Video Mashup of Advice from the World's Best Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://reelsurfer.com/watch/share/19794

<comment><USER2> Since njoglekar is here from reelsurfer, some comments: I love the idea, but I wished that the name of the person was being displayed while the video was being played. The videos need some context.

Also the clips seemed to short. 3 seconds, 5 seconds, is far too short for a video clip. My mind needs to take at least a couple of seconds to adjust to what I am seeing, and process the context around that. By the time I had just started to feel comfortable with the video, the clip was over and the next clip was starting.

Not sure if there is a solution to this. Perhaps longer pause times between clips, or video title above the videos?

And your web site needs the love of a designer.

But I'll end on a positive, I'd love to see more clips like this - the 10 best X back-to-back-to-back. No clicking, no watching 30 minutes of video to see the good part... Keep going with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the helpful message, will answer in order:

1\. The clips are short because the user who clipped them decided to make them that short. We would love to see your favorite clips (and they can be longer than a few seconds)

2\. We are debating putting pauses between the clips, it really depends what kind of video it is. The video title is viewable upon hover - perhaps we should put it at the top of the page?

3\. Any designers that you know well?

4\. Thanks! we would love to see you make a best of list as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The compilation itself is great, but I think we (in the tech community) suffer too much from tunnel vision and this headline seems to be an example of that. These may be the world's best _tech_ entrepreneurs, but there are much more successful people out there building businesses, risking capital and creating wealth outside of the vacuum of silicon valley. People that are building _actual_ business and selling products that people use -- not a bunch of VC's rolling the dice with other people's money.

<comment><USER4> What do you consider to be the difference between Apple and an _actual_ business?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was made by one of our users, we would love to see what clips / advice the HN community thinks is missing

<comment><USER5> "Don't let society tell you how to live." [21:30, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umLkfADe17s>]

<comment><AUTHOR> why don't you cut the clip using ReelSurfer and we can add it to the mashup?

<comment><USER5> "The owner of this video has disabled clipping. Try a different video." Bad luck aside, ReelSurfer is a nice tool. 0.02$: Find a workaround to this: it will damage UX of your first users.

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point if the video has its embed functionality disabled there is no way to clip it. Trying to figure out workarounds now

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> njoglekar, I am running a similar product, although it seems we target different customers, so I hope you don't mind if I chime in. Here is a similar playlist: <https://www.everytimehq.com/playlists/302-inspiring>

<comment><AUTHOR> very cool, are you working on this alone? Perhaps you could benefit from our APIs?

<comment><USER6> thanks. yes, I am currently on my own on this project. I did not realise you had an API, can you point me to some doc? I cannot find any.

<comment><AUTHOR> can you shoot me an email neil at reelsurfer.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> great idea. however the execution could be better. make the transition smoother, have some sort of motivational background music that pumps you up. it can also be a bit longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We are working on the transitions - we are somewhat at the mercy of connections and the video provider.

We are deciding the best way to add music. Love to see any lists you can make!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Efficient dosage of inspiration -- thanks.

</comment><comment><USER9> aw, Elon Musk didn't make the cut.

<comment><AUTHOR> any particular clip / quote you like?

<comment><USER10> After crashing his third rocket in a row, there was this exchange with a writer at Wired:

Wired.com: At the end of the day you're still zero for three; you have so far failed to put a rocket into orbit.

Musk: We haven't gotten into orbit, true, but we've made considerable progress. If it's an all-or-nothing proposition then we've failed. But it's not all or nothing. We must get to orbit eventually, and we will. It might take us one, two or three more tries, but we will. We will make it work.

Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism?

Musk: Do I sound optimistic?

Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.

Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.</comment></comment></comment>


Mark Cuban: Talking the IPad, Kids, Making Money and Video - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2010/01/28/talking-the-ipad-kids-making-money-and-video/ <comment><USER2> "Less bandwidth consumed means ATT can offer a GREAT price on the 3G data service."

My understanding is that the iPhone, with it's "no flash" and concommitant "far less streaming", is crippling AT&T's rusty 3g network as we speak.

<comment><USER3> What's even better is that in the paragraph immediately before that sentence, he talks about downloading a movie for the kids.

That should keep bandwidth usage down.

Better yet- even the highest capacity model won't be storing many movies, so it'll be download each time you want to watch them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Whats also big is the exclusion of flash. The reason is obvious. No flash. Far less streaming over 3G. Less streaming over 3G means less bandwidth consumed. Less bandwidth consumed means ATT can offer a GREAT price on the 3G data service. I personally have never had problems with the ATT Network. The limits on 3G streaming probably means I wont going forward either. Thats a good thing._

I don't think that's the reason. The primary provider of streaming Flash video is YouTube, and despite the iPad's lack of Flash, it ships with a built-in YouTube player.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I don't think Flash has anything to do with the 3G streaming issues. On the plus side for iPad users, they should be very happy with their contract-free 3G service, because it will never drop a call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm constantly amazed that Mark Cuban continues to be regarded as relevant...

Not a personal insult to the guy, but his technology commentary is pretty shallow most of the time.

<comment><USER6> Mark Cuban is a good source for the "every man" point of view as his views on things are largely incorrect and shallow. I take his opinion on this device as a kid pacifier very seriously. I believe many other people might be similarly inclined. "Here kids. Go play with your iPad." No kids installing virus software, no tech support needed. It's like a Fisher-Price computer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do investors "blacklist" companies that raise with equity crowdfunding? - <AUTHOR> I've heard multiple times that VCs and even some angels tend to pass on if not outright blacklist companies that have raised via equity crowdfunding.
The idea is that they see this as a sign that a company could not raise conventionally, has been "over-shopped," etc.
Is this actually true or is it FUD? Not considering equity crowdfunding at the moment, but I've been watching the phenomenon and I'm curious.
Also generally curious if anyone here has done it and how it turned out. <comment><USER2> I've done direct investments in companies and equity crowdfunding via sites like Wefunder. I don't think what you are hearing is true. People (and funds) chase returns and will invest where they can get them.

In the long run, say 5 to 10 yrs, the VCs role will be diminished at least somewhat. Look at Gnosis, who just raised 12MM at a valuation of 300MM, without traditional VC.</comment>


The Road to Openpilot 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@comma_ai/the-road-to-openpilot-1-0-33829ca94b0c <comment><AUTHOR> comma.ai have also released a blogpost of their research team [0]

[https://medium.com/@comma_ai/towards-a-superhuman-driving- ag...](https://medium.com/@comma_ai/towards-a-superhuman-driving- agent-1f7391e2e8ec)</comment>


How My Smart Phone Contributed To Getting Me Out Of A Speeding Ticket - <AUTHOR> http://skattertech.com/2011/02/how-my-smart-phone-got-me-out-of-a-speeding-ticket-in-traffic-court/ <comment><USER2> You got off because the Radar gun didn't have a certificate of Calibration less than 6 months old. Plain and simple. In almost every state radar guns must be operated according to the manufacturers directions which includes calibration every 6 months. If the Officer doesn't have an up to date calibration certificate, he has no case.

<comment><USER3> Agree with the above. I have a fair amount of experience with traffic court- you did not get off because of your GPS; it was because of the officer's answers to your questions. Good job asking, though.

The #1 tip for any court situation like this is the question the officer about events on the day it happened. By default the officer's word (and/or his radar gun) is worth more than your own, but if you can get him to say ANYTHING that calls into question his recollection of events, then his credibility is reduced. Incidentally this is also why most cops take great notes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "He mentioned that he was not familiar enough with GPS technology to make a decision based on my evidence, but I can't help but imagine that it was an important factor."

So the judge categorically stated that it wasn't a factor in his decision but the author imagines it was...

The difference between what you want to hear and what was actually said.

The reality is that he got lucky because he heard what the lawyer before him said and copied it and the police officer was ill prepared (possibly because he knew that the defendant was representing himself which is normally a sign that someone doesn't know what they're doing).

<comment><USER5> I assumed the judge didn't want to set a legal precedent for accepting cell phone GPS data. He entered the verdict in such a way that it couldn't be used to influence later cases.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that a local traffic court, in what's certainly an unpublished ruling, _can_ create a precedent. That's not how the system works.

<comment><USER7> No, that _is_ how the system works. However, precedents can only go "downhill." From Wikipedia:

 _"a lower court must honor findings of law made by a higher court that is within the appeals path of cases the court hears"_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis>

Given, this court may not have any lower courts, in which case you'd be right - albeit for the wrong reason.

<comment><USER6> _this court may not have any lower courts, in which case you'd be right - albeit for the wrong reason._

Actually, that was precisely what I was saying. It's obvious to me that a local traffic court has no lower courts below it.

In addition, to be a precedent, the decision needs to be published (as I understand it, but IANAL). When you think about it, this must be true: no court can follow a precedent that cannot be discovered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Officer: I clocked you going 40 miles per hours. Driver: I wasn't going to be out that long.

GPS measures average speed (delta position vs delta time). Radar guns measure instantaneous speed (doppler shift).

GPS also tends to be less accurate in a partial Faraday cage (like a metal vehicle).

Bottom line: don't expect GPS to get you out of your speeding ticket with a tech-savvy judge.

<comment><USER9> Technically, GPS uses both pseudorange and doppler data as an input. These are usually combined with the previously measured position and speed using a Kalman filter. Speed is generally more accurate than position (to the extent that it makes any sense to compare them) because pseudorange errors tend to change comparatively slowly. Of course how the receiver outputs the speed is up to it, but since it falls out of the position calculation for free it's unlikely many will be storing straight delta position/delta time.

Having said that, it's not especially strong evidence since it's pretty trivial to fake. However, in this case the title is correct: it _contributed_ to him getting off because it gave him the confidence to challenge the ticket.

<comment><USER10> Sure it's easy to fake, but you are under oath. You can stand up there all day and say that, to the best of your knowledge you were not speeding and not perjure yourself. If you get up there with forged documents and get caught, that's something else entirely. So, they are not iron-clad evidence, but they should be pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like a non story to me. The judge did not confirm at all the GPS data affected their decision.

However, I have used GPS data successfully in a somewhat similar situation. I was riding my bicycle to work and got hit by a car that was pulling out of a driveway. My GPS recorded the entire incident and showed quite clearly that the car pulled out and hit me well after I had already ridden pass the driveway, showing they just plain weren't looking (and not the other way around). The whole incident ended up in my favor.

<comment><USER12> GPS is only accurate to 5-10 metres so it would be impossible to _accurately_ tell you were in front of a driveway with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I run at least one logging GPS in my car at all times for OpenStreetMap mapping. As a result, I've asked several lawyer friends about this situation should I ever be cited for speeding. Just about everyone has said that the GPS data would most likely be overlooked because it can easily be faked (or at least the decision makers have that perception) and/or judges don't know about it (so they default to ignoring it).

<comment><USER14> Another problem with GPS is the accuracy (or lack thereof). Sometimes you get a good GPS signal (e.g. outside, clear view of the sky etc.), sometimes you don't, and you position could be off by 10m. Some GPS store the accuracy of each track point (e.g. VDOP and HDOP), some don't. If your GPS doesn't store the accuracy, then someone could claim your GPS is off by 20m, and hence you were speding (or the data is unreliable).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm glad the judge & author pointed out that it wasn't necessarily the GPS that got him off: the chain of custody could probably have been successfully challenged. But it's darn good circumstantial evidence.

Warning: probable abuse of lawyerly language in above post.

</comment><comment><USER16> Basically the only help your phone provided is to give you guts to defend yourself in court. The data you obtained with google tracks has as much legal authenticity IMHO as data you could pull out of your behind. But the fact that you asked the officer the right questions and he didnt have the right answers is in my opinion why the judge decided in your favor.

btw here is a similar story with an iphone and a radar detector [http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2011/01/21/radaractive- he...](http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2011/01/21/radaractive-helps-a-new- york-driver-fight-a-speeding-ticket/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Not long ago, I got pulled over and discovered my proof of insurance card was out of date. I was able to use the iPhone app of my insurance company to load up a PDF of the most recent copy and prove that my insurance was current. The cop was amazed that I could do this. No ticket. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> My uncle was driving a truck a few years ago and hit a woman who walked in front of his vehicle. It was not his fault because the woman stepped out looking the wrong way, and the wet weather and short distance meant it wasn't possible for him to stop in time.

In this instance, the GPS tracking data was used by the police to verify that he was not travelling faster than the speed limit. The data backed up his statement to the police and he therefore wasn't considered negligent or liable for the accident in any way.

Technology like this certainly has its benefits, particularly when the presumption of guilt is so often on the driver in this kind of situation.

</comment><comment><USER19> Next time you're interacting with the police, you might want to use the OpenWatch recorder to record the interaction:

<http://www.openwatch.net>

<comment><USER20> I can't remember specifically the example, but there was a recent case where someone recorded the conversation with a police officer without the police officer's knowledge or consent. This ended up getting the person in a lot more hot water than the original issue. If someone could provide specifics, would be appreciated.

<comment><USER21> Usually you have to at least tell someone they are being recorded, but they don't have to consent to it.

<comment><USER22> That's the law in Massachusetts, but the cops don't believe it.

<comment><USER23> Really? All I can find[1] seems to indicate all parties need to consent:

"4. The term 'interception' means to secretly hear, secretly record, or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting device by any person other than a person __given prior authority by all parties __to such communication..."

[1] [http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/...](http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Chapter272/Section99)

<comment><USER22> If you tell them you're doing it, it's not secret.

<comment><USER23> What about the "given prior authority by all parties" part?

<comment><USER22> Read it again. That's an exception for the "no secret recording rule"; it's not an extra requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _The speed limit in the area was a mere 25 miles per hour_ ... _I found that my phone only recorded a top speed of just 26 miles per hour_

It seems that he probably _was_ speeding, albeit only slightly. That makes it more impressive that he ended up not guilty!

<comment><USER25> In Boston (all of MA?), as I understand it, it's only a crime to go 5 mph or more over the speed limit. 4mph or less and you don't get a ticket.

<comment><USER26> It's the same in Ohio as well

<comment><USER27> Here's a table of speeding laws, for anyone else who's wondering about their state: <http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/laws.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My question is how does he leave that app running while he drives around. When I turn on GPS on my HTC incredible the battery dies in 1.5 hours.

Otherwise I'd love to record everywhere I go like this. I'm hoping the next generation of phones won't have this problem.

<comment><USER29> Some phones, at least in the Droid line, have car mounts which include chargers; he mentioned a car mount in the article, so it's quite likely using it as a GPS was having a _positive_ impact on battery life in this case!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In California you can avoid going to traffic court and do a trial by declaration. Much easier, very effective.

</comment><comment><USER31> I got out of a speeding ticket in 2004 because the officer had allowed his radar certification training to lapse in _1982_. The guy before me in court also got his case dropped when the judge found out the officer hadn't been radar certified.

This guy's GPS data was a novelty. No more a deciding factor in the judgment than his choice to wear business attire.</comment>


Show HN: I'm writing a book to teach intermediate web app programming - <AUTHOR> Hey HN — I've done a couple Show HN's for my first book, Hello Web App (http://hellowebapp.com):
My first Kickstarter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7699291 Launch of Hello Web App: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9329942
Since launch, Hello Web App has had over 1,000 readers and currently has a 5-star rating on Amazon. Yay!
I'm now finishing up a follow-up book, which is fundraising/taking pre-orders on Kickstarter now. Hello Web App: Intermediate Concepts covers topics such as:
* Adding payments (using Stripe) * Adding an API * Adding user-uploaded images, and using a library to resize/edit those images automatically. * Database design * Intermediate form stuff * And a bunch more.
If all goes to plan, will be released to Kickstarter backers in December. It's a followup for anyone who read my original book, or anyone with a basic understanding of Django web development and wants to build out their app (like anyone who has gone through the official Django tutorial or the great DjangoGirls tutorial). If you're interested in the new book or both the old and new book, there are Kickstarter rewards covering both. :)
Campaign link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web-app-intermediate-concepts
(Oh and watch the video because I make this face and it's slightly terrifying/hilarious: http://imgur.com/WDiDwYq)
I LOVE talking process and answering any and all questions, so if anyone has questions about how I taught myself programming, launching my startup, how I self-published a book, etc., I'll be here to chat! Thanks HN. :) <comment><USER2> From the ShowHN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

> _Show HN is for something you 've made that other people can play with. HN > users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread. > [...] For example, blog posts, email signups, and fundraisers can't be tried > out, so they don't count as Show HNs._

Books are a difficult type, because it's not possible to "try" it online. Someona asked about this, and dang answered: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765822)

> _The "try out" rule is important, but adjusts to different kinds of project. > Hardware, for example, can't be tried out as easily as software. For a book, > I suppose a sample chapter or two would be a fair way of trying it out. _

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, apologies - I got good feedback on the last Show HN and I wasn't aware of these rules!

This chapter will appear in the new Hello Web App: Intermediate Concepts book: [https://hellowebapp.com/news/tutorial-setting-up-a- contact-f...](https://hellowebapp.com/news/tutorial-setting-up-a-contact-form- with-django)

I also have a sample of the first book here: [http://hellowebapp.com/sample](http://hellowebapp.com/sample)

Sorry I missed those guidelines! Hopefully the above helps out.</comment></comment>


GoDaddy Apology or Advertising Ploy? - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/3pzWY <comment><AUTHOR> The main reason this angers me is because it is no different than the spam mail I get from them every week. It is just a thinly veiled attempt to make more sales by making people think they could never get this discount otherwise. This is no real apology, a real apology would be reimbursement for past trouble, not necessary, but it would at least feel sincere.</comment>


'Story Of Your Life' Is Not A Time-Travel Story - barry-cotter https://www.gwern.net/Story%20Of%20Your%20Life <comment><AUTHOR> "Story of Your Life" is horror, about a memetic virus that turns humans into p-zombies. The aliens are infected, and following the meme they infect the main character, who goes on to infect others. Consciousness is impossible unless remembering the future is more difficult than remembering the past, because remembering the future depends on calculations on the state of the entire universe instead of just your own brain, which implies that the psychedelic experience of "everything is one" is literally true. Louise is not human and she is an existential threat to humanity.

The story of the remaining humans fighting back would be much more interesting. How can you defeat an enemy where learning too much about it makes you automatically lose? I read a story with a similar concept: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178036](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178036)

<comment><USER2> "The story of the remaining humans fighting back would be much more interesting. How can you defeat an enemy where learning too much about it makes you automatically lose?"

See the stories under the heading "There Is No Antimemetics Division (2015)": [http://www.scp-wiki.net/qntm-s-author-page](http://www.scp-wiki.net/qntm-s- author-page)

It's part of a larger universe, but I _think_ it suffices to point out that in the larger fictional universe in question, the organization that the website is told from the point of has ready and established access to drugs called "amnestics", which can wipe memories in much the same style as the Men in Black. The rest you can probably work out.

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, 'amnestic' is a real class of drugs ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug- induced_amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug-induced_amnesia)), although, as far as I know, they only prevent the formation of _future_ memories, rather than erasing past ones. I've always found it deeply creepy that I once had a painful surgical procedure in which I _experienced_ the pain, but I can't _remember_ it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think one of the important points the story tries to make is the way we perceive/react to the idea of free-will vs destiny is very anthropomorphic because we have sequential consciousness. The heptapods have simultaneous consciousness and do not even understand the idea of free-will. They are not troubled by it because it is a purely different way of perceiving the world.

The subtle difference Ted Chaing tried to get at is that humans think knowing the future means we are doomed to enact a choreography; but the hetpapods perceive knowing the future as creating the future.

So maybe in a human's mind, we think of the future as a geographic feature that we are heading towards. And the inability to change where we go to is troubling. But in the heptapod's mind, the future is just an abstract concept they know in their minds, but do not exist yet; and they seek to create it by acting it out.

<comment><USER5> To me predicting the future is about the implications of abstract ideas carried out in the world.

I take the idea that we are capable of doing a lot of damage with our technology. I reason that once we discover the damage we are doing, we usually do something about it. However, that process of fixing our mistakes is much slower. So I reason that over time we will do more and more damage, because our technology is progressing at faster and faster rates. And the fixes will be implemented slowly. Damage will eventually accumulate and be catastrophic. After some major catastrophe, say a few hundred million people dead, we will then slow down introducing technology into the system and be much more precautious about it. However, even then there will be economists which will argue their way out of it, saying the damage caused by not growing the economy is much worse than any sort of damage caused to the environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd invite everyone to actually read the story instead of the linked interpretation. It does not need it, what happens is pretty straight-forward and the text gives its interpretation freely away by itself. But knowing those interpretations destroys the stunt the story is pulling on the reader, it will destroy your experience of reading it.

Not that I particularly liked it. It is one not particularly exciting history wrapped around an unrealistic pseudo-physics idea. But I never like those type of stories – you might.

<comment><USER7> I preferred the movie over the short story as well. But Ted Chiang has written excellent other fiction. I loved "Tower of Babylon".

<comment><USER6> Too absurd to my liking. I think Murakami is where it ends for me. But admittedly memorable (which also goes for story of your life) and original. Tower of Babylon left a lot better impression than Story of your Life, for me. Maybe they will make a film about that next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The simultaneity of awareness is not novel, but the acceptance of it, the refusal to change the future, is, and people are ignoring this authorial premise and tying themselves into knots to explain it as something else because it unsettles them.

How could someone know the future and not change it? How could someone let bad things happen?

In fact, it's actually quite zen. Well, I'm not sure if it is really, but let's pretend being aware, accepting, and recognising the beauty/rightness in every moment is zen.

And this ties back to the light path and minimisation. When you have that awareness of simultaneity maybe all your possible paths/options must naturally collapse into that beautiful sequence that you have no need or desire to alter.

Now how this simultaneity of awareness coexists with mortality, well that is a head scratcher.

<comment><USER9> What does "refusal" mean in this context? If there is no such thing as free will, then you would have no ability to choose whether to change the future or not, which would make your personal feelings about it irrelevant. Nor would you be able to choose how you felt about it.

If you believe that you have the ability to influence how to feel/react about something, then you must also believe you have the ability to influence the thing itself. Which would make a "zen" attitude negligent.

If you believe that you have no ability to influence either an event or the way you feel about it, then the idea of trying to respond in a zen way is as meaningless as trying to influence the event itself.

Now, you might, in fact, respond in a way an outside observer would categorise as "zen". But, within any personal, self-consistent philosophical system, wherein there is no free will, then you cannot categorise your reaction as such or as an "attempt" to do anything.

<comment><USER10> > If you believe that you have no ability to influence either an event or the > way you feel about it, then the idea of trying to respond in a zen way is as > meaningless as trying to influence the event itself.

The part about performative language counters this objection. Yes, attempting to respond with equamnity - and succeeding, or failing - is all part of the script. But the performance of it is the thing itself.

<comment><USER11> I think the commenter's point is that it isn't enough for one to simply choose not to alter the future once they are aware of it. If they have the ability but do not exercise the ability, you've still introduced a logical contradiction.

From that perspective, framing action as "performative" is at best hand-wavy. You can reduce the claim to, "An individual can know the future without creating a paradox by choosing not to alter it." But you either have the ability to make decisions or you don't; you can't solve the paradox by introducing a phenomenon that _in effect_ surrenders choice while holding on to the ability to make a choice.

That, like every argument of compatibilism I've seen, attempts to "have one's cake and eat it too" in an incoherent manner. When you reduce the dressings down to the base premises and conclusion, it's a matter of redefining terminology for a semantical victory. That's exactly like the sort of thing Wittgenstein used to criticize, because the conclusions aren't _meaningful_.

What would it actually _mean_ for someone to somehow have the ability to know the future with certainty, while also retaining the ability to change the future? The ability to express that idea grammatically and to create a compelling narrative revolving around it doesn't make it logically coherent. Simply having the ability in principle means that there is a logical paradox.

That said, I deeply enjoyed the story. I just interpreted it as a story about humans being exposed to the reality of determinism and the process of coming to peace with it over generations, starting with Louise.

<comment><USER10> > That, like every argument of compatibilism I've seen, attempts to "have > one's cake and eat it too" in an incoherent manner. When you reduce the > dressings down to the base premises and conclusion, it's a matter of > redefining terminology for a semantical victory. That's exactly like the > sort of thing Wittgenstein used to criticize, because the conclusions aren't > meaningful.

> What would it actually mean for someone to somehow have the ability to know > the future with certainty, while also retaining the ability to change the > future? The ability to express that idea grammatically and to create a > compelling narrative revolving around it doesn't make it logically coherent. > Simply having the ability in principle means that there is a logical > paradox.

I've never understood the non-compatibilist view. The laws of physics are mechanistic almost by definition; the only question is whether they are deterministic or randomized, but the idea that one's decisions could be partly random doesn't seem to make them any more consciously controlled than if they're deterministic.

The thing that I've always found incoherent is the very idea of "free will". What would it actually _mean_ to have free will? How could we distinguish between someone who has it and someone who doesn't?

The closest I can get to it while remaining coherent is the idea that there's some pattern that's "me", and that to the extent to which this pattern is causally entangled with events, I'm exerting my will on those events. Knowing the future wouldn't change that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm puzzled by this article. Do people usually misinterpret this short story as being about time travel? I can see people thinking the movie might be about time travel of a sort, since everything is less explained and more "emotional" in it, but the short story is pretty clear about what it's about. We never see any sort of time travel in it. Instead, the protagonist painstakingly explains the different theories of perception of time.

<comment><USER13> Characters in the story don't physically travel through time like in The Terminator, but they have some sort of precognition via information being passed from the future via some unexplained mechanism.

So yes, it is a time travel story, information being relayed to you from the future is information traveling through time.

<comment><USER14> It's all word play and there's no meaning in debating about a concept which itself has multiple interpretations.

You're saying it's "travel" because information travels through time.

But a lot of other people relate "Travel" with humans, meaning it's the human that travels through time.

In fact, most people when they hear about "travel" think of human as its subject, not non-human objects like information.

If you stretch it that far, basically any story with flashbacks is time travel, because information travels to present from the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would recommend to watch _Arrival_ _before_ reading _Story of Your Life_ and this post: I think that _Story of Your Life_ contains spoilers for _Arrival_ which aren't nearly as spoilery the other way around. I found _Arrival_ more emotionally touching, and _Story of Your Life_ more scientifically interesting, so both are worth while.

</comment><comment><USER13> [Book & movie spoilers galore]

As this article points out, referring to Louise being able to see the future in the book:

        > "she is like an actor following a script, engaged in a
        > self-fulfilling prophecy, taking precisely the actions
        > necessary to bring about the future she sees. A
        > fictional example of this would be Paul Atreides in
        > Dune Messiah, whose prescience allows him to see
        > visions of the present and act despite being blind -
        > but only as long as he executes the actions which
        > bring about the vision, thereby keeping the visions
        > reflective of reality."

However, in the book her daughter dies in a climbing accident, not from disease. The underlying point of the book as I read it is that free will doesn't exist and we're all just helpless pawns doomed to play out the inevitable.

Reportedly Hollywood didn't like that interpretation, so instead her daughter dies from disease, so the movie doesn't have to explain why Louise can't just tell her daughter "JUST DON'T EVER GO CLIMBING YOU'LL DIE I CAN SEE THE GODDAMN FUTURE!".

I think as a result the movie really makes no sense. Seeing the future can really only make sense if events are either determinate or you can't or are unwilling to change them. Otherwise you wouldn't know what future you're seeing or how your actions would impact the future.

In a universe where you can alter the future her vision of General Shang at the end of the movie doesn't make any sense. How can she see what General Shang told her in the future, if the only reason he told her is because of information Shang sent to her from the future as a result of her current actions, which are only possible due to information Shang sent her from the future?

In the book it's not as if Louise sees a way to save all humanity and has to make the hard choice to follow that path like Paul Atreides in Dune. She just sees things pertaining to her family life, in particular that her daughter eventually dies in an entirely preventable climbing accident.

So there you go, a movie that really makes no sense, although they had the good sense to plaster over the more obvious plot hole with her daughter now that free will is a thing by making her die from an incurable disease instead.

<comment><USER12> > _The underlying point of the book as I read it is that free will doesn 't > exist_

I thought this was only in the Heptapod non-sequential point of view. Doesn't Louise say something to the effect of "if you think like a Heptapod, you see everything at once but don't have free will; if you think sequentially, like a human, you have free will but can't know everything at once. They are complementary points of view"? (or something like that, not an exact quote).

<comment><USER13> The money quote from the book is:

        > [...] What made it possible for me to exercise
        > freedom of choice also made it impossible for me
        > to know the future. Conversely, now that I know
        > the future, I would never act contrary to that
        > future, including telling others what I know.

I.e. her situation is completely analogous to Paul Atreides in Dune. She can see the future, she can change events, but if she ever did she couldn't see the future anymore. So she throws her daughter under the metaphorical bus to retain her powers.

I think it's a rather bleak story, "woman can see future events, prefers to live out the spoiler version of her life rather than changing anything and being surprised", but whatever, at least it's internally consistent.

What I'm pointing out is that the storyline of the movie makes absolutely no sense, because there she can see the future _and_ is able to change events based on that information, not lose her seeing powers, and seemingly create time loops where people in the future only did certain things because she did them in the present, based on information they gave her in the future because she did that!

The movie tries to evade this problem with a slight of hand. They change the circumstances of her daughter's death to be inevetable, otherwise the audience would be up in arms at the obvious contradiction that she can change the future based on seeing what General Shang is going to do, but somehow can't tell her daughter not to take up climbing as a hobby.

<comment><USER16> _I think it 's a rather bleak story, "woman can see future events, prefers to live out the spoiler version of her life rather than changing anything and being surprised", but whatever, at least it's internally consistent._

In theory Louise could have told her daughter not go climbing because she can see the future and knows her daughter would die but that would probably result in:

1\. Mom getting written off as bat shit crazy and ignored.

2\. Teens and young adults being teens and young adults tend to shrug off warnings and advice of their parents and she would have died anyway.

<comment><USER13>
        > Mom getting written off as bat shit crazy and ignored.

Yeah let's write off mom, the premier expert in xenolinguistics on the planet when she tells you the aliens taught her to see the future. She doesn't even try.

        > Teens and young adults being teens and young adults

Her daughter dies at 25. She's old enough that Louise could have not only explained this to her, but fully taught her Heptopod B so she could see it for herself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Today I learned I am a heptopod apparently. I have ideas quite often that I find hard to write out in sentences, so I end up doing a pen sketch/drawing thing with many colors and stick figure drawings with one or two words beside it.

It is usually when I am trying to think through, or explain to someone else, a concept that has many many variables and the ways that they interact. The current "thought" on my desk has 8 panels, with individual sketch things and 4 colors.

Surely I am not the only one who does this? How else can you explain complicated things without writing a whole book?

"I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no train of thought moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence…Looking at a sentence like this one, I understood why the heptapods had evolved a semasiographic writing system like Heptapod B; it was better suited for a species with a simultaneous mode of consciousness. For them, speech was a bottleneck because it required that one word follow another sequentially. With writing, on the other hand, every mark on a page was visible simultaneously. Why constrain writing with a glottographic straitjacket, demanding that it be just as sequential as speech? It would never occur to them. Semasiographic writing naturally took advantage of the page's two-dimensionality; instead of doling out morphemes one at a time, it offered an entire page full of them all at once."

<comment><USER18> Can you upload a photo of one of your drawings? Sounds super interesting

<comment><USER19> It's just a black circle with splotches on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My take on the story was that learning this language changed how she perceived reality, not that there was anything to do with time travel. I imagined she would only be able to think "forward" in time up to the point that she already existed...

</comment><comment><USER21> To me, it was a story about purpose. In America, there's a strong throughline embedded in the culture that purpose arises from decisions. The entire foundational myth of the American Dream is that anyone, by making the right decisions, can achieve any station in life (and consequently, if you don't achieve the right station, the cause must come from decisions you made).

Chiang's story was an exploration of a more Eastern mode of thought in which purpose is derived more from participation. That we are all part of one large tapestry of life and that it is the privilege of participating, not the end outcome of the participation that gives purpose to life.

Louise is placed in a circumstance where these two values come into conflict and, crucially, is given a choice. The crux is that she is given the choice to not have her child and prevent all of the painful memories but also the understanding that the painful memories are a part of the beauty of living life.

The variational physics stuff is all a frame to wrap around these concepts, finding resonance between the idea that there are always two ways of encoding a problem in physics and the reframing of philosophy that comes from encountering an alien culture.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like to see Ted Chiang's writing ("Story of Your Life", "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "What's Expected Of Us") as "free will as a perspective", rather than anything objectively existing (or not existing). And secondarily - "free will vs knowing future as a trade-off", not unlike Lagrangian vs Netwonian mechanics, or as rotating space and time in Special Relativity.

</comment><comment><USER23> I honestly don't know of anyone that has read the story and ended up interpreting it as a time-travel story.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know I should have seen _Arrival_ already, and I am sure I once read or heard that "Story of Your Life" was the basis for the film, but damned if I didn't get halfway through the very spoilery discussion here in the comments without realizing just _what_ I was being spoiled on.

In case there's anyone else out there that, like me: Reads hn comments first to determine if the article is worthwhile, and doesn't really mind being spoiled on the plot of books, but _hates_ being spoiled on the plot of films, beware!

<comment><USER25> I saw the movie yesterday and I would say the total sensory experience of the film is worth a lot more than just the plot! Still see it, it's really great even knowing what will happen. You might even get a more authentic experience, per the discussion here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article may scratch the point that this article b talking of predestination is basically talking about religion and free will.

And that maybe predestination is pretty acausal, thus posing a strong problem with science.

So I see it as an article trying to say that the story is under the cover of very scientific words trying like zelazny, hubbard and van vogt to open a new era of mystical science.

</comment><comment><USER27> Time is what prevents everything from happening at once in the same way space prevents everything from happening in Cambridge.

</comment><comment><USER28> This book has a lot of really good stories.

</comment><comment><USER29> Don't overanalyze it. It just happens to be excellent science _fiction_.

<comment><USER30> (haven't read yet) What do you mean don't over-analyze it, that's the good part!</comment></comment>


Interview with Markus Frind - AdSense Millionaire - <AUTHOR> http://www.workhappy.net/2006/06/interview_with_.html <comment><USER2> First I was impressed by Frind's work but then I realized I'm from (in mr. frind's opinion) from third-world country cos I can't register there so I asked my friend working in the UK to create an account for me and .... it's something to puke inside especially those huge loads of adsense. Btw, it's not an interview its "questions without replies"

<comment><USER3> Where are you from?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you name a startup? - <AUTHOR>

With a vast majority of domain names taken by squatters and/or legit companies, how do you find a good name for your startup that also has an available domain name? <comment><USER2> Ok, I may catch some flak for this, but... that is exactly the reason I domain squat on a pile of domains. A few years ago I went through a phase where anytime I'd come up with a seemingly cool name, I'd register the domain (if available) and just sit on it... so I don't "domain squat" to make money on ads or anything (although I did play around a little with trying to monetize some otherwise idle domains, but I never put much effort into it), but rather to reserve the domain for myself for potential future use.

With that said, when I was looking for a company name for a consulting business a year or so ago, I threw my favorite one out to a friend of mine for feedback, and he absolutely hated it. So I sent him a list of my favorite 5-10 out the domains I had, and one jumped out at him as "oh yeah, that's perfect." After thinking about it for a while I decided he was right, so I went with it (that one had been my 2nd favorite to begin with). And now I'm actually reusing it as I move into doing a product. It's just the company name though, now naming individual products is going to be the bigger challenge.

Of course if you need a name _right now_ none of this helps... all I can say is generic crap like "think outside the box." Put together combinations of words that don't seem to make sense at first and play around with them. Borrow phrases from the top news headlines of the day and see if those words somehow combine to form something useful. Take a word that has something to do with what your status does, and start attaching other words in front of or behind it, until one combo makes you go "oooh."

For example... If you were doing a "grid computing" startup, take the word "grid" and start going:

gridstart gridcurve gridfeed gridbox gridblox gridwave gridcloud antigrid gridhacker gridlog ... ... ...

And if all else fails, you could explore some of the alternative TLDs if the ".com" is taken. Some feel kinda ghetto for some reason (like .biz... I doubt I'd ever use a .biz for anything) but some alt tlds are actually kinda cool... .fm, .io, .tv and a few others seem somewhat popular.

Like, .io feels kinda right for something geeky and computer related... so if you were doing the grid computing startup, maybe "gridcomputing.io" "io" seems to imply a sort of techie'ish flavor (even thought the TLD actually stands for Indian Ocean or something like that).

Another last ditch thing would be trying to buy a domain that's taken. Not every taken domain costs a bazillion dollars to acquire. And if you establish a trademark on the name successfully, you may be able to appeal to ICANN and get a squatted on domain anyway. Not sure exactly how that works, but it might be worth researching.

Edit: Another approach that might help... pick a theme, and google around that theme for lists of important "things." For example... I was looking to name a series of related open-source projects recently, so I picked "lighthouses" as the theme (and this ties into the company name mentioned above), so I started looking for lists of "famous lighthouses" and "lighthouse terminology" and finally came up with ScrewPile (no, not a pr0n term, it refers to a type of lighthouse), Neddick (reference to a famous lighthouse), Quoddy (again, a particular lighthouse) and Heceta (and yet another well known lighthouse).

</comment><comment><USER3> Play with permuting the morphemes of words related to your product or space.

Say everything out loud many times.

Resist things nobody will be able to spell.

Great names often seem pretty crappy at first. Later, after repeated use, people say "what a great name". So don't necessarily reject names that seem crappy. Use them for a while. See which ones other people find easy to say, spell, and remember.

Oh, and realize that the combinatorial space here is so vast as to dwarf what the squatters can cover. Your creativity can explore much more of that space than they can occupy.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are _many_ different ideas about this, choose it so that it can be a verb, choose certain consonants of power, etc. etc. Eye catching, real but rarely used English words can be tried (e.g. <http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=node/163>).

Although this is a decision that people agonize over (your company's like your baby after all), in the end I don't think it matters that much. You can read PG's thoughts on this: in his first startup they wanted a name so much that they offered a handsome sum to the holder of that domain. Then they relaxed and saw that it didn't matter that much for success.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes, you can get lucky and just get a simple combination of legit words which describes your product perfectly (I got lucky with Pretty Graph). Otherwise, do what designers and advertisers do - pick one keyword related to your product and couple it with a colour or animal or some other memorable word appealing to people's emotions.

If nothing works, make ridiculous combinations of real words but please don't get a domain with missing vowels and ly's and tr's. When you are starting out, your domain name is your brand name. If I have to spell out your brand name, you have already failed.

Think DuckDuckGo, not Srchly.

</comment><comment><USER6> Start building it first under a code name.. name it later. Over time you'll come up with more names and some of them will turn out to be pretty good and previously unused.</comment>


Mapping at Aurora - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/aurora-blog/the-atlas-our-hd-mapping-system-262e7b0fadd1 <comment><USER2> I don't have much background knowledge in mapping or self-driving, so I thought this was well-written in a way that anyone could understand! Re: breaking down the data framework into world geometry vs. semantic annotations— that makes sense, but how often would you need to update the annotations? Just running and biking around San Francisco, I feel like there's no shortage of construction that create changes to lanes/stop signs/lights and rules of traffic flow. How do you account for these, or would world geometry data be enough here?

<comment><USER3> I think you've hit upon one of the most challenging aspects of mapping, which is that the real world is incredibly dynamic. And it's not just the things that we think of as dynamic (bicyclists, pedestrians, other vehicles), it's also the geometry itself (lane lines, vegetation, building construction). So this requires some form of updating (either semantic, geometric, or both). And as you pointed out this is not uniform: dense city maps can change from week- to-week, whereas rural maps require less frequent updates. So first you need to build an on-board/offline system that can first detect these changes, then configure the pipeline so that the proper data is collected and updates can be compact and fast. As mentioned in the article, we have a git-like structure for Atlas updates which allows us to track small changes. And the fact that the Atlas is only locally consistent means that any update is contained just to the detected area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a way to know the "freshness" of the data? Obviously if I'm driving and a car in front of me just imaged the road I can be much more reasonably certain that there isn't any debris on the road surface, or new potholes that have opened up.

<comment><USER3> I think that there is grey-area between data that is sufficiently static to represent in a map (buildings, lane lines) and data that is dynamic and must be handled by on-board perception systems (pedestrians, road debris). A good way to think of this is that the map is encoding priors about the environment for use by the perception system. It may be possible in the future to do all of this on-board (like humans do!) but the computational constraints would be quite high.

<comment><USER3> To add to this: it's not just computational complexity, but it's also about safety. There is a human review process for every element of the map, which enforces a level of quality and safety that is extremely difficult to ensure from a fully on-the-fly system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi all! I'm Greg and I work on the Mapping Team at Aurora. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the article and mapping for self-driving.</comment>


Extreme mortality of common murres resulting from Pacific marine heatwave - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0226087 <comment><AUTHOR> as is recently covered by MSM, e.g.: _" Warm Water Patch Called 'The Blob' Fueled Biggest Known Seabird Die-Off In History"_ [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/blob-heat-wave-bird- deaths_n_...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/blob-heat-wave-bird- deaths_n_5e234550c5b673621f76eec1)</comment>


Facebook is working on a voice assistant to rival Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/17/facebook-building-voice-assistant-to-rival-amazon-alexa-and-apple-siri.html <comment><AUTHOR> Lots of data Facebook can sniff up unintentionally about their users.

<comment><USER2> "Oops, we accidentally saved all your audio to train our ml, leverage to sell embarrasingly privately targeted ads, and fill in our customer profile databases. We promise to stop, but while we have the data..."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sell framework licenses or open source it? - <AUTHOR>

Hey fellow HN'ers. I've worked a couple of months on an a/b testing framework for .net (asp.net + desktop apps).
Now that I'm close to finishing it, I don't know what to do: open source it on github or sell licenses of it.
What would you do? <comment><USER2> Open source it under GPL and sell exceptions as the copyright owner

[http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling- exceptions](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions)

The benefit being that everything GPL touches also needs to be open sourced, unless you hold the magic multi-licence wand :)

</comment><comment><USER3> You've been around HN for 600 days as I write this so I'm surprised you've asked this question here. You should know that "open source it" was going to always be the popular answer on HN in 2013.

The 2009-2010 HN crowd was mostly startup founders, investors, and employees 1 and 2 and it was also mostly people in the US. The 2013-2014 crowd is mostly _not_ startup founders, investors, and employees 1 and 2m and it's probably 50% US folks. As many other recent HN folks have said, "HN is just another subreddit now." That results in a very different hive mind today than in years' past.

If it was me, I'd be wary of making "business decisions" based on the answer to a popularity contest on a site mostly frequented by people who (a) don't live in my country, (b) didn't grow up in the countries I want to do business in, and (c) do not and have not ever actually owned or run a business.

The problem, of course, is figuring out whose advice to take and whose to ignore. Always tricky...

<comment><AUTHOR> scott, thank you for a great advice. I won't make a decision based on suggestions posted here, but I will consider the pros and cons nevertheless

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps combine. Make it open source for personal / non-commercial use. License it for companies who will use it commercially. I don't know the details of the product (complexity for example) but might be worth it test if people are interested in workshops / training. Not sure if you're interested in offering that of course.

Edit: Also, think of what is more important now. Getting people to use the framework or make the perfect decision on how to make money with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of mixed license. However, do you think anyone uses a/b testing for personal/non-commercial purposes?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps you're right, it's an edge case. But for other open source projects it can be interesting to use or at least try.

What I'm not sure about is, how do people try the library. Buying a library without testing it might be a big step. In my experience developers like to try something in their apps and then pay for it when they have commercial use for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right about a trial version... Can be quite tricky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like others said, open source it, get a community and profit. But they left out one hugely important step... trademarks. Get your trademark, make sure it is a defensible name and register in every market you think you might ever operate in.

As far as which license, GPL/AGPL are good options, but you may get more mileage out of an MPL or Artistic License 2.0 license.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to make a business out of it, you can sell license but if you worked on it only as a hobby project, you can open source it, totally depends upon how you personally want to go ahead with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt it can be a business, but it could be a nice side income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Open source it, get user base and code contributions. Then, if it takes off, offer an 'enterprise' version with perceived benefits.

The 'enterprise' version can be a complete re-write with a couple of features that don't get included in your 2.0 open source edition.

Assuming you get users for the original open source version and that the extra features are worth having, you can sell the product on to them. Whether they buy it or not comes down to price.

Testing is also something you can sell. There are advantages in having a separate test team, be that test team. Provide a good service and build a customer base.</comment>


GIMP Turns 20 – GIMP 2.8.16 Released - <AUTHOR> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-user-list/2015-November/msg00055.html <comment><USER2> Build from source is the only option here for 2.8.16 I guess? No pre-built binaries yet.</comment>


Are all the weightloss, health and training webapps good enough? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently lost 20 pounds in about a month and turned my life over and got back to training and stopped eating junk food.
Are the health programs out there good enough?
What is missing in them? This must be a huge market but it might be already taken? I mean how many millions in the world are overweight? And those 2.5 billion indians or chinese will soon start to be...
I have googled some but haven't found anything...there must be right? <comment><USER2> _turned my life over and got back to training and stopped eating junk food_

That is the secret to losing weight and staying healthy. There's no money in that though, since you can't charge people money if all they have to do is stop eating doughnuts and start jogging.

People _will_ spend money on magical gadgets, miracle pills, and mystical potions that promise to "melt away the pounds." It's pretty sad, really.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing I tried this program, ie not a webapp, that lets you fill in your exercises and your meals and then calculates if you on the right side. It lets you put up 10 week plans and doesnt let anorectics use it. Should be something like that as a webapp. I think someone did something like that in Arc.</comment></comment>


What happens when Google Ventures' design team helps redesign a startup's site - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/07/10/this-is-what-happens-when-google-ventures-design-team-helps-redesign-a-startups-site/

<comment><USER2> I worked with GVentures' design team while contracting/advising a startup, and they're awesome. As a result of working with dozens of startups they've developed a really solid and nuanced workflow that really impressed me. More generally, having a UX team in place for startups that need it is a pretty big bonus, and a good reason to take funding from Google over other VCs if you're not an inherently design-driven team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Two nice photos and twitter bootstrap?</comment>


'I hate them': Locals reportedly frustrated with Alphabet's self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/08/28/locals-reportedly-frustrated-with-alphabets-waymo-self-driving-cars.html <comment><USER2> Apple's self driving Lexus SUV is like watching a toddler drive. It does odd things and you just know it'll take longer than normal. I just started expecting the worst when dealing with it, and that strategy has been working well so far.

</comment><comment><USER3> > More than a dozen locals told The Information they they hated the cars, > which often struggle to cross a T-intersection near the company's office.

More than a dozen. In a year of testing.

Pretty good result, if I may say.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes and I'm pretty sure the horse riding public was not fond of the new fangled horseless carriages when they started showing up on the streets either.</comment>


Monty Python: The Holy Book of Days - <AUTHOR> http://holybookofdays.com/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me that they should bring back Monty Python & The Quest for the Holy Grail the videogame for iPad: [http://www.giantbomb.com/monty-python-the- quest-for-the-holy...](http://www.giantbomb.com/monty-python-the-quest-for- the-holy-grail/61-7215/).

EDIT: A kind word of warning: the app is ~1GB. Make sure you have the space for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Syncs with your Blu-Ray" - i wonder how they are achieving this?

<comment><USER4> Totally random first-thought possibility but could the app implement something similar to Shazam (can't remember if that's the app's name or not - the one that listens to songs and identifies them) to "listen" to something and recognize what time in the movie it is at?

<comment><USER5> According to the description, the app directs the bluray player to go to the scenes you are looking at and it has to be over wifi. I'm quite curious about this (not sure if I'm curious enough to buy the BD when I already own the DVD, though).</comment></comment></comment>


When Steve Jobs' ex asked him to pay $25M for his "dishonorable behavior" - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/08/06/steve-jobs-apple-girlfriend/ <comment><USER2> Just because we had sex and had my offspring doesn't mean that i owe you shit. I may owe the child but not the woman. This just shows how hypagamous women are. This woman is just another woman scorned who probably wanted Jobs to love her forever.</comment>


The Krakatoa Volcanic Eruption Was So Loud It Was Heard Round the World - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-sound-so-loud-that-it-circled-the-earth-four-times <comment><USER2> I haven't done any calculations but this is pure BS. With the situation almost a inverse square law, a significant portion of the earth would have to be liquefied for this much energy.

<comment><USER3> The article states that it was heard up to 3000 miles away (registered events), and while the sound was not heard further away, it was registered by the barometers all over the world.</comment></comment>


How Do You Sell a Work of Art Built into the Earth? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/arts/design/robert-smithson-earthwork-art.html <comment><USER2> In the superficially similar cases of many Banksy works across London, the answer is you chisel out entire sections of buildings and sell them to private collectors. eg:

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7188387.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7188387.stm)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- gloucestershire-3714847...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- gloucestershire-37148473)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- london-23461396](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23461396)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- kent-30242249](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-30242249)

<comment><USER3> ...wondered if Banksy would get a mention. Also of note is the occasional "Oops it got painted over / destroyed" ending to his art which nature can also replicate. Might take eons, but the planet doesn't run on my clock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting introduction but the article unfortunately falls short without really answering its title question. IMO it could have continued to discussing the same dilemma faced by most conceptual art. Also surprising there is not a single mention of the contemporary Andy Goldsworthy [0], who has done a great deal to promote environmental art.

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

<comment><USER5> Is there really an interesting question here, though? The art world has for years had no difficulty trading in immaterial works of art, or, for example the right to exhibit a performance. In the case of something simple that anyone could reproduce, like a very simple performed gesture, what actually gets sold is the right to assert that a given performance is actually an authentic, canonical instance of the work.

I've never encountered any interesting nuances or complexity when it comes to the sale of conceptual work. It is just very straightforward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> An additional article [0] showing some of the work [1] made me smile thinking about some future civilization finding these and trying to figure out why we built them or what they were used for.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/arts/design/michael- heize...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/arts/design/michael-heizers-big- work-and-long-view.html?_r=0) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art)

</comment><comment><USER7> Those interested in this sort of thing may enjoy the film series on sculpture, "The Sculpture Diaries" by Waldemar Januszczak, in particular, the 3rd film on Land Art. I was unable to locate a streaming source for the film, but trailers are still available [1], [2].

[1] [http://www.films.com/ecTitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=31163](http://www.films.com/ecTitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=31163)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCMXKANoBgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCMXKANoBgA)

</comment><comment><USER8> Annoyed that they never directly addressed the answer. But it seems obvious that it is by sale of the land, or rights/access to it. As anyone would agree Architecture is art, this question has long been settled. Essentially clickbait for an article interesting enough not to need it.</comment>


We will build your web or mobile app prototype – in two weeks and for a flat fee - <AUTHOR> https://www.twoweekprototype.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: we got the idea from this project from this old HN post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600650)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not sure how you can guarantee a two-week turnaround without first knowing the scope of the project. Also, 7500 EUR can buy a lot of dev time.

Is the value prop the speed of development?

<comment><AUTHOR> We meet with the client and agree on the scope of the prototype beforehand, and based on our experience two weeks is a timeframe for which the scope can be estimated really well!

And you're right, 7500€ can theoretically buy you a lot of dev time, at least from a junior developer. If you want someone more senior who you don't have to micromanage and who has experience in working with clients professionally, our offer a good deal we think. :)

The value prop is the development speed, the fixed price and knowing beforehand which tools we use and the process we follow. We have talked to lots of people about this, and the latter point was especially important to many who got burnt by some developer they found on Odesk or Freelancer.com, who had her very own style of programming and used non-standard tools, and the result often was a system that barely worked and couldn't be carried forward by another developer.</comment></comment>


How Many People in the U.S. Are Hospitalized with Covid-19? Who Knows? - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-people-in-the-us-are-hospitalized-with-covid-19-who-knows/ <comment><USER2> Just extrapolate the data we had before and interpret it as being the upper limit of the error bounds. The hiding of information was bad-faith; the only reasonable response is a bad-faith assumption of what the data must be.</comment>


Local-first software (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html <comment><USER3> Hello, we've published some more work in this space -- no HTML version yet, but here's a more recent paper on our PushPin project.

[https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/pushpin- papoc20.pdf](https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/pushpin-papoc20.pdf)

You can also try PushPin for yourself: [https://github.com/automerge/pushpin/](https://github.com/automerge/pushpin/)

likely outdated binaries are available here: [https://automerge.github.io/pushpin/](https://automerge.github.io/pushpin/)

Also, we're currently in the midst of a new project called Cambria, exploring some of the consequences and data demands for a new Cambrian-era of software here: [https://inkandswitch.github.io/cambria/](https://inkandswitch.github.io/cambria/)

<comment><USER4> This Cambria project looks pretty interesting. Is it an internal project only? One of the blog posts gives an example of running it, but I couldn't find any links to source nor binaries, so I am assuming it is currently internal only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ... cloud apps depend on the service continuing to be available: if the > service is unavailable, you cannot use the software, and you can no longer > access your data created with that software. This means you are betting that > the creators of the software will continue supporting it for a long time — > at least as long as you care about the data. Although there does not seem to > be a great danger of Google shutting down Google Docs anytime soon, popular > products (e.g. Google Reader) do sometimes get shutdown or lose data, so we > know to be careful.

Plus, the value of the cloud app is not just your data, but the network effects. Like, if you've emailed links to a GDocs document, and 5 years later you decide to move to another service, those GDocs links will 404, regardless of whether you've transferred all of your data to the new service.

With local-first apps, the URL starts with _you_ , not some _some-sass- provider.com_.

<comment><USER6> Many far smarter people have said this before, far more eloquently than I can, but in short:

Cloud Computing (and SASS even more so) is little more than just another attempt to recreate access/info monopolies, essentially the same profit proposition as existed with closed source software, while pretending to be one of the cool kids and use politically more acceptable (but in this context rather meaningless) terms like Open Source and Open Standards. It may be a different generation of companies, with slightly different cultures, but they are all equally predatory in nature as the old ones.

It's going to be a rude awakening, when some of the bigger service providers will eventually fall over (which they will). Of course, everyone will blame anything and everything but their own willful ignorance, when that happens.

<comment><USER7> What do you propose? That every company reinvent the wheel or host everything locally even if it's not their core competency? Every company has to decide what its "unfair advantage" is and concentrate on that.

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with hosting software locally and buying 3rd-party support for the stuff that's "not core competency"? It eliminates a single point of failure.

<comment><USER7> >What's wrong with hosting software _locally_....it eliminates a _single point of failure_.

I'll let that just sit there.

But you are going to host your own project management software? Your own expense reporting software? Your own email server? Your own payroll processing? Salesforce equivalent? Your own git server? Dropbox equivalent?

<comment><USER9> Why not?

<comment><USER10> Short answer: generally it costs more money for worse results.

Longer answer: doing things in-house that are outside your core competencies and/or value creation model is a poor use of scarce resources (both capital and human—predominantly management bandwidth) and increases risk carried.

To give a concrete example: imagine you need to host your source code repository. You can pay for something like Bitbucket for $6/month/user and not have to worry about it. It's a price that scales linearly with your team size and is a tiny fraction of their total cost.

Doing it in-house: you have to pay for hardware, storage, worry about backups, have somebody support it, have somebody manage the person that supports it, deal with users, find a solution to remote access, and so on. But all these miss the big cost—risk—what happens if the server dies or your office burns down? Nobody used to get fired for buying IBM, nobody now gets fired for buying a popular SaaS product.

You aren't Google, at some point scale changes the equation, but that's a rare spot to be in.

<comment><USER11> At my last job, we hosted our own git repo with gitolite. That doesn't give you a ticketing system of course, but it was fairly easy to administer. And it sat on a miscelanous jobs server we already needed and didn't use up too much resources.

Remote access followed production norms, so no extra work there (other than a lot more people need access to git than other production servers). Maybe a few hours one time to lock down permissions for git etc, probably less fuss than getting SSO setup for a git SaaS.

<comment><USER7> Now repeat that for your mail server, your expense tracking system, your HR system, your project manager system, various collaboration software....

And what happens when that one server goes down or becomes overloaded?

<comment><USER11> Some of these are better to outsource than others. Mail probably needs more active upkeep, but you could more easily block links to reduce spear phishing if you were running it yourself. Expense tracking needs detailed knowledge of accounting to ensure only proper expenses are approved (possibly by an outside consultant) I don't even know if there are low cost software options here. HR systems (includes payroll?) is also specialized and high effort and not core competency.

I've got opinions on collaboration software (why not put text files in git), but ignoring that, I don't really want to run a wiki, so sure, maybe your email provider offers something anyway.

> And what happens when that one server goes down or becomes overloaded?

You fix it? Same like when production breaks; hopefully you have people who can fix production, hopefully you monitor your important tools. What happens when it gets overloaded and its outsourced? You hope your provider fixes it, and you call and yell at them.

<comment><USER7> > You fix it? Same like when production breaks; hopefully you have people who > can fix production, hopefully you monitor your important tools. What happens > when it gets overloaded and its outsourced? You hope your provider fixes it, > and you call and yell at them.

Well, in my case. I just clicked on "minimum" and increase it by 1 in my autoscaling group or I scale vertically and change the server from 2xlarge to 4xlarge.

Can you get another server shipped to your colo in 5 minutes, brought online and roll over and go back to sleep? Like I did at my last job. Most of the time by the time the notification alarm woke me up, scaling has already taken place.

But, depending on the service, part of "monitoring" is bringing up another server automatically when CPU usage spikes.

But I think my current employer knows just a little about managing servers/services at scale. As far as I know, my current employer manages more servers than anyone else on the planet and has more experts on staff than anyone.

Even that being said, _we_ outsource a lot of the services that aren't in our core competencies to other companies.

I couldn't say that about my previous employer who had 50 people in all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the 3rd time in a week a "Local-First software" overview has been submitted and the 2nd time it's made the front page here. I'm pretty surprised about that because I'm about to release a local-first, offline-first, option for an app I make.

This article also quickly moves past "local-first" software to conflict resolution which, in my opinion, is a distinctly different issue. It's certainly not reason enough to hold off offering users a local-first option.

At this point I believe that since it can be done it should be done. I'll even go so far as to say it's a necessity. At some point users will understand it's a necessity and demand it. All that really needs to happen to convince them is one big incident where they lose access to their data for an extended period of time, or worse yet, lose all their data forever, and it won't matter why or how.

Aside from that, as more app makers start offering local-first options and users begin to see the benefits of that they will begin to demand it. That could take some time, but I expect it's inevitable.

There are other benefits to a local-first approach for developers. Take a "Contacts" app for example. If we have a standard for saving contacts data on the client side that any app could access this would give users and developers options to create and use new apps and features that all use the same data.

CouchDB & PouchDB.js provide a pretty solid and easy way to do this right now. Installed on the user's desktop PC, CouchDB provides the missing link to a robust client side web app runtime environment.

There may be other ways of achieving this right now, but I am not aware of them.

<comment><USER13> Unhosted.org [1] mentions the remoteStorage protocol [2] as one of the options for storing user data separate from an application.

[1] [https://unhosted.org/adventures/7/Adding-remote-storage- to-u...](https://unhosted.org/adventures/7/Adding-remote-storage-to-unhosted- web-apps.html)

[2] [https://remotestorage.io/](https://remotestorage.io/)

<comment><USER14> remoteStorage is pretty cool, and it's a shame that neither it nor something like it has really taken off yet. The spec has some rough edges, though—in particular the protocol requires a smart server to handle the network requests, when it _should_ be fairly straightforward to define a "static" profile that can turn most commodity dumb hosts (Neocities, GitHub Pages, etc.) into a user store. I'm convinced that this seemingly minor design tweak would give remoteStorage a new life and cause it to spread like wildfire.

The spec gets periodically refreshed/resubmitted. It last happened a couple of months ago and is set to expire at the end of the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there's probably a market for a personal cloud, which probably sounds dumber than personal computer did in the 80s. What I mean by that is a computer somewhere in the garage, like a furnace, with enough compute and storage to drive all the devices and appliances in a house. In this model, devices do not have CPUs or memory, only input/output and a network chip.

The way this would work is for the computer in the garage to have the ability to divide itself arbitrarily into VMs for each purpose, with an ecosystem of images designed for things like fridges and gaming consoles. It should be possible to add or upgrade compute to the device in a hot swapped fashion, and because it doesn't have to be in a thin tablet, it could be easily cooled.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if there would be market for _community clouds_ , or _neighborhood computes_? Imagine that a new apartment building comes bundled with a server room in the basement. Every dweller gets compute/storage there. This could serve as edge cache for services like Netflix/YouTube, as well as for the ecosystem you describe.

I once imagined that homomorphic encryption would allow people to store data in their personal/neighborhood clouds and have third party SaaS code operate on that data locally. But I've recently been made to understand that homomorphic encryption would also allow companies to fully close off any access to data beyond what a program/service wants to give out, and unfortunately I get the feeling that the market will prefer the latter over the former.

<comment><USER15> Could be. You could also implement it for smaller businesses. I think another possibility is to sell excess compute back to some decentralized cloud, the same way you could sell excess solar power back to the grid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I skimmed the desired qualities, the review of current tools, and finally the software centric approach to achieving the stated goals.

While we can reasonably expect software elements in any proposed solution, the hardware and physical elements of distributed computing may provide a far simpler pathway and likely will permit much greater reuse of existing proven software approaches.

For example, all future multi-unit residences could come with 'data center' along with the boiler, or possibly the actual units will host this equipment along with their air conditioning units. All your cloud apps can now point to this cloud. I don't see any fundamental reason why 'data center' can not become a modular utility unit, coming in domicile, commercial, and industry grade flavors.

In my view, the pure software solution approach to the 'modern informaton society' has implicit political dimensions. One of these is the concentrated private ownership and control over physical resources which are now a required substrate of modern society. I for one am not ready to accept that as 'acceptable'.

<comment><USER18> What's the point of putting an amateur-run data center in every apartment building instead of using a proper one in town? Or instead of just putting it in my unit (with off-site backup of course), since a personal data center is just a single computer?

My landlord can barely run the water and A/C; no way they can run IT.

The improved quality and reliability is worth it for the trivial latency cost.

<comment><USER17> You are assuming the only possible solutions require user maintenance.

However, your implicit point regarding income level and the range in quality of building management is valid, and successful products in this space would address it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll take cloud first thanks. No software to update. Nothing to backup. I just open a computer/phone/tablet and access my stuff.

I get the tradeoffs. I'm not going back 10+ years.

<comment><USER20> Out of curiosity, how do think about the prospect of being arbitrarily locked out of your account if you're mainly using cloud-first software?

(E.g., you can find example horror stories here on Hacker News: [https://www.google.com/search?q=locked+out+of+gsuite+site%3A...](https://www.google.com/search?q=locked+out+of+gsuite+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+&t=ipad&ia=web))

<comment><USER21> One of those stories is having a bad password memory. One is a person conducting business on his personal account and triggering flags. Another is a business messing up.

It's a good habit to keep multiple interlocking personal email accounts from multiple providers, but being cloud-first is still obviously correct.

<comment><USER20> What does "multiple interlocking personal email accounts from multiple providers" mean?

Just to be clear, regarding the "being cloud-first is still obviously correct", your stance is that it's ok for your access to your life's work being at the discretion a company? (Presumably one you trust.) Not saying you're wrong here, just curious how people who are all-in on the cloud think about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why I'm a frequent visitor to /r/selfhosted. Any other self-hosted centric communities to be aware of?

<comment><USER23> Maybe r/datahoarder ? Or even r/opendirectories ,r/plex , r/homeserver ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The No Spinners thing seems to be my professional niche. Every job I'm tasked at cleaning up a poorly performing native app. And it's always caused by developers writing views like web apps, posting their server requests as views open and fire up a spinner to wait.

It's not that hard to have a caching strategy. And then your native app feels like a native app.

<comment><USER25> that's not caching, that's the optimistic UI from the referenced paper that you are describing

<comment><USER24> You can call it Tomato or Tomatoe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's the origin of the "X-first" language pattern? Earliest example I cam remember is when Eric Schmidt was talking about "mobile first" approach.

<comment><USER27> Nice question. I am not that old and only further aware of the more recent "cloud first" and "america first"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's worth noting that a local-only offline-first web app shifts the load of storing and managing user data entirely onto the user themselves.

That's a huge load of responsibility taken off the software supplier's shoulders and it eliminates the entire cost and complexity of building and maintaining Cloud based data management infrastructure.

And that's a pretty great option to have on the table for both users and software makers.

I'll also note that these apps consume almost no network bandwidth. With Service Workers implemented they barely speak to your server. The amount of bandwidth that can be potentially saved has got to be pretty huge.

</comment><comment><USER28> TODO: build a local-first livestream remote conference zoom alternative software

<comment><USER29> Wasn't this Skype, originally? Pre-Microsoft acquisition?

<comment><USER30> Everyone starts with p2p and realizes it doesn't work. OG skype predates fast internet and expectations of extremely smooth conferencing between arbitrary number of users. A centralised server is basically a requirement for acceptable performance.

<comment><USER31> There is a step between peer to peer and centralized, and that is federated. For most services, that should be the sweet spot.

<comment><USER32> How do you federate a video call with 10 people?

Federation isn't needed because you don't need to have servers that communicate with each other, you just need some server that can host a given video call. So any open source solution works, no federation architecture is required.

<comment><USER33> The same way people federated email forever? Local servers that contact upstream servers?

<comment><USER32> My question is not "how does federation work?" It is "in what situation is federation _useful_ for video conferencing in a way that a single open source server is not?"

<comment><USER11> Depending on the network topology and number of callers, you could get some benefit from a multiple server model. Large meetings across offices could make use of a server at each office to streamline bandwidth. Not a good fit for today's reality of everyone from home or your scenario of 10 callers. Could still be useful for EU vs US callers to connect locally and only one stream across the atlantic. Multiparty e2e calling is already challenging, and adding multi-hop routing might make it more so, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As partly a philosophical exercise, and partly as hyperlocal "no really, you are here so you have access", I added Apache with DAV and Etherpad to a DNS+DHCP "sled": [https://github.com/m3047/pangolin](https://github.com/m3047/pangolin)

The irony that Etherpad is written in Node is not lost on me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Made the front page a few days ago but didn't get much traffic or many comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985816)

[http://hnrankings.info/23985816/](http://hnrankings.info/23985816/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Im doing a "browser-based something" that can mostly be reasoned about as a web-over-rpc-services where the primary pitch to start it, was exactly based on the thinking generously expressed by this article (albeit i had to start it much earlier).

The first thing is to expect the app devs to define a api in RPC so that what they app serve it transparent to the whole platform.

That way, users and other apps can reuse that api and integrate tools and other services without worrying about if the node is online or not.

Given they are RPC (over TCP or IPC), they can be used as a peer node in a distributed computing flock or in the app service process the application can serve the RPC requests not locally if it wants or needs, but going over the network.

But even in the case it goes straight to the "cloud" for resources, in the node it will always go through the RPC-api first. (How the application handle the RPC request is defined by the app developers).

There are a lot of others important details actually, for instance the UI sdk, window management, its already there, the storage layer (files and key-value db) are distributed over p2p(torrent) and everything is accessible/bootstrapped through a DHT address accessible anywhere.

But imagine if you had this architecture before, and Twitter, Facebook or Google search had to install a api-based application, where they need to ask you for permission to index content, or store locally your list of friends.. where later other apps could extract that information from your machine.. For instance you could change your search to DDG or export your Facebook list of friends and post to some other social network(this is actually the primary reason almost no one could compete with a popular social network).

In the end, things that should be yours are yours and third-party apps will have to be installed and granted permission by you to manage that digital property.

But overall i'm very glad to see that this is starting to become some sort of a trend, that people are finally waking up, because despite of all technological implications of it, it also have a lot of political and social benefits to this approach.

</comment><comment><USER37> As platforms get more and more locked down (Chromebooks, Android, iOS) hosting the software in the cloud becomes a easier option. For example I'm working on and editor/IDE for programming, but it's next to impossible to compile programs on the platforms people use now a days. So in order to run a program that you made on your Apple phone, Android device or Chromebook, it has to run on a third party server...

</comment><comment><USER38> Much of this seems to be rediscovering the principles of the IndieWeb movement, who have already thought about many of the issues discussed here.

[https://indieweb.org/silo](https://indieweb.org/silo)

[https://indieweb.org/data-portability](https://indieweb.org/data-portability)

</comment><comment><USER39> How about a more generalised collaboration system, where you just edit your files lot Cally as standard, but can kind of dial in using o collaboration - <USER2> bit like a screen share on a call. So suddenly the people you've dialled can leave comments on your work etc, but when you cut the connection, they can't any more?

</comment><comment><USER40> Take a look at the PJON protocol that is a perfect example of a local-first networking technology, I am really amazed by the job they did on that! [https://github.com/gioblu/PJON](https://github.com/gioblu/PJON)

</comment><comment><USER41> Unfortunately local-first software is incompatible with you being a slave to your preferred technology company of choice (Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft).

If it wasn't for GDPR, most of these companies wouldn't even offer exports of your data.

<comment><USER42> GDPR was born yesterday, and government intervention on such private matters can really cause a disaster. You want to have control over your data, and just to cite one case, Apple has started embracing it a while ago ahead of GDPR laws. Perhaps because it is a hardware company it has more incentives (like, it could very well create something akin to a 'family vault' that would be a fancy digital vault that you could buy and store your family data on it, and it would survive even fires - just thinking some crazy ideas, so don't judge me too much).

I am positive that market forces would achieve the same effect sooner if it were not by GDPR. One thing that has to change in my opinion is the idea of 'exporting out'. People should be using such services to import in what they have to share with others, instead of blindly relying on them to access remotely.

<comment><USER43> >I am positive that market forces would achieve the same effect sooner if it were not by GDPR.

Considering how many business practices across the board aren't very consumer friendly and are seemingly growing ever more anti-competitive in nature while skirting antitrust definitions in grey areas, I'm personally not nearly so sure we can rely on "market forces" to protect anything but the business in question.

In fact, the only thing I've seen market forces achieve is self-preservation and interest which may or may not align with the rest of what society wants or needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> But we still need a catchy name.

</comment><comment><USER45> Was this paper in a journal?

<comment><USER14> It was published in the proceedings for _Onward! 2019_.

[https://doi.org/10.1145/3359591.3359737](https://doi.org/10.1145/3359591.3359737)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> if you prefer HTML over PDF it's [https://www.inkandswitch.com/local- first.html](https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html)</comment>