Show HN: Open-Source Food Delivery and Local Shopping Platform - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops-End-User-Android-app <comment><USER3> We open sourced our old startup [https://crunchbutton.com](https://crunchbutton.com) too--included iPhone and Android apps, a whole suite of tools to support twilio customer service, driver scheduling, sending orders to restaurants a bunch of different ways, smart courier order routing, automated chargeback disputing, and a whole lot of other custom stuff we built for the business. It's a bit old now, but feel free to use it if you like.

<comment><USER4> Is there more detail to the story of your startup we can read about?

I like movies like startup.com and e-dreams.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.failory.com/interview-failure](https://www.failory.com/interview- failure) collects stories of such startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this type of app is a good use case for a P2P distributed app. E.g. Dat style? I see a lot of P2P that is basically good for distributing your favorite cat photos ([https://github.com/beakerbrowser/dat-photos- app](https://github.com/beakerbrowser/dat-photos-app)) but maybe this is actually a useful app for P2P. Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> My thoughts exactly. The market discovery service mentioned could be done off a distributed network. Making it P2P could also enable a host of delivery Entreprenuers to participate in the delivery in a seamless way with the shopkeeper or the customer setting a delivery bounty.

<comment><USER8> That sounds like a problem requiring consensus hence not implementable with p2p tech. It would need a blockchain or something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the tech stack behind the website? Just a bootstrap template?

How did you make the flat-art pictures (e.g. the one including the MIT and CC logos?) Do you have a good, preferably 'free' repository/website for those flat-art humans?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its just a simple html bootstrap website ... built using this theme [https://htmlstream.com/templates/front/](https://htmlstream.com/templates/front/)

illustrations are taken from this website : [https://undraw.co/](https://undraw.co/)

<comment><USER10> Cool

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Walking into many busy restaurants these days and seeing an array of devices functioning as displays for different delivery platforms convinces me that some kind of common order bus/platform needs to happen.

At some restaurants, the simultaneous parallel incoming orders means they miss yours. At ones where they don't, there's the imposed cost of someone paying close attention to all of them. More often than not, this is the cashier, which means if you decide to walk in and order in person like some barbarian from 2010, you are waiting in an invisible line not just for your food but for any kind of attention.

The likes of Doordash and Seamless and Grubhub don't seem properly incentivized to solve this problem -- sure, they might care if order efficiency or fulfillment suffers and users have a directly bad experience, but they may not demand anything from their product team more complicated a rating system punishing providers. And they don't want a common platform; they want to _be_ the platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes they all want to be the platform ... this is a kind of issue that is common with proprietary commercial projects ...

And may be an area where Open-Source could be of any help !

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting. My most immediate question would be whether or not your platform has gained traction in any specific geographic locations? How many stores are participating and what percentage of that local market do they represent?

We've been working in a similar space (hyperlocal for furniture, home decor and fashion) for about 5 years with ATTIC ([https://attic.city](https://attic.city)). The premise of our work runs a bit contrary and challenges a platform like this -- the primary issue is store willingness to participate in yet another platform.

Putting grocery stores aside, most other retail stores have too much to do and manage on the tech/marketing front: facebook, instagram, twitter, pinterest, snapchat etc. Add on their own website with its own e-commerce platform plus several other shopping or delivery platforms (etsy, posh etc) -- it's too much. As a result we've ended up with extremely fragmented marketplaces and none do a good job of showing a comprehensive view of your local shopping options. For example, some restaurants I like are on X. Others are on Y. Others still are on Z.

Like I said, we came at this problem from a different angle. We're indexing local stores to build the platform that actually has a comprehensive view of a local market -- and to fill in the gap that services like Google Shopping do a poor job of representing. It's slightly slower out of the gate as we do some preliminary research for each city/market. But we've launched ATTIC in 9 major US markets so far and expect to be at 15 by year's end.

As an aside, do you know where you first came across the term hyperlocal? I wonder who coined it. We've been using it as well, but we're certainly not the first.

<comment><USER13> I am not affiliated with this project but can give you some insight as I've spent a significant time in hospitality industry and build a delivery system for a QSR.

Most restaurants that focus on delivery are QSRs. While full service does deliver, usually, its not their main focus.

Within the QSR space, brands are mostly broken down by number of locations which influences their decision making with regard to their technology. Most established brands in Tier 1 markets do focus on technology heavily: its a significant revenue stream. However, their approach differs.

The McDs, Penera, Panda Express, Chipotle of the world usually stick to only one platform. The focus more on integration of Delivery, POS, and inventory more than covering significant amount of platforms. Some decide to use an off the shelf solution while others use a 3rd party delivery system on top of whatever their POS provider brings. There is significant complexity in this paragraph and they all approach it differently but the gist is the same.

Smaller brands that have ~1,000 locations or less begin to splinter into 2 groups: some focus on similar integration as above while others will support multiple platforms via several tablets. Since the revenue stream is significant, they focus on Ops to get everything in line and have gotten to be extremely good at managing/streamlining the process. Its not perfect but it works.

Brands between 20-500 locations will also manage multiple platforms but some invest into "aggregate" providers. Such companies will build out a unified backend for the location and integrate with multiple marketplaces (Grub, Door Dash, proprietary, etc.) to unify the system. Usually, they use a 3rd party for the admin that already has the infrastructure (OLO comes to mind). While in this approach streamlines operations, its quite costly as they charge for volume of orders.

Brands with less than 20 locations usually resort to just using 3-5 tablets on their walls for orders.

As a disclaimer, these are generalities and there are other factors that influence decision makers such as franchising percentages, Tier 1/2/3 markets, and their overall approach.

So to answer your question: most brands are currently moving to aggregate platforms or manage fewer platforms in order to streamline their operations. Large brands also use Yext to streamline their on-line marketing presence or other providers.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Very interesting.

I gather your response was mostly in reference to food delivery services. The OP was suggesting this as a platform for more than food, which is what I'm primarily interested in. It's retail shops that are less experienced with and newer to the idea of everything needs to be delivered right away that I'm curious about. Having said that, our original focus was on furniture stores who have always had to deal with fulfillment and delivery. The type of delivery is very different in nature though -- a 200lb sofa vs a 16oz burrito!

Thanks again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is more than just a food delivery platform ... it was originally designed for local shopping ... but i discovered that it can be used for food delivery as well !

Its primarily designed for fruits, vegetables, grocery, but you can use it for anything ... we are currently adding filtering by item specifications ... which might be more useful in your use-case ...

Currently The delivery is provided by the shop-owner ... ... there is orders inventory ... where the shop-owners can keep track and update the order progress like if its packed and ready for delivery ...

Its just another e-commerce platform which is more focussed for local shopping !

Hope that helps !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry to be that guy that points out spelling mistakes. I believe you wanted to say "commercial" instead of the "commertial" that you have.

<comment><USER15> Be the change you want to see in the world: [https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops-End-User- Android...](https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops-End-User-Android- app/compare/master...HansF:patch-1)

<comment><USER16> Pull requests for typos ('Hyerlocal' is another one, 'Migeration ', online-to- offline vs Offline-to-Online vs - in the image - Online2Offline) feel like overkill to me though?

And I currently see three PRs for the same 'commercial' typo..

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you ... for the PRs ... i will check that out !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You have a \ at the bottom left of your website. Nice gesture to open source, good on you!

<comment><USER18> Apologies for ignorance, but what's this about? Not easy to google...

<comment><USER19> It's literally just that the character "\" is visible in the bottom left corner off the page on [https://nearbyshops.org](https://nearbyshops.org), presumably by mistake.

<comment><USER18> Ah. I read the original comment like having the backslash is the nice gesture, some new meme or something like that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I haven't read the code yet so I apologize if this was already addressed.

Do you already have logic in place to deal with different municipality taxes?

For example: in Chicago, you have an additional tax on non-juice carbonated beverage in addition to your regular sales tax plus a locality tax, depending on neighborhood. In other states there are also "sugar tax". In NYC, some items are tax exempt post-production.

I've actually worked on food delivery product before and would be glad to contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we assume that the Price of the Item includes the taxes ... therefore we haven't added taxes in the end-user bill. We add delivery fee and market fee and calculate the Net-Payable.

But as you say ... if its needed we can add taxes ... in the bill ... and its not so much difficult to integrate that ...

I will be glad to see more contributions to the project ... i believe one of the best advantages of open-source is that people can share and collaborate openly !

<comment><USER20> > if its needed we can add taxes ... in the bill

You should check the related laws to produce compliant bills.

I don't know about the US and its various state laws, but in my country, such pieces of informations are mandatory on bills. Well, there are different forms of bills, and also there are different requirements depending on the amount charged; but anyway all these are things you should study in order to publish a piece of software which produces bills which conform to local laws. Some governments can get really picky when it comes to the main or a major source of their income (VAT and such other taxes) and possible fraud indicators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is very interesting, I'm glad the idea of online local shopping is gaining traction in the collective mind. I've been working on similar things although with a completely different stack (JAM & PWA instead of a native app), and with a slightly different intention in mind (my idea is for the local app to finance local NGOs), and I want to start with the vegan market, financing local vegan activism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your idea is also a good one ... funding local NGOs is also an essential initiative ... Yes i agree ... local business needs a boost !

Well a PWA can be built for Nearby-Shops also ... it might be good to have !

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for sharing ! This could be very useful for bootstrapping businesses. One could spend months coding this.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you ... we thought its good to release it open-source so that people don't have to spend time building software and they can get straight to building business ...

More-over because of being open-source it can also help in the development ... and it can help the new developers learn from the existing source code !!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of Open Food Network, which seems to have quite an active community making contributions [https://github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork](https://github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes it is similar and the fact that both are non-profit makes it similar in the way project organization is done !

But nearby shops includes shopping for other stuff also !

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The legal nuances, tax variations and jurisdiction level laws that need to be implemented is not trivial and requires significant domain expertise - <USER2> is this going to come from?

</comment><comment><USER25> What about the backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Backend Source code is also open-source under MIT License [https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops- API](https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops-API)

Source code for Entire Project (Shop-Owner app and Admin app) is available on github ... Under MIT license ... free for commercial use

[https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops-End-User- Android...](https://github.com/SumeetMoray/Nearby-Shops-End-User-Android- app#source-code-for-shop-owner-admin-app-and-server-side)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I struggle to understand: who will deliver the groceries?

<comment><AUTHOR> THe delivery of the groceries will be done in two ways

1\. It can be done by the shop-owner 2\. It can be done by the Market Owner - through employed delivery people

The shop-owner app contains delivery dashboard and orders inventory where you can track orders with their status like when the order is packed and ready for delivery and such !

Feel free to ask if you have any more questions !

<comment><USER27> Can we add delivery person and their live location? Can it notify the nearest delivery person?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes you can add delivery person and there is a special dashboard for delivery person ... live location tracking will be SURELY available in future releases !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hi hope this will be called Open Sauce.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wanted to contribute in the backend project ...but when I opened the project..the basic coding standards are missing..i know this is open source and can be fixed but all over the files i see commentated code the logging is out of place... I work in a Big European bank so maybe i was hoping for a more matured code but this code needs a fresh look...

Appreciate your efforts and thus some pointers to start: 1\. Add liquibase into your project. 2\. Add logging into a project. 3\. Use Spring Boot if possible 4\. Use an ORM framework like JOOQ may be?

Have a look at Jhipster, they are pretty good with their bootstrap projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes ... you are correct .. the code on the backend side ... and also for Admin-app - needs refactoring ... i was planning that ... its just the matter of when i find some time !

I wont recommend anyone to contribute (for backend and admin app) until the refactoring is done !

I had been searching for some good project - Example for backend code ... but i was not really able to find one for Java ... for building REST API !

It was quite a struggle to work ... due to lack of proper tutorials and lack of good example projects ... for backend ...

But anyway ... your suggestions are very useful ... using Spring Boot would definitely improve the project ...

And i will also study about the liquibase and logging ...

I was avoiding ORMs but JOOQ seems like a reasonable option !

It is quite useful when experienced developers like you take your time to review and suggest improvements ...

<comment><USER29> have a look at [https://jhipster.tech](https://jhipster.tech) you can generate a working example code instantly and get started

<comment><AUTHOR> yes ... i checked out ... i wonder why it took me so much time to find that out ! ...

It would be great if you could keep in touch and post some issues on the Project Repository where you can Guide upon how can we improve the Code ! And what is the best tech-stack we should be using on the Backend side !</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Watch developer tools to launch next month - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/16/6988975/apple-watch-developer-kit-to-launch-next-month <comment><USER2> Ohh the possibilities. I'll make messaging app that broadcasts a message every time you bang the watch against your forehead</comment>


How to Debug Your jQuery Code - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptjunkie/ee819093.aspx

<comment><USER2> I wonder if Ballmer is aware that Elijah is pumping FF as his first-target JS environment on an MSDN blog? Not exactly eating your own dog food.

<comment><USER3> Elijah doesn't work for Microsoft.

Contrast his article to what you get from MS employees writing about jQuery: [http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2010/04/08/jquery- asp...](http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2010/04/08/jquery-asp.net-and- browser-history.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kudos to Microsoft for indirectly recommending Firefox!

</comment><comment><USER5> The FireBug console with FireQuery installed will also highlight any DOM elements that match your selector when you mouse over the results in the console. I hadn't heard of FireFind before this; I'm gonna have to give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad there is finally a decent article on how to use / debug jquery and firebug. I've been waiting for one of these for years now. /sarcasm_off</comment>


What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_do_kids_say_is_the_biggest_obstacle_to_techno.php <comment><USER2> Asking students what they think they need to learn? Problem is, they don't know - so they answer with whatever is the niftyest gizmo they adhere to.

The real answer is: they need to learn to DO THE WORK with whatever tools they have. I teach introductory programming, and the biggest problem students have is lack of inclination to simply perform and submit assignments (about 1/3rd suffer this affliction); it is not for lack of understanding, but for lack of action. Getting wound up in arguments about the suitability of various technologies completely misses the problem: if a student is unwilling to absorb the material as given, and to perform assignments on whatever medium is available, they will not learn.

An old copy of Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" and a willing student will make a far more talented engineer than giving a disinterested student an iPad with anywhere/anytime access to the totality of human knowledge (including Angry Birds).

<comment><USER3> > An old copy of Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" and a willing student > will make a far more talented engineer than giving a disinterested student > an iPad with anywhere/anytime access to the totality of human knowledge > (including Angry Birds).

Likewise, a willing student with an iPad is going to have the potential to learn so much more than a disinterested student with a textbook.

If a student is disinterested and completely lacks motivation, it won't matter if you use a tablet or a textbook, that student is probably not going to learn much. However, a willing and interested student can learn so much more with newer, more powerful tools. Does it really make sense to hold the willing student back because of the disinterested student?

As far as motivating the lazy student goes, you are far more likely to spark their interest with real-world applications on a tablet or smartphone than with a boring old textbook.

<comment><USER4> "However, a willing and interested student can learn so much more with newer, more powerful tools."

This is complete bullshit. To stay within the grand-parent post's framework (although Knuth is perhaps a reach), you would reach a fixed point where adding nifty tech isn't going to make your experience studying Knuth that much more productive. It would be nice to have a decent laptop capable of running a compiler and whatever IDE or not-so-integrated environment you prefer; a well configured device from the last 5 years would be fine. An iPad isn't going to solve any problems here.

Lazy students are lazy because they don't want to think hard, solve problems and learn. This is largely a constant and is not going to be affected by being given a iPad.

To quote Jack Vance (why not?): "Whatever you have heard about me, dismiss it. I do not regard my class as a confrontation between the clear light of my intellect and twenty-two examples of sloth and willful stupidity. The exact number may be only half that, if we are lucky, and of course varies from term to term."

<comment><USER3> Based on your logic, calculators shouldn't have ever been introduced in the classroom either because an abacus filled our needs. Or perhaps 128k of memory really was enough, since what possible use could we have for more memory or advanced technology if the status quo fills our current needs?

We are just beginning to untap the possibilities of mobile devices in the classroom, and to completely dismiss them as "nifty tech" is very short sighted. People tried to do the same ten years ago when laptops started appearing in classrooms. Had they succeeded, companies like Google would not even exist today.

We are seeing many interesting uses of mobile devices in education now that the devices are finally appearing in classrooms. However, until they become more ubiquitous and accepted, it will be impossible to fully demonstrate how much they can impact education.

Having spoken to professors who have personally experimented with iPads in classrooms, I can tell you it makes a day and night difference just in student engagement when they are given a textbook to study from versus being encouraged to explore a topic and discuss it using mobile devices like the iPad. I've observed biology classes where roughly half of the students used an iPad. These students consistently participated more than the other students. There are several reasons for this behavioral change, but I think the most important one is the design of the device and OS. It focuses on the single task at hand. When an app becomes the whole device and actually discourages multitasking, students pay attention more compared to their distracting laptop screens. Compared to laptop users, they also benefitted from a lack of a physical barrier from the laptop screen between the student and instructor. Those students that had no electronic device and just depended on the textbook generally participated the least and seemed least interested. It will be interesting to see how these devices continue to change how classrooms operate as more and more schools open up to the idea.

Keep in mind that the target audience is not tech savvy nerds, but the typical student, who for the most part is still afraid of using traditional laptops. These students, however, live off of their cell phones, so why not take advantage of an environment they are already comfortable in to encourage learning instead of forcing them into a foreign environment?

<comment><USER5> Back in the olden daze, I was taught in college with nothing more than a prof and a blackboard, and I took notes. It works fine. I learned a helluva lot in a very short time.

The thing is, it takes work to learn something. You have to make an effort. Labor saving machinery doesn't help any more than using a motorcycle to train for a marathon.

As they say in athletics, no pain = no gain.

<comment><USER3> It worked fine for you, me, and the majority of HN. However, something clearly isn't working in the education system for the majority of students today, hence all the talk of "educational reform."

Nobody will disagree that it takes work to learn, and I am by no means proposing that technology is a magic bullet that will make learning easy all of a sudden. All I am suggesting is that technology can help make aspects of learning easier in order to allow students to focus on the more difficult aspects.

Just like athletes wear specialized gear to reduce unnecessary pain, we can use technology to reduce unnecessary work in the education system and focus on the actual learning.

<comment><USER2> Yes, something is clearly not working in the education system: students are not learning "DO THE WORK". Sure nifty gadgets can help - but only if the student is going to do the work in the first place. I'm not talking about "difficult aspects", I'm talking about the very simplest of tasks, like starting an online at-your-convenience quiz, or handing in a homework assignment with no more content than "I'm confused". I'm talking about students who do so little that if you gave them 100% on everything they do submit they still won't break a 50%.

No amount of specialized gear will help an athlete if he won't move when the game begins.

<comment><USER3> So you're proposing that for those students who have not yet been motivated to work hard as a result of a broken system, we should just keep trying to force them through that system with no change? There are many, many reasons why the education system is not working, and there are many proposed solutions. No one solution is going to fix things, but they can contribute steps towards the overall solution. By dismissing all technology as nifty gadgets and refusing to even consider changing a broken system for a new generation, you're giving up before even trying.

One reason the educational system isn't working anymore is the behavioral changes in children that have been encouraged through cell phone and social networking usage. It's been shown that face-to-face discussion is intimidating and harmful to brainstorming or learning effectiveness [1]. This is why children and young adults prefer texting and communicating through Facebook over face-to-face socializing or even phone calls. Despite this fact, the size of classrooms continue to grow as we cram more and more students together to fight for the instructor's attention and to discuss topics in front of each other. Then we sit back and wonder, why students are intimidated and are unable to learn.

We have a classroom full of unengaged students staring blankly at an instructor, we know that they're intimidated to engage and ask questions in front of such a large group, and we know that they already have mobile devices on them that they _are_ comfortable communicating and engaging with in large groups. But instead of taking advantage of those devices, you (and everybody else) seem to want to ignore everything and just keep trying to force students through a system that's not working for them anymore.

[1]: [http://books.google.com/books?id=RNiFM9br5PwC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=RNiFM9br5PwC&lpg=PP1&dq=medici%20effect&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q=osborns%20claim&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea of kids using their cellphones in class brought an article that Frasier Speirs wrote back in October to mind: <http://speirs.org/blog/2010/10/9/run-what-ya-brung.html>

He argues that there are a number of assumptions that come into play with using pupil's phones in this manner. He's worth reading, since he's involved in a project bringing tablet computers (currently iPads) into the school that he's working for and integrating them into their teaching. The entire series is fascinating reading if you're interested in mobile technology in schools.

</comment><comment><USER7> My school censors almost everything on the internet. paulgrahm.com is blocked for being a personal site, as are all blogs, wikis, and forums. And the best part? The teachers have different censors so if a teacher gives you an assignment with links on it there's a fairly good chance you won't be able to use most of the links. I use my iPhone at school to do research because it has an uncensored internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a baffling question to be asking, given that the evidence that computers are a wonderful aid to learning is scant. Making it easier to putz around on cellphones at school hardly sounds like a educational advance.

<comment><USER3> Actually, there is significant evidence that integrating mobile technology into the classroom does in fact aid learning, but only of the instructor is will to embrace the technology instead of fight it. Unfortunately, most instructors don't feel comfortable changing their teaching methods, so technology is seen as having no impact.

Here's one article about one professor's experience with integrating Twitter into the classroom: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_one_teacher_uses_tw...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_one_teacher_uses_twitter_in_the_classroom.php)

There are numerous similar examples of teachers that are experimenting with technology and seeing positive results, but are being stonewalled by administrators who are afraid of trying something new.

Yes, there's always a risk that students will just be able to play Angry Birds on their phones in class, but then, those same students can just doodle in their notebooks instead. Should we take all notebooks and pencils away? Any tool has the potential to be abused, but it also has the potential to significantly help.

<comment><USER4> Significant evidence != an article about some dude using Twitter in the classroom. The plural of blogpost isn't 'data', just like the plural of anecdote isn't data.

Do you have a _study_? You know, one of those strange things where two different approaches go through this bizarre process of comparison.

So far most of the evidence for tech in the classroom is either inconclusive or tends to connect it with negative outcomes.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.nd.edu/~cangst/NotreDame_iPad_Report_01-06-11.pdf>

<http://robertkozma.com/images/kozma_jrte.pdf>

<http://www.educause.edu/ELI7Things>

[http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based- practic...](http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based- practices/finalreport.pdf)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

Not formal studies but great anecdotes:

[http://www.fastcompany.com/1727292/apple-ipad-officially- pas...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1727292/apple-ipad-officially-passes-the- higher-eduction-test-exclusive)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1-8OOrBi0o&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1-8OOrBi0o&feature=player_embedded)

Anything on <http://speirs.org/>

And of course, there's always the success of Khan Academy.

There are many, many more studies and anecdotes available, but these are the ones I either had bookmarked or could remember off the top of my head.

You're right that there's no absolutely conclusive and irrefutable study about tech in classroom because nobody has undertaken such a bold experiment. However, all of the evidence is there and points to the potential of adopting newer tools in classrooms. Unfortunately, people who blindly dismiss all applications of technology in the classroom have slowed farther, more informative studies from being conducted.

<comment><USER4> This appears to be a dump of randomly selected research papers, many of which don't measure anything remotely connected to outcomes. The standard practice seems to be to do a bunch of surveys afterwards to measure how awesome everyone thought everything had been.

However, I did appreciate this bit from the ed.gov one:

"An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students."

No shit.

<comment><USER3> The data set is too small to achieve a conclusive outcome yet. As more classrooms experiment with these technologies, we'll get more insights. Until then, surveys are the best way to get an idea of how something is working for students.

As for the random dump of research papers, I tried originally offering a more succinct argument with an anecdote, but you wanted more evidence so I obliged.

<comment><USER4> From what I've seen, so far, when actual outcomes are measured for the whole 'computers in schools', rigorous studies tend to show negative or inconclusive effects.

I'm sure that surveys asking questions like "Was everything MOAR AWESUM in class today?" would have similarly suggested that everyone is more 'engaged' by the computers, but we don't go to school to be engaged, we go to school to learn. If we are 'engaged' by something irrelevant - for example, spending an hour dicking around with the fonts on a presentation - we might report wonderful levels of engagement while achieving zero outcomes.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any studies that show these negative effects you keep mentioning? I'm curious to see why they failed. Obviously just tossing technology into a classroom won't do anything, which is what most schools with iPad programs are doing. It has to be adopted by the instructor and actually integrated into the learning process, which is a difficult thing to do.

I agree that surveys are not the most reliable or valid measure of success, but combined with the anecdotal evidence seen by the various experiments, there is a strong case to be made that technology has the _potential_ to provide major positive changes once implemented properly. We have to start the search for the proper implementation somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a teacher, I'm not quite sure what the survey is really reaching for. The kids bring their own technology into school, so that they can use it, and... what? Browse the internet for scholarly sources on a 4 inch screen?

There's not a lot of technology that truly enhances education. LCD projectors make a huge difference. Document cameras (if you haven't seen one, it's essentially a webcam on an arm with VGA out) are wonderful, they let you put any student work, textbook, etc. on display. Online books and online "flash card" sites are also useful. The thing is, though, almost all of these are just improvements on technology that's been around for decades. A LCD projector with document camera is an overhead projector where you can be spontaneous rather than rely on transparencies. There's lots of other cool stuff - student response systems, wireless networking for TI calculators, Geometer's Sketchpad - I could go on. I've even friended problem students on xbox live for the explicit purpose needling them on their time playing call of duty instead of doing their homework.

The thing is, though, none of this requires a student's cell phone. There is no killer app (that I'm aware of). Instead, the cell phone is a major disciplinary issue. Teachers and administrators are wary for a reason: students are irresponsible with the devices, and presently, they cause more problems then they solve.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have many friends and family members who are in k-12 education (mostly teachers but some administrators and executives). Their edu experience ranges from 10-40 years in different socio-economic districts. Every one of them says the single largest factor in determining the success of a student is parental involvement. It doesn't matter if you give a kid the latest smart phone/iPad/laptop if that kid gets home and is never asked about what they're learning in school, how their homework is coming along, when parent/teacher conferences are scheduled, etc. I think it's high time we find a way to motivate parents across the board to take a more proactive role with their children's education (perhaps using some of the state education money per child as a monetary incentive for parents who meet certain "involvement" milestones).

</comment><comment><USER10> The biggest obstacle is that the lessons don't integrate technology. The technology is expected to graft onto the existing lessons and make it better in a vague and nebulous way.

As ctdonath's post indicates: The old lessons work just as well given a text book and paper. The new lessons, one that could not be performed without the technology have not been developed yet.

I mean, this is a bit like complaining that the socratic method is not enhanced by pencil and paper.

<comment><USER8> Agreed entirely. My best lessons, ones that integrate technology and really engage the students who don't usually care, take hours to plan, test, iterate and improve.

Some days, I think about trying to make a company dedicated to period-long drop-in replacement lessons. I'm just not quite sure the market is there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> More and more people have been bringing laptops to some of my classes. I find the clicking keys to be very annoying. I'd go nuts if the whole class typed their notes.</comment>


Stealing Millions 25 Cents At A Time - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/stealing-millions-25-cents-at-a-time <comment><USER2> I don't remember the exact details but there was a story making rounds about a company that sent out $25 average-looking invoices to large and very large companies, with each invoice saying "Invoice for nothing". Most companies didn't pay, and still these fellas made a LOT of money on those few that did. The best part was that the scheme was 100% legal.

<comment><USER3> There's a company called 'Domain Registry of Canada' that looks for .ca registered domains that are about to expire and sends a form letter telling you that you should renew, and to fill in the form, check the box, and enclose a cheque to make sure your domain stays active.

What the form ACTUALLY is is a transfer request, which will transfer your domain to them, at a rate of likely twice what you're paying already. It says this in the fine print, but if I didn't know who my registrar was already I might not have noticed (good thing I don't send cheques to people).

It's the shadiest kind of business, and while I believe it may be technically legal, they're taking advantage of customer confusion. I'm sure they make a ton of money with this sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> There is a similar company (probably same people) in the US "Domain Registry of America" which sends out these "bills" to protect your domain from lapsing for $25/year.

My guess is that company easily gets 100-250k renewals/transfers a year that way. Most likely way more.

<comment><USER5> My dad fell for that. Twice.

Man I hate those people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would anybody here take the time to dispute a $0.25 charge? I wouldn't...

This also reminds me of something that I have wanted from credit card companies for a very _very_ long time...imagine if there was a protocol for the CC companies to accept a record of not only the amount, but also the transaction that you made? Basically the CC machine sends a copy of the receipt to the card processor...

Carrying around paper receipts in my wallet for doing expense reports is a massive pain in the ass.

<comment><USER7> A friend and I had kicked around a startup idea where you would take a picture of your receipt with your phone and upload it to our service. Then it would do OCR, and at the end of the month, you could easily reconcile your statement with the receipts you took pictures of. One benefit is that you don't have to trust the credit card company, or the merchant you buy from, which is a problem of your proposed system.

<comment><USER6> Is the resolution of most cell-phone cameras good enough for this?

I frequently use my phone to take pictures of stuff I would normally just write down (error message after a kernel panic, asset tag, where I parked my car, etc. etc.), but for things the size of a receipt, I can't read it...

What phone were you using?

<comment><USER8> My Nokia N86 8mp certainly is :) (though it has some trouble focusing at short range).

I expect cell phone cameras like that will become commonplace in the next year or so, so it's a good time for startups to abuse that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> PETER This sounds familiar.

MICHAEL Yeah. They did this in Superman III.

PETER Yeah. What a good movie.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is sort of like spam and/or snail mail solicitations. It's so "inexpensive" for people (victims) to ignore that it becomes a simple exercise in basic profit equations for the sender.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing>

</comment><comment><USER12> More reasons why banks / credit cards should be issuing restricted-value, one- time-use card numbers for purchases. Or at least the _option_ to do so. Easier to control and revoke, and easier to identify fraud like this (a number 4 years out of date? * flags go up __* ).

<comment><USER13> They do. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number>

I use it all the time.

<comment><USER12> Where "they" is a rather small subset of the world's banking / credit card- ing. I suppose I should've said " _more_ banks", it does sound like I don't know of its existence.

But yes, that's pretty much precisely what I'd like, though it _should_ be _everywhere_ , and really should've been there from the start. Abuse like this is a rather obvious possibility if there's no way to control what merchant X can do. Looks like Mastercard may come out with it soonish, hopefully Visa & others will do so as well.

<comment><USER5> Discover has had a little Flash app for generating one-time-use numbers for many years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Office Space, anyone?

<comment><USER15> read all the above comments just to see if anyone posted this one.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzGWvZAd228>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before I clicked through I thought this article was about how banks charge a fee for every electronic debit card transaction that they process. Then I realized most banks in Canada charge $0.50 at a time.

<comment><USER3> Really? For ~$12/mo I get unlimited debit card uses, ATM withdrawls, online bill payment, and teller transactions. I can't remember the last time I paid service charges.

<comment><USER17> The last time you paid a service charge was the last time you gave your bank $12.

Even if you got dinged $2 per ATM withdrawal you could take money out once a week and pay less in fees. Your situation sounds like highway robbery to me.

<comment><USER3> $12 per month for a debit card, four bank accounts, unlimited transactions, good ATM coverage, branches open until 8 PM every day, friendly service. Sounds pretty good to me.

Also, your suggestion would imply that I should only spend cash, presumably meaning that I take out huge sums of money once a week at the ATM, then spend the week having to juggle cash, change, etc. It's not worth the hassle at all. The fact that debit cards are the most common method of payment in Canada seems to imply most people agree with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Site is down, anyone have a copy? It seems to refer to this article, though:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178560/FTC_says_scam...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178560/FTC_says_scammers_stole_millions_using_virtual_companies?taxonomyId=17)

</comment><comment><USER19> Capital One once put a hold on my CC for a $0.63 charge from Amazon (my S3) bill. I thought it was very strange especially since they never acted on my $0.19 changes for S3 the 6 six months prior.

</comment><comment><USER20> This seems like a great opportunity for Mint.com. Just flag any known fraudulent companies in everyone's personal report.

</comment><comment><USER21> When I first saw the title I assumed it was about Wall Street.

I kid you not.

</comment><comment><USER22> Apparently Verizon Wireless does the same thing. I heard they charge randomly users (claiming that you click on the Internet icon and got connected) and this ends up being in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I have no evidence of this, but I tend to believe it.</comment>


Show HN: Programming FTDI devices in Python - <AUTHOR> https://iosoft.blog/ftdi-python <comment><USER2> On a related note: Does FTDI still write driver malware? They've been caught with their pants twice. There is no way in hell I'm buying their ICs again.

<comment><USER3> Yup. FTDI is the only chip maker that I avoid out of principle. They have been blatantly and unapologetically abusive.

Their devices are also overpriced to a degree borders on comical, so they're not hard to avoid. For the price of their USB-UART chips you can get a top- tier microcontroller that can do USB-UART easily as fast, and still have plenty of capacity to spare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too bad there is no GPIO example.</comment>


Show HN: Detect seizure inducing images using Tensor Flow - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/asasidh/Seizure-Detection-Tensor-Flow <comment><AUTHOR> The recent involving Journalist Kurt Eichenwald has shown how social media could potentially be used as a terror weapon to inflict immediate physical pain and suffering to unsuspecting victims. By retraining an Inception v3 model you can automatically detect images causing strobe behavior and block them in sites that rely on user generated content like social media.</comment>


Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell dies at age 85 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/feature/apollo-astronaut-edgar-mitchell-dies-at-age-85 <comment><AUTHOR> The entire Apollo 14 crew is has now passed away. Mitchell was the fifth of the twelve moonwalkers to go. I wonder how many are left when we return.</comment>


Uppy 0.27: First Swing at React Native Support - <AUTHOR> https://uppy.io/blog/2018/08/0.27/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone, Kevin from Uppy here. We just added basic React Native support to our open source file uploader. For some reasons why we built a js fileuploader in the first place, check out [https://github.com/transloadit/uppy/blob/master/README.md#wh...](https://github.com/transloadit/uppy/blob/master/README.md#why- not-just-use-input-typefile) :) Happy to answer questions!</comment>


Qi Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.qimagazine.com/qimagazine00.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this. I love the fact that it specifically lists what curable to expect from the movement of energy.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is not about the BBC Quiz show "QI" hosted by the legend Stephen Fry. This post is about the energy Qi, the principle moving energy of a living thing Qi. Not the lovely hour spent watching British comedians, and sometimes other nationalities, banter back and forth with verve and mirth all around a loosely themed pack of trivia.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't tell you how many times I used Qi for a triple letter or word on WordsWithFriends</comment>


Amazon fires are destructive, but they aren't depleting Earth's oxygen supply - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/amazon-fires-are-destructive-but-they-arent-depleting-earths-oxygen-supply-122369 <comment><USER2> This makes perfect sense to me, but I'm far from an expert on any related topic. Anyone have anything that rebuts this in part or whole?</comment>


Former Treasury Secretary Says He "Forgot" That People Had To "Afford Their House" - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/5115736/former-treasury-secretary-says-he-forgot-that-people-had-to-afford-their-house

<comment><USER2> It does seem very odd to forget that house prices can't rise forever at a much faster rate than incomes. I knew my local market was in a bubble all the way back in the year 2001, because I could see that prices had no sensible relationship to local salaries.</comment>


How to change the author in Git - <AUTHOR> http://www.coffee.geek.nz/how-change-author-git.html <comment><USER2> Note that this rewrites history and changes the commit ids (i.e. the SHA hashes). That could be seen as a feature. The same thing happens if you rebase a branch.</comment>


Pwn2Own winner says Macs are more safe, though less secure - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/pwn2own-winner-says-macs-are-more-safe-though-less-secure.ars

<comment><USER2> My partner Dave made this point in 2006; it's one of our more popular posts, and got good comments:

<http://www.matasano.com/log/644/safety-vs-security-2/>

OS X is a suburb. Win32 is downtown Manhattan. You might prefer the suburbs, but remember: neighborhoods change.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing that I don't get about this contest is that they included Chrome and not Opera. Yes chrome is the "new kid in the block" but the other one, despite it's low market penetration, has been around for many many years.

(PS: I am an Opera user, but not a fanatic/fanboy etc. I am not trying to start a browser flame here.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this distinction. It's like the distinction between accuracy and precision.</comment>


GitHub Attack Is Likely an Attempt by China to Shut Down Anticensorship Tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/u-s-coding-website-github-hit-with-cyberattack-1427638940-lMyQjAxMTA1ODIzOTgyNDkzWj

<comment><USER2> Great to finally see coverage of this in mainstream press.</comment>


Ask HN: Sites like HN for designers - <AUTHOR>

Like HN is the best community for hackers, which sites are there for designer community, where the designers showcase their work and discuss about design related topics? <comment><USER2> DesignFloat (<http://www.designfloat.com/>) is gaining in popularity.

Also there's DocType (<http://doctype.com/>) which is a Stack Exchange style site for designers.

The Web Design subreddit gets some activity too (<http://www.reddit.com/r/webdesign>).

<comment><USER3> DocType is the most useful for me; DesignFloat tends to be pretty random/useless sometimes since it's an aggregator and the links it has don't always directly pertain to design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't directly answer your question, but I wish more design related topics would show up on Hacker News — benefits hackers who are looking to learn more about design, and it's a really good startup related topic anyways.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.drawar.com> is pretty nice albeit somewhat inactive.

<http://forrst.com> is invite-only and caters to both designers and developers, but it fits the bill.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're looking for places to share your work and get feedback, then <http://dribbble.com> and <http://forrst.com> are your best bet, although both are currently invite only.

If you're looking for more of a link dump type thing, then <http://www.designfloat.com> and <http://www.uberlook.com> (my site) might have what you need.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://forlue.com/> \- a clone of HN for design speak.

</comment><comment><USER8> The closest analogue I can think of is Undrln: <http://www.undrln.com> but it doesn't get anywhere near as much traffic as it did a couple of years ago, unfortunately.</comment>


Tell HN: Why conferences suck (I'm on Disrupt Berlin right now) - <AUTHOR> They hide all speakers in the speakers' lounge and anybody else who is high-profile as well.
All conferences have this feature, a so-called speakers lounge creating a 2-class conference, but it doesn't make it better.
People buy a 1K ticket and all the bit higher profile folks are never anywhere, just not visible. Because they stay nicely together in their lofty lounge, all the time. Btw, most do not leave immediately after their gig (this is what people assume).
On top, the speakers are barely high-profile on this conference, just one or two. Moreover, they have to perform multiple times. Seems TechCrunch couldn't get enough and high-end speakers.
Wasted money. <comment> Lorenz-Kraft Probably your decision to support these events. As far as I can tell the CCC Congresses are mostly high class with speakers running around all over the place.</comment>


Zuckerberg should protect his privacy, even as Facebook erodes it for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/380348/zuckerberg-should-absolutely-protect-his-privacy-even-as-facebook-erodes-it-for-everyone-else/

<comment><USER2> I stopped taking Zuckerberg seriously when he pushed that Chinese propaganda book on everyone at Facebook and tried to call it "enlightenment".</comment>


Firefox 36.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/36.0/releasenotes/ <comment><USER2> Meanwhile, in firefox 39a (current nightly), a reader view (readability/printfriendly)

[http://imgur.com/DONqb30](http://imgur.com/DONqb30)

<comment><USER3> I see font rendering in linux is still pretty horrible.

<comment><USER4> You know, you might be looking at a screenshot that has font settings (hinting etc) which work on the originating display and fail on yours. No reason to jump to snarkiness.

<comment><USER3> You do realize the screenshot is an image right?

<comment><USER5> That doesn't matter. The pixel output of subpixel rendering only works on monitors with the pixel layout it's intended for.

<comment><USER6> whoa, that is something i never thought about before.

<comment><USER4> Take a screenshot and zoom in on text, chances are that you will see lots of subtly colored pixels around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow this is a big release! HTTP 2.0, phasing out 1024 certs, sync, will- change.

BTW, is there already support for 4096 certs? Or is that coming later?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the full HTTP/2 support was a pleasant surprise! Wonder if Google's (and other prominent ones) web properties have switched over to HTTP/2 from SPDY yet.

<comment><USER9> According to [http://spdycheck.org/#google.com](http://spdycheck.org/#google.com) google.com supports "h2-14" and "h2-15" which I'm guessing are drafts of HTTP/2?

<comment><USER10> Right. "h2" is what the final spec should give.

<comment><USER11> firefox 36 will negotiate any of {h2, h2-14, h2-15}

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently switched back to Firefox from Chrome. They have done a nice job in speeding it up. My Chrome seems like more of a bottleneck than my internet connection.

<comment><USER13> my concern with firefox, at least on the mac, I tend to find video play back just stops whereas I can take the same video to Safari and have zero issues.

I really wish there were a way to more easily identify if the problem is an addon or inherent to Firefox.

<comment><USER14> It's pretty easy to create a blank profile. That isn't magic wand easy, but it's a low bar.

<comment><USER15>
      firefox.exe -p -new-instance

Should open a new instance of Firefox in the profile dialog, where you can create a new profile.

I'm not sure about "-new-instance". I've only used -no-remote but the release notes say remote commands have been removed. Some quick research turned up -new-instance as a substitute.

<comment><USER16> -no-remote is the same as -new-instance except that the instance won't listen to remote commands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm presently in the middle of an experiment to use Firefox (and its Developer Edition) as my primary browser when performing my duties as a web developer. So far... It's been kind of rocky. Daily usage of the browser isn't that bad, but the developer tools are lacking compared to Chrome.

A good example is the Network tab. In Chrome, I need only have the developer tools open to capture information about requests. In FF, I must not only have the tools open, but I must also be viewing the tab.

Another minor annoyance is the state of add-ons. It seems that new versions of the add-ons I use regularly are several versions behind their Chrome counterparts. And have you tried to develop an add-on? Wow. The docs are kind of harsh. They could really use a guided example.

<comment><USER18> One minor grievance I have with the Firefox console is the input line is all the way at the bottom. I quite like Chrome's approach of starting at the top.

Firefox has a few of these irritating UX quirks that I just can't get over. Having to restart after installing an extension is another. Every time I see the request, I can't help lose a bit of respect for it.

<comment><USER19> > Firefox has a few of these irritating UX quirks that I just can't get over.

Another one is not being able to use shift-home or shift-end to select to the beginning or end of a css property.

<comment><USER20> Wow, this drives me insane. I've always meant to file a bug report about this but I'm not sure if its supposed to be a feature instead. It appears to let you cycle through valid properties but I really wish it was assigned to another key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not quite related to this particular release, but I kind of wish sync for extension data wasn't Opt-In.

Having to hunt down the option to turn on Sync for each extension explicitly and not even having that option for some extensions makes for a rather poor user experience.

Also, as someone who customizes the browser layout rather extensively, I'd like to see layout settings included in Sync as well (which toolbars are visible/how buttons are organized on toolbars/etc).

<comment><USER22> Totally disagree I find the present trend towards opt-in-by-default to be an anathema.

It's totally unreasonable that I should have to start up applications in a sandbox after each upgrade and/or hire a team of lawyers to go over the EULA/TOS to find what new & interesting ways have been found to sell my personal info.

(Responding to your general point btw rather than specifically against Mozilla, who compared to the alternatives do seem to care about their users privacy, nor Sync which which you have to opt in for)

<comment><USER21> For what it's worth, I was talking specifically about Sync's behavior for extension data, and wasn't trying to make any general point about opt-in-by- default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I switched back to Firefox and stopped using Chrome when it wanted me to 'sign in'. Even IE does not make me do that. I have to say their technical people are top notch, but their business leadership not so much. If they keep in this direction soon Chrome will look like the old AOL app.

If you are unfamiliar, I recommend you also checkout firefox developer edition.

<comment><USER24> Chrome SignIn is basically the same thing as Firefox Sync. It keeps your bookmarks, extensions, and stored passwords (all controllable) in sync between the different devices you use the browser on.

<comment><USER25> The key difference being that Firefox's implementation gives you all this without having to let Google rifle through the data you want to sync.

<comment><USER26> Not anymore: as I posted last night[1], Mozilla could choose to give themselves access to your password, when you create your account or when you change its password. Anyone who is able to successfully MITM you & Mozilla (say, someone with a Komodia cert if you're infested with Superfish, or any of the CAs in the world, or anyone who can compel them to certify a MITM cert) can do the same.

Google do allow you to use your own passphrase, so conceivably at this point Chrome is at least somewhat more secure than Mozilla.

It's a crying shame.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098459)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Recently switched back to Firefox. Their search engine selection option is so easy and excellent.

On Chrome, non-technical people won't be able to change default search engine.

Thanks Mozilla.

<comment><USER28> I strongly prefer the previous search bar UI, and thankfully it's still available through a setting. about:config -> browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false.

<comment><USER29> Thank you! The new design makes my various Arch Linux-related search options impossible to use as they all have the same icon (which shouldn't be a problem – I don't want to have to design a unique icon for every possible thing I want to search).

Aside from that, what is the benefit of the new design supposed to be? It looks like it's designed for touch, but Firefox on touch-based platforms has a completely different UI anyway. And even if someone were to use the desktop version of Firefox with touch input, the targets look a bit small. So I don't understand the point of making the UI worse for keyboard and mouse input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> OSX Voiceover support has "improved" but is still pretty broken. Anyone know if Voiceover support is on the roadmap? Would ditch Safari in a minute if Firefox had proper Voiceover support. Considering how much attention Mozilla gives to accessibility...

<comment><USER16> Firefox accessibility bugs are listed here:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=34298...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=342989&hide_resolved=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The share and hello icons reappeared in FF 36 after I removed them, this is annoying.

<comment><USER32> This was not intentional. I've filed [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1136300](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1136300).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Pretty astounded at the changes they made to ES6 generators. Twenty-two times faster[1] is incredible

[1]: [https://wingolog.org/archives/2014/11/14/generators-in- firef...](https://wingolog.org/archives/2014/11/14/generators-in-firefox-now- twenty-two-times-faster)

</comment><comment><USER34> > No longer accept insecure RC4 ciphers whenever possible

What do they mean with "whenever possible"? If there is a downgrade attack ongoing, will it be possible to avoid RC4?

<comment><USER9> Here are more details, with links to the discussions on specific issues. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Firefox/Releases/36#Secu...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Firefox/Releases/36#Security)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> _Fix some unexpected logout from Facebook or Google after restart_

What sort of bug is this that only affects Facebook & Google?

<comment><USER36> Looks like it's probably this bug, which (to my reading) was a problem handling domain cookies:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=950399](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=950399)

This would of course affect any site, but the two common instances were FB and google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good to see they fixed this security bug: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1095859](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1095859)

A proxy could inject cookies on a 407 response and even bypass the authentication prompt - could have been used for session fixation attacks.

</comment><comment><USER38> Semi-OT: is anyone on HN using a "alternative" Browser such as Midori or Vivaldi on a daily basis? I love what Midori is doing but it still crashes on me to often.

<comment><USER39> I use Conkeror [http://conkeror.org/](http://conkeror.org/).

<comment><USER40> Me too! The "f" command is sweet bliss for keyboarders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Thank you for the best browser out there!

</comment><comment><USER42> Years after switching to Chrome, I've given FF 35 another chance as my main browser in the past week.

The major drive was Chrome's poor handling of dozens of open tabs, which was slowing down my Macbook to a crawl (8GB Core i7 2012 13" Retina on Yosemite) way too often. "The great suspender" extension helped somewhat, but it felt like a lot of manual work for something I believe the browser should handle much more smartly on its own.

Firefox is better in this respect, with sane native behavior like not trying to restore 100+ tabs in parallel upon restart, and extensions like UnloadTab that automatically suspend tabs after some timeout.

However, I'm about to switch back to Chrome :

\- I only have 3-4 active tabs in FF at the moment, but as I type this I can feel noticeable lag, and firefox+WindowServer fighting for CPU.

\- Embedded video is jerky and looks like it's 10-12fps no matter what the site. Going full screen fixes it, but still..

\- No FF extension I've found integrates Google Translate as seamlessly as Chrome does.

I'm not looking forward to handling dozens of tabs in Chrome again, but its baseline performance for everything else is noticeably better for me.

<comment><USER43> Opera has built in tab hibernation that seems to work pretty well: [http://www.reddit.com/r/operabrowser/comments/2vkdjr/tab_hib...](http://www.reddit.com/r/operabrowser/comments/2vkdjr/tab_hibernation_is_awesome/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just tested FF Hello. A very nice experience! Too bad it didn't work with a recipient on osX/safari. I will be using this more often!

</comment><comment><USER45> The immutable Symbol is interesting, I wonder if React and such would benefit from it (using polyfills for the browsers that do not support it yet)

</comment><comment><USER46> As an OS X Yosemite user I'd love to go back to Firefox from Safari, but the memory usage just isn't good enough. i get over an hour more battery life with Safari compared to Firefox. Please do something about this.

</comment><comment><USER47> Unfortunately MSE are still broken: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129039](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129039)

</comment><comment><USER48> Why was -remote removed?

<comment><USER49> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1080319](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1080319)

tl;dr there are other command line options to do everything -remote does in a more sensible way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> How can you tell if you're using HTTP2?

<comment><USER51> The "HTTP/2 and SPDY indicator" add-on adds lightning bolt icon to your address bar: blue for HTTP/2, green for SPDY:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy- indicato...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy-indicator/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can we please get a non horrible scrolling behaviour in the Android build regarding rest of the platform ?

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't recall FF asking to accept incoming connections upon upgrading to a new version, 36 does.

</comment><comment><USER54> Interested in testing out HTTP/2

</comment><comment><USER55> Still now swipe animation (or "scroll bounce") on OS X _sigh_.

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow, Damn Hello is back even though I disabled it.

Gee, Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER57> cool

</comment><comment><USER58> I just updated and it broke my selenium scripts.

<comment><USER58> thanks for the downvotes, but I've literally spent all day trying to fix my QA environment after updating to firefox 36.

<comment><USER59> It seems to be a known issue with Selenium 2.44. Hopefully it gets fixed ASAP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Your web, the way you like it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Great release, but not so happy about HTTP/2 being used by people now. I mean they kind of have to implement it, but the standard is still rather awful in many regards, like no caching by default (but at least headers get compressed?), bad security, ...

See also: [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2015JanMar...](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2015JanMar/0043.html)

I really wonder whether there is a measurable change in traffic and whether it goes up or down.

</comment><comment><USER62> Yay! Time for another firefox rant. I love the idea of firefox and I used to love it a lot. But not now. I keep trying it and always go back to chrome.

It crashes. A lot. Like, at least once a day I have to ctrl+alt+del and restart it on my laptop. It freezes and the window stops responding, it doesn't even paint.

In the inspector, the DOM breadcrumb area scrolls and moves around. It's like the blink tag, only worse.

JS debugger feels worse and clunky compared to Chrome.

Element inspector feels like duplo to chromes lego (does that make sense?)

I opened firefox yesterday and found a new speach bubble icon asking me to connect to O2 for something. WTF?! WTactualF is that all about?

/rant

<comment><USER63> I'm not sure why you're being downvoted so much. I assume the usual FOSS fanboyism that rules HN.

I used Chrome, IE11, and Firefox all day. FF is the only one that locks up and crashes on me. Its so rare in the other browsers I'm shocked when it happens in FF. I run almost no extensions and I think my copy at work has zero extensions and I don't even have flash installed, so the idea that it must be a plugin problem is questionable. Once a day lockups or crashes are still, unfortunately, common. I really wish it was a better QA'd project. Its such a nice piece of software, but I imagine its reached the point where it can and should be forked to a lightweight browser the same way FF forked from the big ugly Mozilla suite. Current leadership at Mozilla just don't seem to make crashes and resource usage a priority.

I also dont like how it switched on me from google to yahoo as my default search engine. If MS did this in IE people on HN would be losing their shit, but because this project is a FOSS darling, everyone just made excuses for it. At the very least it should have asked me if I wanted to change to whatever search engine they've gotten into bed with this year.

<comment><USER64> This sounds very different from my experience. Have you ever looked at about:crashes and checked into any bugs hanging off your crash signatures? (And if not, please file bugs!) If you make a list of your crashes available, I'd be happy to take a look and see if I can dig out some explanation for your problems, or make sure the appropriate bugs are on file with Mozilla.

I know for a fact that Mozilla leadership does prioritize crashes and resource usage (in fact, this is one reason for all of the work on the process separation feature called Electrolysis), but of course they will prioritize crashes that affect lots of users. For various reasons, it could be that your crashes are different from those. (I'll assume that you're on the most recent version of Firefox already.)

<comment><USER65> THIS. Developers on HN with problems have the requisite skills to be able to file good bugs.

<comment><USER63> I've been filing bugs for years yet the QA of the product is still at unaccepatable levels. FF's constant passing of the buck is bothersome. When they can't blame extensions they blame people for not participating. Yet somehow Chrome/Chromium exists just fine without me writing big reports for it, same for Safari, IE, etc.

FF just has poor QA. That's a problem and all the excuse making actually hurts the product as FF leadership isn't seeing enough complaints apparantly, when an army of nerds are refusing to acknowledged these problems.

<comment><USER65> "When they can't blame extensions they blame people for not participating."

Extensions are commonly blamed because of the way that Firefox implements extensions.

They essentially become a fully integrated part of the browser with full privileges. When extensions do things that they shouldn't be doing (but can anyway, because what's stopping them?), the extensions are blamed.

Of course there have been many lessons learned from a decade-old extension ecosystem. Other, newer browsers have benefitted from those lessons (ie. Chrome). Mozillians know the problems with the current extension model but the hard part is having the resources to do something about it.

"Yet somehow Chrome/Chromium exists just fine without me writing big reports for it, same for Safari, IE, etc."

SOMEBODY is writing bug reports. FWIW, there are what, 50000 Google employees, a majority of which could be dogfooding prerelease Chrome and filing bugs. Mozilla has 1/50 of that to dogfood Firefox and depends heavily on its community to make contributions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> While it's nice to see the progress being made here, it's a little bit.. what's the word here? Strange? Disheartening? Annoying? Infuriating?

..to see long-standing issues being ignored or back-burnered in the march to add all the new features. Duplicate SSL certs still cause sites to be unviewable without stupid and security-breaking workarounds that are not necessary in other browsers, for nearly 7 years now[1], making the browser completely unsuited to enterprise administration uses. One misbehaving tab can still kill your entire session. I understand that they're working on this with the electrolysis project, but end of 2015 goal?[2] I don't mean to be overly snarky here, but congratulations on getting to where Chrome/ium was back in 2008.

I seriously question how the priorities are being decided at Mozilla. These are basic usability things that were solved in other browsers a long time ago.

[1]: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435013](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435013)

[2]: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis)

<comment><USER9> Adding multi-process to a large project that was not designed for multi- process is an astronomical amount of work. And Firefox's approach has advantages over Chrome's, so they're not simply playing catch-up.

<comment><USER66> Understood, but I'm speaking from the viewpoint of a user, here. It's a massive annoyance for a crashed tab to annihilate the other 49. (And the session restore being activated is generally grounds for a smoke break, because your system will be tied up for a while...)

<comment><USER67> Session restore in Firefox has been lazy for a long time now (the tab only loads when you activate it). It doesn't take longer than loading a single page.

How often do tabs crash for you? That's the real issue if you ask me. I'm on Nightly (with Electrolysis!) and the last crash was over 2 months ago.

<comment><USER68> I have a crash probably every day. Usual culprit is Flash.

<comment><USER69> That's weird, since Flash runs on its own process (plugin-container). Is it actually crashing the whole browser?

<comment><USER70> It shouldn't. At least on Windows I've gotten used to killing the plugin container about once ever 2 days. Firefox itself crashes once per month, maybe less.

Firefox = rock solid. Flash = porous rock, at best :)

<comment><USER71> I find when Flash (plugin-container) goes down, it takes both Firefox and Chrome down with it. Running Windows 7 at work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How Can I Get into NLP (Natural Language Processing)? - <AUTHOR> I've recently become quite intrigued by the concept, and want to learn more about it.
If you have any resources, I'd love to see them. They can be videos, articles, tutorials, courses, etc.
If there is any prerequisite knowledge required, which I assume there will be, I would also love a starting point. As for my background, I have experience in full stack web development, game development, and about a year's worth of academic computer science study. <comment><USER2> My co-authors and I wrote "Taming Text" ([https://www.manning.com/books/taming- text](https://www.manning.com/books/taming-text)) specifically for programmers (there is little math, mostly code) interested in getting started in NLP. The examples are a bit dated at this point (2013 publication date), but still applicable for someone getting started. Covers getting started, feature extraction and preprocessing, search, clustering, classification, string heuristics, Named Entity Recognition and finishes off w/ a simple Question Answering system. Examples are in Java. It is not an academic treatise.

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to say: thanks for writing this book, it's really good! I also second your motion that it is a great place to begin, as it's a single coherent source for a nice starting point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have found these sources useful for learning and prototyping NLP:

[http://garysieling.com/blog/entity-recognition-with-scala- an...](http://garysieling.com/blog/entity-recognition-with-scala-and-stanford- nlp-named-entity-recognizer)

[http://tika.apache.org](http://tika.apache.org)

NLTK is always a good starting point: [http://www.nltk.org](http://www.nltk.org)

I also wrote a 3-part article leveraging OpenNLP with Clojure:

[http://edeferia.blogspot.com/2015/03/from-natural- language-t...](http://edeferia.blogspot.com/2015/03/from-natural-language-to- calendar.html)

If you're interesting in applying NLP without necessarily having theoretical background, wit.ai offers some really impressive features.

Course also offers a good course:

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/natural-language- processing](https://www.coursera.org/learn/natural-language-processing)

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks for mentioning my blog! I got into this using "Natural Language Processing with Python", which is basically an intro textbook for NLP that uses NLTK.

I particularly like that they include example exercises in each chapter, because it can be otherwise challenging to see how particular techniques are useful.

[https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Language-Processing-Python- An...](https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Language-Processing-Python- Analyzing/dp/0596516495/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478777763&sr=8-1&keywords=natural+language+processing+with+python)

<comment><USER6> This one is also available online for free: [http://www.nltk.org/book/](http://www.nltk.org/book/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a great set of lectures by Dan Jurafsky and Chris Manning: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfoudtpBV68&list=PL6397E4B26...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfoudtpBV68&list=PL6397E4B26D00A269)

It would be helpful to have some background in Machine Learning. For a good introductory course with a mix of mathematical background, see [https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229](https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229)

NLP in the more modern systems is backed by deep neural nets. Here's a course on NLP using deep learning: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIiVRB6G_w0i-uOoS6cDh...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIiVRB6G_w0i-uOoS6cDh_5nkUyxy_hxe)

<comment><USER8> Jurafsky & Martin's book is pretty much the standard work on NLP. They are currently working on a 3rd edition and the draft chapters are available from the book's web page:

[https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/](https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For initial learning, I would second NLTK with: [http://www.nltk.org](http://www.nltk.org)

You can also checkout [https://github.com/vseloved/cl- nlp](https://github.com/vseloved/cl-nlp). It is an NLP toolkit in Common Lisp. Vsevolod the project owner is a great guy to work with. I had contributed with some minor bug fixes, tests, documentation more than a year back, hence the mention of Vsevolod.

You could also think on the alternative lines of contributing to an open source project in NLP and building an application on top of it. Talking to any such project owner for expected sample apps might help, as they can go into that project gallery and you get to level up your skills. Hope this helps.

<comment><USER10> Any recommendation that does not start with statistics and continue with statistics for a while isn't serious.

<comment><USER9> A better approach will be to recommend statistics resources to make this a better or serious recommendation.

Could you be kind enough to do that? Otherwise, your evaluation of the recommendation is not serious!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You're probably looking for something a bit more sophisticated than what I'm about to mention, but if you don't need anything too sophisticated (that is, if you can significantly limit the domain of the speech you need to be able to understand), you could do something like what I did for "the computer" on my star trek-like space sim Space Nerds In Space: [http://hackaday.com/2016/06/08/talking-star- trek/](http://hackaday.com/2016/06/08/talking-star-trek/)

I used pocketsphinx (trained with specially limited vocab) for speech to text, my own home grown Zork-esque parser for "understanding" the text and generating responses, and pico2wav for text to speech for the responses. That's described in a bit more detail here: [https://scaryreasoner.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/speech- recogn...](https://scaryreasoner.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/speech-recognition- and-natural-language-processing-in-space-nerds-in-space/)

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://spacy.io/](https://spacy.io/) is one of the best library for NLP if you are using python

<comment><USER13> Highly recommend Spacy and the [http://explosion.ai](http://explosion.ai) blog!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> NLP is a huge topic, and the choice of materials pretty much depends on what you'd like to focus on. In my experience nothing beats a good textbook, especially if you do the exercises.

The classic NLP textbook is

* Jurafsky, Martin: "Speech and Language Processing" ([https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/](https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/)) -- already mentioned here: a very solid overview textbook to give you an idea about the field;

Should you be interested in statistical NLP (even if it probably isn't as sexy as it used to be), the classic there is:

* Manning, Schütze: "Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing" ([http://nlp.stanford.edu/fsnlp/](http://nlp.stanford.edu/fsnlp/)).

</comment><comment><USER15> My recommendations, based on online courses and YouTube playlists I've taken:

\- Coursera's old NLP course by Michael Collins, Columbia Univ. More of theory and concepts. It's discontinued now on coursera but the material is available at academictorrents. [1]

\- NLP with Python and NLTK videos by sentdex [2]. Mostly programming, but with useful nuggets of concepts introduced here and there.

[1]: [http://academictorrents.com/details/f99e7184fca947ee8f779016...](http://academictorrents.com/details/f99e7184fca947ee8f77901679e171fcadbf82e7)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQVvvaa0QuDf2JswnfiGk...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQVvvaa0QuDf2JswnfiGkliBInZnIC4HL)

</comment><comment><USER16> I did a one week ml stunt last year: [https://medium.com/learning-new- stuff/machine-learning-in-a-...](https://medium.com/learning-new- stuff/machine-learning-in-a-week-a0da25d59850#.y8pe9o9qm)

I'd recommend starting with the Kaggle Bag of Words tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER17> Take a look at Stanford CoreNLP: [http://stanfordnlp.github.io/CoreNLP/](http://stanfordnlp.github.io/CoreNLP/)

It's relatively fast (after model load time) and quite feature-rich.

<comment><USER18> Also checkout [http://corenlp.run](http://corenlp.run) for a hosted version of the CoreNLP server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested in deep learning for nlp... I suggest at least some familiarity with these papers. It sorta depends on what task you want to use it for.

[https://github.com/andrewt3000/dl4nlp](https://github.com/andrewt3000/dl4nlp)

</comment><comment><USER20> Please read through the Handbook of NLP for a nice overview.

[https://karczmarczuk.users.greyc.fr/TEACH/TAL/Doc/Handbook%2...](https://karczmarczuk.users.greyc.fr/TEACH/TAL/Doc/Handbook%20Of%20Natural%20Language%20Processing,%20Second%20Edition%20Chapman%20&%20Hall%20Crc%20Machine%20Learning%20&%20Pattern%20Recognition%202010.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> I have no particular expertise on the topic, but just in case you missed it, there is this Quora question: [https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-Natural- Language-Proces...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-Natural-Language- Processing)

It points to NLTK as the framework of choice, and has links to a couple MOOCs and tutorials.

</comment><comment><USER22> My suggestion is, in addition to using the videos and courses for background knowledge, to take up and work on a (non-homework) project, to truly explore the area.

For eg., Betty [1] is quite an interesting project with both real-life use and practical NLP considerations, and is looking for new maintainers. (I'm not affiliated, just interested in NLP myself and have been itching to get into betty for some time.)

If you like thinking about game design, there's also the option of Interactive Fiction [2], NLP-involving ones are called parser-based fictions I believe. A recent FLOSS podcast episode with folks from the IF Tech Foundation was pretty interesting and illuminating regarding this area.

[1] [https://github.com/pickhardt/betty](https://github.com/pickhardt/betty) [2] [http://iftechfoundation.org/frequently-asked- questions/](http://iftechfoundation.org/frequently-asked-questions/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hi, some tools seem work fine with English, so is there any good NLP tool for Chinese? Hope for some advice, thanks ahead.

<comment><USER24> yeah I would like to know about this too, any sort of NLP tools for Chinese or Japanese would be helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Start by finding a linguist. You can find one at your local university.

Let the linguist design your first project. It should be something that they don't know how to solve, but have wanted to know.

Don't worry about if it is feasible. Go to local data meetups when you have enough exposure to form your first questions.

</comment><comment><USER26> Jurafaki and Martins Natural language processing is a great book covering a great deal pf topics in nlp.

</comment><comment><USER27> We've just started adding lessons on this topic on egghead.io [0]

[0] [https://egghead.io/lessons/node-js-break-up-language- strings...](https://egghead.io/lessons/node-js-break-up-language-strings-into- parts-using-natural)

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you want to use NLP in a project, or to dig into the state of the art?

The NLTK approach may be dated, but it is easier to approach as an engineer, especially if this is a hobby. It will give you a good introduction to problems in the space.

The math heavy approaches may give better results long-term, but it will be a much longer time commitment, but this is probably more appropriate if you're trying to find a job.

You can also do interesting things with a small dataset and the free plans of APIs like Watson. E.g., I'm working on a search engine for standalone lectures - [https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com).

</comment><comment><USER28> I would suggest you start with "An introduction for information retrieval". You can find a free version here:

[http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/](http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Check out this curated list of resources dedicated to Natural Language Processing on GitHub: [https://github.com/keonkim/awesome- nlp](https://github.com/keonkim/awesome-nlp). Also this is a great blog for understanding the business and high level aspects of the technology: [https://lekta.ai/blog/](https://lekta.ai/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I got into NLP through Chris Callison-Burch's class at the University of Pennsylvania ([http://mt-class.org/penn/](http://mt-class.org/penn/)). Great meta resource for intro readings, background, and advanced methods.

This is the textbook for the course: [http://www.statmt.org/book/](http://www.statmt.org/book/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Has anyone read Language Processing in Perl and Prolog and have thoughts on it? I'm looking g for something that goes deep on theory, but has good code examples, and is preferably a book.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/364241463X/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/364241463X/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile)

</comment><comment><USER32> Prolog and Natural-Language Analysis[1] is great from both theoretical and practical standpoints.

[1] [http://www.mtome.com/Publications/PNLA/prolog- digital.pdf](http://www.mtome.com/Publications/PNLA/prolog-digital.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> Build up personal & professional contacts. Check out this group -- ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence > [https://sigai.acm.org/index.html](https://sigai.acm.org/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm going through the stand ford cs224D videos, only done 3 videos and they are very theory focused, lots of math equations. Any one know other good materials on NLP using neural networks?

</comment><comment><USER35> here's a pretty comprehensive overview of NLP videos, tutorials, courses, books, etc. [http://blog.algorithmia.com/introduction-natural-language- pr...](http://blog.algorithmia.com/introduction-natural-language-processing- nlp/)

</comment><comment><USER25> start a project with someone. write your own data scraper, and implement a model.

</comment><comment><USER36> I would _not_ recommend NLTK (or its book) or Jurafsky & Martin, or Manning & Schuetze. All are insanely dated. Watch some Coursera lectures, check out a newer, non-academic, application-oriented text, or just build something.

</comment><comment><USER37> to the mods: vagabondjack's comment seems sensible, informative and well thought out but seems to have been de-duped in error.

Any chance of raising it out of grey-text territory?

</comment><comment><USER38> NLTK[0][1] (Natural Language Toolkit) was fantastic as an initial resource for me. Because it's a self contained book and library, I found it to have a very smooth learning curve. There is some introductory programming stuff that you can very easily just skip in the beginning so don't let that turn you off initially.

[0] [http://nltk.org](http://nltk.org) [1] [http://nltk.org/book](http://nltk.org/book)

</comment><comment><USER39> Check out Stanford's NLP libraries. We've been using those in production for years now. The documentation around it is not great, but the tools work well.

</comment><comment><USER40> Watch the videos made by Jurafsky (Stanford) as a starting point.

They are quick. This will give you an overview of classical NLP.

From there, you can dig more where you want.</comment>


How about we stop building apps for refugees and top up their phones instead? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/needslist/how-about-we-stop-building-apps-for-refugees-and-top-up-their-phones-instead-f48c46812a64 <comment><USER2> Well, building BS apps for refugees gives you a lot of nice PR for solving non-problems.

Actually helping them does not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or extend to anyone with a mobile an automatic line of credit they can use in emergencies or at will. PayTM in India is expanding on consumer credit and lending services at the "auto-rickshaw" level and for the micro amounts we are talking about here (>$100 per month) it seems more a question of distributing the phones than the wealth. Further if feeless peer to peer transactions via Digital Gold or cryptocurrency become ubiquitous, analagous peer to peer lending would also be universal.

The interesting case is in Puerto Rico after Hurrican Irma when all cell towers are wiped out. You have the common scenario of a CNN reporter with a sat phone relaying messages on behalf of stranded locals who just want to let their relatives know they are alive.

Deployment of Iridium Next with cheap sat phones with integrated digital payments could work wonders.

[http://www.cabelas.com/product/DeLorme-InReach-Explorer- Sate...](http://www.cabelas.com/product/DeLorme-InReach-Explorer-Satellite- Communicator-with-Navigation/1926518.uts)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not just give them some money and let them decide where to spend? I doubt phone top ups are critical for a refugee.

<comment><USER5> Why not let them issue their own mobile crypto currency to help each other?

And not just refugees but villages. Helping the unbanked.

<comment><USER6> I almost upvoted this, but then I realized, with dawning horror, that you might actually be serious.

<comment><USER7> Actually... [https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/blockchain-against- hun...](https://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/blockchain-against-hunger- harnessing-technology-support-syrian-refugees)

<comment><USER5> Aha!

Maybe now you'll upvote me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or how about this, let's build fewer apps in the US and more infrastructure. We spend so much time on software but our connectivity lags well behind developed countries, not to mention not building enough roads and houses.

</comment><comment><USER9> How much does it cost to be smuggled from Afghanistan to Belgium? Exactly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Emotional story. I feel for refugees. Its too bad how economic migrants are giving them a bad reputation.

Remember watching a documentary about two kids being stuck in Greece. Even European streets are not safe for eleven year old boys and girls.

<comment><USER11> _> Its too bad how economic migrants are giving them a bad reputation._

 _Racist propagandists_ are giving them a "bad reputation".

Tacitly reinforcing it helps the racist propagandists.

Maybe don't do that.

<comment><USER12> No, people who are afraid for their own economic circumstances and safety are responsible for that reputation. Pretending that the problem is a few vague high status racist talking heads that have the masses brainwashed is just a scapegoat for the reality that by in large we're nimbys and aren't as charitable as we believe we are.

I can sit at my desk and post empathetic tweets that loudly proclaim my support for refugees safe in the knowledge that either way the situation won't affect my life in the slightest. I haven't been tested -- and so I'm reluctant to throw stones at the people who have because I'm can't say whether I would pass myself.

<comment><USER11> _> people who are afraid for their own economic circumstances and safety are responsible for that reputation_

It's not "economic circumstances and safety" that makes people invent hordes of dark-complected rape gangs out of whole cloth (that would be Pegida, a neo- Nazi group who invented the "Cologne rape gangs" and other similar swill). And the people casting racism as "economic insecurity" _are themselves racist propagandists_ , my dude; it is air cover for bad shit. They do not deserve your buy-in or your charity.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for saying this so clearly. Anti-Immigration hate has nothing to do with "economic insecurity". That's just something people say because they desperately want to find a somewhat rational reason for xenophobia. But there isn't.

For some reason, all the people I know that complain about immigrants are actually pretty well off. I think they don't have any real problems in life, so they just come up with some imaginary threat.

The people who actually suffer from economic hardship don't worry about immigrants – they have enough problems of their own to worry about.

Not sure if my observations are representative, though.

<comment><USER11> _> For some reason, all the people I know that complain about immigrants are actually pretty well off. I think they don't have any real problems in life, so they just come up with some imaginary threat._

I can't speak for everywhere, but Donald Trump's supporters in the United States certainly did trend well-off, majority/white, and male. My theory is that it's not immediate problems gripping them--it's that they see other people _catching up_ , and the idea that it's zero-sum has permeated the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yet another argument for free telecommunications for all.

<comment><USER15> I myself would prefer we give out free food for all, rather than "free telecommunication". We should put food-ration centers all across the country where people can go to get their daily rations. Like public schools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How about we stop building apps for refugees and help our local poor who at least have contributed in the past to the local economy instead?

<comment><USER17> If the criterion for helping someone is "has contributed to the economy", doesn't that exclude children, the handicapped, the unemployed in recession areas, and many other groups without work history?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about giving them good equipment and organise hackathons, so they can build the things they need for themselves, while having fun. There are a good chunk of developers among them with awesome ideas. Nothing beats a product built by someone, for him/her self.

<comment><USER19> I dunno, I imagine more refugees are illiterate than have app development skills. These efforts may be useful further down the line, when you are trying to build community and sense of progress, but when a mother and child are sleeping in a park in the French countryside, the needs are different.

<comment><USER18> A lot of people have this strange image about refugees. These people fled from a war zone, not because they don't have any food or are illiterate. In fact, a majority of the refugees are here because they have money which they spend on the journey to flee their country. Among them are doctors, physicians, engineers, etc.

<comment><USER20> >In fact, a majority of the refugees are here because they have money which they spend on the journey to flee their country. Among them are doctors, physicians, engineers, etc.

Not only.

These doctors, physicians, engineers very likely belong to a subset of literate/educated people that are more adventurous, risk prone, courageous and flexible/adaptable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DNC says Russia tried to hack its servers again in November 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/dnc-says-russia-tried-to-hack-its-servers-again-in-november-2018/ <comment><USER2> Doubling down on the rhetoric... Lessons from propaganda playbook.. keep repeating it .

<comment><USER3> Double down? Didn't the intelligence community also blame Russia for the hack in 2016?</comment></comment>