How to Get into VR - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-get-into-vr/ <comment><USER4> > _The development of VR has been surprisingly tied to science fiction. > Authors in the field have envisioned the futures that engineers set out to > build_

Incidentally, the high _romanticism_ of VR one of the reasons why I am highly skeptical of the industry. The article argues "VR will also enable immersive concerts, reinvented museums, and live, court-side sporting events", but what is it doing _now_ outside of games, which have been hit-or-miss? (the Samsung Gear VR commercials make VR look ridiculous, IMO)

AI is a similarly romantic industry, but the difference is that there are many practical, non-gimmicky applications of AI _now_ and already implemented on your phones/PCs.

<comment><USER5> immersive concerts - TheWaveVR [0]

reinvented museums - TiltBrush [1]

court-side sporting events - NextVR [2]

Not to mention architecture [3], communication [4], collaboration [5], medicine [6], 3d modeling [7], game development [8], film [9] and the myriad of other industries I'm forgetting. Also if you haven't tried any of the latest games on Oculus Rift or Vive you're really missing out. They've gotten incredible since the consumer launch last year.

[0] [http://thewavevr.com/](http://thewavevr.com/) [1] [https://tiltbrush.com/sketches](https://tiltbrush.com/sketches) [2] [http://nextvr.com](http://nextvr.com) [3] [http://insitevr.com/](http://insitevr.com/) [4] [https://web.facebook.com/spaces](https://web.facebook.com/spaces) [5] [http://bigscreenvr.com/](http://bigscreenvr.com/) [6] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601911/better-than- opioid...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601911/better-than-opioids- virtual-reality-could-be-your-next-painkiller/) [7] [https://www.oculus.com/medium/](https://www.oculus.com/medium/) [8] [https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/12/15/editorvr- experimental-b...](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/12/15/editorvr-experimental- build-available-today/) [9] [https://www.oculus.com/story- studio/films/henry/](https://www.oculus.com/story-studio/films/henry/)

*Disclaimer: I work or have worked for a few of these co's.

<comment> aaron-lebo I've found the gaming experiences pretty mediocre.

It's $900 + big clunky thing on your head vs $500 for a really nice 4k monitor.

Something like Onward is pretty special for its realism, but its not a better game than Rainbow Six was 20 years ago. There are some other fun games but the novelty wears off quickly. It's like a really expensive ($1300 setup) Wii. The current experiences aren't worth the money.

<comment><USER6> For me there's no comparison between the experience of firing a gun or a bow and arrow in VR with hand tracked controls vs in a traditional game with a monitor and a mouse or gamepad. Even virtual target practice with very little 'game' around it is pretty fun I find.

The industry is still figuring out how to create gameplay that takes advantage of VR rather than just porting over gameplay mechanics from traditional games. There are also limitations on how ambitious VR games can get given the current size of the market. There's some very compelling experiences starting to appear already though in my opinion.

I think it's a mistake to put too much emphasis on the current relatively high cost of hardware as a guide to the future potential of the medium. We know that price will come down and if you compare it in real terms to the cost of early PCs it already looks quite affordable.

<comment> aaron-lebo I agree with you and expect experiences to get better as the industry learns.

With nothing to back this up, I think the VR headset is a mass market item at $400 (or the price of a console) and better tech (mainly lighter headset, slightly improved panels). I guess with that belief the question is will the industry continue to subsidize those hardware improvements while developers figure things out? Or perhaps VR hardware will improve regardless of gaming success.

<comment><USER7> VR hardware will continue to improve because it drives all sorts of demand for chips and software, and nobody wants to be left behind. The Hacker News audience may be jaded about it, but it still is interesting to average people. It's just too expensive and too confusing, and the software isn't very good yet. I have no idea how popular VR will but I know better headsets will come out in the next two years and prices will come down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Silicon Valley" touched on this last week:

"It's a VR play," Bachman says. "That's the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters 'v' and 'r', and VC's would hurl bricks of cash at them.

"By the time they find out it's vaporware, it's too late. I've got to get into this."

<comment><USER9> The show is about a year, year and a half out of date. Anecdotally, the funding climate for VR was stupid in 2015, more restrained in 2016 and today. (I think AR might be frothier at this point.)

That said, I haven't seen the episode yet, but the show is usually pretty spot on.

<comment><USER8> There was a lot of hype, but from what I understood watching the experience videos, the first experience is amazing, then boring because there isn't anything else to it. Like a boring game with great graphics.

I suspect once better games or software are written for it, it may improve. Perhaps training and whatnot, but I don't see what it offers over headphones and a big monitor setup, other than nausea, hot eye sockets and possibly a headache. Like I said, I haven't experienced it yet though. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety.

AR is also interesting. I'm not quite sure how much more helpful it would be over your regular ole' eyeballs. Maybe identifying wildlife or something. Currently a HUD for cars is the most useful thing out there and it's been around for years. It's not groundbreaking though, I can just look down a few more inches. Also, you can't do much more with a HUD as far as information goes without distracting the driver. I would definitely like to identify speed traps before I get there. The police have been trying to collect revenue around my neighborhood (for my safety of course) and I almost became a donor.

AR reminds me of the segment where Colbert made fun of the "tech" cup that was able to identify and confirm what you just poured into it.

[http://www.cc.com/video-clips/9nzwjt/the-colbert-report- vess...](http://www.cc.com/video-clips/9nzwjt/the-colbert-report-vessyl- digital-cup)

IMO, for something to really matter, it must be related to: communication, automation or transportation. (CAT) I just made that up, so if someone wants to put that in a textbook or something, I want credit. You can just use "Clubber."

Also, their cellular network idea was pretty good, but it would make much more sense to do something like that out of WIFI because there isn't a centralized provider to snoop and restrict bandwidth.

I don't want to spoil it, this season is pretty good.

<comment><USER10> > Also, you can't do much more with a HUD as far as information goes without > distracting the driver.

Overlaying your current route over the road itself rather than on an abstracted representation would be a good one.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking about that and it would have to be perfect if it traced the actual road. Imagine if it traced slightly off the road or into another lane, the first person who would follow it into oncoming traffic would put an end to the whole project.

Maybe recognize and highlight exit signs that you need to turn off on. It's usually high on the windshield and therefore not as distracting.

Parking assist is another thing that isn't quite right. It alarms me when I'm still a foot or two away. When I turn it off, I park much more precisely. It probably made a hell of a lot of money though, selling to car manufacturers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somebody at YC likes "Ready Player One", which is a stupid book. (Essential skill for taking over a big company: ability to play a perfect game of PacMan.) "Snow Crash" was ahead of its time. Yet the plot of Snow Crash would play out the same if everybody simply had modern phones.

Where's the killer app for VR? VR headsets have been around for years. The current generation of technology works adequately. Yet other than first person shooters, there's not much to do in there. You can plug into Second Life or High Fidelity with a VR headset, but few people do. Using a VR headset to simulate a screen so you can watch a movie is more trouble than it's worth.

<comment><USER12> You know what's funny? I actually think Ready Player One nailed the only use case that might be a game changer for VR: remote schools. You can just make all learning materials virtual. VR school means no physical real estate, buses, cafeterias, bullying, janitors, you can cut like 90% of support staff, the list goes on. Also if you divide people by location (like we do now) you can still coordinate field trips and/or social events that I'm sure parents and nay-sayers would claim are lost with virtual schools.

Honestly I think if we had the right software we could do remote schools effectively right now. The largest barriers are going to be (as always) legislation, bureaucracy, and cultural. I mean companies still balk at remote workers, I don't see governments jumping at remote teachers and students any time soon unfortunately.

<comment><USER11> _Ready Player One nailed the only use case that might be a game changer for VR: remote schools._

Edison thought education would be the killer app for the phonograph. Zworykin thought it would be the killer app for TV. The One Laptop Per Child people thought it would be the killer app for laptops. The tablet people thought it would be the killer app for tablets.

Education doesn't seem to be a technology problem. Would Udacity or Coursera be better with VR? Probably not.

<comment><USER13> > The One Laptop Per Child people thought it would be the killer app for > laptops.

No, they didn't.

They thought laptops would be a useful enabling technology for a particular model of education, but did not think that education would be the killer app for laptops (a product that was so we'll established by that time that thinking about it even _needing_ a "killer app" at that point is senseless.)

<comment><USER14> [http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/comt109w10/reading/Kraemer-...](http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/comt109w10/reading/Kraemer- OneLaptop-Vision-vs-Reality.pdf)

>Negroponte seems to question whether teachers are needed at all. Speaking about providing the rural poor a solid educational basis for development at the 2007 Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich, Germany, Negroponte said: "It's not about training teachers. It's not about building schools. With all due respect [to Hewlett-Packard's e-inclusion efforts], it's not about curriculum or content. It's about leveraging the children themselves.

>David Cavallo, OLPC's chief education architect, says, "We're hoping that these countries won't just make up ground but will jump into a new educational environment."

The OLPC people thought they were going to cause a literal, actual revolution in learning. Didn't happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's exciting to me that there are still this many naysayers, even here on HN. That suggests there's still time to enter the field before the inflection point hits.

<comment><USER16> The everyday discourse on HN is dominated by naysaying. Vision doesn't stand a chance here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At least in my case VR simulator sickness was nascent prioproception.

Fast paced and hectic movements performed in VR would make someone sick if performed in real life.

Back in the day, playing FPSs with shutter glasses, I realised the motion sensations were tied to the motion. Then the sensations became a feature not a bug.

Once I understood the feelings they stopped making me nauseous. VR- prioproception improved my FPS performance. Feeling orientation and velocity really helps.

And immersion goes off chart.

Hard to know what way one is pointing in space, sometimes there are scant motion cues.

But in VR with prioproception When your stomach jumps into your mouth, pulling insane high-G maneuvers as bolts of laser fire crackle past your ship. With prioproception you sense it, becoming as Tudyk said "a leaf on the wind". Fully Embodied. No mind, no controls, you just are.

My vision for VR is a web browser, informed by Gibson's original vision of cyberspace, XEROX Park's 3D information sorting and VRML97 with Unreal style portals as hyperlinks.

IMHO The VR in Snowcrash was mundane. Predating the net, Gibson saw further, to a paradigm shift coming from a new knowledge tool.

Gibson's later 'locative art' idea is a nice twist on Augmented Reality - <USER2> have to go somewhere to see the virtual art overlayed on that place - it is site specific.

<comment><USER18> Do you mean 'proprioception'?

Btw, I'm working on something that I think has some relation to Gibson's vision of cyberspace—just the '3D information sorting' part though: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE) (that video is very outdated unfortunately, but here's a newer screenshot: [http://symbolflux.com/images/avdscreen.png](http://symbolflux.com/images/avdscreen.png))

<comment><USER17> Have you seen Underkoffler's Oblong ?

      https://www.ted.com/talks/john_underkoffler_drive_3d_data_with_a_gesture

<comment><USER18> I haven't. I'll check it out—thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One thing that I think can get lost is that to "Get into VR" if you are already a great software engineer you may not need to learn anything new, just find a place to work where you can immediately apply the skills you already have, towards a VR-oriented product. From there, look for opportunities to develop VR-specific skills like the ones mentioned in this article.

For example, at our company (AltspaceVR) we have a _huge_ need for engineers of all stripes, not just the types of folks you'd normally think of for what is traditionally thought of as a "game" (this term, too, is probably about to become very stale.) It's a huge challenge for us to get great engineers who are not in the games industry to realize that working in this space, depending on the application, can be much like hopping, say, from a web app to a mobile app. Are there new skills to learn? Yes, tons. But that doesn't mean you are starting at ground zero nor that your current skills aren't going to highly valued and critical to an organization's success.

We need people to help build our backend systems (Rails, Kafka, etc), manage ops (Ansible, Datadog, AWS), create deployment tools, build UI (React, but rendered in VR!), work on our mobile app (React Native), build analytics pipelines, the list goes on. In fact I'd argue if you are looking at an organization that doesn't understand the need for such a wide spectrum engineering talent to deliver a great application, you should be careful!

Basically for VR companies who are working on _applications_ that will leverage VR, the "VR-specific" slice of the engineering work is probably a lot smaller than you'd expect, just like for companies developing mobile applications, the "mobile specific" part of engineering work is only a part of the effort.

In other words, don't think you can't get into this field just because you aren't a graphics geek.

(Oh yeah, we're hiring :) [https://altvr.com/careers](https://altvr.com/careers))

<comment><USER20> There is some fundamental irony in a VR company not allowing remote work (during the first year of employment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps counterintuitively, I see/hear more interest in VR for business/productivity than for gaming, right now. I think it comes down to stimulation: we're used to gaming and other entertainment being high-octane, exciting experiences. But work/productivity is boring. VR, by virtue of its immersion and fantastical interactions, can bring more excitement to productivity uses (which are typically boring), while adding legitimate value (e.g., building better relationships with remote employees through business collaboration in VR).

<comment><USER22> I'm working on a VR game at the moment (solo side project for now), and one thing I notice is that you very quickly hit immersion limits for even simple interactions when you use the Touch or Vive controllers. The UX is actually a really hard problem!

I can see why that leads to an enterprise approach where UX is a bit less important.

More specifically, I'm building a juggling simulator. Other apps and games have simulated throwing and it looks and feels convincing, but once you have to throw multiple things per second, the immersion totally breaks with trigger based grabbing. I've been experimenting trying to find a better approach.

Originally I thought it could be a nice fun little project, not really trying to make money. But it took all of maybe five hours of Unity programming to hit untrodden territory! Now I'm starting to nerd out on the immersion and design problem.

<comment><USER21> Juggling simulator sounds awesome...I've always wanted to learn how to juggle!

I'd definitely agree that design challenges are worth nerding-out over...and probably the most difficult aspect on VR development. You don't even want to know how much time we've spent tossing around interface ideas...

That being said, I disagree that UX is less important for enterprise. UX is maybe even more important for enterprise. As a gamer, trying VR is an obvious next step. For enterprise, not so much; the bar is much higher for getting someone to start using 3D software whose functionality currently works on a 5" diagonal screen, a la mobile phones.

<comment><USER22> "UX is less important" is probably the wrong way to describe it. "UX can be more trained" is closer to what I meant. In business applications (Photoshop, for example), some degree of tools training is assumed, so there's some allowance for unnatural feeling ways of doing input that can be learned, so you have a bit more room to fudge the design. Games and consumer software are somewhat less tolerant of the UX acclimatization issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've only seen the talk in person and I've not been able to find a resource online that enumerates exactly what he means, but Dr. Ken Perlin gives an excellent talk (with live demo) about how AR could potentially change the human communication completely.

The gist of it is: assuming ubiquitous access to an AR system that provides a completely shared experience, people will naturally start using that shared experience as a communication tool. We will draw what we mean when words become difficult. We will riff on those ideas in a real-time simulation. And with the mind-set or combination of services, it may as well be, or could actually become, a physical reality.

If you've seen any of his more recent, HTML5-based demos (he has completely switched off of Java) involving visually-oriented, live-programmable environments with physics baked-in, it's almost completely targeted at this dream of communication. He has said he's not in it for graphics or VR/AR anymore, it's the communication aspect he's after.

<comment><USER24> Sounds reasonable, VR or AR need to be a means to a goal, not the goal in and of itself.

I share that vision, I believe AR and VR will enable some truly amazing experiences and interactions - the currently limited means of communication of the Internet still amaze me, but we can do so much more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To learn shader programming, check out ShaderToy [https://www.shadertoy.com/](https://www.shadertoy.com/)

its insane how short some of these implementation are.

<comment><USER26> I'm not a shader programmer, but I think the key to making proper shaders is to understand that the shaders are a parallel computational system based on vector/matrix math (linear algebra), and being able to conceptualize how to use that for graphic purposes (within the context of a pixel vs vertex shader).

It seems that some people (software developers) can do this, and others struggle. Myself, I'm kinda in the middle - then again, I haven't really tried anything with shaders beyond simple examples and such. But my "aha" moment in parallel calcs of this nature came to me during the course of the original 2011 ML Class (MOOC) taught by Andrew Ng - it used Octave as the programming language, and we had to implement a neural network.

The "serial implementation" was first implemented (and was really slow), but then we were "challenged" to do the same using only vector/matrix math. I struggled wrapping my head around it, but then a lightbulb went on, and I realized what it was all about. Granted, behind the scenes a still very-much serial process was happening (likely using BLAS), but I could understand the conceptual underpinnings (and that they applied to all similar parallel systems - like clustered processors and GPUs). It was a real revelation to me at the time.

Even so, there is something special about these people who can see and do similar things at a "frame buffer" level; some of that stuff is down-right beautiful and amazing to watch (and the code oftentimes so small, as you noted).

<comment><USER25> That's only a part of the story. The linear algebra and the GPU execution model are like the first step. To write a shader, you have to understand quite a few things about light, materials etc which is the hard part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> While this was super interesting to read it was fairly disappointing. I'm hoping the entire series focuses on VR and this wasn't our only post. They lead off with

> We talked to college students interested in engineering, business, and > technology to figure out what resources would be most helpful to them. Then, > we reached out to experts from academia, industry, or some combination of > the two.

But we all ended up with was a blog post with some links to online courses and books. Is yc doing ...more? I was expecting something like an actual online course/intro with low requirements to get in. IE let me use my laptop camera and some html/css/js to see what building in AR is like.

<comment><USER5> Here's an example of using your laptop camera and html to see what building AR is like: [https://github.com/jeromeetienne/AR.js](https://github.com/jeromeetienne/AR.js)

<comment><USER27> Exactly what I've wanted to see and with an easy demo. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another good resource for those starting out in computer graphics/VR. It's the textbook for our VR class at UIUC.

[http://vr.cs.uiuc.edu/](http://vr.cs.uiuc.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Just wanted to add my voice to the author's plug for Rainbows End (book). Although I didn't find the story especially engagin, the technological ideas and perspective on VR were inspiring. Bonus if you're into genetics or bioinformatics at all (similar to Jurassic Park in that respect).

<comment><USER30> Seconded. I ended the book very impressed with Vernor Vinge's _ideas_ but found the story and writing almost insufferable. I tried it again a few years later and had the same experience. If it were a movie, it would win all technical oscars and blow lots of minds.

Neuromancer, on the other hand, has aged astonishingly well. Even though Gibson is a sort of awkward writer, I _believe_ in the people he writes about. If it were a movie, it would bomb but the actors would say it was the best work they ever did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone have a good resource covering Headset Hardware reviews and specs?

I researched this recently looking for an HDMI compatible AR headset to try command line coding with but it was tough to find concise feature/spec/price comparisons.

Sign of the times I guess.

<comment><USER23> There are no good AR headsets right now. The Hololens doesn't have enough field of view, processing power, or battery to make it very useful, especially not as a development computer of any kind. And while the Meta 2 is tethered to a PC, it's also garbage. I'm not aware of any others that its actually possible to acquire right now.

<comment><USER31> I'm fine with a tether. I just want something simple that plugs into an HDMI or thunderbolt port and projects my laptop screen into the headset

<comment><USER32> [https://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming/) is about discussing programming inside VR. Not a lot of activity. Current headsets are still equivalent to MCGA solid-angle wise. Best so far for programming seems to be the "Pimax 4K VR" [https://medium.com/@n4ru/mobile- full-stack-development-in-4k...](https://medium.com/@n4ru/mobile-full-stack- development-in-4k-vr-dd963bd7cd7d)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Everyone is talking about the hardware cost, but people seem to have forgotten the software cost, which will have a much bigger impact to the industry overall.

Yes, there will be a few great VR apps and games that actually add to the experience, but what an average VR app is going to be? Making something in VR doesn't necessarily make it better. You have to make a good game/app in the first place. And then there's an additional cost for VR. Now you have one more element to screw up.

Look, even a regular standard PC could be 10x more useful if all the software is better built and run flawlessly. Instead we ended up with half-baked glitchy mess. Making a good VR app won't be easier than this. The profit break even point will be higher because people have a higher expectation. It seems the industry is ill-fated.

</comment><comment><USER34> > VR is a new medium

This is just blatantly not true, at least not on the implied timescale. VR has been around for literally decades, including immersive VR with head and hand tracking. I know because I used it in 1998. The current VR hype cycle is based on this all having gotten a lot cheaper and faster.

To top it off, listing _Snow Crash_ and _Neuromancer_ as suggested reading is just silly. Those are the exact same books we were reading during the last VR boom, and while they're two of my favorites, they're both laughably wrong about VR. Specifically, VR is bad for the exact use cases presented in these novels! VR is, was, and will continue to be a product with niche appeal. We'll see the market expand because it's cheaper, but it's not an effective user interface for most applications.

<comment><USER35> The folks coming from film/video to VR speak of it as a new medium. Describing it as analogous to the early days of cinema, before the now familiar cinematic idioms had been developed. The folks working on WebVR say similar things wrt web idioms. And, to a perhaps lesser extent, gamedevs do too (motion, controls, showing state, haptics, accessing inventory, etc). And almost none of these communities were active in past VR waves.

So perhaps you and the article are using the phrase "new medium" differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There seems to be certain momentum behind VR development, but I'm afraid it will fizzle out on mass market. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it (talk about VR) reminds me a lot of talk about VR in 90's, just on a larger scale. I hope I'm wrong, I just don't see it now for some reason. Maybe if it dies out a bit and then another wave comes around with improved tech and maybe riding on the haptics of the future... who knows. As for AR, I don't see it at all. I just don't see it living outside of commercials with happy people clicking on their phones. What I'm sure is that VR, dead or not on the mass market, will continue to live on in niche varieties (as it did after 90's fizzle out) like job trainings (space, military, medicine..) and such.

<comment><USER35> This time phones and China exist. Phones will continue to drive display and other tech. China has a dynamic manufacturing sector, to keep churning headsets. And has internet cafes, to support game dev. And VR seems to be catching on in US non-governmental industries like realty.

This VR wave seems much more a "look what we can do with current societal phone experience, and phone manufacturing tech", than a "let's struggle again to make something novel and hope it catches on".

As for AR, how about this - picture sitting down at your work desktop/laptop screen(s), and having lower-than-screen-resolution 3D, with direct hand manipulation, surround you. Not interested?

What else might go badly? The patent trolls are spinning up - BillGates/IntellectualVentures have announced it as a focus. But asia seems still insulated enough to keep going, even if the US sidelines itself. A media freakout seems increasingly unlikely (about VR at least), and would be limited to the US. A game market may grow more slowly than expected, but no longer seems able to vanish. What else?

So while takeoff trajectory is perhaps uncertain, I'm having trouble seeing how this wave might fizzle?

<comment><USER36> I'm just not sure it will succeed this time around (en masse). VR needs killer apps, price going down (it's not only about headset), and even more advanced tech in order to be (more) successful. Everyone's talking about headset/displays, but I can't remember anyone talking much (any) about haptics and total immersion - which would be a right and killer direction.

As for AR, we've seen Pokemon Go as a success. It was a perfect storm. Even if you disregard AR/Camera segment, one could possibly categorise geolocation segment as AR. There are AR apps for museums, but it's debatable how much of a success that is.

Have you used anything with 'hands in the air' for much time? I did use some 3D digitisers with haptic feedback before (in 3D work) and 'gorilla arms' syndrome is real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The elephant NOT in the room here is Apple. I think one can safely assume that Apple is very actively doing R&D to solve the very hard problems with VR - <USER3> they will probably succeed. It'll probably be a walled garden like iOS, but it will still move the market.

<comment><USER38> Are you sure? Because everyone is still waiting on the Mac mini and Mac Pro that is overdue. I really doubt apple's doing anything in the VR space.

<comment><USER39> Apple doesn't have much incentive to build new Mac minis and new Mac Pros.

<comment><USER37> Exactly. But they do have a big incentive to participate in the next big wave of personal computing.

<comment><USER38> Apple has never been about spearheading the 'next big wave'. It's modus operandi has always been step in late, but do it right.

VR as I see it now isn't any where close to being the big wave that people are anticipating it to be. I think we still need a bunch more computing power and time before it has any chance of disrupting anything.

Even then I doubt Apple will get into VR. Apple is very elitist when it comes to adopting industry standardds. That hasn't stopped it from getting a good foothold in the personal computing market. But it did pretty much kill Apple's chance at making money in the hardcore gaming sector. Which I think will happen again with VR.

<comment><USER37> I, for one, anticipate it being a big wave - perhaps even the biggest after smartphones. I think it's what comes next. And I for one wouldn't miss the era of walking around poking our index fingers at 5" screens. I do hope that there are senior folks at Apple thinking the same, because I think Apple has the resources to do VR well.

<comment><USER38> Flying cars are what comes next after cars, and that's been going on for several decades now isn't it?

VR does have great potential, but not as it is right now. IBM and Xerox have put in a lot of money then in a lot of things. And Google is throwing money at several things too. But seldom do the big wave things pan out as expected when we want them to.

<comment><USER37> Some things require major scientific or technological breakthroughs. Other things just require smart people and people with money willing to take a chance on them. Flying cars falls into the former (needs battery breakthrough). I think VR falls into the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For those interested in how NOT to get into VR, I present: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OHlaVNOKGM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OHlaVNOKGM)

</comment><comment><USER41> VR Porn i believ will be the biggest of all social consumption. last year i had a chance to try it (out of sheer curiosity and nostalgia) . it was way way to real. the end of society.

</comment><comment><USER42> Everyone in VR thinks they are creating things for the first time. From 2000 to 2009 I founded and ran the second largest VR company in the world. The number of firsts that my team had was amazing.

What really amazes me is now that VR is growing. Zero people have talked to me about what my team learned. Its like the past never existed...

<comment><USER43> Well... what did your team learn?

<comment><USER42> I will boil down 10 years experience into a few words, "its hard, and expensive". Leveraging the real world paradigm works great in some situations and not at all in others. There are some things that 2D will always be better for, like search and shopping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've always been sceptical of VR. As much as I was amazed by Oculus the first time I tried it, I never thought it was going to catch on. All for the sole reason that humans do not like to have things on their faces.

Any technology that needs to mount on the user's face will have to propose a huge value proposition.

</comment><comment><USER45> A very interesting development in this space is WebVR. You can use WebGL to create widely available (95% of browsers) web-based 3D experience and thanks to WebVR the experience can upgrade to VR for visitors that have VR hardware.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why are VR posts devoided of any talk about porn technology development. I think a huge market for VR will be the porn industry, and it seems quite untapped at this point.

</comment><comment><USER47> I would love to get my hands on a VR kit in order to look into AR and UX design, but sadly, I do not have the money to invest in a HTC VIVE or similar.

</comment><comment><USER48> First they should ask if you want to get into VR. I mean, there is a certain crisis, as the hype did not live up and obvious problems (sickness) remained obvious.

<comment><USER5> As a professional VR developer I'm unaware of this crisis. There's also about as many headsets sold as people thought there would be (and way more GearVR's than expected). I haven't gotten sick from a VR experience (that I wasn't half-way through building) in over a year. The headsets are good enough that they don't make you sick by default (like they used to) and to make somebody sick you have to go against best design practises.

<comment><USER49> I'm not a VR developer, but from an outside perspective it actually looks like there are a few different crises.

1) _Developers_ seem to be interested in heavyweight VR systems like Vive and Rift, while _users_ (based on sales figures, anyway) seem to be interested in inexpensive, cordless systems like GearVR and Cardboard. Which leads to the awkward situation where all the innovative software is coming out for hardware that very few users actually own. (And then that market gets segmented even further -- with Rift development now orienting around Rift + Touch, for instance, which leaves users without Touch behind.)

2) "It hasn't made _me_ sick in over a year!" is not an answer to concerns about VR making people sick that is going to get people to rush out and buy hardware. Once a product has developed a rep for making people sick (not _everybody_ , of course, but all it takes is _enough_ people), it can take a long, long time to shake that rep off.

3) There's a fundamental problem that nobody in this generation of VR has been able to really solve yet, which is _making a headset that is comfortable to wear for long periods._ Even simpler solutions like GearVR are heavy enough that you feel their weight after wearing them for 30 minutes or more, and with developers pushing the platform towards bigger/deeper experiences, the trend in hardware doesn't seem like it'll be running primarily towards weight reduction. This could lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of pushing the tech further and further away from a mass audience, as VR enthusiasts (i.e. people who don't mind the weight of existing hardware) demand higher-resolution experiences, which leads to hardware companies pursuing more power instead of less weight, which leads to products that only sell to VR enthusiasts, who demand higher-resolution experiences, etc. Something similar to this happened to the market for flight simulations in the '90s, which resulted in one of the main categories of entertainment software evolving into a tiny niche market of interest only to obsessives.

None of which is to say that VR is doomed, or that these things are in reality as serious as they appear to be to an outsider. But I would say there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that VR will become a big, mass-market hit, at least this go-around.

<comment><USER50> What's possible on a high-end rig today will be possible on on a phone within 2 years.

<comment><USER35> I was at a Boston VR[0] meetup last week, that was lifestreamed via youtube[1] to AltspaceVR[2]. An organizer used a recent Samsung phone in a Daydream headset (which has a closed back), to host the VR space. The biggest problem seemed the low duty cycle - use it for a few minutes, then take the phone out to cool down. Some demo setups at the recent VRLA Expo, had a small fan attached to the phone. So will we see a GTX 1060 equivalent on a flagship phone in 2 years... maybe? But I was struck by how far we've come already.

[0] [https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Virtual- Reality/](https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Virtual-Reality/) [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iGszROz58U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iGszROz58U) [2] [https://altvr.com/](https://altvr.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I would love to see a "Paths" post about getting into 3D printing. Or if anyone has any good resources for a total beginner I'd be grateful.

</comment><comment><USER52> do I need a PC to be able to get into it?

<comment><USER23> Not necessarily. As always, the answer is "it depends".

If you're looking to get into high-end, room-scale VR with hand-tracked controllers and high-fidelity graphics, then yes. You need a Windows 10 PC with as much RAM, CPU, and GPU as you can muster. Plan on spending at least USD 2000 on a custom-built PC.

If you're looking to get into smartphone-based AR, you can use practically anything to write the code, and there are plenty of tools to be able to build completely cross-platform apps. But you will want a flagship phone, whether that's the latest iPhone or one of the Androids with a powerful CPU and GPU. AR is very _CPU_ intensive. While there have been demonstrations of SLAM on GPUs, all of the implementations I'm aware of are doing it on the CPU.

Where should you start? Well, without hand-tracking of some kind, I don't really consider it VR. Google Cardboard, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR, and Oculus Rift without the Touch controllers are all glorified 2D interfaces. They don't provide anything actually new in terms of being able to interact with the application.

Smartphone-based AR apps will probably reach a wider audience sooner than VR. But if Microsoft's approach to headsets and Windows Holographic pays off, I think that is not a perpetual state of affairs. Ideally, this gets down to the size of a pair of sunglasses (which is very nearly the case already). At that point, smartphone-based AR is going to be a quaint novelty.

<comment><USER53> 2000 USD is too high for the cost of a VR PC. I built a PC in fall 2016 that was more powerful than what was required for VR and it cost me around $1200. Additionally there are companies advertising "VR Ready PCs" that come with an Oculus headset for around USD 1,000. See this article: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/dont-look-now-but- ocu...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/dont-look-now-but-oculus-ready- pcs-are-getting-relatively-cheap/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I still haven't drunk the VR kool-aid.

I want to believe. I've used all the software. Played many games. The problems for me are 2 fold

1\. I don't have the space. I don't personally know anyone that does. Maybe if you live in the mid-west or the suburbs but there are plenty of cities where people are unlikely to have a space for room scale VR and arguably the non- room scale VR is just not that compelling. Visiting a "VR space" is not ever going to be mainstream so that seems like an issue for mass VR adoption.

2\. When I play a good non-VR game I play for hours and days at a time. As an example last month I played Zelda:Breath of the Wild for 70+ hours, 10-14 hours a day. I've yet to play anything in VR that I could stay in for 10-14 hours. In fact many VR games get extremely tiring very quickly. I've played a few where after 10 minutes I'm exhausted. That's doesn't seem likely to become a main form of entertainment.

I've also played at a few VR arcades. Again the games have been fun and immersive but the also felt like thrill rides. In other words, 5-10 minutes and I'm done. Neat experience but just like I could not ride a rollercoaster for 10hrs I can't do VR for 10hrs. It's not about the form, it's about the activity. Searching a room, opening draws, pressing various floating buttons, holding virtual weapons. It's tiring not relaxing like non VR games.

Those issues don't seem solvable. They aren't tech issues they're inherent to the whole concept. Fixes for the space would require direct brain implants so you don't actually move around, you just think you are. I don't know if there is a solution to the 2nd. It's one thing to push buttons to see Nathan Drake climb mountains. It's another to actually do the climbing.

As for the article itself I was a little sad to see VR defined as only

> VR… only tracking, rendering, and display. Tracking is the process of > recording the user's location and orientation in 3D space. Rendering is the > process of constructing the appropriate image for a user. Display refers to > the fidelity with which the hardware can produce the rendered image."

Even with the problems mentioned above there seems to still be low-hanging fruit.

If you want to be able to talk to people in VR you need to be able to emote. That means you need low-res cameras looking at your eyes and mouth so your avatar can show your expressions.

Similarly, 2 hands is not enough. I need censors on my feet and maybe knees, waist, elbows. In many VR experiences I've played things where bumping up against something with my waist or, kicking something away with my feet, using my knee to close a draw etc seem like natural actions that were thwarted by lack of input.

<comment><USER55> "I don't have the space. I don't personally know anyone that does."

Same (NYC). Urban centers have been trending for the last 30 years and have become prohibitively expensive as a result. I can't help but wonder if a future (next?) generation of kids will move back out to the burbs in search of McMansions with two-car garages to use as immersive VR environments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Super interesting... I definitely wonder how VR/AR might change the way we think about architecting spaces in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Using VR makes me sick...

<comment><USER5> What have you tried?

<comment><USER57> I think this is a reasonable question, as different headsets are more likely to make people feel ill than others, from what I've heard.

<comment><USER5> Not just different headsets but even different content on the best headsets (as will always be the case until we figure out how to zap your vestibular system in an accurate and safe way).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LIGO Black hole merger may have optical confirmation - <AUTHOR> https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/black-hole-collision-may-have-exploded-light <comment><USER2> > _Once the black holes merge, the new, now-larger black hole experiences a > kick that sends it off in a random direction, and it plows through the gas > in the disk_

Hm, I would expect the merged object to move in the same way as the center of mass of the unmerged objects. Where does the extra momentum for this "kick" come from? Is there mass from the surrounding disk thrown in the other direction? Or maybe some relativistic effect?

edit: apparently gravitational waves can carry away linear momentum, and that's where the kick comes from[1].

[1][https://astrobites.org/2018/03/08/recoil-detectives- searchin...](https://astrobites.org/2018/03/08/recoil-detectives-searching- for-black-hole-kicks-using-gravitational-waves/)

</comment><comment><USER3> How strange that "Seeing is believing" still holds even with gravitational waves, which aren't electromagnetic phenomena. Human nature :)

<comment><USER4> Two point verification always has value. It's how every instrument we've ever made is calibrated.

<comment><USER3> Can gravitational waves be verified by optical signals? I thought the whole point of LIGO is that it's a method not relying on electromagnetic signals

<comment><USER4> Yes. In fact that this is the exact (very exciting and somewhat recent) experiment that proved that if gravity does propagate in higher dimensions, then the dimensions must be very thin.

[https://youtu.be/3HYw6vPR9qU](https://youtu.be/3HYw6vPR9qU)

Edit: To be clear: the experiment I'm referring to was the observation of two neutron stars merging. Since there was no event horizon prior to the merger, we'd expect a lot of EM energy to be radiated away. This new observation is neat because we'd expect much less EM energy out of a black hole merger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the surprise or confusion here. Yes, light can't escape black holes. But black holes are _systems_ And they typically would have accretion disks. Those very much could emit light (and no doubt a ton of X-rays and/or gamma rays) when the black holes "collide" (as violent and energetic as these events are, I think "merge" is still probably more accurate).

The magnitude of these events is simply mind-boggling. I think the first such LIGO detection has an estimated 3-5 _Solar masses_ converted to energy.

<comment><USER6> the surprise is that to make an accretion disk which would make any detectable emission, there had to be a lot of matter around a black hole.

the accretion disks are commonly seen around binaries consisting of a stellar mass black hole and a regular star. stars feeds the disk in this case.

another possibility is to have a supermassive back hole in the galaxy center, which feeds on the surrounding gas, making much larger and slowed disk.

what has never been seen before a stellar mass black hole (or pair of black holes) feeding on the interstellar medium. This should happen of course, but the expected luminosity is way below anything detectable.

binary black hole, i.e. a system without any addition mass to accrete, would have to be in some very unusually dense medium, and the medium would need to be disrupted by merger.

interestingly, such medium can occur around another back hole - a supermassive one.</comment></comment>


How I built 1QAD in 48 hours - <AUTHOR> http://blog.piotry.me/how-i-build-1qad-in-48-hours/

<comment><USER2> Looks like a good solution. Email app is an area that is not used much these days, or have a very high profile. Good job!</comment>


Show HN: Enlight – Learn to Code by Building Projects - <AUTHOR> https://enlight.ml <comment><USER2> I think the site is really cool. We build a lot of tutorials as well and you have a simplicity to your style that I think will resonate with readers esp. those newer to programming.

We just wrote a tutorial on building a simple realtime react app with GraphQL Subscriptions. If you're interested I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

[https://scaphold.io/blog/2016/11/09/build-realtime-apps- with...](https://scaphold.io/blog/2016/11/09/build-realtime-apps-with- subs.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

I'd love to know your thoughts on Enlight. I hand-crafted the site and am hoping you guys can give some advice on how to make it better!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I made a mistake (I should have just linked it to the URL)Here's the site: [https://enlight.ml](https://enlight.ml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice stuff!</comment>


Are Amazon and Wal-Mart Laying the Foundations for Socialism? - <AUTHOR> http://machineryquestion.com/notes/peoples-republic <comment><USER2> I was prepared for this article to be a ridiculous, illuminati- and qanon- reference laden steaming pile of nonsense. It is not.

> Some firms, notably Walmart and and Amazon, are so "vast" that they are in > every important respect "planned economies" like the former Soviet Union.

This article appears to be a thoughtful critique of a long-form article from "Jacobin". It's worth a read. You will have to elsewhere for steaming piles of Qanonsense, however.</comment>


BeerXML - <AUTHOR> http://www.beerxml.com/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like a good complement to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer)</comment>


Driverless cars set to be tested in four English cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30316458

<comment><USER2> Having worked on the Ultra PRT project ([http://www.ultraglobalprt.com](http://www.ultraglobalprt.com)), which was born out of Bristol University thanks to the late Professor Martin Lowson, it's great to see Bristol involved in this driverless car project.

However, it's a real shame that the Bristol project is basically another study, led by consultants, which won't actual result in any implementation. The Ultra system at Heathrow has now carried over a million passengers, operating in one of the world's busiest environments, and yet none of the engineering or operational experience will factor into the study (or even be used to - shock horror - actually test something rather than just study it).</comment>


Ask HN: Startup programming language/framework stats? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious to know which programming languages and web frameworks are en vogue with startups right now. Can anybody offer any insight on this or links to statistics? <comment><USER2> I would point out the biggest 3 scripting languages around and their Web frameworks

Ruby + Ruby On Rails ( Twitter, Group On, BaseCamp, Scribd, Hulu, Justin.TV, SlideShare etc..) The Web Framework is designed for Fast coding for Web, really nice design and easy to use.

Python + Django ( Washington Post, <http://www.djangosites.org/most-comments/> ) Django is also a Web FW designed to help in fast coding, but as far as I can see it strong point is the admin console which is very rich.

Scala + Lift ( <http://lift.poweredsites.org/> ) I am not very familiar with it, I only know that it's a son of Java language, it uses the Java JVM to work, and it's sintaxe looks more like java then the to above.

I myself am learning Ruby because I liked the Web Framework more( I am a Java programmer, java sucks a bit for Web, too complex I think) Python has the appeal to be useful for more stuff like doing linux stuff or getting a job on Google :D

Cheers from Brazil !

<comment><USER2> you are right !

PHP totally slipped my mind... but My point was the "New" ones :D I would not advise anyone to learn PHP nowadays... to much trouble for to learn an old language, it's still in use I agree but has too many problems solved by those 3.

Java Web is a pain I work with it and takes a lot of time to master and be able to code anything useful in it... would never recommend it for a web Startup. Ok, maybe for a webbroker I would :D

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree with your stance on PHP. It is not an "old" language (in fact, it's younger than both Java and Python), and while some programmers seem to have a problem with it, most of the criticism is exaggerated in my opinion. Personally I like both Python and PHP, but in terms of getting something simple up and running quickly, nothing beats PHP (and yes, the thing that you get up and running is actually very maintainable).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just checked [http://www.quora.com/Which-startups-are-hiring-in-the-San- Fr...](http://www.quora.com/Which-startups-are-hiring-in-the-San-Francisco- Bay-Area), and it seems that the languages most in demand are Python, Ruby, and PHP.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here we go: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843083>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Glad to see Python at the top of the list, since that's my preferred choice as well.

<comment><USER2> Javascript 704 points

Is the top of the list

Cheers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I know, but I was mainly talking about the serverside of things (and the poll was focused on that, too, since the majority of languages there can't be used on the clientside).

And yes, I know that you can use JavaScript on the serverside too, but I highly doubt that something like node.js would be the backend engine of the majority of startups. So the way that I'm interpreting the results is that everyone (or most) startups use JavaScript on the clientside, and a majority of startups use Python on the serverside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Django/Python in our case <http://alpha.beepl.com></comment>


Show HN: CF-BAN, a tiny shell script to automatically ban IPs on CloudFlare - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nichdiekuh/cf-ban

<comment><USER2> Maybe you should mention the configuration in your README. Some blind admin might just throw it in and wonders why nothing happens.</comment>


Habits of Successful People: Start Before You Feel Ready - <AUTHOR> https://jamesclear.com/successful-people-start-before-they-feel-ready <comment><USER2> Sometimes you feel like you aren't ready because you aren't ready.

This seems like advice for people who have enough money to fail repeatedly, or post-hoc advice from people who spun the chamber and survived.

There's this idea that it's solid generalized advice... to tell people to stop thinking and pour themselves into a gamble. Because it worked for a billionaire. I would not be surprised if ninety-nine out of a hundred people who could take this advice literally end up buying into an MLM, or starting a shitty restaurant, or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this applies to families too, explaining why many well-organized and cautious people end up missing out on children. There may _never_ be a time when you feel ready. There is always something more -- a dept paid off, a larger house, an education completed -- and that just never ends. Meanwhile, the opportunity slips away.

</comment><comment><USER4> Selection bias obscures the unprepared people who went down in flames.

Branson's charm and people skills make him ready for a lot.

</comment><comment><USER5> Right on. Too many people are held back by worrying about things that `could` go wrong.

Worrying has an opportunity cost.</comment>


Initiative for Low-Income Students to Access New Generation Of Higher Education - <AUTHOR> http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-ed-launches-initiative-low-income-students-access-new-generation-higher-education-providers <comment><USER2> Having seen how demand side subsidies destroy the rest of the education sector, why oh why would they think this is a good idea for tech?

If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges open free to the public ones. Then all the bullshit paid ones will have to compete against a free product and the price will go down. To solve the demand issue start off with a lottery system and tweak class size accordingly.

<comment><USER3> > If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges > open free to the public ones.

Some of these even already exist, but seem not to have as good PR behind them. For example, De Anza College, a community college in Cupertino, offers a variety of intro programming courses for a $140 enrollment fee, with fee waivers available for low-income students.

<comment><USER4> I took a c++ course at Canada college in Redwood city and the professor had us watch YouTube videos for instruction and submit assignments as Microsoft Word documents. Their is a huge lack of quality control that ultimately lowers the value of the accreditation of such institutions IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great... more subsidized loans means more profit for me. Can't speak to the whole "benefit to society" piece, but thanks Uncle Sam. Sorry for the people who will be making these payments, whether it's the taxpayer or the debtors. Business is business.

</comment><comment><USER6> Education in the US is a huge mess. How is a 13-week class in web development going to help low-income students?

I'm not sure how many readers of HN attended low-income schools. The problem I see is that many that get out of low-income schools don't know basics like the commutative law of multiplication (a * b == b * a) or how to use a semicolon. The education deficit by the time they hit CC is so large that it's unreasonable to expect them to be successful at programming.

I had low-income friends that took school seriously and these kids ended up in college on scholarships, but most of my classmates did not take school seriously. It wasn't a character issue that held them back, but more of a cultural issue. They were surrounded by people, friends and family, that didn't appreciate the value of education.

These problems started early, in elementary school, and by high school they were too far behind to be successful and simply checked out at best or became disruptive and tried to hold everyone else back at worst. Very sad.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about instead of adding code academies to the student loan gravy train, they try something a bit innovative?

How about they pick a hundred community colleges and provide money for a competitive salary and housing costs for a number of STEM faculty members for about 3 years. That should generate enough data to figure out effectiveness.

I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of buying 3 small kit homes, placing them on the school grounds, and then hiring 3 new PhDs on a 3 year contract so they can get teaching experience, then cycling in a new set of PhDs. They probably won't be STEM, but you have to start somewhere.

<comment><USER8> The public school I attended used trailers for overflow classrooms. Simple, cheap and effective.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, we'll skip that as I would want them to blend with the rest and I'm pretty sure it needs to look a bit more permanent to convince people to live in them for 3 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see how these boot camps are substantially different than so called "for profit colleges".

<comment><AUTHOR> Scrolling down to the partnerships, you find things like:

> Institution: SUNY Empire State College (Saratoga Springs, New York)

> Non-traditional provider: The Flatiron School

> Quality assurance entity: American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

and

> Institution: Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts)

> Non-traditional provider: General Electric

> Quality assurance entity: American Council on Education (ACE)

The traditional education institutions are very respected. The non-traditional are also well respected already, just out of reach for the low income students (aside, Flatiron school was the only one to release an audited report of job placement earlier this year - [http://www.ibtimes.com/code-boot-camps-fail- obama-unaudited-...](http://www.ibtimes.com/code-boot-camps-fail-obama- unaudited-stats-cast-doubt-success-rates-2301188) ). And lastly, there's that quality assurance entity like ANSI which places like the university of phoenix and the fly by night boot camps would shy away from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> GE is in mixed company here; the other partners don't have nearly GE's deep pockets or long history.

I read this proposal and think of the poor / underserved people I know through working in the homework / dropin center at the local public housing project here in MA. A job at the GE turbine plant in Lynn would be a dream come true, and a ticket out of housing (absent layoffs or offshoring).

These folks can study online; we have the beginnings of a nice mesh network, and donors for computers. So the pattern might work.

A determining factor would be support for the students. Underserved people need encouragement and occasional bureaucratic intervention ("fix that registrar's mistake, please!") to get things done. They typically don't have family members capable of coaching them in such things.

But, Northeastern U? Seriously? That's a fine institution with a long history of experiential education. But it's expensive, and many of their students have deep resources (== helicopter parents) making sure they succeed. The young people I work with would be culturally outcompeted at such an institution. I'd much rather have a program like this at a community college. GE certainly could participate.

It's good these programs have independent quality measurement. Hopefully they'll measure the qualitative cultural stuff as well as doing stats on test scores.

Loans worry me. People shouldn't become debt slaves, especially to pay for experimental programs. I hope there's accountability, in the form of compulsory debt forgiveness, in case the programs don't meet expectations. That accountability needs to lie upon the .edu, the partner org, the QA org, and the government lending agency.

All that being said, it's good to try new things.

</comment><comment><USER11> some more corporate handouts</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't Wetware Computing mainstream? - <AUTHOR> I just read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_computer and I realized that synthetic biology + wetware computing would be a huge breakthrough for low power computing. It was studied extensively in the 90s but abandoned. Could it rise again? <comment><USER2> Rise is an odd word. It barely got out of the basement.

That Wikipedia article doesn't remark much on speed, or stability. Nor on which classes of problem it fits. It is possible with ML and genetic programming you could re-enter the room and apply it to things but I'm wondering how the devops and compile cycle works.

Slime mould solves the travelling salesman problem pretty well. Google maps finds tractable useable paths in near real time for most problems not involving best path over seven bridges..

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah these are really good questions. I'm going to dig deeper, it seems very interesting and it may hold outcomes that could be significant.</comment></comment>


New video element Policies in iOS 10 (safari will allow autoplay if no sound) - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/6784/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apple will honor the autoplay attribute on the html5 video element starting with iOS 10.

In their example they state that this will allow animated gifs that got converted into a video to autoplay.

But this is also interesting for developers like me that use a video as background on their landing page, because previously the video would not autoplay until the user clicks somewhere, now with sound turned off the video will autoplay, at least on iOS > 9.

I also guess this is good news for Facebook that has more and more videos in a users timeline which can't autplay on iOS. Now they will autoplay in iOS > 9, as Facebook turns the sound off by default anyway.</comment>


Maps TD - Google Maps-based Tower Defence. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mapstd.com/ <comment><USER2> I like this game because now I can prove that my house is in a very defensible position for a zombie attack.

Also I really liked the use of Google maps and the power that brings, namely being able to zoom in an out and being able to switch to map or satellite mode, both of which were a lot of fun. And of course it's more fun because I was able to defend my own home!

I think I'll play again and defend my childhood home, which is much less defensible.

<comment><USER3> Really loving the Moon tiles too. Are the Moon tiles by Google as well or are they 3rd party tiles?

<comment><USER4> The moon tiles are from Google Moon ( <http://www.google.com/moon/> ), although I think it's actually NASA imagery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just finished the game. Marvelous TD experience, really kept me on my toes with the "new paths" being added as you progress. The game did get a little slow near the later levels, but that's no problem as it was still very playable. I completed the game with 100 life so there might be room for added difficulty (maybe even more levels with increasing difficulty).

Had me on the edge of my chair the whole time. Super awesome game!

<comment><USER6> You can keep playing after you finish. It seems to get much harder around level 80, with multiple orange dudes, and you end up losing multiple lives a level unless you've strategically placed your orange and purple turrets.

(I finished the game with 91 life remaining - I screwed up a little when the first new path was added, didn't expect it and didn't have enough money banked to build adequate defenses - but didn't lose a life between around level 10 and level 80. Then I started losing about 5-10 lives each level at 80...probably would've died at about 90, but I saw the writing on the wall and gave up.)

<comment><USER7> You made me curious so I played it out... <http://i.imgur.com/Y2M6j.png>

At some point you just become unkillable.

edit It's still going ;_; when will it end?! I wasted 2 hours on this already.

<comment><USER8> You are especially unkillable if you pick a very defensible location, like "mount evans"

<comment><USER9> Nice! "Col de Braus, Lucéram, France" is not as defensible, but has lots of switchbacks.

For a different approach, try "Golden Gate Bridge." The invaders follow one- way streets so everything coming from San Francisco has to cross the bridge twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You're an evil man posting this here on a Sunday night, knowing damn well people have work tomorrow.

IDEAS TO CHANGE THINGS UP:

\- Here's something different: If there was 1 path to my "base" and every few levels my home would move and extend the path for the enemies. Something different to try if you wish.

\- Do NOT show the path that the enemies take, just show me where my base is and where the enemies spawn from, and generate 3 or 4 slightly different enemy paths that are invisible so it looks like the enemies look like they're choosing their own paths towards you. The rule should be that you cannot place a turret on any street, only on property or parking lots.

LOVED:

\- endless levels to choose from. The google maps themeing.

DIDN'T LIKE:

\- Inability to move turrets.

\- Short multiple enemy paths, I would have preffered one long and winding enemy path.

WISHED:

\- You used the little "street view guy" icon as a enemy boss.

\- Less straight lines, more turns for the enemies.

\- Longer enemy paths.

\- A lot of what roryokane said:

BUGS:

\- I caught an interesting little glitch, I bought and fully upgraded a Yellow tower then sold it but it looks like its still doing damage as if it were still there.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't help to hide the path the enemies take. It's built on the real world road system. A solution would be to prevent you from completely blocking the destination, but that requires knowing street data which Google doesn't easily provide.

If you want a more winding path, try some place in the world with more winding roads, like Col de Braus, Lucéram, France or Pikes Peak, Colorado. Golden Gate bridge was also interesting in a winding-like way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> General comment about TD games: Whenever there are no clear tower/mob advantages, I simply maximize damage-time per dollar. (You can go a step further and do damage-time per dollar-space.)

Simply doing that, I'm on round 200 with 100 lives, on my first try. Eventually it makes sense to only buy orange towers, no upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe I'm just a sore loser, but I don't like the common trope in TD games of not telling you what kind of opposition you'll face until you're already committed in terms of what defense you'll put up. It doesn't make the game fundamentally harder, because all you have to do is play through it once to see everything. It just makes the first couple playthroughs suck, which is exactly when you should be sucking people in and making them enjoy the game.

<comment><USER13> Eh, it doesn't matter a whole lot anyway. A TD game you can beat the very first time isn't interesting, and if hints on what is to come will let you beat it, it's too easy.

<comment><USER14> I disagree -- Crystal Defenders tells you what enemies (and their weaknesses/strengths) are coming the next wave, and it's the hardest TD game I've ever played. Sanctum, Bloons TD, PixelJunk Monsters, and Dungeon Defenders all do it too, and none of them are what I'd call "easy" (/maybe/ BTD).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a really neat and creative idea, and worked really well. Some thoughts:

-I never like it when TD games have finish lines. It would be better if the game continued progressing indefinitely, with the player making more and more money but the enemies getting stronger and stronger until even the best defenses reach a breaking point. As it stands now, the player can continue after the game ends at round 50, but he/she makes little money. Even without knowing what the different towers did and what angles later enemies would be approaching the building from, I was still able to win on the first try just by placing towers near roads and buying upgrades as soon as I could.

-An implementation of street view would be pretty cool. Players could see their towers added to the landscape and watch the enemies storming down New York Ave. Might be really difficult though.

-More complexity and variety would make it better.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had some fully-upgraded towers built near each of my map's four spawn points. After I sold them, enemies near the spawn points continued to take damage.

Someone might want to test whether selling towers does anything other than give you money and allow you to build a new tower in its spot. :)

<comment><USER17> I sold each one of my towers at level 200 and continued to beat each wave, towerless. To compensate, it seems that the amount of money you get from selling a tower is nowhere near the stated amount :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really like the use of page visibility API for putting the game on pause. Wasn't sure of a good use case for it but this definitely counts.

Nicely done!

</comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one that reads the domain name as "Map STD"?

</comment><comment><USER20> I am a sucker for Tower Defense games. That I can defend my own house from the creeps is awesome.

One of my favorite strategies is as-many-as-possible long-range, low-power, fire-fast towers. Just made level 100 with all 100 lives in tact with blue towers only.

<comment><USER2> What was your build out strategy? Did you try and do full upgrades before building more, or did you build a bunch and then upgrade?

I'm trying your strategy right now and so far full upgrades before building more seems to be working.

<comment><USER20> So, this time it was upgrade all the way then build more, but the build a whole line then upgrade one at a time worked pretty well too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wasted about two hours of my day on this. It was fun, but I actually found it a bit too easy. Maybe I was just picking easy maps (Colorado is all pretty much just straight roards). Still, it was a good diversion.

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks nice. Added complexity would be cool. TD is great with some creativity.

</comment><comment><USER23> I played tons of tower defense games before and i loved smart ideas of game. Unlimited levels, zooming, simplicity, great concept!

I wished to move turrets when new enemy paths added.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love it, I just wish you had used some cool 8-bit tower looking markers rather than the default GMaps markers. Great though, I'm hooked.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wrote a feedback email to the developer with many small suggestions for improving Maps TD. I am copying them here in case others are interested or have the same suggestions.

"""

If fast-forward is enabled when the round ends, skip the animation of the "Next Round!" panel falling and have the panel just appear. When I have a strong turret formation and just want to send a few waves of enemies through it to save up money, I get annoyed from having to wait for the Start (start the next round) button to finish bouncing before I can click it. Though the speed of the disappearance of that panel is fine. Perhaps the disappearance animation but in the other direction would work, too, since it's fast.

When a turret is selected, you make the inner circle white. I suggest you also make the border of the outer circle black, so we can see the range of the selected turret easily.

Turret inspector window suggestions (attached to this email is a mockup image incorporating these suggestions): (attachment mirrored for this comment at <http://postimage.org/image/hizbeeotj/>)

Make the turret type and X (close) button always stick to the top, even after scrolling, so I can easily close the inspector wherever I am in it.

To the left of the turret type name (e.g. "Yellow Tower"), put an icon of that turret (e.g. a yellow turret icon).

Always show the current attributes of the turret, no matter how you scroll - fix them to the top. Then, for each attribute, instead of listing every new attribute and the cost, list only the attribute that will be changed plus the cost. It might also be nice to show the old value of the attribute, for reference, but I don't see a place to fit that in the interface. I think this will make the effect of each upgrade easier to comprehend, and also require less scrolling. If that big a change sounds bad to you, here is different way of achieving that: in the attributes list of each upgrade, make the attribute that will be upgraded bold, italic, another color, or otherwise emphasized.

I don't know if this is possible with the Google Maps API, but it would be nice to have some indication of how upgraded a turret is just from its icon. I had one fully-upgraded blue turret next to a plain blue turret, and I wanted to upgrade the plain one, but I had to look at the inspector of one of them to find out which one was the plain one. Some possible indicators of upgradedness are the shade of the color (darker or lighter), the color or darkness of the circle representing size taken, or the size of the dot in the middle of the turret. The number to indicate how upgraded a turret is would probably just be the number of upgrades divided by the number of possible upgrades for that turret type.

Bug: on Firefox 11.0 on Windows 7, the six turret icons on the side all look like the goal/house icon instead, which is confusing for new players. The icons on the map look fine, and all icons look fine in Chrome. An image showing this bug is attached. (attachment mirrored for this comment at <http://postimage.org/image/h0m7bv53f/>)

I am seeing this turretless winning bug, too: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3784435> (and the sale price bug mentioned in its reply).

"""

</comment><comment><USER26> Really nice, the last round (50 or 51 i think) was a bit too much for my laptop integrated video card, but i succeeded :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't place towers, and I don't know why. Its a shame I really liked the idea. Using chrome 17.0.963.83

<comment><USER28> Same here. Probably one of my flags but I am too lazy to check. However, I do like the idea of real world maps as a game data source; it was fun to see the 'enemies' advancing on my actual house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Made it to round 92. A nice little browser game, the stuff you can do with the Maps API is really sweet.

</comment><comment><USER30> tadaa [http://imageshack.us/photo/my- images/707/screenshot20120401a...](http://imageshack.us/photo/my- images/707/screenshot20120401at956.png/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Doesn't work in FF 11.0/WinXP. Over-quota on google maps?

</comment><comment><USER32> played through the game as well, very well done!</comment>


Android's Missing Http Library - <AUTHOR> http://loopj.com/android-async-http/

<comment><AUTHOR> The android SDK comes with both Java's java.net.* http client support and the Apache HttpClient 4.0 library, but both require you to write epic amounts of code just to perform a basic HTTP GET.</comment>


Ask HN: I have 5 % stake in a startup, how much should I work? - <AUTHOR> I got 5 % stake in a startup because I do technical work for the founders. I have created the website with an online shop and some individual functions in the background. Currently I have invested about 100 hours, the founders knew this beforehand. I get a one-time payment of around $1000.
We have discussed that I can do some work during the year, the question now is how much time should I invest? How should I value it?
* Should I work 5 % of the hours that I would normally work in a year? * Should I measure the time based on the expected profit that I could end up with after this year? * Are there any other measurements?
Apart from the startup, I work full-time in a company. <comment><USER2> Your 5% stake is not 5% of a full-time job. It's compensation for the work you've already done. You earned it already.

Value your time at the same rate anyone else with your skills would command. Even if you're waiving compensation, value your time at a market rate and keep track of how much compensation you have waived.

If you want to know how much your 5% is worth, ask the founders how much they would pay to buy you out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Separate your 5% stake (i.e. your ownership in the company) from your salary as an employee of the company (the amount of money your labor is worth). Calculate how much that labor is worth on the market and see if the 5% stake is making up the gap. If not, then you are getting a raw deal. If so, then you are just fine and should work your normal hours.

</comment><comment><USER4> Any value you add to the company you get 5% of that. That's about all you can really say.

<comment><USER5> And if he thinks others are adding 20x the value he is adding and are not getting paid as well. Working on it is not such a bad idea.

But I doubt non technical founders are adding 20x value at this stage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Should I work 5 % of the hours that I would normally work in a year?

That is an odd idea.

Honestly, I feel like you don't provide enough details. All in all, it depends on if you think this startup can become a big thing. If it does, 5% ownership can be a really great payout. It's for you to decide if the opportunity is worth your time or whatever the founders are paying you.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope they're paying you a rate for your work alongside the stake. Working for free is a mugs game. The stake is worth nothing at this point, so no, it's not payment in itself.

That aside, holding down a full time job and committing to other work as well can be tough. Do as much as you feel you can, but say no when you want a break. Burn out is no fun.

That aside, how much you work depends on you and what you're willing to do.

But again, stakes are not payment, so don't work for free.

</comment><comment><USER8> So, 100 hours and got paid a $1000. That means you worked for $10 an hour. Not great.

The 5% stake is worth nothing at all. It might even be a liability in the case this company is mismanaged.

Id go for money (more this time) and shared (mostly because you seem to see value in them).

If you need help negotiating, let me know. I can help out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just value it like you would any other choice to work. Expected value of an hour working = (increased probability business succeeds due to an additional hour of your time) * (expected value of potential cashout based on how you value their product/idea).

</comment><comment><USER10> Best bet is to keep your 5% lottery ticket, and go work somewhere to get a slice of another pie, or more money.

</comment><comment><USER11> The sky is blue, what is that dogs name?

</comment><comment><USER12> Because you do technical work for the founders, here's a quiz for you:

You own 5% of common shares in a startup and startup got an $10M exit. How much did you get?

A: $500K

B: $50K

C: $0</comment>


Ask HN:Help needed with acceleraton & friction calculations in JS - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/ajNN7/6/

<comment><USER2> Hi, I tried to send you a response via email, but I think the address was incorrect. What email would you like my response sent to?</comment>


The current Bitcoin economic model doesn't work - <AUTHOR> http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=57.0

<comment><USER2> I haven't read up too much on bitcoins, but it seems many of the arguments about it are based upon an assumption that the value of bitcoins need to be realized, not addressing the possibility of an asset of derived value based on bitcoins.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.</comment></comment>


Normal sleep tough for night workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/25/night.shift.workers/

<comment><USER2> Steven Strogatz' _Blink_ -level introduction to synchronization, _Sync_ has a good chapter on Sleep titled _Sleep and the Daily Struggle for Sync_. I almost used it as a prescription for avoiding certain activities that may prevent me from getting a full sleep cycle.</comment>