Ask HN: Anyone have ideas for an honours thesis project? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently enrolled in a Bachelor of Computer Science program and will be starting my final year this fall.
We have the opportunity to complete a thesis project or 2 smaller projects but the thesis project is required for an honours degree.
I would like to complete a thesis project but I am having troubles coming up with something to create.
I'm most comfortable with web development, php is my strongest server side language so far I'd say but have experience in others.
I've ordered a Raspberry Pi and have a bunch of electronic parts at my disposal, including XBee RF modules.
I've also scratched the surface of Python and Node.
I'm also not afraid of learning something completely different if it's a cool idea especially since I have the rest of the summer to learn something new.
Any suggestions would be great, even resources you may know of which have some cool ideas or content I may be able to get ideas from.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> It looks like you have some familiarity with a variety of different technologies which is fantastic.

The most important thing is just to pick a direction and get started. It doesn't have to bee anything more specific than "I want to build something using Raspberry Pi".

Once you pick a direction you can start working through some basic tutorials and learning the ropes. At this point after understanding what's possible you might get some ideas about what you might want to do.

If you don't have ideas yet that's ok, but now you're pretty well equipped to research what other people have been doing with your platform. You could build somewhat different alternatives to existing projects, or work on trying to contribute an extension to an existing project.

If just looking at projects doesn't spark any ideas start talking to people. Start with people who might know something about your topic at your university, or reach out to individuals in the community.

The key to a research project is just getting interested in one idea or question. Once you develop a little curiosity about on little thing it's like pulling on a thread that's connected to a much larger tapestry. Maybe your original idea has already been done but you find something else that's closely related that hasn't been done. You'll quickly be able to follow this tiny thread to a much larger world that will be of great depth and in general can be very interesting. If you have the diligence to carefully review existing work it's not hard to steer yourself to a totally uncharted area (this is probably a lot of work for a senior thesis but if you find it fun then go for it).

Also don't worry too much about originality. Re-creating something that already exists is a good learning experience, and might lead to other interesting ideas, like taking an existing thing and using it for a slightly different purpose. Just make sure to give credit where it's due. This isn't a PHD thesis and I don't think you'll be knocked for not making some brilliant original discovery. The key thing is to get started and follow your curiosity.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot for giving me some direction, I think I will take your advice, Raspberry Pi included

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To keep excitement up over the course of the year, choose something from an area of Computer Science or practical applications that interests you beyond the tools required to solve the problem.

As a resource for cool ideas, there are hundreds at [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/acs_projects/#topics](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/acs_projects/#topics) (click on the names of the research groups at the bottom of the page). Most of these are intended to be 33% of a year's work at 4-year undergraduate or 1-year masters level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the suggestion and resource. My parents have a problem with security at a camp they're building so I figure it may be a good fit. I was thinking a raspberry pi could handle the events while connected to an arduino with a GSM shield to send a text message when a door, window, etc. is opened. I have not decided how exactly this will be handled but I'm looking into it at the moment.</comment></comment>


Summer YC: Fuzzwich Politics Cartoon builder - <AUTHOR> http://www.fuzzwich.com/minivid/minivid.php?vid=4549

<comment><USER2> still a classic:

[http://www.fuzzwich.com/minivid/index.php?vid=400&](http://www.fuzzwich.com/minivid/index.php?vid=400&);

<comment><USER3> PG is a pink bunny?

Do you guys know something we don't?

<comment><USER4> Steve is a bison? Or is that a buffalo?

<comment><USER5> i'm told it's a buffalo. but a super smart one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Essay to Read If You Even Think About Wearing Clothes - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-essay-to-read-if-you-even-think-about-wearing-clothes <comment><USER2> Fashion has fascinated me for 35 years. All that time has resulted in two observations -

The first is that nobody knows fashion like the Italians do, so get your advice there.

The second is a result of the first - some basic rules will get you an ageless but very fashionable look for very little money. And so positions you well for a future focused on wealth rather than status.

This applies everywhere. Buying a car? Look to the best car manufacturer. Don't buy new, never lease, always go for reliability.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with your view on Italians and fashion however I do often find myself amused by the compliant uniformity of fashion in Italy. I vist two or three times a year and as someone old enough to not obsess so much about my own fashion anymore, but not so old as to have given up entirely, I'm invariably impressed by dapper old men holding on to youthful exhibition.

However, the flipside is that 'whatever mode is in fashion that season' is draped off everyone - be it the particular type of puff jacket, or particular brand of trainer or hoodie or size and volume of scarf, there it is in consistent multiplicate, over everyone.

It becomes less, to my eye, individual expression than blinkered social compliance.

Not that I'm not entirely without some envy, especially where my father in law is concerned, he being very much more fash than I!

<comment><USER4> I am Italian (living in San Francisco though), and I pretty much agree with your observations - in general, and also specifically about Italy.

On a side note, I find the brand "Uniqlo", which sounds very much like the word "unique", to be the ultimate oxymoron.

You can see people wearing "unique" dresses dozens of times a day, everywhere in the US.

<comment><USER3> Amusingly, for me, my partner buys each of her folks a puffer jacket every few years from Uniqlo - apparently they're just about different enough to stand out from the crowd they work so hard to confine themselves to! :)

Personally, I see Uniqlo as offering fine base-elements for clothing. I long ago settled into having my own uniform - just so that I don't have to think about my daily clothing too much - so own a dozen or so exact-same long- sleeved navy blue t-shirt-things from them. No logo, no branding, no overt design - just simple, methodical soft cotton clothes that pair nicely with whatever else is in my wardrobe.

.

I never thought I'd write about my crap fashion on HN...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recommend _it 's a small, medium and outsize world_, by John Taylor which is probably out of print, but is a fantastic history of fashion written in 1966. Its wry, satirical but informing. Eric Newby also wrote about his family fashion business pre and post war in _something wholesale_

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure I understood this article at all. Part of it may be because I don't understand fashion, but it was written in an overly-grandiose prose which is a bit misplaced in an article such as this. I don't want to have to give an artcile the same kind of thought I give Dickens.

With that said, can any one fkll me in on exactly what this is supposed to mean?

</comment><comment><USER7> And after that you can watch The True Cost.

<comment><USER8> Available free online: [http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true- cost](http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost)

Highly recommended if you even think about wearing clothes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is an essay of Ortega y Gasset's from the 1920s or 1930s, in which he wrote that British men were the worst dressed in Europe, because they had real things to think about. I was pretty slovenly when I read this, and took some comfort in the notion. (I have long since married a woman whose eye for clothing is as sharp as mine is dim, and am usually presentably dressed.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Chiuri (Dior) sure knows how to make a peplos look amazing. The best fabric, lighting, makeup, and photography in the world probably don't hurt. It could do without the typography though.

This book review of Bernard Rudofsky's "Are Clothes Modern?" is about as close as something could get me to being interested to read a treatise on fashion.

</comment><comment><USER11> After a certain level of cleanliness, the more effort someone puts into their appearance, the less respect I have for them. I have tried to look past this in some situations, but I cant help but think they're lying to me in some way.

<comment><USER12> I have a hard time getting out of my head that those people could be putting more time into furthering their expertise rather than participating in a fashion show. I've had similar experiences with people who pursue very intense fitness activities. You _can 't_ train for a marathon while also putting in the long hours to be at the peak of your technical field for example. Sometimes, on a day off, I see people out in the road training for intense cycling or running activities and I can't help but think to myself "those people must be impossible to work with...why aren't they at work now?"

Then I also temper myself to realize that work isn't all of a person's life, and I also spend a great deal of time in non-productive pursuits that aren't help to me at work.

Working all the time at all costs isn't healthy. It reminds me to go out and take a walk, or a sculpture class or something.

<comment><USER13> > You can't train for a marathon while also putting in the long hours to be at > the peak of your technical field for example.

Why not?

I always try to tackle big challenges at work, switching teams / companies when finding challenges becomes the challenge. Hands-on learning 9-5 is enough to maintain my personal maximum sustainable career growth - any more would lead to burn out.

Commute jogging (10mi/day) and weights at the gym takes 2h/day.

That leaves another 6 hours/day for happy hour, cooking, movies, guitar... _excluding_ all the free time of weekends.

What are you doing with all that time?

<comment><USER12> Not taking the time to read all of the original comment provides a nice compact example of the point. Perhaps you were too busy lifting? (I'm being sarcastic, please don't take offence!)

> What are you doing with all that time?

Working! Why are you spending all that time screwing around? You've just told me you have another 10 hours a week you can be working that you use exercising. And another 30 hours a week you spend watching movies and playing guitar! That's like a whole other full-time job you could be putting into work! (for the record I'm being very sarcastic)

In responding to dec0dedab0de's original comment, I agreed that I share his superficial feelings -- but I don't think those feeling are right. My point is that while for some people like myself, grinding as hard as possible as long as possible, is both natural _and_ not healthy. For some people, work is not naturally the thing they spend all their time on, and they gravitate to other things as soon as the clock hits 8 hours for the day.

For people such as myself, my natural tendencies to overwork can, at times, unfairly extend to other people and I often have to resist the temptation to think that they should be doing the same as me -- and if they aren't that they aren't putting in 100%.

These are _very_ unhealthy thought processes and one that I personally have to spend time, effort and discipline to temper. The problem is, for me, work is _fun_.

On the flip-side I've also really worked with people who become incredibly unreliable at work (during normal work hours) while they train for <sporting event> and it's absolutely intolerable. I also say this as somebody who intensely pursued a sporting activity very heavily in my younger years at about 20-25 hours a week. People really minimize the amount of time they spend doing these things.

And to dec0dedab0de's original point, I've also worked with people of impossibly limited technical capability who fly up the corporate ladder, often to disaster, because they have good looks and dress well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://loosethreads.com/podcast/2016/09/27/loose-threads- po...](https://loosethreads.com/podcast/2016/09/27/loose-threads-podcast- building-the-future-of-clothing-and-unlocking-social-mobility-with-abe- burmeister-of-outlier/)

podcast with the creator of outlier.nyc one of the more interesting workwear/techwear brands

'Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear' is also good read

</comment><comment><USER15> The book in question from MOMA: [https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3159_300063439...](https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3159_300063439.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to be that guy and complain about the webpage's formatting.

When I opened the page, a modal dialog was covering everything asking me to sign up for some newsletter. I closed it to get to the article, and I ended up with this: [https://i.imgur.com/sV9hfOA.png](https://i.imgur.com/sV9hfOA.png). The actual article makes up less than 4% of my screen. I've never seen a page this bad before. There's two different types of pop-ins from different directions I have to close before the article becomes readable. It's like playing whack-a-mole. Is anyone working on the site proud of that? Who looked at the site when it had just one of those pop-ins (and a modal) and made the decision that it needed another one? I don't want to be too ranty, I'm actually baffled.</comment>


The NFL's problems in one accidentally revealing ad - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/04/everything-thats-wrong-with-football-in-one-ad/

<comment><USER2> I don't buy the argument that the new rules and equipment have made the game more dangerous. Back in the old days, 100 years ago or so, it wasn't uncommon for people to die on the field [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/sports/football/21thorpe.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/sports/football/21thorpe.html?_r=0)

 _the 1910 rule changes were a reaction to a raft of horrifying deaths on the field. A total of 26 players died in 1909, including 10 at the college level. Thirteen in 1908. Eighteen in 1905._

<comment><USER3> I've always had trouble with the "no pads is a natural limiter to the amount/intensity of the hits" argument.

That said - those hard plastic helmets are weapons. They can hurt a player a lot more than a skull. Not sure what to do with that conclusion.

I love watching NFL football but its obviously a form of killing people slowly for our entertainment. I don't see how it can sustain unless we all look the other way on the brain injuries.

<comment><USER4> The rugby players that I know tell me that their pain limits how hard they tackle an opponent. They would not like to see padding introduced because a player would trust their armour overmuch and increase the risk of injury.

<comment><USER5> In addition to the force of the impact, a significant difference is the form that you employ in making a tackle. In football a common technique is to put your head in the center of the opponent's body in order to help stop their force. In rugby, not wearing a helmet means you are _likely_ to receive a concussion if you do this (mostly from knees). As such, in rugby a proper tackle technique involves you putting your head to the side of your opponent, and using your shoulder as the primary point of contact with the opponent.

The upshot of this is that your head is involved in significantly less direct contact (though there's still some).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate when people complain about football injuries. It's the risk and conscious choice that athletes take in order to make an enormous amount of money. If I were able to make millions of dollars for 8-10 years and risk having concussions and other physical problems later on in life, I would probably take it, especially if I came from an underprivileged background.

The real tragedy is that 80% of pro athletes go bankrupt because they don't know how to handle their own money. They made a life-changing amount of money, and they waste it all because they don't have proper guidance in terms of how to retain most of it. THIS is something the NFL needs to concentrate on, that these young kids don't blow all their money away because of immaturity and arrogance.

<comment><USER7> You are mistaken in the fact that the majority of players have million dollar contracts. The actual truth is that the majority of football players don't make a million dollars gross in their short careers.

<comment><USER8> League minimum is $390k (which can only be paid to rookies, it then goes up every year) and the average career is about 6 years, so really the vast majority are doing more than a million gross (and net) in their career.

Also the average salary is about $2m so you're looking at $12m gross. There's certainly a power law there, but still, an average salary of $12m careerwise is substantial.

<comment><USER9> You should use medians rather than averages for this analysis. The median salary for those who play an entire season before getting cut is around $800,000. The median career length is not reported anywhere I can find. Since all sources besides the NFL claim the average career is 3.5 years, I'll overestimate the median to be 3 years.

So, rather than $12M, we should be talking about $2.4M for a median career, and that's just those who play an entire year before getting cut. Since the NFLPA is toothless most NFL "contracts" allow a player to be cut at any time for any reason and then he doesn't get any more money.

<comment><USER10> _Since the NFLPA is toothless most NFL "contracts" allow a player to be cut at any time for any reason and then he doesn't get any more money._

I don't think this is because the NFLPA is toothless. I think it's because the marginal value of the 53rd man on the roster over the first guy on the practice squad is not high, and it doesn't increase much as you move up. Because the NFL is such a team game, with a few major exceptions players are largely replaceable.

That's why you hear so often about guys who were sitting on the couch watching football one Sunday and playing the next. This effectively doesn't happen in, say, baseball, where the supply of guys who can hit major league pitching above the Mendoza line is quite limited. Even with a huge farm system, teams rarely have more than a few major league-caliber players who aren't actually on the roster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree that losing the hard equipment would make the game safer (take a look at rugby or Aussie rules: much safer similar sports), but I don't agree with the implication that the owners of the NFL ever had a nefarious plan to add equipment so that the game would become watchable (again, take a look at rugby or Aussie rules: very watchable similar sports).

<comment><USER11> Aussie rules is not very similar to American football, though. Rugby Union is pretty different, too. Rugby League is about the closest thing to American football without the pads and helmets.

<comment><USER9> They all feature teams of players throwing, kicking, carrying, and sometimes punching an oblong ball on a long field with goal posts at either end. The object of all games is to advance the ball in a direction opposite to that of the other team, and then to score a varying number of points depending on how one moves the ball into a scoring area or kicks it between goal posts. Rough play is encouraged, and body tackling is the basic means of defense, so these games are all (with the exception of rugby union: the entire game is spent listening to the referee holler "pause, engage!" while the scrum falls apart) more enjoyable to play and watch than the sport upon which they're allegedly based. They're all more similar to each other than any of them are to baseball or tennis.

Besides, the only similarity that counts for this analysis is the nature of the head trauma involved: men carrying a ball run while other men attempt to tackle them bodily to the ground.

<comment><USER12> The hits and tackles are very different in Aussie rules or League not only because of the equipment difference, but because of rule differences. Look at some of the hits NFL line-backers put on receivers over the middle 2+ years ago (there was a rule change to partly address this). There just aren't many situations where a rugby player would get that sort of look at someone who is blind to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm no Sports-Ball expert, but two things you can do to make Football more enjoyable is lose the padding and lessen the constant pauses of the game (which frustrate me to no end, as a casual observer). These two reasons are why I find Rugby infinitely more enjoyable to watch.

<comment><USER14> You don't see the problem with "I don't like sport A, I like sport B. Make sport A more like sport B"? The pauses lead to a more rigid tactical game (you can't really run set plays much in rugby as you do on most downs in football). And the physical violence padding allows is also part of the appeal of the game. Just google "Clowney hit" and you see thousands of people losing their minds in praise for a hit of the kind you'll never see without padding.

Of course, the second point is more what this article is about and I believe American football will eventually been seen like we view Roman gladiators. But for now, padding is a major reason why it is the biggest sport in America.

<comment><USER8> Eh, the hits are only a small part of why it's the biggest sport. There are a lot of things the NFL does better than other leagues.

I'd argue the biggest is the salary cap and the parity that results. But there are dozens more, and hits are probably low on the list since they're still nowhere near as exciting as the slam dunks you see on a SportsCenter highlight reel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's basically a combat sport. These days, the players know or ought to know that is the case. I feel bad for the guys who get hurt, but the ones playing at the college and professional level are being rewarded substantially for the risks they take.

<comment><USER16> That makes it basically "spectators pay players large amounts of money to injure themselves for our entertainment." I don't think that's the sign of a civilized society.

<comment><USER15> That's overly reductionistic. We're not paying to watch them strike eachother in the head with baseball bats. We're paying them for an intense display of athletic skill, which incidentally is also extremely risky and likely to cause long-term harm. The reality is bad enough without overstating your case or taking a naive view of what people are getting out of spectating.

<comment><USER17> By the time you were fighting in the amphitheatrum novum, you had already survived a bunch of other fights and proven your abilities. And of course the citizen of Rome came for the same "intense display of athletic skill". There isn't much enjoyment in just mindless slaughter, so you add animals and weapons and shields.

<comment><USER15> Again: the stupid, sensationalist comparison to bloodsport is not helping your case against anyone who doesn't already agree with you. Normal, rational people will read your comment and say, well, there are no swords or lions in football, nor any caesar giving the thumbs up or down, and almost no one dies on the field. Clearly this guy is off his rocker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you plot concussions over helmet size you'll see the problem. Bigger/stronger helmets means more concussions. Its fairly obvious, go back to leather helmets or some softer material and players will lead with their head less. Which will mean lesser concussions. I am not saying they should play with leatherhelmets but the bigger harder plastic helmets make no sense. players just become projectiles using their heads as weapons. The helmet should be a silicon jelly ish type of material.

<comment><USER19> > players just become projectiles using their heads as weapons.

Leading with the helmet will get you a 15 yard penalty, ejected from the game, or both.

<comment><USER5> Leading with the _crown_ of the helmet will get you a 15 yard penalty. The second infraction should get you ejected from the game. Leading with the front of the helmet (e.g. planting your facemask in the opponent's chest) is still perfectly legal.

If I recall correctly, this rule ("spearing") was introduced to avoid _neck_ injury, as leading with the crown of the helmet puts an incredible amount of strain on the vertebrae in the neck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The NFL has made rule changes to reduce the incidence of head injuries, and IMO it's worth going a season or two to see if they improve things.

The nature of the rules in U.S. football creates situations that are inherently more dangerous than its overseas counterparts like rugby or Aussie rules. In those sports it is very rare for players on opposing teams to and run directly at each other from 10s of yards/meters away. Most tackles are chase-downs where the runner is pulled to the ground at low speed.

I disagree with Klein's assertion that the violence is at the heart of the NFL's appeal. There are numerous more violent or dangerous sports, like boxing, MMA, or even NHL hockey (which as straight-up fist fights) that are not nearly as popular.

The sport is far less dangerous or violent today than it was 20 years ago, but it's far _more_ popular. The NFL has reigned in the violence with rules like illegal contact on receivers, hits on defenseless receivers, roughing the passer, spearing, chop-blocking, face mask, blow to the head, horsecollar tackle, etc.--and as they have done so the game has only gained in popularity. This disproves that the violence is the heart of the appeal.

Personally I think the appeal is that football is a) extremely athletic, b) extremely complex tactically and strategically, and c) perfect for TV because every single play has time for instant replay and analysis. In addition it involves a lot of ballistic trajectories, which are always popular:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870377970457607...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576074222543274268.html)

<comment><USER21> _Personally I think the appeal is that football is a) extremely athletic_

How athletic _is_ Football, when compared to other sports? I'm not too clued into the game (grew up in Britain) so I'm genuinely curious. My instinct is that the frequent pauses and switches between offensive and defensive players mean that an individual player gets a much larger break than in other sports (I'm primarily thinking of soccer and rugby here), and runs a much shorter distance. But on the other hand, a football game goes on far longer than both of those.

In fact, an infographic:

[http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55220000/gif/_55220300...](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55220000/gif/_55220300_rugby_a_football_624.gif)

Football players run across a _considerably_ smaller distance than rugby players, but tend to be larger and stronger. Hmm.

<comment><USER11> Pure aerobic endurance aside, gridiron players are some of the most athletic people on the planet when ranked on things like quickness, strength, vertical leap, agility, and so forth. There is an event called the NFL Scouting Combine where college athletes are tested and ranked on these factors: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Scouting_Combine>

Perhaps the most interesting differentiator between american football and other sports is how much of it is about raw athleticism. It's a power, speed and size arms race. Most other sports are more about how good the players are with specific skills.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. It looks like those tests are heavily biased towards short-burst athleticism, which would make sense looking at the figures in that infographic. So football players excel at short-burst, but not endurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would venture to guess that most NFLers that have made a career out of taking head trauma would be much more in favor of furthering post NFL support (jobs, financial guidance, mental health support), and better helmet technology then watching their game go the way of Boxing.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's more revealing are the players in the ad who are apart of the 4000 suing the NFL.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/02/04/nfl- evolutio...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/02/04/nfl-evolution- concussion-mel-gray-rick-upchurch-ollie-matson/1890231/)

Whatever the risk/reward calculus younger players might make, the NFL will still be held responsible. They know this. Their army of lawyers know this.The rules they are a-changin'.

</comment><comment><USER24> Obviously NFL player safety is important, but I am much more worried about youth players and people who will never get to the NFL.

This is why companies like <http://brainsentry.com/> need to get more exposure.

[added] Brain Sentry makes sensors for youth programs to detect big hits. Obviously this isn't exactly what the author was referring to, but is a great first step.

<comment><USER4> A technical solution to a social problem. It never works. You'd hope they take away the players' helmets so the company can go bankrupt in peace.

<comment><USER25> The whole point is to be able to keep playing the game, but make it safer. Tech can help identify the players who should be checked for a concussion and get those players off the field. Players don't report their symptoms so the technology enhances overall awareness of the topic (helping the social problem) while adding an extra set of eyes on the field (tech component).

<comment><USER4> Everyone knows what repeated concussions do to a fellow - boxer dementia is age-old - there are regulations against fielding concussed players, yet athletes play on, out of a sense of team spirit, or something. If players and coaches don't go by the information they already have, what will cause them to listen to an electronic box? This does not seem the way forward. Since it's impossible to fight team spirit the rules need changing.

<comment><USER24> If I understand you correctly, you are saying that it is clear when people have concussions and that players simply disregard the advice of coaches and play anyway.

1) "It is not always easy to know if someone has a concussion. You don't have to pass out (lose consciousness) to have a concussion."

[http://www.webmd.com/brain/tc/traumatic-brain-injury- concuss...](http://www.webmd.com/brain/tc/traumatic-brain-injury-concussion- overview)

"Since it's impossible to fight team spirit the rules need changing."

I agree, by using a G meter, we can make a specific rule that if a player's head experiences a set number of G's, the player can no longer play. That basically simplifies the entire situation because it removes the subjectivity of detecting the concussion.

If I had a kid, and they wanted to play football I would want him wearing a g meter to protect my kid.

<comment><USER4> At present you have the rules of the game and the helmets and padding, which encourage concussions, and they you put another device on top of that, in order to limit them. That doesn't sound as if it would lead anywhere, and past experience has shown that the evolutionary path the game has taken did nothing to improve safety, Better helmets have made the concussion problem worse.

I'm not comfortable with this approach, it would be better to discourage hard hits altogether instead of limiting them with a g-meter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Obligatory SMBC comic: <http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2778>

</comment><comment><USER27> The fact that you have to wear armor to play a contact sport games shows the quality of the game. I watch only the superbowl every year and it tells me why I don't watch the rest of the year. Soccer is just such a nicer sport. The worst that can happen is a leg injury, not cumulative dementia.

<comment><USER28> The jury is still out there on that. Heading, in particular, is linked to brain damage ([http://journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2013/01170...](http://journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2013/01170/Neuroimaging_of_Pro_Soccer_Players_Shows_White.4.aspx) (article paywalled at <http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1391907)>):

 _"To the Editor: Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, with more than 250 million active players.1 It is the only sport in which the unprotected head is a primary point of contact when heading the ball. In other contact sports, the deleterious long-term effects of repetitive traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as impaired white matter integrity,2 are well recognized.3 However, whether frequent subconcussive blows to the head lead to TBI remains controversial,4- 5 although evidence suggests impaired neuropsychological function in soccer players.5 We evaluated concussion-naive soccer players using high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is highly sensitive for detecting alterations in white matter architecture."_

Heads can also hit each other or goalposts, for example when a keeper dives for the ball.

<comment><USER29> >>Heads can also hit each other or goalposts, for example when a keeper dives for the ball.

Aaaajajajajajajaja. Yes, lighting could also strike you.

<comment><USER30> It's more frequent than you think:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvSNMrcKR5Q>

[http://www.insideworldsoccer.com/2012/04/gerard-pique- injury...](http://www.insideworldsoccer.com/2012/04/gerard-pique-injury- barcelona-chelsea.html)

<comment><USER29> Of course it happens. The same way that people get hit by lighting everyday, or that someone wins the lottery every day. But to pretend that in soccer you can get the same kind of dangerous injuries as in American Football is disingenuous.

<comment><USER30> Getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery happens orders of magnitude less often than getting a concussion in soccer. Don't be disingenuous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thats a strawman to the real question, and of course the top comment has already picked up on it, now claiming that "but back then it was just as unsafe".

So now unsafe, back then unsafe. Seems like we should not be promoting a game that works only on brunt violence.

</comment><comment><USER31> The real issue is as a society what do we do when adults knowingly engage in an activity that is self destructive.

Nobody is forcing them to be football players. Nobody is forcing us to watch.</comment>


The Problem with GitHub Pages - <AUTHOR> http://hackwrite.com/posts/github-pages-problem/ <comment><USER2> I realize that Jekyll isn't everyone's favorite choice of a static build engine [1] and the available installed plugins on GH Pages is a minimal, slim selection, but restricting yourself to Jekyll and the GH Pages supported plugins list seems a reasonable compromise to avoid the issues seen in the article.

You can even stick to the GH Pages version of Jekyll (and supported plugins) and have local test builds: GH Pages provides a meta-gem with the version of Jekyll and plugins that are running in GH right now, and then you can .gitignore the output folder, use this version of Jekyll locally for testing, and reasonably expect GH Pages to build the same output after the commit has been pushed.

Admittedly, the toughest part may be getting that Jekyll installed on a developer's machine, especially for a developer unfamiliar with Jekyll and with no/few other Ruby environment needs. Tools like VMs, Docker, Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, can all help here.

[1] I'd prefer something that wasn't built in Ruby, if wishes were horses, simply because I usually don't have any other need for Ruby on my development machines than Jekyll and I'm not invested in Ruby beyond Jekyll. I know everyone has a different reason.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is this 131-point posting critical of a YC job advert dead? - <AUTHOR>

I know this is getting far too meta for HN, but why is this posting critical of a YC job advertisement on HN dead?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703771
I think it's a valid criticism, with a good amount of interesting discussion that startup founders (and others) could learn from.
Is HN really so disconnected that it can't accept criticism? Or was this marked dead because this is (apparently) an advert for a YC startup?
Until this post, I hadn't even realized HN had advertisements of any sort. This opaque posting of advertisements, and the fact that this criticism is now dead, among other recent events here, is really turning me off of this forum. <comment><USER2> This happens from time to time. Threads critical of, or problematic for y combinator companies or affiliated companies are killed without warning or explanation.

Pg has to protect his assets I guess. This is capitalism after all.

This is what is meant by having contacts and influence in the industry. Pulling strings and all that. One of the most oft cited advantages of being part of yc is being able to call pg for favors, I imagine that includes having threads killed on here.

EDIT: actual job ads can probably be killed by the companies who posted them, however I have seen multiple user submitted links killed in this context, including one I posted myself.

EDIT2: for reference, here is the link i posted that got killed when near the top of the front page:

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com>

we were having a nice discussion about how the top search term referer for reddit is "jailbait" then boom, dead. The motivation for having that one killed isn't hard to see. I'll see if i can find the link to the thread itself...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see how this is terribly problematic for the company, or even YC. It is critical of the posting, but criticism, when done correctly, is helpful. This thread contained offers of help, as well as genuine insight from other industry professionals.

Especially considering that, to those not in the inner circles of YC, the company behind this is unknown, I don't see the upside to killing this post.

Isn't part of HN to be educational? Isn't part of YC accepting criticism and learning from it?

<comment><USER2> YC is about making money.

EDIT: here is the link to that reddit jailbait thread I mentioned: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2367714>

It now mysteriously appears to have been un-killed. I assure you that it was killed at the time. Curiouser and curiouser...

<comment><USER3> It's [dead] for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh cool, you found the discussion. Though I wasn't asking about the moderation exactly, I posted a similar question earlier: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2704833>

I just reviewed the guidelines and my feeling as to why it was removed is because of this:

 _Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to email@example.com_

p/s: Funnily, i think it applies to this post to. :)

Anyway, that is assuming that the post was moderated or deleted by the admins. It could just simply be the OP regretted posting it, deleted it and coincidentally the YC company that posted the job ad decided to remove the ad after receiving much criticism.

<comment><USER5> If you're looking for a suggestion of things to do, I can tell you something that the posters of the original ad didn't do that rubs me the wrong way: Respond to people who have emailed you, even if it's just to say "hey we got your email".

I emailed the company from the original ad because we may have been a great fit (seemed great on paper at least), but heard nothing back at all. Who knows if they put a typo in their throwaway email address, or just don't care; but to me it says a lot about how people run their business.

I know it certainly killed my interest in whatever they were working on.

<comment><USER4> That is actually an excellent suggestion. Would you have mind if it was an automated canned response?

<comment><USER5> Honestly, I think any kind of response is better than no response. If anything just to verify that the email got where it was meant to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm the OP of the criticism. I thought there was some useful feedback in both my post (available at [https://raw.github.com/gist/1051210/fd7008d908c2929f8476ad57...](https://raw.github.com/gist/1051210/fd7008d908c2929f8476ad577b3a7ae3c4cd798f/gistfile1.txt)) and the comments which followed.

However, it was slightly rantish, and some of the comments followed that line as well. I should have been more tactful (whether or not this was a YC company).

</comment><comment><USER7> So criticism of Google, Facebook or Groupon is ok on HN. But criticism of a no named startup is not ok on HN. And it was not a criticism of that startup but it was just of the wordings in their job ad. What kind of censorship is this? On top of that there is no explanation of why the post was deleted.

Land of the free? I don't think so.

<comment><USER8> What caused you to think HN was "land of the free"? That's not implied anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clickable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703771>

</comment><comment><USER10> didnt see the add, just the resulting comments. am curious to.</comment>


Ask HN: Save Github: Improve Github's availability - <AUTHOR>

Github is down again, suffering from a DDOS. Github has a huge talent pool, what would you suggest Github do in order to improve availability of the service?<p>If these outages continue, more developers will continue to leave the platform. Save Github, help them scale, and deal with availability issues. <comment><USER2> "Save Github" is a ridiculous title, I don't think Github is anywhere close to having a problem. They've also got a lot of really smart employees and I don't know what to contribute that they wouldn't already think of. Web services have outages. Github's outages are not significant to me in any way.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think many will leave unless it causes issues in deployment.

It would be nice if githubformac/windows could cache the wiki and issues for my starred/cloned repos automatically, this would be more than enough to satisfy me personally.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe just stop telling it's a DDOS when it's human errors ?

<comment><USER5> How do you know that it's not a DDOS?</comment></comment>


One year with Colemak - <AUTHOR> http://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2014/07/17/one-year-with-colemak <comment><USER2> I switched to Dvorak about 7 years ago. In hindsight I probably should have stayed with Qwerty.

Nobody can use my machines. My girlfriend already knows to Ctrl-Shift to change keyboard layouts, but that's on my PC where Windows is in English. On my laptop with Windows in Spanish it's Alt-Shift. Even I get confused sometimes.

Most games I play don't recognize layouts, so WASD doesn't work. I have to Ctrl-Shift before launching a game. And that's on Windows 8 that has per- session layout. Windows 7 is per window layout so if Ctrl-Shift doesn't work inside the game I have to manually configure keyboard.

Copy Cut Paste become Ctrl I, Ctrl B and Ctrl . I think this is not a problem in Colemak.

My first language is Spanish. After learning Dvorak I no longer use accents or ñ (just Alt-164'd that one) so it's a pain when I type something more or less official that can't have spelling errors.

After that rant, I'm still relatively happy with Dvorak. At least I have something to say on job interviews.

<comment><USER3> As a person with RSI in both wrists, I'm glad I changed to Dvorak last year, including a change to the kinesis keyboard.

That being said, I can never apply to grad school anymore because I can no longer type in qwerty and won't be able to take the way portion of those electronic tests very well. (And that would affect my performance in other sections)

<comment><USER4> I've been looking at the Kinesis keyboards to try to get some relief from wrist pain. Which do you use? Have you tried the MS Natural, or did you go straight to Kinesis?

<comment><USER5> Kinesis can strain your thumbs. I used one for 14 years. Still got major wrist pain and really bad thumb pain. Microsoft Sculpt Mobile and that style of keyboard ended up being my best option.

<comment><USER4> I use the Natural. I bought a Sculpt, but took it back because of the top row of keys being so small, and a couple of other gripes. I bought another Natural, but I always ponder the Kinesis line. Besides the unknown experience, the price is also a factor.

<comment><USER6> My cube-mate has a natural and I use a kinesis. We both thing the keys on the kinesis have noticily better action, but he just can't (doesn't want to) wrap his head around the grid layout. Unless you have very small hands, or you just absolutely hammer on your keyboard, it would be unlikely for the kinesis to make your thumbs sore. The space button on the ms naturl is junk compared to cherry mx brown switches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I switched to Dvorak in high school and have been using it full time for about 13 years. I find I can switch back and forth almost fluently, though I do have to look at the keyboard when typing on qwerty in order to switch my mind into that mode. As a test, I typed the last two sentences on qwerty and it was a bit painful, but not too slow. Maybe 40wpm. I hit 80 on dvorak without thinking.

The biggest thing I notice when going back to qwerty is how horrendously uncomfortable it is. I feel like I'm doing contortionist exercises with my fingers, and my wrists start aching very quickly. Going back to dvorak after that is like switching to the "walk" section of a walk/run interval training session.

I agree with kingmanaz that words just roll off your fingers. Dvorak is like cooking in a kitchen where everything you need is in just the right spot and you can grab it without moving, versus qwerty where everything is over the place and the spices are opposite the stove. You can still cook, and even do it quickly if you know where everything is, but you wind up expending so much more energy moving around.

I did have problems at work when co-workers needed to use my keyboard to do something on my machine. The universal reaction is "what's wrong with your keyboard", sometimes with gratuitous profanity thrown in. Maybe 10% of people realise that it's dvorak without me having to explain. A handful try to hunt- and-peck before giving up and making me do it. One person surprised me by knowing dvorak as well. So, I had work buy me a hardware-switchable dvorak keyboard that has double-labelled keycaps (qwerty in small blue letters). That's solved the problem.

Gaining dvorak fluency in the first place took me about 3 weeks of inability to type, which was hell on a shy geeky 16-year-old whose main social interaction was IRC channels.

The one place I still use qwerty is on my phone. Dvorak is very poorly suited to thumb typing because it breaks autocorrect. Most of the time when you mistype a word, it's still a valid English word, because all the common letters are next to each other.

<comment><USER8> I've acquired a reasonable number of friends, family, and associates who use dvorak. Every so often, I'm surprised when I find someone who uses my keyboard without issue!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're serious about increased typing speed you're probably better off switching to a two-handed chording system [http://www.loper- os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16162](http://www.loper- os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16162) . Alternative layouts for conventional non-chorded typing don't seem to be worth the disruption.

<comment><USER10> Stenography might also be an option:

[http://plover.stenoknight.com/](http://plover.stenoknight.com/)

Here's a video by the stenographer half of the duo that started the project:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb- dB6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g)

<comment><USER9> I mentioned Plover and steno in my linked comment. Basically, classical stenotype and other similar syllabic two-hand chording systems are a big bag of hurt, and probably not well-suited for anything except transcribing spoken English (or whatever natural language your steno system is designed for). A more orthographic system like Velotype [http://www.velotype.com/en/](http://www.velotype.com/en/) / Veyboard [http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html](http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html) is probably better unless you need to optimise for the last iota of transcription speed in one specific spoken language, especially since most of us will never reach professional real-time transcription speeds no matter what keyboard we use. (And OTOH, Velotype is apparently fast enough to be in use for real-time tasks in the Netherlands.)

EDIT: Also, most people would probably be better served doing something about the time they spend moving their right hand between keyboard and mouse than increasing their typing speed.

<comment><USER10> Ah, I see now (for some reason the browser on the other computer I was using before didn't jump to your comment, so I thought this was about Engelbart's chording system). Apologies for the noise.

EDIT: Wow, wrist-button for spacebar. I gotta get me one of these! I always thought it was a waste that we used our most flexible, well-controlled finger for one dumb button.

EDITEDIT: Oh,€1500... Can't that be made cheaper with modern hardware? Wonder if that could be remade as an Arduino (Leonardo) project...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's been about 8.5 years since I switched to Colemak. The most interesting part is indeed working at other computer keyboards. But I managed to keep proficiency at QWERTY (at least for touch typing, perhaps not quickly and until I'm used to it, I look like a drunk...) and though I've since lost it somewhat, I discovered that my fingers were very happy typing different layouts on very distinct keyboards. Even now, a generic Dell keyboard has me thinking QWERTY, while it'd be impossible for me to type on my Das Keyboard Ultimate in QWERTY. Actually what's since messed up my QWERTY the most has been the unusual grid pattern of the Kinesis Advantage. I love it, but it's given me some bad habits at more traditional keyboards. Hardest keyboard for me to type on though, hands down, is a 7-8" tablet's. I'm writing on one now...

</comment><comment><USER12> When I was in college I took up Dvorak for a while. It was definitely an interesting experience trying to switch between Qwerty and Dvorak with any frequency. I found that I could touch type in either, but to type Dvorak I had to look at the screen and to type Qwerty I had to `look' at the keyboard. When I wanted to type Qwerty it didn't matter if my eyes were shut, but my head had to be tilted down.

</comment><comment><USER13> I made thi switch to Dvorak at the tail end of college, just to prove that I could keep learning new things. It was really difficult; work machines were shared so I was using QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home. This bit really struck me:

> After little more than a week, I got to a point where I started to make lots > of mistakes typing Qwerty, but I could not type proper Colemak either. This > was something I had not anticipated: I expected to learn Colemak in addition > to Qwerty, not instead of it!

I felt the same way! Eventually I was 85% proficient at both. Finally, I left for a job where my machine is mine, so I'm 100% Dvorak and my WPM and accuracy has dramatically increased. Unfortunately, those times I -have- had to type in QWERTY, I find myself looking at the keyboard. (I wish there was some form of Dvorak + Kana keyboards for JP).

One upshot to this is that I learned Vim AFTER Dvorak. I've never had to worry about hjkl not being on the home row; they never have been for me! Big plus.

Also, I've found that most games don't care about your input language, they tend to key off of the key signal so traditional wasd keys still function as expected.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish this would have gone more in depth in his experience with colemak and vim. I've considered switching keyboard layouts in the past, but applications with lots of keyboard shortcuts (like vim) make it seem too difficult.

<comment><USER15> I've recently been making the switch to Norman and use vim. I initially tried to remap a bunch of keys (especially hjkl) but you end up going down a path of remapping more than you want.

So I've just started getting used to using the same keybindings just in a different spot. So far it's not too bad. Like anything, you get used to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have tried Dorvak (I can touch type with it, but a lot slower than my non touch typing on QWERTY).

One thing I noticed since then is that as a programmer typing speed or touch typing is not so important. On the command line I have tab completion, and in my IDE I also have the equivalent. It rarely takes more than three keyboard strokes before I can get a sensible list to choose from. Its a lot more efficient than tying top learn to touch type.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been using Colemak for about 6 years now. The difference for me wasn't just speed, but rather that I learned to type "wrong" on Qwerty. I could never get myself to touch type, I always had to look at the keyboard. It turns out that forcing myself to switch layouts fixed that, for whatever reason. To this day I can type with Colemak without looking but have to look if I want to use Qwerty.

<comment><USER18> Exactly! I never touch-typed properly with Qwerty. It was trying to learn proper touch-typing with Qwerty that I got so frustrated trying to unlearn old habits that I picked up Colemak instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm just over the year mark with Colemak as well. Used the Tarmak transitional layouts to get to full Colemak and now use wide-angle mods as well to further improve keyboard ergonomics. On a good day I can hit 70wpm which is faster than I could ever manage with Qwerty. To find out more about this stuff visit the Colemak forum and get chatting with the legendary DreyMar..

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm using Colemak for 2-4 years and I have the same Experience(helping someone using another layout, non-blind typing previous layout, games) as you have. I used Azerty 95% and Qwerty 5% before the switch. Because I don't type much French anymore, I'm not missing Azerty layout.

I'm even using Colemak on Android.

<comment> Ruud-v-A I still use Qwerty on my phone, because I always type with two fingers. Does Colemak have any real advantage there? The muscle memory for two-finger touchscreen typing is different from that for ten-finger blind typing, so that is not an issue for me.

<comment><USER21> The official FAQ recommends against using colemak on smartphones:

[http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#Is_Colemak_suita...](http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#Is_Colemak_suitable_for_smartphones.3F)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone have any experience with minimak [1]? It seems like the 4 key layout would be much easier to handle within Vim than most other alternative keyboard layouts.

1 - [http://www.minimak.org/](http://www.minimak.org/)

<comment><USER23> Very interesting, for the 4 key, k and cntrl-d are really the only keys that would impact my vim usage much.

For heavy vim/emacs (I use evil/emacs) making sure your esc/meta/control keys are large and cleanly accessible is probably a better investment. I resisted even remapping capslock for years but now I'm even working on using control-[ instead of esc (it's universal but may not be the optimum trade for the esc).

Thanks though, I'll put this away for later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Colemak is great until you jump on another machine. Then it's really weird.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm a full time dvorak typist after years of having used qwerty. I re-learned vim's shortcuts for dvorak. The transition took approximately one month. My wrist used to ache after 10+ hours a day typing querty. The fire finally died after I switched and became comfortable with dvorak.

My first impression when revisiting qwerty is a revulsion at the placement of the "t". What a horrible location for such an oft used key. However, most qwerty users will have a similar response when typing "ls -l" on dvorak. Actually, a lot of unix commands were clearly written with qwerty in mind, their letters centering on qwerty's home row. The unix monikers get easier with repetition for dvorak typists, but dvorak's true power comes in writing English, which in my case is most of my typing. Vim works well with either layout, luckily. Most of the programming languages I use - SQL, golang, python, and c# - seem about the same in either layout.

Once you become fluent with dvorak it "rolls" off your fingers. You'll know what I mean once you're there. "The", "another", "masticate", "friend", and most other words with vowels and common consonants spend most of their typed lives on the home row. Both hands share evenly in typing. The common punctuation and quotes are right where you need them.

If you use RDP for most of your remote work the transition is surprisingly easy. Switching between layouts is simple in Windows and Unix. Hell, even my copy of Amiga 3.1 supports dvorak out of the box.

Some here seem to switch their keycaps to a dvorak arrangement. I did this in the past with my Model M but eventually set it back to querty. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I need to look at the keyboard now to type qwerty, thus having the keycaps set to querty serves as a convenient reminder. When typing dvorak I never look down.

<comment><USER21> The position of the "L" is what convinced me to stop learning Dvorak and instead learn Colemak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I noticed an interesting gender stereotype.

"Want to help someone out? _She_ will probably use a Qwerty layout."

I'm not perfect and guilty as well mistakenly defaulting to a user on the internet as a male. Let's try to welcome both genders equally :)

<comment><USER27> Some people are of the school that the term 'she' should be used by default, switching from the traditional assumption that people are male. I personally prefer 'they' but some people seem to take offence/feel it's incorrect to do so. There's quite a tradition in CS writing where people being spoken about are female (can't think of any exact references off the top of my head though).</comment></comment>


'Sally' (Asimov's 1953 short story about robot cars) - <AUTHOR> http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/82060/20/Isaac_Asimovs_Worlds_of_Science_Fiction._Book_9__Robots.html <comment><USER2> I can't recall if it was this link or a reference in a comment somewhere else that caused me to go read this story yesterday, but I really enjoyed it. I also ended up reading "The Tunnel Under the World" [1] by Frederik Pohl and "How-2" [2] by Clifford Simak. Then, today, in a moment of serendipity, I ran across a recent paper [3] and article [4] questioning whether the increase of automation and unmanned vehicles in military use is going to bring about defense robots turning on their masters. The paper appears to be behind a pay- wall, so I've linked to the abstract. Those with university library access may be able to grab it.

[1] [http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/82060/3/Isaac_Asimovs_...](http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/82060/3/Isaac_Asimovs_Worlds_of_Science_Fiction._Book_9__Robots.html)

[2] [http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/82060/14/Isaac_Asimovs...](http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/82060/14/Isaac_Asimovs_Worlds_of_Science_Fiction._Book_9__Robots.html)

[3] [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0952813X.2014.895...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0952813X.2014.895111#.U4c9tfldVNs)

[4] [http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2014/05/21/Autonomous- arm...](http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2014/05/21/Autonomous-arms-race-AI- robots.aspx?s=ds_280514&Page=1#)</comment>


Ask HN: A realtime video warping solution - <AUTHOR> Hi All.
For the past few months I've been struggling to find a solution to creating a sub-$200 realtime HD video warping solution.
I'm developing a curved display product and I need a solution to perform geometric correction of regular flat/rectangular content so that it appears fine on the curved surface.
To perform the warping I can do it at various levels:
1. At app level utilising software that incorporates the warping for specific purposes (I've got a few that do this).
2. Using desktop warping software. I've come across $500+ warping solutions for Windows, Mac and Linux. Noting on Android. These solutions are not user-friendly
3. Utilise an existing commercially available warp box. A/V providers who have digital scaling solutions supply these. They're pretty expensive: $3500+
4. Find a projector with built-in warping capabilities - these are generally $4000 to $17000
5. Build my own warp box: I've found semiconductor companies with chips that perform geometric correction. However they only supply evaluation boards. To design my own PC Board with HDMI-in & HDCP that warps the content and outputs via HDMI is probably going to cost beyond $10k after development and certification.
6. Use an Android Media Player with HDMI in/out and HDMI passthrough capability to warp the content in realtime utilising OpenGL mapping techniques. I've been searching for a freelancer on various platforms that can help me do this on an Android Media Player that I believe offers the potential to be a low-cost warping solution but to-date I have had no luck in finding a developer that can do this.
The gig: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01ee348a91b5cca1a9
Is their anyone on HN that can suggest a viable warping solution and/or help me develop it? Will pay for it.
- Zaid <comment><USER2> Hello Zaid, How many units are looking to build? Which semiconductor companies have looked at? What is your upper limit on the cash you want to spend? How big is your video database? Sorry a lot of questions, but I've some experience in this field.</comment>


War Elephants - <AUTHOR> https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part-i-battle-pachyderms/ <comment><USER2> I'd just like to note that the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds has a probably- unique surviving suit of elephant armour, which is displayed on a stuffed elephant in pride of place:

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/bb/15/43bb154f887b493c76c3...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/bb/15/43bb154f887b493c76c300535bbf47c8.jpg)

 _Not_ on display due to conservation issues (but noted on the display text) are the tusk swords, because once you've got an angry Indian elephant wearing armor pointed at the enemy why _wouldn 't_ you strap a pair of giant swords to its tusks?

If you're ever in Leeds — in the UK — I'd highly recommend a day trip to the Royal Armouries, especially if you have any kind of interest in the history of armour, guns, and murder cutlery.

(Posted to add a reality-based perspective to the 100% fictional imagery of war elephants in the OP.)

<comment><USER3> Were the tusk swords just strapped on? If so, I find it odd that displaying them would be controversial.

<comment><USER4> FYI he said "conservation issues", not controversial. They're probably brittle and can't support their own weight safely.

<comment><USER5> Ah, thanks. It was confusing to me. Another word that I think might fit better would be, "preservation."

<comment><USER6> Perhaps that's yet another case where British English diverges a bit from American English.

I didn't find an explicit quote, but for example look: there is this institute in UK called "institute of conservation" [https://icon.org.uk/groups/archaeology/about- archaeological-...](https://icon.org.uk/groups/archaeology/about- archaeological-conservation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Guess no discussion of War elephants can be complete without their use by Porus in war against Alexander's Indian campaign - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes)

<comment><USER8> This is discussed at some length in the article and how the 2004 movie got certain aspects of the war elephants wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They mentioned the war elephants used by Hannibal in the Battle of Zama (during the Second Punic War), but only briefly. The opposing Roman general, Scipio Africanus, was already prepared to deal with the elephants, effectively using them _against_ Hannibal.

While elephants can take on the role of an almost tank-like unit on the battlefield, they still have an inherent sense of self-preservation; when given the choice of running into a wall of soldiers wielding spears vs going through an open path in between, they will opt for the path of least resistance. With this in mind, Scipio was able to effectively set up his army's formation.

<comment><USER10> From what my extended family in India told me, it is relatively easy to get elephants trained for work, but training war elephants was extremely hard and required a lot of time. Having said that, well trained war elephants, although harder to come by, held to their nerves during the battle and were very devastating; Given they encounter the army they were trained to fight.

During the first battle of Panipat, the invading Mughals had canons, which the opposing War Elephants were not trained for, and their alien sound broke their charge. If, for example, those elephants were trained with Canons in mind, they would probably have been successful in their charge.

I am talking about Indian elephants though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Those Total War games are worth checking out. They've basically been iterating for 20 years on the same engine and have made a whole bunch of titles, mostly with a view to historical accuracy. They made a fantasy title from the tabletop Warhammer game, it's arguably more fun because of the sheer variety in units, the scale of it is also ludicrous like maybe you have a battle with 10,000 units fighting each other.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_(series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_\(series\))

<comment><USER12> Rome Total War (the original) is one of the most fun and replayable games out there. It's also still got a massive modding community, that have expanded the base game in enormous ways - the Rome Total Realism[1] and Europa Barbarorum[2] mods are very well done, if you want to go for a bigger and more historically accurate experience.

The successor Medieval 2 is arguably the high point of the entire series.

Rome 2 Total War was sadly not nearly as good; it may be playable at this point, but I was very disappointed with it.

[1] [http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?26-Rome- Tota...](http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?26-Rome-Total- Realism-\(RTR\))

[2] [https://www.europabarbarorum.com/EB1/](https://www.europabarbarorum.com/EB1/)

<comment><USER13> Bingo. Even though CA actually did put some effort into getting Rome:II TW patched/updated it still is no where near the level of the original. Medieval:II is the high water mark for the series (with Rome being an _extremely_ close second) and that is unlikely to change anytime soon, based on CA's current lineup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What a fantastic blog. Its follow up to this post, focusing on the logistics of raising and feeding an elephant army, is even better: [https://acoup.blog/2019/08/02/collections-war-elephants- part...](https://acoup.blog/2019/08/02/collections-war-elephants-part-ii- elephants-against-wolves/)

</comment><comment><USER15> According to the Islamic tradition, before the Hijri calendar was established, the Arabs used the "aam-ul-feel" \- the "year of the elephant" \- marked by the event of Mecca being under attack by an army with war elephants. There's a small chapter in the Quran called "The Elephant" about this.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unmitigated Pedantry

</comment><comment><USER17> I rode a War Elephant^1 for years. They are pretty bitching. Great for stomping kobolds and goblins without rusting up your blade on their vile blood.

[1] in D&D

<comment><USER18> I actually did ride an angry bull elephant in real life in the jungles of Chitwan national park ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitwan_National_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitwan_National_Park)) in Nepal when I was in 7th grade. I was on the elephant along with its mahout (controller) and my parents and let me tell you it is not fun. I saw it topple a boat full of passengers over (thankfully they stepped out into the river before he could do any damage and the river was 2-3 feet deep).

Apparently, it was mating season and he didn't like being separated from his female when we started the ride. The mahout eventually brought him under control but it was an experience worth remembering none-the-less.

<comment><USER10> Why would the mahout let you ride a mast elephant?

<comment><USER18> No idea. We didn't even know he was a bull.

It was part of the safari experience where one group will go on elephant back into the forest to spot tigers/leopards/rhinos,etc and the other group would go in small boats in the river to spot gharials ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharial)).

The boat that was toppled was full of tourists going for that. After the mahout got him under control though there were no other incidents. We were on him for the full 4 hours.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gun – Distributed, embedded graph engine - <AUTHOR> http://db.marknadal.com/gun/index.html <comment><USER3> This actually sounds like a pretty cool and useful project, but I had to force myself to overcome the site, which I think does a poor job of marketing.

The headline is a bit confusing -- it's not obvious that something can be "embedded" and "distributed", let alone "massively." You might rewrite it to tell me what the project _does_ , not what it _is_.

Besides that, as a developer, what I want to know is:

\- Why should I use it? (Instant in-browser storage synced to a distributed server network)

\- How is it implemented? (it seems to be a javascript project, but that's only mentioned once)

\- How do I run it? (It run daemons on servers and stores the data in S3)

\- What do I have to do to configure it? (Seems to me like "The granularity and frequency of these snapshots can be tweaked by you" means "Prepare to get elbow-deep into telling gun how to shard")

If you just take the answers to these questions and make them either bullet points up above the video, or headers for your marketing essay, it would help people like me digest the project enough to be interested and read more.

Finally, while I'm being a grinch, I'd adjust your styles just slightly to make the site more readable. At the very least:

\- Make `#main` narrower; perhaps 700px or even less (long lines are hard to read)

\- In `body`, apply a line-height of maybe 20pt (the lines seem too close together for the font size)

\- Also in `body`, drop the text-shadow. Shadow on white tends to just make things look blurry.

All that said, I _am_ interested in learning more. A self-hosted Firebase would be a real boon for many projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions! Already fixed one of the things, and working on updating the others! (Although content will take a while longer). Thank you so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This title is bad. It's not an embedded database engine. It's not a database at all. The author mentions this directly in the article (How are you different from every other database that is trying to reinvent the wheel? 1. Because gun is not a database (NoDB), it is a persisted distributed cache.)

There are other possible issues, but this short summary doesn't give nearly enough information about the system to make a possible determination on its efficacy. I will be interested to see further work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey _dark_matter_,

Thanks for the comment! I'll be doing follow up posts soon on the technical details of my conflict resolution algorithms, and will be preparing Jepsen tests for gun. I just wanted to formally announce this now, though, as I have a tendency to overly-perfect stuff, and getting feedback early on is great. Mind listing things you would like me write in-depth posts on? Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER4> Hey Mark, I'm interested in several different features.

First off, you make a great point about "Hosting your own database is a pain" and/or expensive. I'm sure you know about the raging debate that has been happening between MapReduce and Parallel DBs, and a big part of the reason that MapReduce (Hadoop) style has had so much support is because it's easy and cheap. In lots of instances it may run slower, but why pay for the hassle when you can just run Hadoop for free (not including server costs)? You're making the same point here. Whats the threshold on money savings? How much does it cost to use a DaaS (SQL or NoSQL) compared to what you want to do with Gun/Redis? (Also, is this going to be open source?)

Next, the conflict resolution should be interesting. What kind of eventual consistency guarantees are you hoping to have? I see you're planning on addressing this.

I'm also interested in the querying. That is, are you using Javascript? My problem with what you're saying about current query languages is that it's not really _that_ hard to get the bare usage out of them. Simple queries in SQL are extremely straightforward. In addition, declarative languages really make things easier for the programmer, not harder. Who wants to have to deal with all the nuances of a join? Certainly not me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Realistically I won't have cost-comparisons for a while, as this project is just in the infancy and obviously needs to stabilize/mature first. Although as a quick summary, your costs should approximately be server(s) that are expensive enough to fit your smallest set of per-user active-data, plus your S3 storage amount, plus S3 API calls (I've made this part a simple options parameter, so you control how often these calls are being made - the more frequent, the more integrity from worst-case disruptions but also more expensive, less frequent and your costs go down).

What is worst-case disruption? Everything goes offline simultaneously. User's don't have localstorage fallbacks in their phone/browser so retries rely on the server cache. The server cache is running the default method, not Redis - and then your server crashes or the machine goes under. And finally, of course, there is an S3 outage and you only persisted to 1 region, not multiple regions.

I'll get into hairy situations like that in some of my following posts, but too much for here.

Yes, you have another good point about query languages. I agree with you very much - somebody else commented about this, check out my reply to muaddirac. Please keep in touch with more questions/comments, or even email me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found the header image a bit disconcerting, and immediately hit Back (I'm at work).

<comment><USER6> Pictures of guns are offensive and dangerous at work now?

Really?

<comment><USER7> Heck, I used to work in an office where most people had similar weapons on them at all times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting!

> you never have to learn some silly separate query language again. A query > language which just attempts to be some DSL to RPC another machine into > doing the same query you could have already written in half the time it took > to learn the query language.

Not sure I agree with this sentiment - most programming languages aren't declarative like query languages are, and that seems especially useful for, well, querying.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true. The neat thing about the modular design I have for gun is that people can always write a plugin that receives some/any query language, and then translates it directly into the appropriate algorithms. So you should be able to write your own abstractions ontop - but this is only possible because you are able to write the direct queries underneath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm withholding my judgment on the tech - it all seems a little too good to be true - but the copy on your page is great, I actually read every line of it which rarely ever happens when I visit a technical page.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey, I'm confused by the statement, "No amount of leader election and consensus algorithms can patch this without facing an unjustified amount of complexity. Gun resolves all this by biting the bullet - it solves the hard problems first, not last. It gets data synchronization and conflict resolution right from the beginning, so it never has to rely on vulnerable leader election or consensus locking".

My question is, how do you solve data synchronization and conflict resolution, without using the techniques that do that, i.e. leader election, or some other type of consensus algorithm?

<comment><AUTHOR> Gun's conflict resolution algorithm is deterministic, meaning that it will choose the same answer on every peer without having to communicate with others which value it chose. This even works when the ordering of incoming updates is switched depending upon which server was the "I" sending updates out to "you" (pronouns, analogously, are inverse of each other depending upon which person is doing the talking). Uh, this is not clear/sounds confusing, I'll explain it better in my post that goes over how the resolution algorithm works. (Basically the gist is that sometimes for two servers to agree on the "same" answer they both have to have an algorithm which results in an inverse condition from what the other would answer - similar to how quantum-entangled particles have opposite spins of each other to "balance out")

Point being, this makes gun truly peer to peer, because it behaves correctly if its the only one running, or if there are numerous guns interconnected with each other. No leader election, no consensus algorithm - you don't need those, because the system agrees as soon as the update are received because it resolves them immediately with an idempotent algorithm. Make sense? More details on this soon.

<comment><USER10> Then I look forward to your next post. Can you give me a preview on what type of failure model Gun can support? Consensus is easy assuming there are no faults, but if faults are possible, then leadership election, paxos, whatever, something is needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> First let me go over the levels of redundancy:

1\. In memory in the browser tab's process.

2\. If available, in the browser's localstorage or fallback.

3\. In the server process's memory.

4\. If available, in Redis on the server.

5\. If in a multi-machine setup, any other connected server that is subscribed to that data set, being in memory (3) or in Redis (4) if available.

6\. If configured, in a machine log on S3.

7\. Persisted to S3, which replicates and shards it for you internally.

8\. If configured, in a revision file on S3.

9\. If configured, in a multi-region S3 setup, redundantly in many places.

(2) is not cleared till an acknowledgment that (7) is confirmed. (1) is not cleared until an acknowledgement that (7) is confirmed or if the tab is exited. In the case of (7) it is no longer the delta/diff, but a snapshot of that current data set with that delta/diff's update. Retries from (1) ~ (5) will happen at various events, if the confirmations are not satisfied. If a conflict has already occurred by (3) the acknowledgement from (5) will include a notification that the value has already been updated, along with the standard delta/diff of that conflicting update being sent down. Meaning (5) does not guarantee that your delta/diff has "won", only that it has been saved or is already outdated.

Worst case condition is that (2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9) are turned off, in which your user's data is as volatile as them preemptively leaving the page (although I suppose you could use an onbeforeunload to warn them) - however this behavior is the current norm for most http post based forms and apps. Actually, pardon me, worst case condition is that everything is offline simultaneously, however this is not really interesting because then users won't even be able to access your app in the first place.

Please correct me if I have my terms wrong:

Fail stop - since gun runs in your application process, any bugs or errors in gun should result in a standard error being thrown. In the case of javascript, your process will crash. Generally speaking you are responsible for the liveliness of your app uptime, however if you use some of my other existing open source libraries, they will respawn the process for you. When your app restarts, so will gun.

Receive omission - as mentioned before, the peer that originated the message will attempt to retry messages until a confirmation is given. So even if a process somehow does not receive a message, it eventually will, unless the origin gives up.

Send omission - this is a bit trickier, gun tries its best to keep user changes by all means possible until a confirmation is received. If for some reason gun is unable to do this, or the user's browser starts going haywire and doing weird things... you have no way to know and neither does gun. At this level, something is fundamentally wrong with the runtime or the OS, and gun has no way to check this.

Arbitrary - malicious attacks are best done from server peers, however this would require the malicious node to know your key. Currently the event of this happening may be decently high, as all it would require is for an attacker to take over an IP that another one of your gun node might connect to - <USER2> connecting node will issue the key as proof of being not malicious. I definitely could use some help on figuring out a more secure, yet still fully decentralized means of authentication and trustworthiness of server nodes. In the instance of byzantine mistakes, this will only effect the system if the message actually complies with the spec - in which case it does, the message is indistinguishable from a real request, therefore will be treated as one. And finally, what about an intentionally malicious user? The way gun's conflict resolution algorithms work makes it very difficult to be abused in any way that is actually meaningful to the malicious user, but I'm saving the details of this for a real post. That being said, such abuse will happen and I can already describe the results for you - "annoying" and "spammy" \- luckily gun as filters built into the piping channels, so if you as the developer notice any particularly fishy behavior, you can always block that user out.

Recovery - when gun starts (or restarts) it goes about its usual business of checking its cache (if Redis is available) and retrying whatever is there that had failed to be cleared, listening to messages which may be retries of things that had failed to be cached (especially in the case Redis isn't enabled), and intelligently pulling things back in from S3. When any data set is loaded into gun it will also subscribe to that data set so it can be notified of updates from any other node, gun will also merge (using the same conflict resolution algorithms) the data set it got from S3 with any other node that also has that data set, and even replay some persisted logs if available. This way it boots itself back up into the most valid and live operating status that it can.

Partitions - there are 9 different layers, of which communication and networking can all fail or go out. That is about 9 factorial amount of combinations that can, could, and probably will go wrong (although this is an over estimation since not all the layers require networking). I simply can't cover them in this comment, but will go over some of the most concerning and common cases in a separate post - I also plan on building a partition simulator, so that way people can play with causing these issues, and so that I can do testing against them. That being said, gun as a strong commitment to handling these things, since it can afford to (since gun is eventually consistent, we have time to make up for networking problems). I hope this comment was helpful in what I did go over - I'm not sure if you'll even wind up seeing it (please notify me that you did! Even if that is just an upvote) I'll probably reuse a lot of this in one of my actual posts.

Thanks again! Anything else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice idea which mirrors a lot of my current thinking; far more details are needed.

For example: "All conflict resolution happens locally in each peer using a deterministic algorithm." Hrrrmm.... if the model is to use CRDTs for conflict free resolution I can believe it; if it's timestamps, for instance, I'm much more doubtful.

<comment><AUTHOR> noelwelsh, thanks for the comment! Timestamps do fail pretty miserably for handling conflict resolution - while my algorithm does use timestamps, the timestamp is hardly responsible for the actual synchronization. It just provides a basis to initially sort things off of, and then the conflict resolution kicks in. Obviously I'm going to need to do a pretty detailed post on how this works, cause unless it can be battled-tested and skeptically investigated by others, it is only as good as snake oil. So more on this soon! Thanks for bringing it up.

<comment><USER12> Conflict resolution is the main question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How would gun handle user auth and data that can only be seen by the authenticated user?

<comment><AUTHOR> So I'm making sure that the concepts of piping and transforms are built right into the API, so you'll be able to easily filter out data by whitelists or blacklists as it is getting pushed down to your users. I'll also be writing plugins to gun that will allow people who like ORMs to just attach one on, and the filtering and validation will be handled for them. Does this answer your question?

<comment><USER13> Yes conceptually it does, I would be interested to see how it is implemented. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me a little of Meteor and a bit more of ShareJS. And it reminds me of a few other things.

As far as transformations and conflict resolution, I am wondering, are you using something like operational transformations?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to develop my own synchronization algorithms after doing a lot of research on OT for a couple of reasons. One is that Google sometimes relies on being a centralized authority (Google's server) to resolve some conflicts, especially for collaborative rich text editing (Neil Fraser, a sync genius that Google hired, has a great talk on his own type of implementation "diff- match-patch", although Google uses different algorithms now I believe). Another is that OT sometimes requires you writing your own transformation commands, and I wanted something that was generally applicable to most data types without forcing developers to write their own. (It has been a while since I did a lot of this reading, so this comment may not necessarily be accurate/true, please somebody correct me!)

Instead, I developed my own method, called "Analytical Fluctuation" \- but I haven't written papers on it yet, but need to soon! One requirement is that it has to be truly peer to peer and cannot rely (even occasionally) on some centralized server or leader election setup. Another requirement is that it has to be latent proof, which for me means "preparing for the future" when people need to collaborate on documents not only from the other side of the world but also from Mars. This is where Neil Fraser says his system breaks down, because if there is too much latency, the patches stop applying idempotently. Again, more on this in upcoming posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So CAP: which does gun throw off the island? Based on this statement ...

> It bridges the distance with a realtime connection, so updates propagate at > the speed of the raw pipes linking them.

... I'm assuming it's the P.

<comment><USER16> CA system's don't exist so it must be CP or AP.

      However, further consideration shows that CA is not really a
      coherent option because a system that is not Partition-
      tolerant will, by definition, be forced to give up
      Consistency or Availability during a partition.

[https://foundationdb.com/white-papers/the-cap- theorem](https://foundationdb.com/white-papers/the-cap-theorem)

<comment><USER17> It could also be neither, which is a popular choice these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Because face it, any sufficiently capable query language has to be Turing complete" \- No, no it doesn't. Stock SQL is not Turing complete. There are extensions that support recursion to make it so, but it is perfectly possible and capable of doing everything you could reasonably want without it.

Caching is hard. Consistency is hard. Peer to peer is hard. I hope the author is addressing these in a sane, verifiable way. I'm really curious to see the demo apps that come out of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I apologize, I wasn't saying every query language /is/ Turing complete, just that to do exponentially more complicated tasks in a single atomic query... the lines start to blur between the two.

Yes, these are hard subjects - especially things like cache invalidation. You raise good points, and I hope to answer them in the follow up posts I write - I expect your's and other's good eye to check my work. I'll let people know when I've written them. Demos are coming too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Regardless of the title being confusing or not, this seems pretty interesting! Would like to see how it performs under some heavy load / multiple sources of data.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not everyone is familiar with the concept of NoDB so this paper [1] is a good read to start with.

[1] [http://bit.ly/RjBl9S](http://bit.ly/RjBl9S)

</comment><comment><USER21> What license is the code distributed under? It is not clear from the site or the code that is available through npm.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have been looking for something just like this! Fantastic

</comment><comment><USER23> The name "gun": a) has negative connotations, b) is ungoogleable, c) can't even write about it without being ungrammatical and d) will be filtered out at some workplaces.

Dumb, de-dumb dumb dumb.</comment>


Best YC App: Medfly – Goodbye Designers - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I think designing anything like an ad, brochure or photobook should be an integral part of life and it should be made accessible and simple to everyone. I'm very much looking forward to hearing some comments from you. Just check out gomedfly.com, thanks! <comment><USER2> How does it work? Is this like an online Photoshop? Or you have a staff of designers making designs for people? Or it's a list of prebuilt templates? Or what?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are prebuilt templates to start with, you can also customize from there. It's like online Photoshop just that it's easier to use without learning curve involved. I'm not sure about you, but I took years to learn Photoshop to create the effects the way I want. It just takes took long, and many of my friends gave up too. So this is something you use on your own without having to get people to work on it for you, like a DIY thing. Are you into design? Is software a problem for you?

<comment><USER2> No I was just wondering because the website contained very little info on the product, so not much to go on.

Personally I'm a software developer and hire out my designs.

Good luck on this project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Anthony! Our intention was to keep the web as simple as possible, shall work on the detail a bit more. We are currently putting together a video to illustrate it further. Hopefully this product can be of help to you. In any case, I've done design for 10 years, if you need immediate help, hope I can provide a few cents worth :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you measure fire-in-the-belly? - <AUTHOR>

How do I screen early tech contributors to my startup for their "fire in the belly?" Not everyone is willing to eat Ramen and roll with the punches but the economic climate has made it harder to tell who's really hungry and who's just looking for a meal. We are pursuing a database driven application for mobile. We have some funding but we are running lean and I am afraid of making some bad early hires in this regard. We're in Seattle and I have been initially enthused about some very smart off-the-bench retirees from large local tech companies. I have come to my senses before an offer letter has been written but I am looking for other tips and ideas. See my profile if you would prefer to contact me directly. <comment><USER2> Since startups are by their natures unpredictable, what level of unpredictability will your candidates realistically tolerate? Requests for deferred compensation, for example, is a tipoff that a candidate has big company expectations that cannot be satisfied by most startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone that rolls their eyes after you use 'mobile' as a collective noun is a good bet.</comment>