Small Seasons - <AUTHOR> https://smallseasons.guide/ <comment><USER2> kind of off-topic:

Being raised in Brazil, on a urban environment there are basically two seasons: Summer and Winter, the rest is just transition between them.

Now, having just moved to the USA I am constantly incredibly confused by season references. Not only because the seasons are inverted, but because we do not use season references for anything in Brazil. We say the months name or things like _" end/middle/start of the year"_ or _" first/second semester"_

So when I see that a movie will come to the theaters _" next fall"_ I have no idea when it is.

<comment><USER3> In Australia, the two seasons are "football" and "cricket".

<comment><USER4> But now we have the cricket world cup in the middle of footy season and soccer football in the middle of cricket season. I blame climate Change /s.

More seriously, the CSIRO has attempted to define Australia's seasons better (in line with plants) with the addition of Sprinter on Sprummer: [http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221](http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221) . The BOM has a page on various indigenous seasons too: [http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml](http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml) . I'm enjoying an unseasonably warm Chunnup day today.

<comment><USER5> We could have called them anything, and they chose sprinter and sprummer?

<comment><USER6> This is Australia we're talking about. Seven Mile Beach, Great Barrier Reef, Great Sandy Desert, Granite Island... Calling things exactly what they are seems like a tradition.

<comment><USER3> On the Central Coast of NSW (an hour or so north of Sydney) there is a salt water lake, and a town has grown near the lake's entrance to the sea. It's called The Entrance. Parts of the lake are shallow and muddy, and a long jetty (pier) has been built. That town is Long Jetty. Shelly Beach is close by too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Months of the year are named in the similar spirit in Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian and probably other Slavic languages.

Edit: I couldn't find a good definitive source of etymology/roots etc, so here's a rough sheet of what was able to scrape from the web as well as my own knowledge/interpretation: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT8PGYX8c46N...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT8PGYX8c46NyR3NEyRUH --PnKzCoKNtRFPVSWkbdn_tZUMuYsg7idAiLJv4nYysyhy9Htec2bQgF_C/pubhtml)

<comment><USER8> FYI чэрвень comes from the Slavic name of Polish cochineal, an insect harvested in June and used to produce red dye until Mexican cochineal pushed it out of the market.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal#Linguistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal#Linguistics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I moved from the southeast US to the Bay Area, and the difference in seasons is striking. It went from a clearly defined spring, summer, fall, and winter to what appears to be "brown/dry" season and "green/wet" season. I certainly don't miss winter or the hottest parts of summer, but I do miss spring and fall (particularly autumn colors). The almost nonstop sunshine is a nice replacement though.

I wonder what other parts of the world have "weird" seasons?

<comment><USER10> Where in the southeast? I grew up around Knoxville, which had reasonably well defined seasons. Then I moved to Atlanta, which basically has "summer" and "not summer".

<comment><USER11> I live in Atlanta (formerly: Philadelphia, Boston, Bay Area). I would say that Atlanta "winter" is cold enough to be a season - although it's more defined by the threat of possible snow than by actual snow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was trying to find out the Chinese names for these seasons and came across a Wikipedia page on these seasons, if anyone else is interested

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

<comment><USER13> Looks like the Chinese names are identical to the Japanese ones. (Or really, the other way around.)

Chinese 节气 are certainly not defined or tracked by natural phenomena such as fish becoming visible under the ice or plants blooming, though. As Wikipedia notes, they are defined astronomically and are used to calculate when an extra month needs to be inserted into the calendar.

(Each 节气 is assigned a polarity, yin or yang. A month is supposed to include one yin point and one yang point. Since lunar months are too short, eventually there will be a month with only one point instead of the correct two; that month is immediately repeated. I think this system is very cool because just a little thought will show that it is guaranteed to stay within one month of the "true" position of the earth wrt the sun, using just the dead simple method of "Oh, were we too slow this month? We'll put in some overtime.")

<comment><USER14> From the wikipedia page:

> Solar terms _originated in China_ , then spread to Korea, Vietnam, and > Japan, countries in the East Asian cultural sphere.

<comment><USER13> ...yes? Why mention it again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For some reason I find this really beautiful.

<comment><USER16> I agree. The typography and page layout are gorgeous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote a small Swift screensaver to display the current Japanese microseason :

[https://github.com/echelon/microseasons](https://github.com/echelon/microseasons)

It's just a toy project I used to learn Swift. The code isn't particularly great.

<comment><USER18> Neat, you should add a screenshot to the README so I can see what it looks like without having to install :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is fascinating. I love the names of these seasons, and this guide does a great job offering a pithy and easily grokable description.

By the same token, I am curious how else we can come to understand seasons and yearly cycles. The climate stability that led to this sequence of small seasons and their associations with agriculture has begun to vanish. With the worsening climate emergency, where there is no "new normal," what yearly cycles can we still hold onto?

<comment><USER20> Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Spring Sale, Back-To-School Promotions, Christmas Sale, Pre-Season Clearance, ...

<comment><USER21> It's unfortunate that your description already feels like it has more of an impact on my life than most details in the sekki descriptions, with or without climate change. Just reading the sekki descriptions initially made me kinda sad because I realized how far removed I am from all that. That was at least different as a kid who played outside a lot in a small village.

<comment><USER22> One of the weirdest things about existence, besides that we're all made of meat or that the entire universe will one day crumble into cold nothingness forever, is that we can only be one person.

You can be the one who stayed in the village or the one who left the village for the big city, but you can't be both. You can be one who left the village but came back, or the one who goes back and forth between the city and the village, but those are different, a third and forth person, and whichever one you pick, you still only get to be one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A nice and simple website. I like the responsive design here. Text size scales with window size, and the table loses its first column on smaller screens.

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that too, it's really well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like it, thanks for making this and bringing my attention to this concept. The descriptions remind me of Japanese Zen poems ("Rice has ripened, the heat of summer, forgotten.")

Reading it, I wondered how much the 'little seasons' are identical between various regions on the northern hemisphere?

I subscribed to the iCal calendar, and the descriptions have HTML tags in them. Any chance of avoiding this?

</comment><comment><USER24> There is an extremely nice app (IOS only, I am afraid: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/72-seasons/id1059622777](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/72-seasons/id1059622777) ) called "72 Seasons" which collects charming pictures, poems and interesting factoids for each of the 72 seasons.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would make a great addition on a magic mirror</comment>


Does it cost twitter to receive SMS? - <AUTHOR>

Just trying to get my head around twitter's SMS costs. I know it costs to send them but is it costing them each time they receive one?<p>Thanks HN <comment><USER2> It depends, but the answer is probably not. Most people operate shortcodes through an aggregator (OpenMarket, mBlox, Ericson IPX) that has direct binds to all the telecom carriers in a given country.

For the most part, aggregators charge a monthly fee usually tied somewhat to system throughput. For example, OpenMarket charges $1500/mo for 10 messages per second outgoing and $20,000/mo for 100 messages per second.

On top of that, they charge for messaging. Rack rate in the US is often $.035 outgoing and $.005 incoming. At Twitter's scale, they're probably paying a fraction of a penny per outgoing message and have most incoming fees waived. Some of that is carrier specific however. T-Mobile often doesn't waive the incoming message fees.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, there are special plans for that, but also in a lot of countries (Italy for example) we never pay for receive sms or calls, so they could have a foreign plan (very common). Anyway, they may have a server that handle the traffic of the sms, and that is costing money for sure</comment>


EXMO launches with Eventbrite Partnership & New Products to Make Events Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/09/exmo-a-mobile-events-platform-making-conferences-more-social-exits-beta/

<comment><USER2> So proud of these guys! Very much deserved. Amazing app and great group of guys.</comment>


MEGA's first week - a retrospective - <AUTHOR> https://mega.co.nz/#blog_4

<comment><USER2> On my phone, this link just bounces to a "an app for your phone is coming soon" page, zero content. Not the best way to do mobile...

</comment><comment><USER3> If they get a desktop client and decent encryption, then I am in.

</comment><comment><USER4> I want to like MEGA, but it can't compete with Dropbox and I've lost interest already.

Yeah, MEGA is different, but that won't matter if people don't want to stick with it. Also, MEGA's customer support sucks (although that's completely forgivable seeing its the first week).

MEGA needs a desktop client, and to fill out basic features and profile settings. For example, last time I checked, I couldn't change my password. There is no way to do it.

One more thing. Kim has an amazing artistic sense. I wish there was more of that kind of brash yet polished aesthetic he is known for with MEGA.

<comment><USER5> I'd say give it time for the basic features and so on. I think they wanted to spend more time on the product as a whole so that they could show the world what the vision was, then come back and polish it a bit.

So many products get launched with gadgets, buttons, options, but they miss the mark on a larger scale, the product itself.

Personally I haven't used it (no real need), so I don't know what exactly it's lacking. A change password option does seem like a crucial thing to have (although I think that I read somewhere that your password is part of the key, and if that changed you'd lose access to everything that was encrypted... I could have read that wrong).

Either way, I do enjoy reading their updates, it sounds like they really do care what the community is saying, and then publicly address concerns/problems. Bug Bounty sounds promising.</comment></comment>


First Look: Mozilla's Boot2Gecko Platform and Gaia UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/02/first-look-mozillas-boot2gecko-mobile-platform-and-gaia-ui/ <comment><USER2> B2G, unlike Palm's WebOS and Microsoft's JS+HTML5 Metro platform, is a genuine Web stack with DOM APIs to all the hardware capabilities. You don't use proprietary libraries and frameworks to get at the telephony stack or the vibrator or the camera or the accelerometer or the bluetooth stack or USB or any other hardware device. You use JS and the real DOM. All standards-based and of the real Web. These capabilities, these new DOM APIs will make it into the standards and be available from browsers and other real web stacks across all platforms and all devices (where the capabilities exist.)

</comment><comment><USER3> It should be noted that the UI was completely revamped before MWC. A ton has changed since these screenshots.

(Disclosure: I'm a Boot2Gecko hacker for Mozilla)

</comment><comment><USER4> dumb question I understand, but if the browser is a simple iframe, how does it handle iframe busters?</comment>


Australian Same-sex marriage postal survey results are in - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-15/same-sex-marriage-results-ssm/9145636 <comment><USER2> I am extremely happy this passed. Although I was shocked when I came back to Aus a few weeks ago and saw some of the no adverts.

I had hoped for a higher % but at least there is no doubt now.(not that there ever should have been, but oh well).

<comment><USER3> That freedom of speech and religion will be destroyed? yeah its not like they referenced other countries where that happened. Oh wait they did.

<comment><USER2> Freedom of speech and religion destroyed by letting two men or women cement their bond to each other? Mate you need to take a few steps back, and a long look at that statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a shame it got so muddied. I suspect a lot of the "No" votes are more related to uncertainty about _what specific policies will be involved_ , than to opposition of same sex marriage itself.

<comment><USER5> > It's a shame it got so muddied.

The whole structure of the survey (not vote) was deliberately done to confuse the issue.

\- It's not legally binding on the parliament (it's a survey, not a vote)

\- It's not mandatory participation like voting (again, survey)

\- It was done by the ABS with responses tracable back to the person - supposedly those responses will be destroyed and not recorded elsewhere.

\- It was mailed out in recognisable letters, allowing sabotage of the survey (plenty of examples of letters being dumped on footpaths, some examples of someone responding on behalf of others)

\- Responses were sent back in recognisable envelopes through which you could see the response, again permitting anyone with access to the mail to tamper/destroy responses they disagreed with.

\- Those handling the responses were put under gag clauses which prevent them from talking about any issues they might have witnessed.

\- No independent witnesses to the counting process.

<comment><USER4> > _survey (not vote)_

Yeah, I'm aware that genuine postal referenda are probably not lawful in Australia; which is good for the many reasons you add. ;- )

I meant "vote" in the more casual sense, since it's a multiple choice question gathering responses from a demographic, it is a _poll_ in the strictest sense. An individual response to a _poll_ is a _vote_ , whether it's binding, non- binding, serious, humourous, legitimate, or illegitimate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The text of the Dean Smith bill, which is the likely form of how it will be legislated:

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4204045-Marriage- Ame...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4204045-Marriage-Amendment- Definition-and-Religious.html#document/p1)

<comment><USER3> Lets hope not, the guy has no idea.

<comment><USER6> Nah it's got pretty broad support. It does a good job at making appropriate carveouts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> shame it cost us 120 million effing bucks to do something they should have effing known was a forgone conclusion and the only _human_ effing decision to make.

what a waste of money. bunch of 1st class political wankers they are... the whole lot of them.

<comment><USER3> 'Human decision' lol yes saying those who can't push forward their genetic line is acceptable is totally a human decision.

<comment><USER8> What has marriage to do with pushing forward genetic lines?

Are you trying to strawman, or did the strawman just work on you?

<comment><USER9> To answer your question: historically, the primary benefit to marriage was to ensure a stable household for the raising of children and for the economic wellbeing of the resulting family. It was often a pragmatic arrangement instead of a romantic one.

Now days marriage for some has become a declaration of longer-term romantic love.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Big Firms Keep Wages Low - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2019/01/21/uncovering-the-mystery-of-your-sluggish-paycheck/#70a9b2371d79 <comment><USER2> Nobody talks about how it's an explicit fed policy to prevent wage growth, because of worries of "inflation". While other kinds of inflation are ok, such as the asset price inflation we are seeing today. The asset price inflation comes from the 2007 era quantative easing money given to banks instead.

That is a major reason why wages are kept low. The policy started around the 1970s, and surprise surprise, real wage growth has been flat since then.

The fed & US government is the biggest firm out there.

<comment><USER3> Conversely, it is an explicit Fed policy to always have some non-trivial amount of inflation. In fact, generally speaking, inflation is purposefully created, and has to exist, in order for the Fed to control the money supply, because the tools available to them become largely ineffective once real rates drop below 0% for any significant stretch of time ("pushing on a string"). The only significant obstacle to this was the domestic, then international pegging of the dollar to gold reserves, the last vestiges of it being removed in the early 1970s (this of course being the high point of real wage growth in the US).

This is not per se a terrible thing (assuming some mythical scenario where wage growth and inflation are nearly balanced), but it certainly shifts the balance of power from inflation to the _rate_ of inflation, and therefore is easy to nickle and dime until your average worker is almost assuredly experiencing wage growth lower than inflation. Small changes here, small changes there, ones nearly impossible for your average person to have any control over or have any lever over, and largely imperceptable to most people, end up being de-facto theft through the back door.

<comment><USER4> The other interesting connection to wage growth and 1970's was 'women in the workforce'.

The concept, apart from the genuine support that existed for it, was certainly pushed by the feds, not out of political support but because they knew what the implications were.

They could drive down purchasing power and families could make up for it by having both parents work.

<comment><USER5> I agree that this factor has a big impact on the economy but I don't see how it drives down purchasing power in any way. By having more people available to do more things you have an opportunity for more economic activity.

It's true that when an economy is in deep, possibly structural recession, you can increase wages by reducing the number of workers (this was used in Germany in the 1930s -- when they cut the number of people allowed to work in half the employment rate magically and mathematically doubled). But if you think that there is inherently a finite amount of work to be done (the so-called "lump of labor fallacy") you could also "fix" this problem by adding a day (or two!) to the week end. France tried this by lowering the number of non-overtime hours per week from 40, but it had no real effect.

Instead I think there is general consensus that having more people available to do things promotes economic growth and human freedom.

It has had a pernicious effect: _household_ income has increased because the number of people working per household now averages more than 1. Relying on that measurement has masked the overall flattening of wage growth, which has been quite a bad thing.

I don't know what you mean by this policy being "pushed by the feds"; could you give any examples?

<comment><USER2> I think they mean supported maybe? I can definitely see a typical economist giving arguments why women going into the workforce and away from the family 'workforce' is a good thing, this being encouraged by the fed which leads to policy changes by congress people.

I think what people argue is multifold:

\- Households tend to pay for things in terms of budget percentages vs something more rational. Ex: People tend to semiconciously target 30% of their income towards housing, and will upgrade and downgrade their housing accordingly as incomes go up and down. A dual income household will therefore pay approx double the normal price if single family households are the norm.

\- The cost of things in some markets, especially NIMBY housing markets, are demand sensitive at the margins since the supply isn't responding properly due to rent seeking structures. So if a new more competitive creature called the dual income household lands on the scene, the price norm will adjust to assume a dual income household vs a single income household as the market price

\- Employers consider cost of living in pay to make a competitive offer to employees. If the typical household is dual income, the pressure to pay more to cover this norm is reduced. People quickly figure out that you need to be dual income to pay your rent and have a 'family sized' lifestyle.

\- Iterate this kind of model several times over a lot of stuff and you need to be a dual income household in many cases to tread water.

So what you are saying and what others say can both be true at the same time. Dual income norms increase total economic output, but also make it very hard to compete as a single income household on the market, which have other knock on effects such as decreased fertility since all of the 'free' household labor has now disappeared.

Go watch "F is for Family" for a 1970s time capsule of how family life was back then. You have a suburban white single family household living in a house on a single lower-middle class income, with 2 cars, the conflicts that arises as the wife starts working and her previous 'free' household labor disappears and more.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, good analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not mentioned in the article is another aspect of this: 1 in 10 American workers is now an independent contractor or works for a contract labor firm [1]. When monopsony starts to creep into buyers of contract labor, bargaining power drops and wages stagnate or fall as well [2].

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one- in-10-workers-a...](https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one- in-10-workers-are-independent-contractors-labor-department-says)

[2] [https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/409876-the-hidden- culpri...](https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/409876-the-hidden-culprit- behind-stagnant-wages)

<comment><USER7> It interesting/despairing to see that the modern world just seem to end up formalizing age old things like collusion and corruption. So many of these situation are essentially lose-lose-lose. I really wonder if any country will manage to keep on track, or we all wake up when we realize there is competition. It isn't exactly unknown how to be successful as a country, or at least it is pretty well known how to fail. It is weird that everything have become easier, yet more complex. I guess that is why all the super vertically integrated companies are outperforming the rest of society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my salary to help ppl negotiate:

I worked for KPMG previously (within 12 months) and made 140k as an AWS Architect (designing the environment and then building it out in the GUI).

This was in Dallas, Texas so good amount of money.

If you're going into any consulting company as a cloud person or devops person with more than 2 years experience, anything less than 120k isn't acceptable if you're a US citizen.

<comment><USER9> Citizenship shouldnt matter, location of work should. If someone is working in the United States, they should be paid the same as anyone else in the United States doing that same work, no matter that persons country of origin, Country of Citizenship, or visa status.

(Apparently this is an unpopular opinion)

<comment><USER10> I don't think it's unpopular, it's just an unfortunate reality.

An individual's compensation is dependent on how much people with similar skills, backgrounds, and experiences will accept.

Is this fair?

Nope, and that's why we have minimum wage. No matter how low the wage is, people will accept the job for the money.

It would be hard(if not impossible) to implement an effective universal minimum wage for international workers, but I don't see any other solutions.

<comment><USER11> You don't need anything near as complex. You just need to give visa-holders (A) job mobility, (B) the right to stay in the country for some amount of time when not employed (this doesn't have to be unlimited...), and ideally (C) not lock the Visa to the employer beyond a year or two.

Some countries implement the above, some don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The suspicious use of noncompetes as a pure power play came to light when the fast food joint Jimmy Johns was discovered to have forced their sandwich makers to promise not to go to another fast food restaurant. It is not credible that they were taking JJ secrets to McDonalds. But the action froze JJ workers in searching for a better job. Surprisingly, the courts said it was legal, but JJ settled and stopped using them.

This is so fucked

<comment><USER3> Outside of rare cases, the entire concept needs to be made illegal, along with forced arbitration.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash There wasn't much mentioned in the way of mitigation, which is somewhat disappointing. If we are to accept that globalization and technology favor massive champions (FAANG/Alibaba/Wall St) then by lacking any circumvention of monopsony power we are collectively signing away our current and future pay and bargaining power to executives and shareholders.

<comment><USER13> Last time we encountered this sort of problem, the answer was unionization/collective bargaining. Monopsony exists almost exclusively because of regional/area dependency. By its nature, this problem can't be dealt with by offshoring jobs on the company's part, and requires a local labor force. Unions allow the labor class to raise the floor on the lowest things they're willing to accept.

One of the largest problems towards this is the 40 year smear campaign that neoliberals have been on against unions. Somehow they got the working class to believe that each special individual is better on his own when bargaining against a massive corporation.

<comment><USER14> Ironically, unions always seek legal monopoly status.

[https://www.nrtw.org/right-to-work-states](https://www.nrtw.org/right-to- work-states)

<comment><USER15> Sorry you got downvoted. A lot of people never studied the history of Unions (and I'm very pro Union, with several Union organizing relatives) to see how incredibly corrupt they become. They have a long history of selling out to the agenda of the rich - and many famous strikes were initiated by the rank and file against the wishes of the Union - forcing the Union to pretend to be supporting the strikers while doing everything possible to undermine them.

Just one example - Caesar Chavez's United Farm Workers was destroyed by the Teamsters, since the Teamsters were aligned with farmers (who are mostly big multinationals - hope you don't believe that "small farmer" myth.) So the Teamsters agreed to undermine the UFW actions (by taking away members and offering a short-term sweeter deal, criticizing UFW, then later giving them much worse deals after the Farmers gave them benefits to keep the truckers happy. Keeping Teamster management fat and happy.)

<comment><USER16> There is something suspect about the rise of corruption in the unions. Back in the 1930's, labor was getting powerful and both starting and winning some big strikes, and communists were a significant part of the labor movement. The capitalist establishment's answer to this was the red squads (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Squad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Squad)). These were branches of local law enforcement operating largely sub-rosa in collaboration with the big employers and even sometimes partially financed by contributions from anti-labor malefactors of great wealth. The strategy adopted by the red squads was (1) that a union run by gangsters was ipso facto far better than one run by someone who could change the status quo in favor of workers, and (2) local law enforcement could benefit substantially from a win- win relationship with organized crime. Corruption of unions became part of the American economy hand-in-hand with corruption of police. When the gangsters struggled with each other for control of a union, law enforcement might be recruited as the tie-breaker, helping whichever thug best understood the needs of the municipal power structure. The working class did not bring this on themselves.

<comment><USER15> You might be interested to hear that about 30 years ago I got myself invited to a "union busting" class. It was held at changing locations each week, with nobody giving their names (not even the instructor), and guest speakers from law enforcement, legal, and senior management invited to discuss their successful efforts to undermine unions. In essence, their recommended strategy was to slowly move assets away from the company - whether overseas or via contracts, then shut down sites while simultaneously bringing up other sites without unions in secret. As long as things were done slowly, the courts wouldn't recognize actions as anti-union. You could even move back into the same region in a few years without unions. Once you know what to look for, it's easy to see this technique being used over decades here in the United States. And it doesn't apply just to unions, it applies to anywhere you want to force lower wages. (In the early days of unionization big employers used to coordinate moving out of a region, driving local populations to desperation so they could move back in months later and pay wages where people were actually starving while they worked.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What can you actually do against this? I have exactly this problem as I live in a city with two major international companies and they get so many applications that their salaries are quiet low and bad benefits (no remote work, less holidays...).?

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there anti-monopsony laws like there are anti-monopoly laws?

<comment><USER19> Historically the anti-monopoly laws in America could be deployed to against monopsony or the accumulation of power to act as a monopsony.

However, American Businesses successfully lobbied to change the ways the anti- monopoly laws are used - now the anti-monopoly laws are focused primarily on avoiding consumer price increases and are blind to things like accumulating power to be an abusive monopoly (a la Amazon) or monopsony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Parenthetically, it looks like Forbes has quietly abandoned its anti-adblock efforts.[1]

It used to be that I couldn't read a Forbes article without javascript and without either disabling adblocking or trying to circumvent its anti- adblocking attempts, and now reading a Forbes article without javascript is not a problem.

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11693485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11693485)

<comment><USER21> Reading Forbes now and getting a seizure are the same thing. Mini video with autoplay that either doesn't have a close button or I can't figure out how to close it combined with ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, that's quite a take from Forbes, long considered a capitalist tool. Is Forbes feeling OK?

<comment><USER23> Perhaps they too understand a free market requires ruthlessly eliminating monopolies and cartels. Perhaps they genuinely believe a functioning free market helps everyone. Perhaps the article is coming from this direction.

Or perhaps it's been noticed that it is better to reign in some excesses of rising inequality rather than potentially face the annihilation of wealth and chaos of the 1930s and 40s.

<comment><USER14> Do you assert that the Great Depression was caused by rising inequality?

<comment><USER23> I only note that inequality peaked in 1929. And while the market obviously collapsed from over exuberance etc, the lack of middle class spending power prevented recovery. I also note inequality peaked again in 2007. But anyway people use ideology to choose their explanation for the great depression from the vast tangle of possibilities so it's a futile topic. And whether true or not, it isn't my main point anyway.

Inequality causes dangerous levels of political instability which should be of concern to Forbes' and everyone else.

<comment><USER14> > Inequality causes dangerous levels of political instability

Does it? I think that's just a hypothesis. I haven't seen any careful research justifying it.

It is clear that when people are literally starving, instability results. But that isn't the same as inequality. Remember that Hillary lost the election despite outspending Trump 2:1. We still live in a democracy, 1 man 1 vote.

<comment><USER23> >I haven't seen any careful research justifying it.

You can literally google it and find an innumerable number of papers. Here's one[1] with over 3,000 citations.

>We still live in a democracy, 1 man 1 vote.

You do know she won a majority of votes cast.

More votes than Bush beat Kerry. More than well loved Kennedy beat Nixon who ended up resigning rather than be impeached.

Even more than Gore beat Bush.

So more of a flawed democracy[2] with 1 man, 1-ish vote

[1][https://www.nber.org/papers/w4486](https://www.nber.org/papers/w4486) [2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)

<comment><USER14> From your cite: "As a consequence, income inequality and investment are inversely related."

And yet, investment in America has never been higher. Prosperity is up, unemployment is at very low levels, employment of minorities is at record levels.

As for the Electoral College system, that's been around since the US was founded. We've always had a republic. It's irrelevant, anyway, since rich people don't have any more votes than poor people. There was little to no evidence of voter fraud in the last election.

<comment><USER24> > It's irrelevant, anyway, since rich people don't have any more votes than > poor people.

no, but they do have more money, which, thanks to citizens united equals more speech (money equals free speech)

so, iow, they don't need to vote, just use thier resources to conveniently/trick/extol others to vote the way they want... nice little workaround they found...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


2011 London tech job trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.adzuna.co.uk/blog/2011/10/28/2011-tech-job-trends/ Research on London tech job salaries by Adzuna - & the pros and cons of startups vs banking. <comment><AUTHOR> what's the first logo before perl?</comment>


Taming The Social Media Firehose, Part III – Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gnip.com/tumblr-firehose/

<comment><USER2> Part 3 post on consuming social media firehoses... Also, see Part 1 (<http://blog.gnip.com/streaming-api/>), which gives a high-level view of social media firehoses, Part 2 (<http://blog.gnip.com/twitter-reaction- earthquake/>), which gives a data science example.</comment>


Can you make your brain not see this circle illusion? - <AUTHOR> http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/can-you-make-your-brain-not-see-this-circle-illusion <comment><USER2> Illusions like this always remind me of failure modes of image classifiers - where an AI thinks a sunflower is a panda or whatever, because it's never seen a sunflower before.

That is, presumably the illusion works because it depicts something we've never needed to distinguish before, in such a way that it shares salient features with something more familiar (in this case, oddly-textured concentric rings and normally textured spirals, respectively). Or am I spouting nonsense?

<comment><USER3> I wonder why evolution has not exploited this more.

<comment><USER4> It has, think about natural camouflage like zebras. It short circuits the predators ability to pick out individual herd members.

<comment><USER5> Minor correction: Predators like lions have no problem distinguishing individual members of a herd. The stripes pattern messes with the way blood- sucking, disease-spreading flies (such as horse flies or tsetse flies) see the world.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzwpv/the- reason...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzwpv/the-reason- zebras-have-stripes-isnt-what-you-think)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The illusion creator's homepage is an old favorite of mine.

[http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html](http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html)

The illusions discussed in the article are the Cyanophyceae under the shape illusions category.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/ACSwamp2010.jpg](http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/ACSwamp2010.jpg) got me. But there's a catch: it only works when you scroll. So you have to go to [http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html](http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html) and scroll down till you see it. It looks bizarre.

<comment><USER8> Wow, and it doesn't even require color. There's a grayscale illusion which behaves similarly -- maybe even a bit stronger! -- at:

[http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/mesh- driftillusion01...](http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/mesh- driftillusion01.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Yup. Those aren't spirals. They're all concentric circles._

Except they are spirals. The black patches form the implication of a spiral - this is where your visual system picks out the spiral from.

If you were to say that there are _technically_ no spirals in that image because they're not contiguous, then you could equally say that there are _technically_ no circles either, only an arrangement of square boxes that is strongly suggestive of a circle.

Either way, it's a very powerful illusion.

<comment><USER10> >If you were to say that there are technically no spirals in that image because they're not contiguous, then you could equally say that there are technically no circles either, only an arrangement of square boxes that is strongly suggestive of a circle.

There are circles though. The grey concentric rings.

If you removed them, you'd see the black and white pattern spirals towards the center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you like this sort of thing, and haven't heard of the McGurk Effect before, take a look at this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0) .

<comment><USER12> Wow. I can close my eyes and picture the two different speech patterns and hear different results. Bizarre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Focus on the gray, and let your mind put it as the foreground, and circles, let them be a low frequency background. It may be your best chance to _not_ see the illusion.

<comment><USER14> Worked for me on the squared circle but took concentration on the spiral. It changed as I looked at it but not like before. Different ways of focusing on it made it go static vs moving.

What made you recommend that?

<comment><USER15> Negative space is easy to see when you focus on it. In these examples, the negative space is flat color, so it's not affected by the illusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's like generative adversarial samples for biological neural nets. I wonder is someone could weaponize this so if would cause lasting dizziness and disorientation after a prolonged exposure.

<comment><USER17> Similar device was used in the sci-fi novel Snow Crash. It appeared like a black and white image of static but in fact contained a subliminal message which tapped into some subconscious low-level cognitive functions of the brain. Just by looking at it, it reprogrammed the victim's brain and made them into a mindless zombie.

<comment><USER18> See also: BLIT

[http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The illusions are cool and study worthy, but the "you will never believe this!!!" tone of the articles is major turnoff.

<comment><USER20> Well, it's Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, and it's kind of his style.

I like his style, but I knew him when we were in elementary school together back in the early 70's (he was into telescopes and stuff even then), so I cut him some slack.

<comment><USER21> Yeah. Despite the style, he's strictly no nonsense (after all, the original point of his blog and website was to refute bad astronomy in popular media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you cover one eye and look at the image of two concentric circles, it gives a slightly exaggerated illustration of how I see text with both eyes open due to misalignment. That's why I hate two-space indentation with a passion. Saving this for the next tabs vs. spaces debate.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the camouflage on some spiders. I wonder if their markings invoke that illusion?

<comment><USER24> I thought it looked like snakeskin. And then wondered about evolutionary adaptation, i.e. making it harder for predators to accurately see where the snake is.

<comment><USER25> I love this stuff.

Was reading about a dinosaur discovery that allowed them to project colouration, turns out the bottom was brighter than the top, an adaptation prey has so that their shadow is the same brightness as their top half, deer have the same adaptation, evolution is amazing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> These illusions must be bugs in our image perception hardware that evolution hasn't sorted out for some reason.

It would be interesting to know if some people don't get fooled by them, and if so how they're different in other ways.

Also, do other species react like we do? How do you design an experiment for that?

Finally, I wonder if this can be used practically. Some kind of camouflage maybe?

<comment><USER27> > Also, do other species react like we do?

Cats seem to see the squirming snakes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcXXQ6GCUb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcXXQ6GCUb8)

<comment><USER28> Cats play like that with blank sheets of paper on soft surfaces, too, due to the crinkling noises, so the evidence is insufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What is up with the dot on the screen?

<comment><USER30> Looks like js gone rogue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The rounded corners rectangle looking one gave me the idea of using these for parts of the UI.. good thing I'm not a UI or web designer I guess!

</comment><comment><USER32> Oh my god.

I normally find optical illusions interesting and fun. Here it's like the fun guy at the party has had too much to drink and is now obnoxious and a bit nauseating.

</comment><comment><USER33> Focussing on the negative gray color in between circles gives it away. Still requires extreme focus to figure out the spiral.

</comment><comment><USER34> Out of interest, is there anyone for whom these illusions _don 't_ work?

<comment><USER35> _raises hand_ I've been doing 3D modeling and photo manipulation for over a decade. I learned to dismantle these illusions, focusing more on the "how" than the "wow". I've dabbled in making illusions. [http://imgur.com/J3kSB1c](http://imgur.com/J3kSB1c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The five parallel lines farther down the page were giving me a headache. Ugh

</comment><comment><USER37> This is pretty much the basis of contouring makeup

</comment><comment><USER38> There are two words I think explain why this effect is so strong in humans; survival, snake.

</comment><comment><USER39> yes. but then, i perceived the dress as blue and gold, too.

<comment><USER40> Blue and gold?? Surely it should be blue and black or white and gold?

<comment><USER39> yep. those are either both wrong or both right. i haven't heard of anyone else who got it half right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This reminds me of visualizations of neural network layers in visual tasks.

</comment><comment><USER17> This effect is kind of similar to what makes subpixel font rendering look horrible when the wrong LCD subpixel order is selected. Or why text looks jaggy on pentile displays, especially while scrolling.</comment>


Ask HN: Know of a Gmailish Interface for Self-Hosted Email? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a long-time Gmail user and love the slick web interface.  I love the searchability, threading of emails, intuitive reply mechanism, built-in chat, etc.  However, I don't have full control over it.  I would like to run my own mail server, with my own domain, and host a comparable web interface to it for my own purposes.  Built-in chat would be great (maybe compatible with XMPP so I could still chat with my Gmail contacts).<p>Does anyone know of a package out there that fits the bill?  I'm not looking for "Google Apps for your Domain".  Does anyone else think this would be useful? <comment><USER2> I would advise against running your own web server unless you really know what you are doing. I'm sure you know how to setup a web server, but email deliverability (getting past spam filters of the big email providers) is a huge pain in the __*. So much that I don't even attempt it these days, I just outsource my email.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, let's change the context then. What if I run a web hosting company and want to offer an installable package that includes an MTA, MDA and a front end for viewing/sending mail? (I don't run a web hosting company, so I'm sure there are other things that need to go into that mix.) The customer would click a button and we would configure everything on their VPS or whatever. If that's not plausible enough, maybe I'm a web hosting company that just offers to host your email and now I've got enough scale to make it worth investing resources to ensure deliverability and spam filtering. At some point it's got to be worth running your own email infrastructure and for those scenarios, is there an installable front end that has the Gmail special sauce?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Given the fact that server failure is a 'when', not an 'if', I'd recommend using "Google Apps for your Domain". It takes the hassle out of it all (as you already likely already know!) and leaves you (and your team?) free to focus on making money.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know of anything that will give you anything even close to Gmail as far as an interface/search/chat. Also, running your own email server is basically saying "sign me up for an endless source of pain". At my current job, when we were hosting our own email, I was spending 4-5 hours a month on email issues on average. Google Apps is either free or $50/user/year - although it is a bit less flexible, it is well worth it to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Clarify what "I don't have full control" means in this situation. Do you want to run procmail? Bulk sends? Mailing lists?

</comment><comment><USER6> I was pointed here as an installable Gmail alternate: <http://roundcube.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the concrete suggestion! From the screenshots, Roundcube looks like a very good webmail client. It looks like they're going after Outlook though with their feature set and layout.

[Edit] But this is exactly what I'm looking for in terms of being an installable package that can be thrown on a web server and hooked up to an in- house or third party email infrastructure.</comment></comment>


Convenient End-To-End Encryption for E-Mail - <AUTHOR> https://autocrypt.org <comment><USER3> Unpopular but very probably true fact: email can't practicably be made secure, and people should stop trying. Email is itself archaic, and there aren't good reasons people should use it for routine peer-to-peer communications that need secrecy.

Why? Because:

* It's default-plaintext. We don't generally love the way websites ensure they're viewed securely, but email doesn't even have the basic mechanisms HTTP has to prevent secrets from accidentally being sent in the clear.

* Email encryption is never forward-secure. The most popular standard, OpenPGP, involves a long-term key that is the root of secrecy for all messages from a particular person. Lose that key, ever, and not only is every message you send in the future unsafe, but every message you've ever sent in the past is too. That's a terrible property for a secure messaging system.

* Email leaks metadata. In fact, some of what we call email "metadata" isn't even metadata --- stuff like subject lines are simply content. They're sent in plaintext. We would never accept a new secure messaging system that behaved like that.

* Most email users get their email from a website. Unless you make them install something on all their computers --- and at that point, just get them to install Signal, WhatsApp, or Wire --- "encrypting" their email involves schemes in which those websites can get their plaintext mail.

* Most email clients are searchable-archive-by-default. Again, if you're using a secure messaging system to keep secrets from a state-level adversary, that's exactly what you don't want. And again, what matters here is the behavior of the overwhelming majority of clients. If you can stipulate a special mail client that is extra-careful, why not stipulate a forward-secure advanced messaging system and stop bothering with email?

Everything that makes email effective in the real world makes it inhospitable to secure messaging. We should stop trying to push this particular boulder up this particular mountain and instead just get people to adopt serious secure messengers.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, Signal is not decentralized or federated (for good reasons[1]). Email is. This is an important feature for those of us who worry about the growing centralization of the web, as well as the very many users who still mainly use email for communication. When you leave a job, you may not keep your email address, but at least you can still communicate with people across organizational boundaries.

Anyway, even if email security cannot be perfect, I agree with the sentiment behind RFC 7435[2] - some protection is better than nothing.

If anything, I feel that they didn't go far enough in this compromise. Most people interact with their email through the provider's webmail client. Autocrypt is fundamentally incompatible with this[3]. This means that it will really not be useful for the majority of users.

1: [https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is- moving/](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/)

2: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7435.html](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7435.html)

3: [https://autocrypt.org/level1.html#requirements-on-mua-e- mail...](https://autocrypt.org/level1.html#requirements-on-mua-e-mail- provider-interactions)

<comment><USER5> > Anyway, even if email security cannot be perfect, I agree with the sentiment > behind RFC 7435[2] - some protection is better than nothing.

Opportunistic encryption (or any kind of negotiable security) is prone to downgrades by a MITM. Either both sides require strong security, or you must assume lowest common denominator.

While I have your attention, please do yourself a favor and pin some strong, modern ciphers for your SSH client: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/OpenSSH#Modern](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Guidelines/OpenSSH#Modern)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gah, the thing I truly hate about this website is that it doesn't offer me an answer to the most important question: But what does it do?

I have to scroll down to see the content in the "What is Autocrypt" section. The content was two sentences long and I still didn't understand what does it do (I wondered what's an "email program" in this context). Since there was no additional text to help me out on the homepage, I had to look further.

FAQ page was too technical for such an explanation, implementation status page gave me some genuine idea that this is _something_ related to _other_ OpenPGP products instead of a new OpenPGP product. The third page I tried opening was the "test it" page, which led me to basically nothing out of any use.

And this is not an isolated case, this is more of a rule for project websites. Seriously, figure out a layman term to explain whatever you're representing and slap it on top of your homepage. Nobody cares if you're decentralized or an open standard until we know what is it. "Convenient End-to-End Encryption for E-Mail" made me believe it was a separate OpenPGP implementation, not a set of guidelines.

Just one sentence like "a set of guidelines that make email encryption easier" would make me want to find out more. This way, by the time I found that out, I have already decided to write this out of rage instead of finding out more.

So, here's a plea to the authors of this website and every other project website: Please, tell me what your project does right at the top of your homepage and do not make me chase an answer to that question.

<comment><USER7> Note taken. Making a website for a tech spec is surprisingly hard after looking at it for so long :(

[https://github.com/autocrypt/autocrypt/pull/328](https://github.com/autocrypt/autocrypt/pull/328)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The site could benefit from a to-the-point explanation that doesn't assume prior experience with PGP based mail. I can't point less technical users to this.

Does this work if one uses multiple mail clients (fx. notebook, desktop, and smartphone)?

Since it requires client support, it doesn't seem an option currently on, say, an iPhone.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, we are not at a stage yet where pointing "less technical users" to our website is very useful, since the main take away for those people is "stay tuned".

We hope to be able to change this as implementations progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To save some hunting around, here is the description of what is being proposed here:

* [https://autocrypt.org/examples.html](https://autocrypt.org/examples.html)

Basically you include your public key in a "Autocrypt:" header line added to all messages you send out. Then encryption transparently happens.

So we give up some protection against MITM attacks but get protection against passive surveillance for people who are not willing or able to participate in a web of trust. All and all a good idea. Because this works with standard OpenPGP messages it would be good if we could tell what level of protection we were getting when we view a message.

<comment><USER10> How is this better than signing outgoing email, and default to encrypt to senders who sign their mail?

<comment><USER9> A signature does not give you a public key. You actually need the pub key to verify the signature.

I think one could still ask why you couldn't just use a mime section for the public key in the same way that signatures are often attached.

<comment><USER10> The implied missing steps are a)publish key to keyserver network, and b) get fingerprint from signature and look up key on keyserver network.

Bundling public key with every mail "feels" a bit heavy handed - given the key server infrastructure that already exist. (and special-casing "mail to new receiver" seems cumbersome. At least considering you'd probably want to sign all outgoing mail anyway[1]).

[1] Ok, maybe not your bomb threats if they're designed to be anonymous - <USER2> that's getting into one of the other issues with pgp - non-repudiation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a description how it works: [https://posteo.de/en/blog/new-easy-email- encryption-with-aut...](https://posteo.de/en/blog/new-easy-email-encryption- with-autocrypt-and-openpgp-header)

<comment><USER11> >>The manual exchange and management of keys – which users often perceive as complicated – is becoming superfluous: Prior to the first encrypted communication, a regular empty email (without content) is sent. With this, the key is transferred in the background. Henceforth, messages can be encrypted automatically.

doesn't sound like they solved the key exchange problem. they merely changed it to trust on first use.

<comment><USER8> Which is a common compromise and frankly more useful than the web-of-trust model, as long as users understand the limitation and verify once offline.

It's still unclear to me how this works if you use more than one email client.

<comment><USER12> This seems like a good use case for keybase.io. They've implemented their own proof of concept messaging system, but I have yet to see any third party integrate with the service.

<comment> dane-pgp keybase.io is another centralized third party which, like Signal, we should be trying to move away from rather than becoming more dependent on. By relying on the DNS (which is already trusted to make email, keybase.io, and Signal work), every service provider can be in control of the keys they are publishing.

Also, keybase.io, being centralized, isn't as auditable as the DNS, but admittedly there is work being done on both DNSSEC transparency:

[http://blog.huque.com/2014/07/dnssec-key- transparency.html](http://blog.huque.com/2014/07/dnssec-key-transparency.html)

and keybase.io publishing to the bitcoin blockchain:

[https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitco...](https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitcoin_blockchain)

<comment><USER12> I'd say that it's only quasi centralized. At its core, keybase is a directory of signed statements posted on social media. Where space permits, these statements include the person's public key. Verifications can be checked directly on Facebook, Twitter, etc. without using keybase, somewhat decentralizing the service. As you mentioned, writing to blockchain pulls keybase further out of the equation.

They're more of a facilitator for other applications -- Signal is a packaged application itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty off topic, but: I've been working on signed web applications: [http://blog.airbornos.com/post/2017/08/03/Transparent-Web- Ap...](http://blog.airbornos.com/post/2017/08/03/Transparent-Web-Apps-using- Service-Worker). If anyone working on a web-based email client wants to take a shot at making it completely secure (against the web app's server), shoot me an email :) in profile.

</comment><comment><USER14> Metadata is more important than content. Metadata is surveillance. There is no way to hide metadata with computers. The only way to get around this is through anonymity. You put the info out there, but it can't be correlated to you by someone else except your intended recipient. This is approaching impossible even with the best, security-minded infosec professional. The safeguards you need to employ are very extraordinary. One slip-up, UR-FCK'ed.

OPSEC is not retroactive.

<comment><USER15> Tackling header privacy is harder in an existing platform. Memoryhole ( [https://github.com/autocrypt/memoryhole](https://github.com/autocrypt/memoryhole) ) has some ideas but it's some way off implementation right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who is the team or company behind this offering?

<comment><USER15> Developers from various open-source email clients. It's a protocol, not a product.

[https://autocrypt.org/contact.html](https://autocrypt.org/contact.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Send the link to your boss and ask his opinion

<comment><USER18> Say your company needs a new vehicle with specific safety features while still being convenient. When you find the vehicle that meets the requirements do you just plop the manual on your managers desk and ask for an opinion?</comment></comment>


Wink-lemmatizer - <AUTHOR> http://winkjs.org/wink-lemmatizer/ <comment><USER2> Here's a link to the github (AGPL 3.0) - [https://github.com/winkjs/wink- lemmatizer](https://github.com/winkjs/wink-lemmatizer)

Very cool! It looks like this is only for English at the moment, but it would be cool to see this for other languages as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link was originally [https://nlp.stanford.edu/IR- book/html/htmledition/stemming-a...](https://nlp.stanford.edu/IR- book/html/htmledition/stemming-and-lemmatization-1.html) ... I don't mind that the mods changed it; I just wanted there to be a record, because otherwise some of the comments here don't make sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey! I am Sanjaya, the lead developer of wink-lemmatizer, and the rest of the wink family. We are trying to break down NLP and ML into atomic building blocks. I am happy to answer any questions and gather feedback about wink located at [https://github.com/winkjs](https://github.com/winkjs) :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice. Any plans for the following features?

\- instead of calling the API using "noun", "verb", etc, let the library figure out the type of word.

\- let the library return information about the word, e.g. "coolest" -> "cool"+superlative.

<comment><USER6> "cool" is both a noun and a verb. How would it handle that?

<comment><USER5> Return a list of results?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From the Exercises section:

 _> The stemming for ponies and pony might seem strange._

What's that all about?

<comment><USER7> The stem for 'ponies' in the earlier figure was 'poni'. That means that 'pony' has to be stemmed as 'poni' in order to correctly retrieve 'pony' when searching for 'ponies' and vice versa.

<comment><USER3> The next question was,

 _Does it have a deleterious effect on retrieval? Why or why not?_

Any thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok, so how does it work? Which stemming algorithm?

It's not helpful unless we know what it's doing under the covers.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. For use as a tool, for some use-cases, if it "works as advertised," all we really need to know is whether it's efficient enough for our purposes.

One (horrible) use for something like this is in a framework like Rails, where there's a cultural acceptance of making method and field names by pluralising and conjugating etc.

In Rails if your `House` model has a one-to-many relationship with your `Mouse` model, a `house` object probably automatically gets a `.mice` field. That sort of thing can be done with extensive rule sets, or it can be done with a black-box library.

Of course it's a horrible use-case, and you'll probably always need to deal with ambiguity and context, but for that sort of thing the implementation details aren't nearly as relevant as "the dimensions of the black box" \-- how quickly does it run, how quickly does it start up, how much memory does it use, how good at its job is it, and which languages does/can it be made to support?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be really cool if they had a live demo to try it out on their site.

<comment><USER11> Here you go. This works for many npm packages. [https://npm.runkit.com/wink- lemmatizer](https://npm.runkit.com/wink-lemmatizer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> any plans for multi-language support?

<comment><USER13> This is really needed in the NLP world. Most things are english only.

<comment><USER14> Good luck with Turkish. A very large lookup table may work for %90 cases but it will still fail. A basic `true` lemmatizer requires either a complex graph with rules, or an FST generated from it. input is searched through the graph and morphological disambiguator must be applied to result to pick the correct lemma.

<comment><USER15> Or Welsh. You want a canonical form for "wnaethpwyd"? Try "gwneud"! Some regexes and an exceptions list isn't going to cut it.

The more a language needs a lemmatizer for NLP the harder it is to write it.

<comment><USER11> Could someone explain what's hard in particular about canonical forms in Welsh?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What It's Like to Work on League of Legends - <AUTHOR> https://builtin.com/media-gaming/riot-games-technologists-working-league-of-legends <comment><USER2> Another take on what it's like to work there when the copy isn't curated by HR and PR.

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Riot-Games- Reviews-E247538...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Riot-Games- Reviews-E247538.htm)

Written 1/24/2020 - 11 days ago,

Pros

\- Colleagues who really really care about what they're doing

\- The best campus and amenities you're going to see in LA

\- Being surrounded by other gamers/people of similar ages and hobbies

\- Cool products - a ton of R&D

Cons

\- toxic, extremely harmful culture for women/nbs, poc and those who don't play the game with the ol' boys club

\- lawsuits galore

\- sexual harassment left and right, especially from executives and skip levels

\- work/life balance is non-existent, and the great amenities help keep you there. (Lots of divorces happen because of this place.)

\- don't expect a title that reflects your actual skillset unless you're sleeping with someone, or are a man who knows how to trade on social currency. Riot likes to hire people who are overqualified and make them battle to the death for promotions

<comment><USER3> Why cherry pick 1 review? You could've copied the more representative aggregation of reviews:

Pros:

"Riot is a great place for gamers" (in 79 reviews)

"Cares about Rioters: Riot has fantastic perks because they want to keep the talent (that's us) happy" (in 67 reviews)

"Best free food I've eaten, benefits are great, and there is a lot of opportunity if you are willing to work for it" (in 40 reviews)

"people that play League of Legends each month" (in 38 reviews)

"The company is obsessively player-focused" (in 32 reviews)

Cons:

"work/life balance can be an issue if you don't know how to handle it" (in 66 reviews)

"Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation" (in 59 reviews)

"Growing pains: Flat organizational structure doesn't work well when you start to hit 3k people" (in 32 reviews)

"Tends to over-value pedigree from ivy league and mbas" (in 28 reviews)

<comment><USER4> > "Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation" (in 59 reviews)

This phrasing immediately struck me as odd so I went looking for an actual review:

'Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation. Some Rioters, particularly those who have never worked a "real job," do not seem to appreciate what Riot offers them.'

Smells like astroturfing.

<comment><USER5> The parent comment smells like outrage mongering. How could I know that you didn't post it yourself? All the reviews are equally unreliable, you can't just pick out the ones that you like.

<comment><USER4> > How could I know that you didn't post it yourself?

You can't? How could anyone else know that I didn't write "smells like outrage mongering", maybe I enjoy arguing with myself. The only people who know for sure are you and I ... if we are even two different people, maybe you are my sock puppet, maybe I am yours. Who can prove that we are or aren't?

Assuming that I did write every comment in the entire tree - what difference does that make to any of the arguments?

<comment><USER5> All perfectly reasonably points. Which is why anecdata should generally not be taken very seriously. Especially when the author of it has some seriously questionable motives, which is the case with Glassdoor. The two groups of people who have the strongest motive to post something on Glassdoor are disgruntled employees (and an employee can become disgruntled in any work place, no matter how good or how terrible it might be), and astroturfers (and perhaps also competitors, but I have no idea how good they are at policing that). It has exactly the same set of problems that any review site has. Perhaps it's aggregate data can reveal some truths, perhaps not. But a single review (especially one that is either strongly negative or strongly positive) reveals nothing.

<comment><USER4> Upvoted.

> But a single review reveals nothing.

Agreed. The top comment presents a single review. Anecdata, little informational value - outrage mongering, fair point. That was responded to by Reedx who disputed the value of a single review (ok) and presented what was implied to be a broader cross-section of reviews. One of those felt peculiar, not phrasing I would expect in 59 independent reviews. I dug up the only sample I could find and smelled astroturf.

Although my comment was negative I didn't address the point: "Why cherry pick 1 review?". Perhaps I should have opened by agreeing with Reedx that ancedata != data.

Perhaps we can both agree to:

Is Glassdoor a reliable and unbiased (including selection bias) source of information? Hell no.

Did I contribute in some part to the outrage mongering by not affirming Reedx's good point and writing a wholly negative reply? Yes.

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with anything here at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to enjoy reading the bugfixes section in the patch notes. They make me wonder "how the heck is this game implemented ?!" due to the weirdly specific interactions.

Eg: _Winter Wonder Neeko will no longer lose a significant amount of base stats and the ability to basic attack when Lulu uses W - Whimsy on her as Neeko is using R - Pop Blossom while disguised._

-> A character using a _specific skin_ is affected by a _specific spell_ when this character is in a _specific form_ casting a _specific spell_. (Btw, I don't know how the bug was even found.)

(Coming from a 4 months old patch: [https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en- us/news/game-updates/patch...](https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game- updates/patch-9-20-notes/))

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the work culture has gotten any better there since 2018.

[https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot- game...](https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot- games-1828165483)

</comment><comment><USER8> I spent a few days at Riot for one of their hackathons. First of all, the entire space feels like a video game inspired theme park. It's really unlike anything I've seen before. While I can't speak to what the daily routine looks like, I was blown away by how passionate Rioters were about shipping great software and UX. I spoke with one of the lead designers for the Ezreal re- work, and it's shocking to learn just how much effort goes into every minor detail. They do everything in their power to ensure users love the product. That's not the kind of culture you find at your typical software shop.

Also, Riot has an excellent developer community and API[0]. Riot believes that the community, not just the engineering staff, makes the product great. So, a lot of effort goes into making sure 3rd party developers can work with the LoL brand.

[0] [https://developer.riotgames.com](https://developer.riotgames.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> I was waiting for the answer to "what position do you play in League of Legends" to be "basically I don't" and there it was at the end of the last interview.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that 3 of the 5 employees play support and the other 2 play top.

<comment><USER11> To completely stereotype: Teamplayers do interviews that make the company look good?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> TIL Riot is owned by Tencent

<comment><USER13> What company isn't?

<comment><USER14> Tencent only owns 5% of Activison Blizzard, Paradox, and Ubisoft.

They own 40% of Epic Games, and 100% of Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile).

<comment><USER13> Also 100% of Supercell and they dominate the Chinese mobile gaming market with Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> might be off topic, but the monitor wall they have is awesome

<comment><USER16> off topic or not, it is indeed pretty awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Riot outsource their animation and music production? The cinematic and music videos they've been releasing every year are always amazing.

<comment><USER18> Cinematics are outsourced. There was an effort to build an in-house cinematics team, but that was abandoned years ago. They often partner with Blur, but use others as well.

Music production is largely in-house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's baffling seeing all these credentialed people talk and the game still having an utterly horrid bug riddled client for so long now.

<comment><USER20> My impression from playing games is that bugs don't kill the games, stopping feature releases to fix bugs kills games. Everyone just laughs at the bugs, even when they change the outcome of an esports matchup with millions of dollars on the line. In the end, the players keep playing and the sponsors keep buying ads, so it's no biggie.

Looking through Blizzard's tech talks about Overwatch (they do exist!) is that they focus their testing on making the game fun. They do not say that this comes at the expense of thorough unit and integration tests, but from playing the game, my impression is that it does. Sometimes a patch will come out and the patch notes will be along the lines of "that ability didn't actually work in the last release, but hey we fixed it". Unit tests always notice abilities not working; playtests don't always pick them up. But unit tests will never make your game fun, and nobody will play a game that's not fun. So I'm guessing they don't work on that.

(This video shows what happens when you uncover a lot of untested corner cases all at once: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl11iqagWIc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl11iqagWIc))

There are many software engineers that do enjoy bug-free software. Nobody cares because people are given passes time and again for bad software. Some bugs in a game? "OMEGALUL". Some credit card numbers stolen? "Oh, we're deeply sorry." The software crashes the plane from time to time? "Hey, we'll fix that in the 737 MAX v2." If engineers working on safety systems don't really care about bugs, why should a game whose competitors don't care either? It's just throwing money away. When Dota2 starts stealing LoL users because of their amazing bug-free client, then suddenly everyone will be working on testing frameworks. Until then, I expect some bugs in my games.

<comment><USER21> It should be noted that the client and the game are two completely separate pieces of software. The game itself certainly has a bunch of bugs, but those bugs tend to not be game-breaking, and are mostly "this doesn't behave as described" \- for many of these things, it's not even clear anymore what the intended behavior even is. Until it's fixed, it's intended, for better or worse.

But apart from that, the game is actually somewhat bug free.

The _client_ however, is just an honest to god embarrassment. It is legitimately terrible in every aspect that could possibly be terrible. It's slow, so slow that many things temporarily break on laptops, like opening rune pages in champion select. It uses more RAM than the game itself (?), it runs on like 4 different processes that interact in who knows what ways, but if the client crashes and you're trying to kill it that often (but not always) initiates a repair for no apparent reason. Often it doesn't even shutdown properly when you close it. On a friend's computer it one day just died and didn't start at all anymore, with no indication of what went wrong. He had to reinstall the game.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/epm9c8/all...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/epm9c8/all_the_things_that_are_wrong_with_the_league/)

It's a mess. And not only it is it a mess, it's an embarrassing mess because the client was always a pain point of many players, until they decided to completely re-write it in 2015. From the ground up. Clean slate - scalable, durable, lightweight, all that jazz. And now it's widely regarded as worse than the original client. If there was ever an example of how not to rewrite something, that would be it. Just a catastrophe on every level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm more curious to hear about what its like to work at Riot but on any of the other games.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ironically I was listening to an interview about working at riot (the one with darmar). It did sound like there were no major flaws, which is pretty impossible ain't it. Reading the discussion proved the point I guess.</comment>


Ramos alarm clock - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2074185253/ramos-alarm-clock

<comment><USER2> It is probably a mistake of him to let the beautiful nixie tubes and the elegant wooden finish pull so much weight in the promo video and then reveal that the final product will feature very bland LED numbers and an equally non- attractive plywood finish. He should sell the product, not the one of a kind and too expensive to manufacture prototype.

<comment><USER3> Yup, I'm selling the Nixie Ramos also. The thing is I really want to make the Ramos alarm clock available to people, and the nixie clock costs a lot to make. That's why I'm also offering the cheaper LED model, so that more people can benefit from the Ramos alarm clock functionality.

EDIT* Oh and by the way, the wood in the prototype is the same as what will be used in $160 LED Ramos, it just has a darker stain. I'm glad you like it :)

<comment><USER4> @paulsammut

i think you're missing one important point : ramos alarm clock doesn't/can't solve the wake-up problem ( people just have to go to the bed early and have a purpose to wake up early ) and just another alarm clock screaming at 6 o'clock in the morning isn't "sexy".

If one would buy it, it would be because the nixie tube and remote control. It looks retro (=good ) but you can remote control it and it wakes you up by the "super hipster nerd" way ! I think you should remove LCD model or if you insist to keep it , give it a modern look ( aluminium case etc ).

<comment><USER5> tl;dr: this addresses a fundamentally different problem, which would exist even if you went to sleep early

The problem with the alarm clock is that people traditionally put the clock on a night stand or somewhere easily accessible from the bed. At that point, if you can hit snooze from the bed, you most likely will doze off. Most of the time, even if you went to sleep early, there will be some internal resistance to actually leaving the bed (it's warm :)

If you put the alarm far away, then you are forced to get up, and by that point you've already fought most of the resistance to actually getting up. Problem there is that the visual clock is too far away from the bed.

The real problem that this solves is decoupling the physical clock presence from the alarm silence mechanism, forcing you to physically leave the bed. Even if you get up early, you still have to overcome the desire to leave the bed.

<comment><USER6> I keep my alarm about 10 meters from my bed, and I got up and put it for 20 minutes later... about 4 or 5 times this morning. Can't remember for sure :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Buy cheap alarm clock from Amazon $5 - $10. Put it far from your bed so you have to walk over to it to turn it off.

I love the look of the Ramos, especially the nixie tubes but I just don't see much of an improvement over placing the alarm clock on the other side of the room.

<comment><USER8> Pro tip: Get a outlet timer and put a bright lamp on it. The lights in my bedroom click on at the same time each morning and make it much nicer to wake up.

Edit: I use this one: <http://amzn.com/B000NBCEM8>

<comment><USER9> I have one of the Philips wake-up lights[0] which gradually brightens its lamp over 30 minutes before playing some optional bird-chirping. The gradual light- up feature gives it an edge over the sharp turn-on of a lamp plugged into a timer, but I'm often lying on my side with my back to the lamp, in which case the bird-chirping wakes me instead of the light. I'm thinking of running a cord from the Philips's bulb socket to the bulb in a floor lamp which I can position _above_ my head (instead of to one side, like the Philips).

[0] <http://amzn.com/B003XN4RIC>

<comment><USER10> I've recently connected my bedside lights (on each side of my bed) to a dimmable X10 socket. Using the programmable controller, they gradually brighten over 20 mins when all lights in the room turn on and my alarm goes off.

Felt it was more fun, less intrusive, and as cheap (ish) to roll my own solution.

It's a long way from the old days of a radio on full-volume static or alarm clock thrown under the middle of my bed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Zen clocks are far more easy to wake up to:

<http://www.now-zen.com/>

"the acoustic chime bar is struck just once … 3-1/2 minutes later it strikes again … chime strikes become more frequent over 10 minutes … eventually striking every 5 seconds until shut off"

<comment><USER12> I've been using a Now & Zen timepiece for about 5 years now. It is far more pleasant to wake up to a gentle gong than electric buzzers that shock you awake. You can adjust the strike force to control for loudness. I keep it set fairly soft. When I first got it, it would take a several gongs before it gradually woke me. Still no need for snooze though. These days I usually become aware of it on the first or second gong.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I bought mine 17 years ago and still use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks very nice in theory, but for me, this is a terrible idea. It looks like a great way to wake up stressed and upset. Adjusting your sleep schedule is better for your body and sanity than any complicated alarm clock systems.

</comment><comment><USER14> A much more elegant way (I believe) is to have it in software as an Android / iOS app. There are quite a few apps that force you to solve a simple math question / puzzle. You could always put your phone somewhere away from your bed.

At one point, I was working on an alarm app that had some game mechanics built into it (points for waking up on time, waking up on time for 5 days in a row, waking up before 6am etc.) and had various types of puzzles to turn off the alarm. I gave up on it because I decided it was more of a sleeping habit issue than an inability to wake up. You can't consistently sleep at 2 in the night and expect to wake up by 6 in the morning ..

<comment><USER15> At one point, as an alarm clock, I had a headless box under my bed that would play loud music. To turn it off, I had to ssh into it from my laptop - and the password was extremely long.

Ultimately, the long password wasn't enough to "wake me up," and by then I had a smartphone, so I got an Android app that made me solve math puzzles to turn off the alarm.

Ultimately ultimately, I realized that it was really a behavioral problem. Now I just get up when my alarm goes off. :)

(That makes it sound like the "behavioral" solution was simple, but believe me, it was extremely far from simple. And I still think the product being advertised here is an extremely cool idea and potentially very useful.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is great about this product? If used properly, once you turn it off you have no excuse not to start your day. (brush your teeth or hop in the shower) Very cool.

What sucks about it? I don't have any desire to buy it. I just don't need another alarm clock yelling at me in the morning. Plus it will only be a matter of time before I learn how to ignore it, like I have done with every alarm clock before it.

What is my pain that I would like a new alarm clock to solve? I want an alarm clock that wakes me up in a natural way. I want it to pull me out of my REM cycles gradually so I am ready to get out of bed, not jarred out of bed.

If you told me that you had done research on REM cycles and that it takes x amount of time to move from one level of sleep to the next. And that your product plays music softly, then increases in volume in natural increments for the human mind. If this was the problem you were solving, accompanied with the wireless kill switch, then I would be very excited about this product and would consider shelling out my hard earned money for it.

I would even be okay if you couldn't solve this problem, so long as I knew that this is the problem that your alarm clock will eventually solve. I would expect the alarm clock's software to be updatable, so as you get closer and closer to perfecting waking up, my $135 alarm clock will get better at it as well.

I hope this feed back is useful to you. Good luck to you. It looks cool, and it is a neat idea.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! I thought about this, and I wanted to do it.

A really effective way to measure REMs cycles is to have an accelerometer on your bed, just how the Sleep Cycle Iphone app does it. I designed a system that would involve having a small wired puck that you put on your bed, under your pillow, that links to the Ramos. The coding and interfacing with the micro-controller is straight-forward, and it would work.

The issue I had with it is that it was extra "baggage" i'm adding to the clock. I felt like to implement the puck system, it would take away from the simple straight forward, 0 installation solution that I really wanted to achieve. That wire really just like, irked me. And to make it wireless means another radio which leads to more cost to the user. And with a wireless puck you need to power it, which is again more cost to the user. I actually also made this earlier alarm clock that used a heat sensor to detect if you're still in bed. Hehe it didn't work real well though. [https://s3.amazonaws.com/ramos_alarm/Paulsammut_BHS_alarm.pd...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ramos_alarm/Paulsammut_BHS_alarm.pdf)

But still, i agree, it would be really really cool if it had that feature, but it got to the point where I started trying to add all these little things, and the whole Ramos idea started shifting. I didn't like it. And the remote panel really does the job at getting you out of bed and away from it, which is key.

PS. from what I've noticed from using Ramos for a year, is that I've developed a fear to it. Like, deep down in my head i know i'm gonna have to wake up, and I usually will naturally wake up with the alarm time.

again, THanks for your interest!!

-paul

<comment><USER16> Wow, I can't believe you put sensors in the bed, that is awesome. You are completely correct though, an alarm clock should be next to the bed not in it.

But you don't need to know what cycle your customer is in to implement a gradual wake up process. You can just assume they are in the deepest sleep, start incrementing, and eventually the alarm clock will be in sync with their current state of sleep.

Again, the product looks great.

<comment><USER3> Oh there's ramp-up mode for that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's no two ways around being able to get up in the morning. Go to bed 7-9 hours before you wish to wake up, that's it. I'm not sure what the obsession is with over engineering alarm clocks, but the problem isn't the little gizmo on your night stand that goes beep and bloop, it's a lack of a solid sleep routine. Sure, every now and then you can will yourself out of bed if you're unrested and need to get up, but you should really be getting good sleep most nights of the week. Go to sleep earlier: the hard way is usually the easier way.

<comment><USER18> And I think, ideally, most people follow this pattern. Problem is, my 4-month old daughter (and, I suspect, many, many other 4-month old daughters) haven't heard of this.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely. Once you have kids you don't sleep through a whole night for at least 18 months. Sometimes never again if you're the paranoid/caring kind.

<comment><USER19> Might be relevant to you and parent: There was something on NPR this morning, about some mom adopting French parenting ideas - and one of the things the French are supposedly good at is getting their kids to sleep through the night at 4 months or so. Might be worth looking at :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks very cool. However, I'm looking to go a different direction: an alarm that automatically opens the room-darkening drapes and lets in sunlight, for a natural and gradual waking process. Imagine my surprise that no such product exists outside the expensive and complex home automation market. I have no experience in hardware hacking, but I might have to see what I can do with an Arduino.

Still, this looks like a very cool alarm clock, especially the top-of-the-line nixie model. Good luck!

<comment><USER21> Indeed, I wish I had the spare cash to drop on the custom model, just because those nixie tubes and wood choices are so awesome.

One of the reasons I started my home automation startup was to make myself a decent alarm clock. The first thing I did with my automation controller was program my lights to ramp up smoothly in the morning.

Blinds and ramping audio cues are perpetually on the TODO list, but motorized blinds are expensive and aren't all that useful during the winter, when the cloud-obscured sun doesn't come up until late and the extra light is needed most. Of course, leaving the blinds open all night isn't an option for most of us because of light pollution and possible loss of privacy.

Anyway, good luck with your Arduino blinds project, and good luck to the creators of the Ramos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having purpose in life also helps. You'll feel excited to go do your thing when you wake up.

At least that's what works for me.

</comment><comment><USER23> If anyone is looking for a challenge buy one of these things and build a snooze button app for this clock.

</comment><comment><USER24> With all this power and smarts built into this alarm clock, couldn't they just put in an automatic adjustment for Daylight Savings Time?

I would love to have one less clock that I need to adjust two times a year.

Edit: It knows the day of week. All it would need is to know what political zone you are in, and be able to predict the whims of the politicians. How hard can that be? :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm sure this will appeal to some people, but for the practical ones, Gentle Alarm for Android has all of these features. And it's only $2.86 :)

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobitobi.android.g...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobitobi.android.gentlealarm)

</comment><comment><USER26> It's amazing how fast such tiny projects* can raise. I just watched the video, and then refreshed the page and the funding jumped from $1,055 to $1,700.

* I mean here the actual size, and the idea (clock, ipad cover, watch...). Execution and build of the product can take a lot of time and experience.

</comment><comment><USER27> Holy shit $75,000? Are you kidding me? That is an astronomical amount of money.

<comment><USER28> What? Why? Hardware production has a much higher capital outlay than software production.

You'd be surprised at how much tools and equipment costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yeah. My wife will just _love_ listening to my alarm going off for a few minutes as I stumble out into who-knows-where to find the defuse panel and remember the code.

<comment><USER30> That's what courtesy mode is for. (from reading the article.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have this habit of walking all the way up to both of my alarm clocks, resetting the alarm to 20 minutes later, and then walking back to bed for a bit more sleep.

</comment><comment><USER32> There's no way I'll spend 160$ on an alarm clock with a remote control.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice idea, if a little unpractical. I thought (or read somewhere) about doing something similar using a bathroom scale (you have to put your weight on it for some seconds for it to turn off.

</comment><comment><USER34> if you really want to get people up have them enter a code to defuse an actual explosive

</comment><comment><USER35> WakeMate done right!

</comment><comment><USER36> If you have trouble waking up to an alarm everyday (around the same time) then you need to really re-evaluate your sleeping conditions and habits.

After having to wake up everyday around 7am my internal clock has pretty much gotten used to just waking my body up around the time. Even on weekends sometimes (eek).

Neat product but it's more of a novelty item than anything for me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Kickstarter - such a good way to corner all the dumb money.

</comment><comment><USER38> Great, now I can put the panel on the night table, key in the code half groggy in the morning and go back to sleep. :)

Seriously, $135 for an alarm clock?

<comment><USER38> Why the down votes? Nobody has a sense of humour? :|</comment></comment>


I am a YC Rejected Transwoman's Crystallized Resolve - <AUTHOR> http://tcombinator.blogspot.com/2012/04/iama-ycombinator-rejected-transwoman.html

<comment><USER2> I think you have a good intent (promoting business for transgender people), but I find your article coming off a bit defensive, especially when you ended with:

"I'm playing hard mode. A victory now will be more meaningful. I am Allison Mobley's Crsytallized Resolve. And I am here to say hello, world."

Perhaps you need to go beyond the question of why there needs to be an incubator for just transgender people and ask just yourself: why you are personally doing this?

<comment><USER3> Most people have no comprehension of how difficult it is to live as a transgender. I have several TG friends and I am constantly in awe of how they put up with not just prejudice, but persistent threat of violence (even here in SF!).

Anyone who accepts that burden in life has already proven the ability to go thru hell, and they usually carry those lessons of perseverance with them in other aspects of life also.</comment></comment>