Paul Buchheit: Left brain, Right brain, and the other half of the story - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/09/left-brain-right-brain-and-other-half.html <comment><USER2> He's basing his knowledge on Jill Bolte's TED talk. NOOOOOooooo. That TED Talk was full of misinformation when it came out, and obviously still is.

The left brain is NOT a "serial processor", and the right brain is not a "parallel processor". Those are bullshit analogies.

What the main difference is, is the left-brain is usually specialized for fast, categorical processing using a smaller field of information, wheras the right-brain is usually specialized for broader, global processing.

The whole brain uses parallel processing. Also, kids who have huge sections of their left brain removed (due to epilepsy) are still able to develop language abilities in their right brain. Language processing can be done on both sides of the brain.

You can test for hemispherical differences in people by either the left or right part of their visual field. The left hemisphere processes the right visual field, the right hemisphere processes the left visual field. The right side of the brain actually processes language faster\better in some instances, like getting jokes. This is because you need to activate a wider field of connections to pick up that such a grouping of letters (the word) can have multiple semantic meanings.

The difference isn't serial vs. parallel. That's bullshit. The whole brain is parallel everywhere. The difference is in the field of focus. How much data do you look at to draw a conclusion. Left-brain: smaller field of information, "local" processing, can categorize faster. Right-brain: broader dataset, "global" processing, categorize slower.

As a cognitive science student I wanted to clear that up. Also, intelligence is extremely varied people are not either "left brain" or "right brain", there are lots of different processing heuristics that might be occurring that different emphasize over others.

<comment><USER3> You are right all brain processing is parallel, but the author doesn't base anything on serial vs parallel processing and in fact never even mentions these. He obviously uses the left/right brain thing as a metaphor for the emotional vs logical mental processes, not as neuroscientific down-to-the- hardware fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This made me realize why I prefer watching a movie before going to bed, instead of having a late night coding session. After keeping my mind occupied for a while with lots of left-brain thinking, I can't just flip a switch and see life in a holistic, right-brain way. I'm usually laying on the bed, sleepless, thinking about every little problem in my life in excruciating detail. It's only after I make some conscious effort to switch to right-brain thinking that I finally relax and fall asleep.

I face the same issue when I drive home from work, too. It's usually when I see my daughter's face that I can power-down the left brain and start seeing the big picture.

</comment><comment><USER5> This has been used for some time in sales training. The idea is that people want something because of emotion, but make their buying decision based on logic. They call it ERBN (Emotional Reasons to Buy Now) and LRBN (Logical Reasons to Buy Now).

Without ERBN, there is not enough reason to proceed. But you must also provide the buyer with enough data to flip his LRBN.

This site has a better explanation and a graphic:

[http://www.deankennedy.com/blog/copy-tip-26-persuasive- sales...](http://www.deankennedy.com/blog/copy-tip-26-persuasive-sales- factors/)

</comment><comment><USER6> There are some great points here but I'm not entirely sold on the 'Right Brain Optimistic' , 'Left Brain Pessimistic' part. I'd say the Right Brain is often great early warning mechanism for a lot of people (i.e. that gut feeling that something isn't right). If taken too far it would most likely be the source of phobias. It's like a 'black box probability engine'. Very powerful but difficult to debug.

From what I've read the Left Brain is the 'communicator' as well as the 'logician'. I suspect this is the reason why discussion of probabilities, risk and 'expected returns' are often fraught with confusion - because the Left Brain doesn't really know how to process these things. The Left Brain prefers to round probabilities to 0%, 100% or 'unknown/50%'. It seems like many of the science/policy debates in the world (and on HN) are caused by people having different rounding criteria and starting probabilities.

<comment><USER7> Yeah - people tend to overestimate some risks - like car theft, flying airplains etc. - this is why insurance companies can make some money. This is in conflict with that hypothesis - the left-brain dominant would not do that because left brain is calculating, right-brain dominant would not do that because it is optimistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "When we imagine the kind of person who believes things that are obviously false, falls for scams, ends up joining a cult, etc, we probably picture a stereotypically right-brain person."

I don't think this is because right brained people aren't thinking logically. I think it's right brained people are more apt to realize that large chunks of the human experience can't be conveyed through language, and that the scientific method is unfortunately broken for these areas of the human experience. (Because without language you can't define phenomena, have multiple people test stuff, etc.) Thus they realize that they can't discover the truth on many issues without taking the experiences of others at face value, even if it means getting snowed once in a while.

If you don't believe me then there are many substances that can make one temporarily more right brained, so you can see for yourself. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ideally one could "realize that large chunks of the human experience can't be conveyed through language", etc without getting scammed and joining a cult, which is why it's good to you both parts of the brain :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _My theory is that both halves of our brain are useful_

I have the opposite theory.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't this the entire plot to Pi?

<comment><USER11> The external plot was people accosting Max for the number in his head. The internal plot, I interpreted, was that when Max stared into the sun as a little boy, it merged his left and right brain functionality. When he took a drill to that growth on the side of his head, he was breaking that connection.

I think that's the ultimate goal when dealing with yourself: creating peace between both halves of your brain. Max found enlightenment by staring into the sun, and wasn't ready for the power it wields, and went crazy.</comment></comment>


Git pre-commmit hook reminder to update Helm chart version - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/maurobaraldi/cc1e68b8d1db4796ee6fb78e7ce03732 <comment><AUTHOR> Almost all the time that I deploy, I forget to update Helm's file Chart.yaml. So I wrote this hook to notify-me when I forget.</comment>


After a Century of the Fed, It's Time to Return to Constitutional Money (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/02/11/after-a-century-of-the-fed-its-time-to-return-to-constitutional-money/ <comment><USER2> What a bizarrely naive article to completely fail to appreciate the many historical economic benefits from central bank market interventions and investments that wouldn't be possible with the gold standard...

<comment> ur-whale Krugman, leave that body !

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The thing that grieves me is the pretense that monetary policy occurs in some apolitical realm.

The spirit of the 1787 Constitution is that people wielding vast power stand for election.

The Supreme Court does not.

If the argument is that the Federal Reserve resembles SCOTUS, fine.

But an outfit tantamount in power to a fourth branch of government ought not to have been rushed through legislatively at the end of 1913.

Reform, make transparent, and amend the Constitution to legitimize this entity, say I.

<comment><USER4> > Reform, make transparent, and amend the Constitution to legitimize this > entity, say I.

Dismantle this entity, say I.

<comment><USER3> I'm not rejecting that completely, but there needs to be some healthy dialogue.

By which I do NOT mean our cancel culture hogwash where anyone disagreeing with the globalist orthodoxy is an -ist -ite -ism of the worst sort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Folks who believe that tying the value of money to the gold standard would ensure stability should instead look at how the price of shares has changed against the price of gold historically.[1] If we priced shares in gold terms, historic sharemarket swings would be even more volatile than what we see at present.

Instead of considering the USD price of something as the 'value' of an asset, a better stance is to say that all assets can only be priced against each other. E.g. shares have decreased in value relative to cash and gold this quarter, but are potentially stable against real estate. From this lens, an individual interested in capital preservation should instead own a bit of everything, instead of a pile of cash/gold.

Lastly, for people who want to maintain the gold standard for their personal cash stores, they can enter into futures contracts at extremely low overhead, which will link their cash stores to the price of gold ongoing. If you're keen on gold, why not?

1: [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/sp-500-priced-in- gold-201...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/sp-500-priced-in- gold-2015-7?nojs=1) (I wish I had an updated version)

<comment><USER6> You do understand that gold values have been wildly manipulated for decades by the central banks, right?

They've been depressing them in the past decade with futures shenanigans, all the while buying up gold like mad. (Those are of course related.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The Fed will finance a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for each acronym to conduct these operations. The Treasury, using the Exchange Stabilization Fund, will make an equity investment in each SPV and be in a "first loss" position. What does this mean? In essence, the Treasury, not the Fed, is buying all these securities and backstopping of loans; the Fed is acting as banker and providing financing. The Fed hired BlackRock Inc. to purchase these securities and handle the administration of the SPVs on behalf of the owner, the Treasury.

In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades.

This scheme essentially merges the Fed and Treasury into one organization. So, meet your new Fed chairman, Donald J. Trump."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-27/federa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-27/federal- reserve-s-financial-cure-risks-being-worse-than-disease)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hold on to your butts!

By the time this coronavirus crisis is over, the stock market is going to accelerate into overdrive.

Infinite QE, will push stock prices higher and higher.

Trump is going to give $4 Trillion dollars away, to corporate America. That's with a T. These are going to be in loans, that can be forgiven.

Housing will likely double in 10 years. If you thought a $700,000 house is expensive now, then in 10 years, this will look like a bargain. That same junk house will go for a cool $1.4 million.

Everything will cost more. Groceries, gasoline, cars. But your salary will remain the same.

I hope you can afford a 60 year mortgage, because that is what you'll need to get.

Welcome to the next stage in America. The rich oligarchs got their way, and will now begin to enslave your children.

<comment><USER8> I'd immediately quit my job and get into the house building game. I don't really know what I'm doing but if labor costs halve relative to the price of a home, I'd be rolling in it.

<comment><USER9> It will be so fun if we turn real life into the game of Monopoly. Oh wait...

<comment><USER8> The point is the cost of everything can't double while labor costs stay the same because labor makes up so much of the cost of the all the goods we consume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let's just use ETH or BTC and call it a day. A gold standard would be nice, but even if we got on it, how long before governments withdrew from it again? Only a matter of time. I think it's time for a separation of money and state.

<comment><USER11> Actually this crisis is exactly why we don't need that separation. We need a government that can actually respond to crisis.

And even if we truly needed a new monetary system, crypto is just not the answer. Crypto has always and will always be useless as a currency and even as a store of value. Blockchains sound amazing to some but they are useless in the real world. It's been 12 years, every single use case, speculation aside, has been tried and failed miserably. The ship has sailed

<comment><USER12> I agree with your points, however its worth pointing out the dollar is also a bad store of value too!

<comment><USER13> But a good signalling and liquidity mechanism, and the very nature you decry (poor store of value) is an incentive to invest in productive assets.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Company using Mechanical Turk botches U.S. Senate campaign finance records - <AUTHOR> https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/09/04/22214/company-using-foreign-workers-botches-us-senate-campaign-finance-records <comment><USER2> For a bit more background: in general, House and Senate campaigns use the same software to manage their campaign contribution data, and this software is capable of doing electronic submission (because the House requires it), but the Senate instead prints it all out and hands it in paper, because they're the worst, and then it all gets typed back in again at a cost to the taxpayer of about $250k per filing deadline (how many of those per year there are varies -- they get more frequent closer to elections). The main motivation for the unwillingness to change things here isn't that they like the inaccuracies so much as that they like the delay -- it effectively means the last couple of pre-election filings aren't public until after the election, rather than, you know, instantly.

<comment><USER3> Article says McConnell is the blocker of electronic filing. Anyone know about his own campaign finances in the last few months before elections?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.opensecrets.org/](https://www.opensecrets.org/) is a good resource, but honestly (having worked on money on politics stuff for several years) none of it is that juicy in isolation. Everybody gets money from everybody. For the most part they're not scared of any particular story coming out, they'd just rather not have a "In the final days of the campaign, X for $Y from Z" story come out the day before the election at all, for any Y or Z (it looks bad pretty much regardless of who it is: banks, pharmaceuticals, defense, lobbyists, energy, whatever)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are so many factors in play here. Government issues a contract for scanning and loading all the paperwork. Contractor wins contract (prime), he then hires sub-contractors to do the their work, which in return can hire some other sub-contractor. If you think about it from a requirement perspective, government asks for apples, by the time those requirements get triaged three levels deep, they get oranges. Government attitude for a shitty product delivered, you can still make juice out of the fruit we got. They still keep pumping yearly, millions of dollars for that same minimal viable product.

</comment><comment><USER5> A bit off-topic, but as an example of what could be done with this kind of information, the Operation Serenata de Amor from Brazil created a robot that analyses the reimbursement claims from Brazilian politicians looking for outliers, filing complaints and tweeting the politicians to ask for clarifications. There have been some pretty funny conversations between politicians and twitter bots because of this :)

[https://serenata.ai/en/](https://serenata.ai/en/)

<comment><USER6> They argue about reimbursements over _Twitter_? That seems like a topic for private communication methods. Email bots are also a thing.

<comment><USER7> > That seems like a topic for private communication methods.

Since the topic is public officials acting in their official capacity, I disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Captricity is terrible on MTurk. They reject and don't pay. A lot of people who regularly work on MTurk avoid them because they are a scummy company. Read their TurkOpticon reviews or on Reddit or other MTurk communities. I hope they disappear.

</comment><comment><USER9> Mechanical Turk doesn't have built-in quality assurance so unless you're very skilled in QA systems or have a lot of money to burn on validation it's going to give poor results. Btw it's relatively hard to build a QA system that validates work, establishes trusted workers and optimizes for cost without significant redundancy.

I do the technology at an MTurk competitor that automates the quality assurance/training process and pays fair wages to refugees to do the work (workaround.online) if anyone is interested in an alternative to MTurk that is still relatively cheap I would highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't they be running each scan through the mechanical turk multiple times to remove errors? I guess that would double or triple their costs.

<comment><USER11> My experience with MTurk is that 3 isn't enough runs if you need the data to be correct and can't afford to pay someone (who ISN'T from MTurk) to validate every entry.

We regularly ran into these two situations:

\- All three workers got different answers

\- Two of the three workers agreed on the wrong answer

I think five or more runs may be necessary for data transcription on MTurk.

<comment><USER12> You should consider using qualifications / simplifying the requests.

The error rate I get for data entry tasks is around 0.5%-1% discrepancy between double entry. If you use prior reliability of the worker to tie break between who's right it drops to <0.1% error rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I once did campaign finance data entry as a child laborer for a newspaper reporter. I entered all the contribution reports for all the the state house and senate races. It was crates upon boxes of public-record paper documents. According to the reporter, I probably only made one mistake in the dollar amounts, due to a single missing contribution report. Not bad for a kid.

But it took forever, and it was relatively expensive for the newspaper. This was way back in the early 1990s. Since then, paper filings tapered off, and electronic filings replaced them. It really is a far better way to do it. Clearly, these records need to be digitized to create public transparency, and that need is apparently being met by bottom-feeding tax-eaters doing a minimum-effort job at a top-shelf price. I am not surprised these records are being botched, but I am surprised this story is coming out only now, rather than back in 2001.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh this reminded me immediately of this story about a data migration project [https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Importing-Data-the-WTF- Way](https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Importing-Data-the-WTF-Way)

</comment><comment><USER15> My understanding is that Senate campaigns _can_ file electronically, but are not legally required and therefore do not.

<comment><USER16> Because they want their records to be hard to read and analyze. This is a policy/political problem not an OCR one.

<comment><USER17> Also, it directly benefits the senators for the company hired to process the data to fail in doing so. Any issues raised from the dataset can immediately be refuted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a political issue more than a technological one.

<comment><USER19> Agreed, especially considering

>Reform advocates say this is in large part because of opposition by a small group of Senate Republicans, most notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

which is exactly what I'd expect from the dude, but not something I feel like screaming about on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> a did part of my PhD on crowdsourcing and the poor quality results still remain a problem ;)

<comment><USER21> I remember back when Yahoo Answers was the go-to for crowd-sourced Q&A. Nobody was getting payed and most answers were absolutely terrible.

Then Quora came out. Nobody was getting paid but suddenly experts were answering questions in their field.

Wonder if there could be a Quora for MTurk

<comment><USER22> I think this is the first positive thing I've ever read about Quora anywhere.

<comment><USER23> I mean, it's not perfect - I have seen my fair share of "experts" but I would say as a general rule the answers are fairly high quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mechanical Turk is basically laundering of grossly underpaid labour.

</comment><comment><USER25> Checking data for amount=ID seems pretty trivial. Also looking for outliers. And of course, for records with nothing in name fields.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Captricity turns these images into machine-readable text through what its > website calls a "groundbreaking collaboration between humans and computers."

> Captricity administers this kind of work through Mechanical Turk, an Amazon- > owned online labor marketplace.

Ah yes, "groundbreaking collaboration between humans and computers", which in this case actually means "pay a human below minimum wage to type numbers on a keyboard".

Gotta love corporate marketing speak. The only thing that would make this even more ridiculous is if Captricity claimed they were using the mystical "machine learning" too. Hmm, let's check their website. [1]

>Captricity then uses sophisticated machine learning to package up these fields (we call them "shreds") into quickly identifiable packets.

...lol

1: [https://support.captricity.com/blog/captricitys-secret- weapo...](https://support.captricity.com/blog/captricitys-secret-weapon- crowdsourcing/)

<comment><USER27> But are the results stored in the blockchain?

<comment><USER28> In the cloud?

<comment><USER29> No, no, no! They print the blockchain to paper so it can be duplicated and stored in multiple secure physical locations. Blockchain in the cloud is so last year.

<comment><USER30> A plant based media storage ledger, with redundancy. I smell a crypto startup.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MiSTer: Run Amiga, SNES, NES and Genesis on an FPGA - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki <comment><USER2> I have the MiST, the predecessor to this and really like it. It was originally made for Atari ST emulation but quickly acquired other cores. Mine even has MIDI ports like the original ST.

It's odd the MiSTer page doesn't even list an Atari ST core as available. Odd given the heritage (and name).

On the other hand, there's an X68000 core. That's pretty amazing.

But apart from bigger FPGA one of the big advantages of MiSTer over MiST is HDMI output. Dealing with VGA is a real pain in the but, esp if you want to hook up to a living room TV.

I'll probably invest in MiSTer at some point, but it would be nice if they had an expansion which added MIDI and 9-pin joystick ports like you could get on the MiST.

<comment><USER3> Like the LL Cool Joy add on board:

[https://twitter.com/smokemonstertwi/status/10523148009807298...](https://twitter.com/smokemonstertwi/status/1052314800980729856?lang=en)

<comment><USER2> nice, it exists

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a SuperNT, a MiSTer, and a raspberry pi 3 running retroarch. They all work very well and all should be considered great for retro gaming. Here are a few of my thoughts.

SuperNT - I love it, i don't have the jailbroken firmware and play strictly from games. I have made several Super Mario based carts from Rom Hacks and i find not having save states has probably made me a better player. The system is dirt simple, i plug a game in and it plays. There is a menu and you can play with settings but you dont have to. Using only purchased carts makes this legal .

Retropi - Very nice allows you to play up to the PSX. All is pretty much smooth and there are so many howto's anyone can set it up. If you have never played on the original hardware you will never probably never know if there are any issues with the emulation. Still a very nice choice and cheap. Unless you dump your own ROMs you have to use illegal content on this (and dont lie, almost no one dumps their own ROMs).

MiSTer - This is very nice. It boots quick, the emulation is great. The menu is easy to navigate, but very ugly (no scraping or any game information very folder driven). controller set up is not difficult, but is not as straight forward as retropi. Installation is simple compared to retropi. Very expensive ($130 for the board and at least $25 for the SDRAM board unless you build your own, USB Hub as well). Arcade support is limited. Still have to provide your own ROMS.

All three choices are still great depends what you want to do. There is always room for all three options (I realize the SuperNT is not a multisystem machine, but it i mean a dedicated FPGA system, they are coming out with their sega genesis FPGA as well).

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. I have wanted to try some FPGA stuff out but it seems like its very encumbered by proprietary toolchains and industry secrets.

Wondering what the pros/cons are of using this vs a raspberry pi.

<comment><USER5> Raspberry is emulation which will not be console accurate. The FPGA would more accurate since it is recreating the console on a hardware level(chip)

<comment><USER6> To expand on that, Higan[1] is a super accurate SNES emulator that requires a decent CPU to run at full speed due to all of the weird quirks and on- cartridge chips[2]. For the popular games, typical emulators are probably good enough, but for true accuracy of all the quirks and special chips you need quite a bit of compute power. In the case of Speedy Gonzales, at least for a time (not sure if it's still the case) the only emulator you could actually beat the game on was Higan.

By comparison, Analogue sells the Super NT which is their own FPGA SNES that uses micro USB for power and probably requires about as much power as a Pi, but is comparable to Higan in terms of accuracy. Their implementation still uses physical carts though, so they skipped on implementing the special chips that were contained in the cartridge of various games. For _that_, there is the SD2SNES flash cart which runs its own FPGA for most of the chips (SA-1 support in beta).

[1] [https://byuu.org/emulation/higan/](https://byuu.org/emulation/higan/) [2] [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes- power-...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one- mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/)

<comment><USER7> Byuu, the author of Higan, has been quite critical[1] of the claim that the Super NT is as accurate as stated. It may be tempting to assume "FPGA = hardware recreation = perfect", but we don't have access to the original SNES schematics, so anything we recreate involves some level of guesswork.

Higan has been in development for more than a decade, and literally every first party SNES game has been tested to ensure 100% compatibility. By contrast, since the Super NT was released, its creators have issued multiple patches to fix game-specific issues that were discovered. As is expected in the development of any emulator, it is likely that these patches have created new problems in other games, which haven't been discovered yet.

\---

[1] [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uHa892...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uHa892sRNOQJ:https://byuu.org/articles/fpgas- arent-magic/)

Sidenote, the above link is using Google's cache. Byuu appears to have not only deleted all the articles from his site, but _also_ prevented the Wayback Machine from preserving copies of them.

Byuu, _please_ don't do this! You've spent your life making sure old video games are preserved for future generations! The Internet Archive should be allowed to preserve your work as well.

<comment><USER8> Byuu's work in emulation and ROM preservation should be commended but his FPGA dismissal seems rooted in envy. After spending 14 years developing Higan, I can sympathize. The fact is, the SNES chips are well understood (partly through the work of Byuu). The SuperNT FPGA code from Kevtris mimics almost every perceptible quirk of these chips in gameplay and I'm sure MiSTer will get to the same point if enough talent is drawn to the project. The list of known timing/graphical issues for the SuperNT is less than 20 from some of the most fanatical users: [https://github.com/SmokeMonsterPacks/Super-NT- Jailbreak/issu...](https://github.com/SmokeMonsterPacks/Super-NT- Jailbreak/issues)

Edit: only 10 of the known issues are confirmed and graphical/timing related.

<comment><USER7> To me, Byuu didn't come across as dismissive of the SuperNT so much as the idea that FPGA's are _inherently_ more accurate than software emulators. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages.

20 known issues is significantly more than Higan's _zero_ known issues (for the SNES emulator specifically; other Higan emulators are of varying degrees of quality and maturity). Unless you count issues like, there's a certain game that appears to randomly crash slightly _less_ often in Higan than on real hardware, which was still being investigated as of when I last checked.

<comment><USER8> I'm not dismissing the incredible work of Byuu. I'm simply suggesting it is far easier to get cycle accuracy and correctness in an FPGA than through software emulation. Kevtris probably spent less than a year in his spare time to pull off nearly identical results with his FPGA. He also hasn't gone back to work through the known issues because of his work on the MegaSG.

<comment><USER7> > I'm simply suggesting it is far easier to get cycle accuracy and correctness > in an FPGA than through software emulation.

This is the line I would disagree with. What about an FPGA makes cycle accuracy and correctness easier than with an emulator written in software?

Make no mistake, Kevtris is immensely talented. But he also had the advantage of additional research going in (such as byuu's), and, well, I truly don't think the accuracy is comparable as of right now. The difference in effort required to get between 99% and 100% compatibility is immense, and the Super NT is clearly at 99% right now.

<comment><USER8> Verilog/HDL has obvious advantages to C/C++ in the emulation world that seems to escape too many people in this never ending debate. Are both using some blackbox magic? Yes, but if we could compare the HDL size to byuu's code base the mystical advantages would start to become more transparent. Byuu, by his own estimation, spent "40% of his life" developing Higan...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly off topic but feel this might be a good place to ask... Does a FPGA exist that would allow me to resurrect a 68k Mac SE? I'd love to find something like that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of [https://www.analogue.co/mega-sg/](https://www.analogue.co/mega- sg/) which is also FPGA-based, IIRC.</comment>


Facebook can recognise you in photos even if you're not looking - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27761-facebook-can-recognise-you-in-photos-even-if-youre-not-looking.html?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=twitter&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2015-GLOBAL-twitter#.VYhh9eeq8nu

<comment><USER2> Original source (from Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Lab): [https://research.facebook.com/publications/1388608378133800/...](https://research.facebook.com/publications/1388608378133800/beyond- frontal-faces-improving-person-recognition-using-multiple-cues/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone have a link to the actual paper?

<comment><USER2> See my comment with original source link.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it better building an app or a website for an mvp? - <AUTHOR> I am developing my own startup and thinking about the next step I am wondering whether develop an Android app or a website. Is a social platform where users can interact. I have knowledge in Android so I could develop the app, and HTML&CSS but not enough to create the website.<p>The question is, what will be more efficient, to create the app, or learn more about lets say PHP and create the web, or maybe use a CMS as Elgg to create it <comment><USER2> I say website, and this is why:

Early on you'll be doing a lot of A/B testing, making changes, getting feedback, making mistakes and so on. All of this is easier in a website.

Facebook's early app was considered a mistake and they "wasted" two years before they switched to native but I think they iterated like mad during those two years and really learned fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer, I agree that with a website the iterating process is probably faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd recommend walking into a couple homeless shelters, volunteering there and getting to know the user base. I'm sure you could get some face time with a director or staff there and ask them what they think about your ideas. I bet they will have a lot of feedback for you. One of their primary jobs may be to connect their clients to the community and each other -something you are trying to do too.

I have spent a fair bit of time in homeless shelters and working with immigrants so I'll share a bit of my experience there. I bet more homeless folks have cell phones than you may think. If they are in an urban area, they will likely be able to get access to the internet via wifi. A number of homeless I have known have a cell phone with apps and use it for texting, but don't have a phone or data package.

If you're hoping to connect homeless & refugees to jobs, then you'll need to connect them to the established community and not just each other.

App or website ... If it's a social app, is it something they'll need connectivity for all the time in order to use? If so, then you could probably go either way. If they could technically use features of the application offline, then you could go the app route.

I've done a lot of volunteer work in this area so I'd be curious to follow along how you're doing if you have things to share.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great answer, thanks!

Do you have an email? I will update you when I have talked to some shelters / homeless people and when I get some work done

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As others have said here, you really need to understand the needs of your users and build accordingly. Also, do not get bogged down by technology, start with shared google sheets/forms if that gets your work done while still meeting the needs of your users.

</comment><comment><USER5> You should have some sense of who the users are and what they would use. You're building it for them, not for your own convenience - what would they prefer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer. Indeed! I'm not sure, the main mission of my idea is to offer homeless/refugees a way of connecting to other people (it could be just for chatting or for meeting and offering some jobs in order to allow them to integrate).

The main problem here is that these people won't have an easy access to the internet so it might be easier a website but otherwise I think an app would be more suitable.

(probably worth go to the streets and ask them).

<comment><USER6> All the refugees I've met have mobile phones and use Facebook for connecting with other people just like everyone else.</comment></comment></comment>


Firefighter Patrick Hardison Adjusts to New Face After Transplant Surgery - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/health/mens-health/firefighter-patrick-hardison-adjusts-new-face-after-transplant-surgery-n464456 <comment><USER2> I remember coming across this GQ story (1) last year about a 2012 face transplant carried out by the same doctor. The writer highlights the ethical concerns of performing such a risky procedure in those who are otherwise healthy (and are now forced to take immunosuppressive drugs for life). I imagine that having such noticeable facial deformities takes an enormous emotional toll, however, and that these transformations would considerably improve the patient's quality of life.

(1) [https://www.gq.com/story/richard- norris](https://www.gq.com/story/richard-norris)</comment>


Ask HN: How to find a student job as a programmer? - <AUTHOR> I am a CS student in The Netherlands. Here it is pretty common for students to have a part-time job. Most of them just work in the supermarket or in a restaurant, but I thought it would be nice to put my programming skills to good use.
After some searching and a couple of interviews, the main obstacles I found are:
1. Many companies underestimate your skills and want to give you trivial and boring tasks (e.g. find and escape all SQL queries in an ASP codebase, ugh)
2. Big companies don't offer part-time jobs for professionals, let alone students.
3. Some companies have whole teams of incompetent people (e.g. a friend of mine gives lessons to one of those teams! Yes... it is the same one of #1)
4. Startups don't have the previous problems, but are often unable to offer a good salary.
5. Because I am a student, my network is pretty limited.
Should I just accept #1 and hope for an improvement in the future?
Do you think #5 could be solved by going to meetups or something like that? <comment><USER2> To answer each point in turn;

1\. You're a new developer with no professional experience who wants a reasonably well-paid job on your terms rather than an internship/junior role. You're going to end up doing the boring stuff. On the specific task you mention - that's either a fairly trivial exercise in regular expressions or a reasonably interesting task refactoring a codebase to use a proper database abstraction. Either way it's not _that_ boring. I can think of much more boring coding things.

2\. Don't look for roles at big companies then.

3\. Every company has things that look bad from the outside but there's usually a reason for it. Don't judge. You'll be responsible for writing some pretty horrible code during your career. I guarantee it.

4\. Some startups have plenty of cash and are absolutely desperate for developers. Look here: [http://workinstartups.com/](http://workinstartups.com/) (if not there, there might be a more Netherlands specific version somewhere.)

5\. Yes, you can network. Finding events is easy (Google, Meetup.com, etc). There's loads of them everywhere. Also, ask your tutors/professors. They'll be pretty well connected. And go old school - Google for local software companies, find their email addresses/phone numbers, and reach out to them. You will be _amazed_ how happy people are to help you.

EDIT: One more thing.. don't underestimate the value in getting a job that isn't anything to do with coding. For example, working in a restaurant would give you plenty of 'soft skills' experience dealing with people. Being a 'people person' will set you apart from other developers later in your career. It's worth thinking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great answer! Thanks! It gives me a lot of stuff to think about.

<comment><USER3> That was a fantastic answer. Just to add a bit to onion2k's excellent response:

1) You have a lot to learn about refactoring and working in codebases that aren't great. I have never once been upset with a junior developer who went above and beyond a task to try to make something better, especially those who ask questions along the way. Don't do the tasks they are for. Do accomplish the same result they are hoping for in a better way! And learn from it. (Refactoring, better tests, better OO or functional principles).

2) I have worked in very very large companies which have part time intern spots that pay much better than restaurants and grocery stores.

3), 4), 5) here here! Well said.

On the Edit note: I want to point out that three of my very best software engineer colleagues started their careers in construction. One moved rocks at a quarry, one was a roofing and framing assistant, one did concrete contracting. All have a work ethic unlike any I have seen in a life long engineer. Not only are they brilliant coders, they have immense problem solving skills, fantastic people skills, and they don't complain nearly as much as everyone else.

<comment><USER4> Regarding 1) so it is a very good way to learn how to NOT do things, and will make the "proper" ways more understandable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in a very similar situation and about a month ago I posted this exact same question here on HN.

Since then, I went ahead and built a functional job board for part-time jobs for students/parents/etc.

I'm currently looking for some early adopters who have part-time jobs to post (for free!), so if any readers have part-time jobs to fulfil, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Even though I'm currently booked for months, it'll help people in the same situation I was a month ago, and in the situation the OP is now :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Does your university have a job posting site?

I found my student job out of sheer luck, mucking around in bash before an exam and suddenly someone was peering over my shoulder and gave me an email address for their boss, I had a job interview a week later as a junior *nix sysadmin for my university.

You might not find the same luck, but you should definitely try to find something on campus. My boss is very flexible around exam time, and it's just a laid back atmosphere where you learn a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a job posting site... However, no technical jobs are posted there. I guess I will have to try somewhere else. Thanks anyway for your suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> you could choose a low salary and work with a start up for experience, unless you need the money. personally i would go with a start up with a low salary since my country pays students and don't care if you have a job on the side.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll go with number 4</comment>


Algolia's Index of Hacker News Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://hn.algolia.com/ <comment><USER2> [HN Search admin speaking] We disabled the rate-limit for now. A load-balancer experimentation that didn't behave as expected (the LB's IP getting rate- limited).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Sylvain, much appreciated. It's working for me now.

I must say I expected this post to kind of go into the ether, not for Algolia's VP of Engineering to reply with a solution within an hour :)

Have a nice weekend!

<comment><USER2> Let's say it was a mix of HN alerting (hnwatcher), good timing (Friday evening) and luck :) very happy to have seen this in time. Have a nice WE as well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had this issue last night. What was really odd was that algolia's API was throttling - 429 error code - when I was connected to my wifi, but when I switched to my cell network it worked fine. Then this morning it worked fine on both.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, this is surprising as the rate-limit should be per IP :/ Investigating.

<comment><USER2> Should be good now.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! It's a small world on HN haha. What was the issue? If you don't mind me asking

<comment><USER4> We were experimenting some rate limiting settings and the load balancer IP in front of the hn cluster wasn't excluded, both features haven't been mixed before (doesn't make much sense to rate limit a search cluster behind a load balancer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Is it? Working from here. What kind of network error do you get?

<comment><AUTHOR> I get a completely blank page.

I'm testing from two separate internet connections, with different ISPs, in the same region.

If there's a way to provide more info or some kind of error, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> *A page that looks like the normal Algolia HN page, but with no results.

And it's working for me now. Hope I didn't cause any panic; sorry about that.

It was "offline" for me and a friend for about an hour, but it's back up now. Might be some kind of intermittent issue.

edit (18 mins after this comment): it's blank again for me, and I'm getting a 429 error.

<comment><USER2> Investigating, this is weird as the rate-limit should be per IP :/

<comment><USER2> Should be good now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stuck In The Middle With Bruce - <AUTHOR> http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/2005_Stuck_In_The_Middle_With_Bruce.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I've found this article on less wrong. It's written by a magician, but it's really highly relevant for startups.</comment>


Ask HN: What service for contact forms? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to add a contact form to a client's site and was hoping someone could recommend any good services or plugins?<p>I'm aware I could add a quick PHP mail, Python SMTP, or Ruby Pony snippet, but I wanted to check in with HN for alternatives. Currently, their site is static HTML on Apache, so solutions in any language are welcome. Thanks! <comment><USER2> <http://wufoo.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks pretty awesome! Thanks Jeff. Would you happen to know if you have to use the form builder or if you can just do HTML?</comment></comment>


The Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity - <AUTHOR> http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/691462 <comment><USER3> Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory.

So we're the first generation shifting cognitive burden of some kinds of memory (all those phone numbers) elsewhere. I welcome it. My wife hates it, but she likes the books. In a couple of generations it all will be irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> You seem to be defending against a claim the study does not make. They're not saying "smartphones make us stupid because Google's in your pocket!" Rather, the study is saying that by having your phone on the desk or even in your pocket, you will exhibit decreased mental capacity because your brain is using some cognitive resources to monitor for notifications etc.

This may be over-simplified but appears to be backed up by the general discussion on pages 10-11.

<comment><USER5> I keep my phone on silent and turn off all vibrations. There's no way to notify me of anything until I look at it, but that's a feature.

<comment><USER6> I realize that I am not typical, but I seldom even have my phone turned on, and don't even take it with me very often.

I was tethered to a phone for years. I am retired. I only take it if I am expecting to be idle. Then, I take it so I can browse while waiting.

It feels kinda nice, frankly. I am not a technophobe. It's just nice to not be beholden to my phone.

<comment><USER7> This reminds me of my experience giving up my wristwatch. I would glance at it frequently, but then didn't know the time because the behavior was strictly reflex. Finally, someone asked me for the time right after I did this and I had to look again because I hadn't internalized it. That was the day I removed my watch forever.

Your comment about being beholden to your phone reminds me a a great quote that I recalled on that day: "Wearing a watch is like being handcuffed to time."

<comment><USER8> > "Wearing a watch is like being handcuffed to time."

I like the quote because that's how I feel when I look at any digital clock or watch. The millisecond accuracy of any NTP-aware device produces anxiety and is unnecessary.

An analog watch, especially if it's a wind-up mechanical watch, which is by its nature slightly inaccurate, is much more comforting. I feel like an observer of time, and not a slave of it.

<comment><USER9> A reliable clock produces anxiety over an unreliable one? Citation needed!

<comment><USER8> n=1, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want to learn Japanese.

3 months ago I changed my phone's language to Japanese. Everything is Japanese - maps, services, apps that read from the default phone language.

Oddly enough, instead of learning Japanese, I just use my phone less.

<comment><USER11> That's kind of funny.

Similarly, I stopped listening to any music on my iPhone once I got an iPhone 7. Unexpected side effect of having no headphone jack, but I always forget the dongle somewhere. So, no more music from the iPhone. I listen to old am/fm talk radio again instead.

<comment><USER12> Buy AirPods. Honestly.

<comment><USER11> I considered it but I'm not a big fan of headphones, I usually listen to music at home or in a car.

One of the most annoying situations was when I had a great podcast I wanted to share with someone on a long drive, pulled out the iPhone 7 to plug into their car stereo and.... new-ish car.... but AUX only.... no dongle..... never mind!

I believe Apple removed the headphone jack 5 or 10 years too early. Bluetooth is not that great, and it's also not that widespread. AUX is not a floppy or CD drive, it is everywhere and works great and allows for high quality audio, no troubleshooting, no compression, no hassle. The alternatives (dongle? Bluetooth?) is comparatively nowhere and does not work great.

<comment><USER13> Bluetooth radio transmitter for the car is like $100 (for a good one). Quality is only slightly worse than radio (for a good one).

Problem solved. Enjoy

<comment><USER14> Worse than radio? That's not what I have experienced.

I'm using a 1,5€ BK8000L module ([http://www.electrodragon.com/w/BK8000L](http://www.electrodragon.com/w/BK8000L)) that I soldered to my old stock autoradio, replacing the tape audio circuit, and the quality is much better than FM.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like you're connecting the device directly to the audio system. With a radio transmitter, you're broadcasting on an fm band that the car picks up via the fm tuner.

Of course if the person is willing to attach something to the car audio as you have, that's the best!

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure what you were suggesting before, then, when saying that a bluetooth transmitter is worse than radio... ah unless you were talking about some kind of device => bluetooth => fm => autoradio contraption?

I didn't think about that, yeah, but the OP said they had an AUX input, so quality should be good with a (even cheap) bluetooth adapter on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation- setting as a result.

This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to- moment mindfullness, and I think I'm going to keep this up for a while and see how long I can go without a smartphone before people start asking me questions at work. So far, so good.

It's like I've withdrawn from a drug and some of my attention is back under my control, where my mind can better keep its peace. I guess I didn't exercise proper discipline when I had the phone.

<comment><USER16> Try keeping a sketch pad for quick illustrations or perhaps a notebook for poems. The world is filled with inspiration! Not only will you be more present, but you'll be turning your seemingly humdrum life into a work of art!

<comment><USER17> I love that interpretation of jotting down information as creating a mindfulness work of art. What a thought! I used to do the cliche "note to self" with a voice recorder, that I've recently been desiring again. My cell phone is too slow to respond to my inspirations having to log in past the keycode, launch the app, dump mental information. Stepping through those hoops seems to decay my inspiration. You make me think about reverting back to old technology like the pen and paper. Come to think of it I get the sense that the mental decay from fishing for those materials in my pocket is less than futzing with a cell phone.

<comment><USER18> I actually carry a cheap USB wacom tablet around with my laptop for such purposes... I swear by it, it gives you almost the full freedom of paper without the restrictions of manual media (undo, scaling, duplication, restyling, etc.)

<comment><USER19> Have you ever tried a boogie board? [https://www.myboogieboard.com/](https://www.myboogieboard.com/)

Writing on it is very natural/paper feeling, there's no erasing or anything. With the more expensive models, it can sync the notes to a computer/cloud service.

<comment><USER17> wow, it's pretty affordable. How do you write multiple pages on it?

<comment><USER19> The way the screen works, it can only erase the whole screen in one go. I think with the cloud-connected ones, you can save the page off before erasing it and then view them later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am quite skeptical of the results of this paper. The claims are very strong, but the paper was published in "Journal of the Association for Consumer Research". I would AT LEAST expect it to be published in a journal related to cognitive sciences (even low-impact cognitive science journals would be fine), this seems like a safety net journal that is not really related to any of that..

Anyway, reading through the paper, there are a few methodological issues that I believe severely weaken the claims made by the authors.

1\. Even though the claims made specifically towards phones, there was no "control" item situation.

2\. Participants were explicitly drawn to the item in 2 out of 3 conditions right before the task.

3\. Experiment 1 does not randomize on task (OSpan and RSPM) order.

4\. Item (phone) dependency tests were based on self-reporting. Why not some more objective measure like in a neutral situation, how many times does the participant take the phone out of their pockets to check it?

5\. As far as I can tell, there is no control for differences in their population & their measure of phone dependency (ie, is phone dependency uncorrelated to factors like age?)

but really, the killer finding is: there is a (non-linear) interaction effect between phone dependence and phone location. In the phone on desk condition, there is a negative correlation between phone dependence and performance on the OSpan (working memory) task (which is the result the abstract talks about), but in the phone/bag AND other room condition, there is a POSITIVE correlation between phone dependence and performance on the OSpan test.

So based on these results, I can make the claim that we should use our phone MORE to increase our cognitive capacity. We should become more dependent on them. We just need to remember to put them away, out of sight, rather than leave them on the table nearby.

I would put as much trust in the claim above as the original claim by the paper's authors.

EDIT: continuous grammar improvements

<comment><USER20> To clarify a bit further as I can no longer edit my post:

The points about the methodology stand, and I don't believe one should update ones beliefs in either way based on this paper.

The "killer" finding is not necessarily a killer towards the reported results (which are dubious anyway), but towards the way the paper is presenting these results. The missing discussion of this interaction effect between phone dependence and phone location is what makes me very much doubt the quality of the paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know that I'm guilty of this - just voluntarily putting my phone in the other room causes withdrawal-like anxiety, followed by a greater sense of awareness.

Maybe future generations will see our management of information devices as backwards and unhealthy once we learn more about the human brain, the same way we treat smoking, child-rearing, and daily routines of yesterday as horrifyingly detrimental.

<comment><USER22> In the near future we're going to see even more "information diets", "digital cleanses", meditative go-to-nature sort of breaks integrated into lifestyle routines.

<comment><USER23> My wife and I recently spent a few nights at an Airbnb in the mountains where we couldn't get cell reception and the wifi had a crappy satellite Internet connection we'd been asked to avoid using as much as possible. Also none of our digital crap was there, just a few physical books we brought and some card games the hosts provided.

It felt _great_. It's had me thinking more and more or the digital things and the hyper-available entertainment and information (and, maybe importantly, hyper-available _choice_ of which to indulge in, at a moment's notice) as kind of junk-food like.

Yeah it's cool to be able to watch all this crap from my childhood, and a thousand great tv shows or movies, or hundreds of the best video games yet made, or browse endlessly for new music tailored to my tastes, or whatever, totally on demand—but maybe that kind of thing's just not healthy to have around.

<comment><USER4> > Yeah it's cool to be able to watch all this crap from my childhood, and a > thousand great tv shows or movies, or hundreds of the best video games yet > made, or browse endlessly for new music tailored to my tastes, or whatever, > totally on demand—but maybe that kind of thing's just not healthy to have > around.

I feel the same, although I have a hard time articulating it well. I think I'm slightly better at not watching hour after hour of utter garbage than I used to be, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A simple demonstration of the inefficiency of task switching. Time yourself writing the letters of the alphabet in order from a to z followed by the numbers 1-26. Then try the same task only instead switching from numbers to letters, like this a,1,b,2,c,3, etc. Compare the two times. They should be the same, but the second version takes much more time for most people. It seems that whether you sit next to a giant bookshelf or put your phone in your pocket and occasionally think of the information either contains the effect on the efficiency of whatever you were trying to process would be the same.

<comment><USER25> On the flip side my smart phone often allows me to look up needed information about something I'm currently thinking about or working on. So I can stay in the same task instead of noting it and having to come back to it later after I've looked it up from a laptop or in a library prior to the modern internet.

I think the effects of a smart phone on someone varies greatly depending on how exactly the individual uses it.

<comment><USER24> How could one design a test for the last statement above (which resembles a hypothesis)? In practice it seems the statement "varies greatly depending on how the individual uses it" equates too easily with "varies greatly depending on the individual" (fundamental attribution error). Also, it may be that we believe we are very good at using something to our advantage when in fact we should not be using it at all (casinos exploit this problem). The reality is that it is impossible to split test oneself to discover whether in fact there was a benefit, although I wish this were possible. Maybe try something very difficult in two scenarios: play a game of skill which may benefit from looking something up (like chess openers) several times without a phone and several times with access to the phone to see whether there is a difference in performance against a continuously adaptive algorithmic opponent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Mine broke last week. I haven't replaced it and almost don't intend to because I do feel more alert now. Though the feeling is subsiding, so perhaps it's a temporary thing.

I wonder in the study, is the control group smartphone users temporarily deprived of the phones, or non-smartphone users. Could make a big difference.

<comment><USER20> The control group were smart phone users and high smart phone dependence was in fact positively correlated with performance on the cognitive tests, on the condition that the smart phone was not on the desk in front of them. However, I wouldn't put too much faith in either results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Mental exercise:

Does smartphone deprivation return cognitive capacity to baseline or cause people to exceed it? Phone deprivation may induce a higher state of attention than before a person had a phone if they associate phone deprivation with focus situations such as exams or crises.

Having a phone around may train the brain to relax and offload tasks, leaving it more fresh to focus when required.

</comment><comment><USER28> So true. And in-car GPS keeps your sense of direction from developing.

I've seen people stymied as to how they could possibly make a phone call without their phones. Payphone. Borrow someone else's. Not that hard.

I used to think this would only ever happen to geeks like me. Boy, was I wrong.

<comment><USER29> After I lost my phone to a robber late at night, I walked home (which was about 15 minutes away) so I could look up the nearest police precinct station. The detectives looked at me like I was the biggest idiot for not calling 911 from the nearest pay phone (this was before NYC converted their pay phones into whatever they are these days).

<comment><USER30> Is it really considered okay to call 911 for a stolen phone? I thought 911 was for emergencies (e.g. imminent danger to property or someone's life or health). If your phone's already stolen, what can the police do urgently? This assumes they can respond quickly. I wouldn't have thought a stolen phone would result in a quick response in NYC.

<comment><USER29> It was a robbery by gunpoint. I wouldn't have reported it if it were just a theft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The proliferation of video currently gets my goat. I like to read news, not watch it.

<comment><USER32> I agree. Aside from the egregiously asshole move of auto-playing video (sometimes related, sometimes not), I can typically read an article much faster than an anchor can narrate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I predict someone will invent a smart utensil. It will be a smartphone-like device that has a curated app store which only includes utilitarian apps. It'll contain all of the apps people think "I'd love to ditch my smart phone, but I'd really miss <utility apps>".

Apps I really want AND never waste time on:

\- ride sharing (Lyft, Uber)

\- calendar

\- calculator

\- mobile banking

\- movie times & reviews

\- booking a place to stay (CounchSurfing, Airbnb)

\- public transit schedules

\- camera (only pictures, not picture sharing)

\- identity verification (RSA, Okta Verify)

\- alarm clock

<comment><USER34> The types of people that would want this can already do it with their smart phones. What's gained by crippling a device to only support certain classes of apps?

<comment><USER35> It's like comparing Advil to Heroin. Heroin is better at numbing pain, but people prefer to take Advil as it's not addictive and won't damage us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Like most commenters here, I've found a happy medium (when I activate it). I'm no good at cold turkey and being without this amazing device is just impractical, but airplaning the phone routinely throughout the day really helps to cut down on "notification checking" and that constant background mental polling that this article talks about. I still like to have music (audiobooks actually) and navigation on hand, but knowing I have no notifications and knowing that there is just a _tiny_ bit of effort involved in getting them seems to be my effective compromise.

<comment><USER29> When I need a break from social networks, I just log out of the app/sites on my phone. Since most of my passwords are unmemorizable (and stored in a password manager), it's quite a bit of work to get logged in again. It's enough work that I'll put it off for a week at least.

*typo

<comment><USER37> social networks ? like playing sports with friends, visiting family, job events ?

<comment><USER29> Twitter and Facebook mostly

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Has anyone here tried asking everyone to not look at or fiddle with their phones at a meeting they've called or a social event they've organized? How did it work out?

What about going the extra step of collecting the phones to be returned when the meeting or event is over?

Is there any way to do either of these without coming off as a jerk?

<comment><USER39> Ever tried the Phone Stacking game with friends?

In short: You all stack your phones on each other after ordering food. First person to crack pays the bill.

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/you- have...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/you-have-2-new- text-messages-also-youre-paying-for-dinner/article2296118/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My family calls this the "Crimson Tide Effect".

It was named thus because we were once eating in a bar/restaurant situated below ground level, with no mobile phone reception whatsoever. At one point, someone mentioned "that submarine movie with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman in it." We couldn't remember the name of the movie. We could almost recite the entire script, but couldn't say the _name of the danged movie_.

We tried (in vain) all the way through lunch. We managed the name of the submarine, the Alabama, but not the name of the movie. So the instant we left, off to the Internet movie database. Crimson Tide! Ah, because it was the Alabama! It makes sense now!

Most recent occurrence was two days ago, when we couldn't remember the name of the band that sang "Cult of Personality" for over 15 minutes. We could remember that they were a rare instance of a rock band with black people in it. We could remember that they were not a one-hit wonder, because they had one other hit.

I can only hope that memory storage has been repurposed for more useful data rather than simply lost.

</comment><comment><USER41> What has worked out well for me is a flip phone. The modern ones have all the offline smartphone features you need to get by. Call, text, alarms, calculator, camera. I have found it to be rugged, inexpensive, and one week battery life is a great selling point.

And when I get home to my computer, the refreshing relaxation of the internet is great.

Smartphones making people dumb, dumb phones making people sane.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if there is a effective way to counter this without giving up on the phone completely. Discipline is of course the main thing but let's be honest, that's like telling an opiod addict to 'just use it less'.

I tried meditating in the train instead of fiddling with my phone. I can definitely feel the urge to read up on something despite knowing that there's not really anything that currently needs my attention on the phone anyway.

Also I replaced my digital calendar and task list with a bullet journal that I'm carrying around. I was surprisingly more successful with keeping task load under control. As a test, I bought the new Things 3 and used it with Fantastical for a month instead of my journal. I was able to add things faster but actually getting things done has become slower. Though the Calendar reminders are definitely super helpful.

Maybe a detox in a country where you don't have mobile data or wifi might be nice.

</comment><comment><USER43> This worked for me:

DND on for priority only, forever. Star my wife.

Then I can check my phone at my leisure time for everything else.

<comment><USER44> I do this, which helps a lot. I still find myself mindlessly browsing during "downtime", however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The statistically significant result is that scores on this test : "in each trial set, participants complete a series of math problems (information processing) while simultaneously updating and remembering a randomly generated letter sequence (information maintenance)" were significantly different for those with their phone silenced, face down on the desk next to them than for those with their phones in another room.

Given that this test essentially measures attention and distractions would seem to affect performance, I wonder what the results would be for some other object on the desk in the field of view - a book or a photo say - rather than just a phone.

</comment><comment><USER46> An effortless hack which I've gotten a lot of utility out of: put your phone behind your laptop.

Out of sight, out of mind (and you can't feel it in your pocket either!)

<comment><USER47> A related hack if you don't want to put your phone behind your laptop - <USER2> the phone screen-side down. This way the changing states of the screen (when you get a notification) won't distract you.

<comment><USER48> The researchers specifically tested phone face up vs phone face down and noticed no statistical difference, I believe.

<comment><USER49> I guess it depends on if you have (and are used to having) you phone make a noise when you receive notifications. I have most notifications set to silent, and some I let vibrate. The only thing that makes a sound is my alarm and calls.

Since smart phones became a thing I've always had them set to vibrate, I don't really see why you need your phone to make a sound (and disturb other people) when you get such things as an Instagram like or a game wanting you to play more. Biggest quality of life improvement was disabling vibrate (so it's silent) for instant messages and SMS (which my phone always notifies me twice about?) - they can wait a few minutes to hours and don't need instant replies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is indeed a good study. I recently experienced one such thing. I bought fitness tracker which I used to monitor my sleep quality. I paired it to smartphone and kept phone aside and slept wearing the tracker. This activity I repeated for entire week and I found that my sleep quality over the week exacerbated compared to time when there was no tracker. When I thought over this, I found out that when I was sleeping wearing the tracker, I was subconsciously thinking continuously about how my sleep quality will be, how will be my heart-rate during sleep, it should always be in resting zone, etc... I had all sorts of kinda unnecessary apprehensions/ worries. This was OK for a day or two... then I got used to the tracker, still my quality of sleep was poor for remaining week. When I further thought over this, it appeared to me that I had setup a goal for daily 6 hour sound sleep and I have to achieve that. I had subconscious pressure to achieve that goal which is making me restless frequently. Atlast I gave up experiment of sleep monitoring and now I can sleep peacefully without tracker. :-)

</comment><comment><USER51> Funny timing, I almost got hit yesterday (at a speed that could have been fatal) by a driver who most likely was either checking notifications or actively texting, while I was biking right on the UC campus. Immediately jerked my handlebar to the right and dumped myself into the grass and escaped with a huge gash above my left eye. Our self-driving overlords can't take over soon enough.

<comment><USER11> The next time you're driving around on a street or highway, look around at your fellow drivers. It is absolutely shocking the number of people who are staring down at their phones.

<comment><USER52> They recently jacked up the penalties in the UK (six points on the licence and £200 spot fine). Maybe it'll help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've come to hate notifications, alerts, and digital nags of all kinds. I disable practically all of them on every device I own, the only unsolicited notifications I want are from rare legitimate emergencies.

But yea, simply having a smartphone around makes you want to fiddle with it. I would guess there is some addictive component there, as it impacts nearly everyone.

<comment><USER53> > _there is some addictive component there_

That's by design. There's a whole science of making the customer come back over and over again.

<comment><USER11> Right, and you can feel it, though I'm not sure if most people are aware of it.

The smartphone and social media often feels like a glorified Skinner box.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> How does one manage a strong appetite to learn new things and the compulsion to look at their smartphone all the time?

I recently started getting into photography and I'm finding it very hard not to look at different lenses and Lightroom tips etc etc on my phone.

Combine that with a desire to learn about new tech and program and I end up spending a lot of time looking at it.

<comment><USER55> You're not actually learning but feeding your novelty-seeking brain. The best way to learn is to actually take photos, not research lenses.

Being in motion vs action: [http://jamesclear.com/taking- action](http://jamesclear.com/taking-action)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Wake me up after the registered replication.

<comment><USER57> Yours seems like a flippant response, but I don't think that it is. We have to be wary of confirmation bias here on HN. Would someone even think to publish a study where no effect was found? And then would someone post that link to HN? And then would it get upvoted? It's important to remember that we are not seeing a uniform sample of news stories here. We are seeing a highly biased selection, and it's important to appropriately discount things appropriately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why do I need to enable cookies to see any content here?

I'm genuinely asking, because there's an informative error message, so it's clearly deliberate; I just can't understand the motivation.

Edit: the only human-readable cookie is 'machine_last_seen', perhaps that's just considered a really important statistic...

<comment><USER59> I ask the same thing any time a site doesn't work without javascript

<comment><USER58> That annoys me, but I understand (from a 'how they built the site' perspective) why it happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Just finished reading "The Distracted Mind". Highly recommend it if you're interested in a broad summary of all the research out there on the effects of technology on our cognitive control - executive function, attention, working memory, ability to get things done, etc.

</comment><comment><USER61> We just need better integration with our exocortex.

<comment><USER62> Please explain...

<comment><USER28> I think he's referring to efforts like this one:

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk- neural...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink- brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Thanks for all the rationalization I could ever want for keeping my phone on DND 24/7

<comment><USER11> That is an excellent choice, based on personal experience I would highly recommend it.

I put 3-4 important people on the exception list and ignore everything else. You will find 99.9% of alerts and digital nags are adding zero value to your life and require no action at all, let alone immediate action warranting your attention and a big buzz and chime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm somewhat surprised they didn't have a group in their studies with some other irrelevant object (say, the person's wallet) on their desk. I know that having anything in my personal space disrupts my ability to think.

</comment><comment><USER64> Sounds about right, also for productivity. I began having a strict "no cell phones" rule after school and on weekends and found as a family we were much more productive plus had much more enjoyable conversations.

</comment><comment><USER65> "This discovery of yours [writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing"

\- "The dialogue of Phaedrus, Plato

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm an observant Jew, so I keep Shabbat every Saturday. Among our creative restrictions is the prohibition of using electronic devices. I've always had this feeling of mindfulness and focus on Shabbat that ends when I'm free to pick up my phone. Against my will, pretty much, I'm drawn to it, and like the authors say, I check it randomly at inopportune times.

These authors expressed scientifically what I've been feeling for years.

</comment><comment><USER67> I haven't gone quite so far as to ditch my smartphone yet, but I now leave it on silent, no vibrations or LED notifications or anything. Whenever I check my phone maybe once an hour at work I see anything that requires my attention, otherwise I put it away. It's made me more sane, but I've often thought about ditching it entirely. It's sad that I feel like I might not be able to function entirely without it.

<comment><USER37> Replace it with a regular phone, it will make a significant difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Oddly enough, the presence of my wife reduces my cognitive abilities due to me instinctively offloading most of my responsibilities to her.

</comment><comment><USER69> Results of this kind, which attract "aren't people on their phones a lot these days, and also millennials should stop buying avocado toast"-level Huffington Post columnists, have consistently failed to replicate: [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3048418](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3048418)

</comment><comment><USER70> This isn't profound because a phone is made to distract you, or from a business view, get your attention

<comment><USER71> That's not really a good model of phones.

Our phones are so powerfully captivating because of the high-speed Internet connection it hides. New information at the tips of your fingers, just a swipe and even more things! Facebook, Instagram, messaging apps, HN, Reddit, news, and so on.

Sure, there are addictive offline things (games mostly), but that's not the things people usually complain about.

Phones are made to be efficient magic boxes of interesting things. It can load anyone's poison in just a few blinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I deleted reddit, instagram and quora and have deactivated facebook for over a year now!! I only have HN and the NYtimes and I get sparse notifications from the latter. I don't care much about my phone as I spend most of my day glued to my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER73> Decided to keep my phone out of my pocket while at home. Just put it on a shelf. I was really surprised at how often my hand just reflexively goes to my pocket for the phone. I only noticed it happening because my phone was not there.

</comment><comment> real-hacker Perfect time to recommend a book: The Shallows. Digital information overload not only makes us less attentive, it also makes us shallow. We are exposed to so much information, that we have little time to think deeply about something.

</comment><comment><USER74> Is this similar to a man's IQ dropping when there is a beautiful woman nearby?

</comment><comment><USER35> What I really want: an ultra high-end cell phone that has a camera built in. Phone calls, SMS, photos, and that's it. Differentiate on build quality, great design, and minimal features.

<comment><USER75> [https://lifehacker.com/how-i-turned-my-iphone-into-a- simple-...](https://lifehacker.com/how-i-turned-my-iphone-into-a-simple- distraction-free-1175739059)

The iPhone has the best build quality (come at me), and you can easily make it do what you're looking for here. A device that doesn't give you the option of extra features won't sell enough to get the scale you need for really high build quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Would putting the smartphone away, out of sight (in a drawer or the pocket of a bag) and on do-not-disturb alleviate the symptoms ? I myself find my mind quieter when I do that.

</comment><comment><USER77> I recently removed all notifications from my phone (except calls) and it has drastically improved my life. I felt like a slave to a fucking device. It was ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER78> 20 years ago I knew all the phone numbers of all my friends.

Today I barely remember my own phone number.

I have outsourced the cognitive load to my phone.

I'm still not sure if that's better or worse.

</comment><comment><USER79> Now I know why I had trouble reading the heading...

</comment><comment><USER80> Perhaps the most conclusive study to prove that mobile learning (on a smartphone) is a myth and at most a vanity.

</comment><comment><USER81> Misleading y axes strike again...

</comment><comment><USER82> Smartphones should be banned in all meetings.

</comment><comment><USER83> it is rather that wikipedia and google, parts of my weltbild (brain), get totally damaged in the wake of the adpocalypse

<comment><USER37> Google got really bad at providing relevant search results, wikipedia did a terrific job of providing URL to official websites and killing many of the relevant and interesting websites that I used to find left and right, they gone now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> All of those "ditch the smartphone" comments are so cute.

I'm on devops. Can't ditch the smartphone.

<comment><USER85> People want to want to ditch the smartphone. Very few actually want to. Proof: sales in the hundreds of millions.

It sucks when capitalism shows people what they really want because sometimes it pierces people's bubbles of who they think they are and they find out who they actually are.

<comment><USER86> Having a two way internet pager (being able to read and send email) is good. Almost everything else about smartphones is really not that good but worth tolerating for email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Looks like nothing to me

</comment><comment><USER88> I've been trying to stay on top of my technology usage. I'd like to move all my electronics out of my bedroom and buy an old fashioned alarm clock. I've heard this is good for sleep and healthy habits and what not

I've been trying to stay off my phone when I'm bored and clean/read/do something productive without technology. I'm glad I had a chance to grow up in the 90's before tech was involved from every waking moment.

It doesn't help that I'm a network admin and I work on my computer all day</comment>


Amazon Kendra: Enterprise Search Service - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/kendra/ <comment><USER3> Interesting to see more players joining the market. You can't walk into a large Enterprise and start your search conversation with "Your developers just build ____". Otherwise customer will want to build it themselves.

The killer feature I haven't seen with many of these solutions is easy, out of the box integration with internal systems (Atlassian Confluence, JIRA, Remedy, SharePoint, FileSystem, Intranet). When you have a SaaS search engine it's difficult to export that data... Even worse to secure it. Ironically, Plumtree Software (bought by BEA -> Oracle) had all of this in their product in 2001. What's old is new again... Those features are prime for a comeback.

I think this is a space where Elastic can do well with an on-prem or managed cloud offering that is "behind the firewall", integrated with customer's environment. Add in term vector search support, ML for document/query understanding, and integration with customer's security model (Active Directory) and it would be compelling.

<comment><USER4> You will need very powerful hardware to deploy the deep learning models on- prem for incremental learning.

And most of the time, while not indexing, the hardware would be sitting there sleeping. Probably not very cost-effective for enterprises.

<comment><USER5> > the hardware would be sitting there sleeping. Probably not very cost- > effective for enterprises.

Not to be condescending, but idle hardware isn't even on the radar as far as waste goes in enterprises. An on-prem solution that is idle for 364 days of the year is completely fine for most of these companies.

For the ones that do care, that's what they make virtual machines and over- subscription for if they even care the slightest about that.

<comment><USER3> Also - see the rise in popularity of OpenShift/PCS/PKS - <USER2> infrastructure is also catching on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey HN, we're building a similar product at [https://evertrove.co](https://evertrove.co) \-- we don't have the limits Kendra currently has, and integrate with a lot more services. We're still early and figuring out what the pricing structure should be, but we're making it a lot more competitive than Kendra is.

We'd love to talk to you if you're interested in using Kendra. We're also wondering if there's more value on the Question Answering side of things, or the document retrieval side of things? Would love your thoughts!

<comment><USER7> Is this HIPAA compliant? And how do we contact you? It's a little difficult not having an email address.

<comment><USER8> Sorry about that, our mistake. Please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shameless Plug Alert

Building a similar enterprise search product at [http://landria.io/](http://landria.io/) that has a lot of additional features & enhancements over a unified keyword index + ML.

We also have a terraform config if you would like to boot it up within your own private cloud!

Any feedback would be great appreciated

</comment><comment><USER10> This is cool, but much of the functionality they're demoing isn't available in the preview. See the disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

> Kendra's preview will not include incremental learning, query auto- > completion, custom synonyms, or analytics. The preview will only offer > connectors for SharePoint online, JDBC, and Amazon S3. It will be limited to > a maximum of 40k queries per day, 100k documents indexed, and one index per > account.

<comment><USER11> i.e. the preview is mostly useless for any enterprise...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've worked with setting up Google Cloud Search. GCS is good for our use case because all of our employees use Google G Suite for email calendar and one-off sites. However it took 2 years for it to be somewhat mature enough for us to actually deploy it. We're still missing connectors for some major data sources like Slack.

Hopefully Amazon moves faster and offers more out of the box data sources. They are missing G Suite content that a lot of orgs are relying on these days. Would be interesting to see what's their strategy there.

<comment><USER13> GCS - not to be confused with Google Cloud Storage ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Probably this dictionary definition of Kendra (kendră) might make sense in this context

kendra (IndE)

noun C

a centre for some activity (research, study, business, art, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Curious how it compares to my offering:

[https://insideropinion.com/](https://insideropinion.com/)

The main issue is giving access to documents, which most Enterprise customers do not want to do... Further, most info is in employees heads, not in documentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the demo it looked like an alternate way to search things like corporate portals. I.e. they're trying to improve the search that products like SharePoint provide with some ML integration.

<comment><USER15> Very similar, it also learns from context of a conversation what is likely in a document, a page, video, audio, etc. This alleviates the need to parse media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank God. Even today it's almost always faster to use Google than a site's search bar. Maybe this will start to change that.

<comment><USER17> Even Google's Search Appliance wasn't a game changer. Reality check - it's DEAD.

Google disrupted the market by factoring in links into its algorithm, something that is rather meaningless in proprietary context.

<comment><USER18> I've heard from the industry that the issue with GSA was that it just wasn't that good. It tried to adapt Google's core search into a box, but Google's algorithm is only great because of scale. The box doesn't have as much of an opportunity to learn from user interactions and thus fails to meet expectations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So the idea is I feed all of the content for my website to Kendra (hosted in cloud) and whenever a user performs a search on my website, Kendra will return results to me via a REST(?) call and I can display sorted results back to the user, right? Is the index going to live locally within my ecosystem for faster retrieval of results and Kendra can do updates to the index via some push mechanism? To be honest instead of bootstrapping a solution with Lucene/SOLR- esque, this might be not be bad idea to ride your search on the shoulders of Amazon AI search giant.

</comment><comment><USER20> I do not know if it is inspired or not,and my 2G internet is not that fast to open this page, but name Kendra means Center in Hindi, with exact spelling

</comment><comment><USER21> Hello everyone at HN! The team @ Biome ([https://www.trybiome.com](https://www.trybiome.com)) is building a unified search platform for finding and organizing internal information. Biome integrates with your existing SaaS applications (Github, Slack, etc.) to surface content no matter where it's stored.

If you are interested in a search solution like Biome, please feel free to reach out so we can talk more and learn the best way we can empower your team to be more productive.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sure are alot of product plugs going on in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is Kendra just a wrapped Elasticsearch? Initial offering doesn't look like much, only thing "new" is FAQ.

</comment><comment><USER24> It would be cool if they added this to their Kindle e-readers so you could could perform better searches of your library.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is Kendra just a wrapped ES ? Only thing novel is FAQ creation and the data sources.

</comment><comment><USER25> Coming from a Solr/Lucene/Algolia background, my opinions on this:

 _What 's good:_

</comment><comment>====

\- Focused search for question and answer databases (such as customer FAQs)

\- ML-based semantic search without requiring any explicit configuration

\- Connectors for S3, AWS-hosted MySQL/PG, Sharepoint. Searching data already in the AWS ecosystem (S3, Aurora) is now easier, and likely faster and cheaper too in some aspects like saving incoming/outgoing bandwidth

\- Document-level access control at all pricing plans

\- Managed search (similar to Algolia)

 _What 's similar to existing search systems (Solr / ES / Algolia):_

</comment><comment>====

\- Indexing: All data has to be processed into "field:value" structure prior to indexing

\- Indexing file formats: Plain text, HTML, PDF, MS DOCX, MS PPT

\- Searching: Usual boolean filters and faceting but only at field level.

\- Searching: Field and value boosts for relevance, but only at index-time

\- Results: Highlighting support

 _What 's missing:_

</comment><comment>=====

\- No multi-lingual support. Only English. Given that it's AWS, I'm very surprised by this actually (or I've missed out something in their docs)

\- Can't configure text analysis for English. I feel this'll return relevant results for formal-style content, but probably not for informal-style content like emails.

\- No connectors for common internal systems: Outlook, JIRA, Confluence

\- No built-in support for CSV, XLS, JSON (that one's odd!). They'll all require preprocessing which means additional infra costs.

\- Doesn't seem to support range- / query- facets. I feel lack of range facets is a big problem, especially for numerical data.

\- No query-time relevance tuning

\- No field-level access control

\- Scores are not returned in results

\- Common post-searching functionality is missing: rescoring, grouping, clustering

 _What 's unknown:_

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

\- I don't see any information about phrase or proximity searches. Of course, they are usually relevance hacks in keyword-based systems, but sometimes users really need exact phrase matches. Does their ML backend handle this somehow?

\- All search systems fall short while handling proper nouns - names, places, things, scientific names. It's possible to alleviate it to some extent using part-of-speech aware indexing. Not sure if Kendra does it in its ML backend.

</comment><comment><USER26> Damn this is a really expensive alternative to Algolia.

<comment><USER27> it's internal enterprise search, not site search. harder problem.

<comment><USER5> Is it? The main difference is additional connectors and access control filters. Both are not really hard from a technology standpoint.

<comment><USER28> It's a nightmare when it comes to the relevance of all those things, with an extremely long tail of queries, ranging from the lunch menu to narrower, domain specific knowledgeable questions about the company's domain. There's usually not enough traffic to figure out what a good result is for a given query. And users would usually rather complain than be part of the solution. Throw on top of that doing relevance on top of federated results is a big headache...

Very different than a consumer-facing e-commerce product search, or searching your blog, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What kind of technology they might be using for this ?

</comment><comment><USER30> Where's the AWS Kitchen Sink Service? :)

</comment><comment><USER31> do they use the elastic fork they did a while ago?

<comment><USER32> They explicitely mention Question Answering. Could it be that they use something like BERT trained with Squad dataset, and fine tuned on additional content? If so, Bert is very intense in terms of required GPU hardware...

<comment><USER31> pretty sure they use some of the BERT + rules + a classic search engine + a LOT of marketing kool-aid

<comment><USER33> Can you elaborate on "BERT + rules + a classic search engine"?

We're due to upgrade our basic Postgres based text search to a formal search solution and investigating different options.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TextMate Is Still The Best Text Editor - <AUTHOR> http://a.shinynew.me/post/27841262025/textmate-sublime-text-2

<comment><USER2> My major gripe with textmate is not that it's a bad editor or even inferior to sublime but that it looks like it's dying. I don't have the feeling it's supported any more and I'm not confident that it will be around after the next OS update - at least not in a form that will work. So I'm changing away from it, albeit slowly.</comment>