Nobel Laureate Develops Low-Cost Health Care System for Bangladesh (cost is $2/year) - <AUTHOR> http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-16-voa3.cfm <comment><USER2> It is worth mentioning that Muhammad Yunus is not only a microcredit pioneer but also co-created Grameen Phone, the very first mass cell phone provider in Bangladesh. They implemented a very innovative business model to make cell phones accessible to the poor, by allowing the cell phone owner (a villager) to resell minutes to other people in that same village.

What is interesting (and relevant for HN) is that the Grameen Phone experience demonstrates how access to technology empowers people exponentially:

1) The cell phone owner (villager) has a new source of income

2) The other villagers also increase their income, because now with access to crop information and market info, they can run their crops with less waste and negotiate a better price

3) Women is empowered because most of the phone owners are women (who are disenfranchised in that society)

<comment><USER3> Whats interesting about the model of selling minutes is that it is now used almost as a currency in some countries (specifically in african countries) where a cab driver will accept a transfer of minutes rather than money because he knows he can resell those minutes to someone else.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Actually the site nextbillion.net did a case study a few years ago about this subject. I cannot find the exact link right now, but I am sure it's somewhere in the site :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This TED talk is pretty on point/inspirational as well on building sustainable and even world class healthcare in developing countries - [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ernest_madu_on_world_clas...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ernest_madu_on_world_class_health_care.html).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad they're improving their situation.

But it can't work here. Are you going to be satisfied when your spouse or child is seriously ill, if you can only talk to a doctor by telephone, and no specialist ever even examines the patient?

<comment><AUTHOR> This service already exists here (in US, I assume), and is actually a prerequisite of sorts when scheduling an appointment: you have to call the nurse, explain your situation, and go from there. The catch is, you already have to have insurance to be able to do this (which costs much more than $2/year).</comment></comment>


What would a disruptive bank look like? - <AUTHOR> http://jackgavigan.com/2014/04/14/disruptive-bank/ <comment><USER3> Excellent post, as mentioned it would be easy to acquire the necessary talent pool in London. However, just starting out on the tech platform would have a significant price tag attached which means funding would be necessary even without a MVP....hard if not impossible to find

<comment><USER4> The Twitter conversation that led to that post started with me pointing out that VCs "don't fund NASA [i.e. large up-front cost] projects these days. They fund little consumer startups with traction" \- [https://twitter.com/JackGavigan/status/432633513666281472](https://twitter.com/JackGavigan/status/432633513666281472) \- and cited retail banking as an example - [https://twitter.com/JackGavigan/status/432644947485802497](https://twitter.com/JackGavigan/status/432644947485802497)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Automated functions, like storing money, transfers, (digital?) check processing, buying indices - all on explicit commands and with fees - <USER2> storing money - but dirt cheap.

After that we can talk about less clear-cut functions, like various kinds of investments or loan offerings.

<comment><USER4> I would ignore checks. Here in the UK, they're hardly used anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was my rejected idea for Ycombinator. I still think there's a lot of potential in this space, very similar to Simple.

<comment><USER7> Me too! What a coincidence! Oh... wait</comment></comment>


CSS3 is not proven to be turing complete - <AUTHOR> http://my-codeworks.com/blog/2015/duty-calls-css3-is-not-proven-to-be-turing-complete <comment><USER2> Cream colored text on a pixelated, white background. Title is difficult to read! Otherwise nice post.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: "CSS appears to be Turing complete. Sorry for wasting your time :)"

<comment> d-Pixie Sure, but the work that the entire internet based the claim on until now was in fact not a proof at all. Which is the main point, for me at least.

Isn't it strange that Wikipedia, some CS professors and many, many other places didn't even take the time to look at the "proof" before announcing the "fact" that CSS was turing complete? I like my proofs a little more proofed than that :)

/Jonas</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I store cookies? - <AUTHOR>

The landscape of the web is a bit difficult to research sometimes. I thought maybe you guys can help ...
I want to write a small analytics tool that people can install on their websites. The question is, how can I track the user sessions?
My biggest problem is that safari (under its default setting) refuses to write cookies on any other domain besides the one in the location bar, whether for documents requested by an iframe, or any resource requested by javascript. Chrome allows this for image tags, but Safari does not.
It is discussed here, but a lot of the methods suggested do not work anymore: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/408582/setting-cross-domain-cookies-in-safari
It would be very useful for an analytics tool to be able to write COOKIES back to the domain where it's hosted, so it can keep track of sessions. But what is a good way to achieve in this ALL browsers?
I have heard of evercookie. Will this work on all the browsers?
If I can't do this, then I guess I will have to mooch off the site's own cookies, which I think is what most analytics tools do. I guess this is designed to prevent tracking a user across multiple domains. <comment><USER2> I'm curious what you mean by when you say "track user sessions". Are you talking across multiple sites? Pages on the same domain? Or all sites that are running your analytics?

You explicitly, for good reason, cannot read and write cookies from another domain. What you can do, however, is host a PHP script that displays as an image on a 3rd party server (<http://www.configure- all.com/howto_display_image.php>), and use that script to write cookies or store information on that server's domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's say I navigate to publisher.com

If publisher.com has an iframe, img or other element with src coming from analytics.com, then (almost) all browsers will allow reading cookies from it. That is how e.g. commenting systems know who you are across domains.

However, safari is the only browser that doesn't seem to allow WRITING to a domain other than the one you have navigated to, using any method. (Not even loading img tags.)

I was wondering if there was a way around it. Someone said that doing a POST to an iframe used to work

[http://anantgarg.com/2010/02/18/cross-domain-cookies-in- safa...](http://anantgarg.com/2010/02/18/cross-domain-cookies-in-safari/)

but now people are saying it doesn't anymore

<comment><USER2> Considering the number of pages that rely on that php-image style scripting for simple things (like page hits), I'd be surprised if that didn't work on Safari. Sadly I don't have a Mac on hand, so I can't test it myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _It would be very useful for an analytics tool to be able to write COOKIES back to the domain where it's hosted, so it can keep track of sessions_

If you take Google Analytics as an example, it uses Javascript to gather info on the current visitor, then it creates a dynamic image tag to send that info to Google. This allows them to set a cookie using the domain of the site containing the analytics tag, and send that data back to a server on a different domain.

It is also possible to track users across multiple domains (e.g. the DART cookie used by DoubleClick). I believe this is achieved by using a dynamically generated iFrame to set the cookie on the user's computer. Since the domain used for the the iFrame is the same across all sites that use the Javascript snippet, the cookie can be read across multiple sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> So google uses the cookies of the publisher's site, okay...

but then what if the publisher has www.something.com, foo.something.com and something.com ... are all of these considered different domains? And if so, isn't it kind of unhelpful to the publisher, that you can't track a session across their various subdomains? Or is this intended?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha, I see, I can set a cookie for *.domain.com (or .domain.com) and then it will also work for all subdomains.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Google building an anti-spam empire? - <AUTHOR> http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Is-Google-building-an-anti-spam-empire-or-size-matters.aspx

<comment><USER2> > My prediction: Google next purchase in this space will be Akismet.

Im not so convinced - it depends a lot on what technology Akismet can provide. I mean yes they get a hell of a lot of content daily - but any more than Google get from Blogspot and other sources? I cant imagine it is enough to warrant a purchase based on that.

So, the tech. Im still not overly convinced about it; on my blog it is constantly flagging clear spam as "maybe". The thing is the posts are near identical in content week on week so the tech is a poor learner!

Google's email spam tech is killer in comparison, so I highly doubt they will be interested in Akismet.

Unless of course the intention is just to cut out the competition or offer an "spam api" of their own to the Akismet user base.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting view. I'm pretty sure that their reCAPTCHA purchase has more to do with scanning their books than it does with captcha.</comment>


YC: Don't forget to call your mother.  - <AUTHOR>

It's mothers day. <comment><USER2> This being a community of hackers, it'd be much appreciated if one of you could write a program that dialed up my mother every year leaving her a voicemail. This way, I can sleep in the entire day, and fulfill my duties as a son.

<comment><USER3> I know this has been downmodded, but if you wanted a trick to go straight to voicemail for this "app": <http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9915518-2.html>

And it just has a pre-roll ad or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Only in certain countries:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day#Mother.27s_Day_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day#Mother.27s_Day_in_various_parts_of_the_world)

</comment><comment><USER5> My mother lives a block away. Just a phone call would have been kind of rude ;-)

<comment><USER6> That is a deep basement ;)

<comment><USER7> Hahahah. Amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i don't really understand this: why do you have to wait for a specific day for this ? aren't you grateful _everyday_ ?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but most of them expect a show of that gratefulness _today_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a moment I was surprised that no one made the obligatory "I called your mom last night" joke, but then I remembered that news.yc is a more refined crowd

<comment><USER10> and you just couldn't resist saying it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I get to call my mom on Saturday the 10th, mexican mothers day...

</comment><comment><USER12> Mothers are frequently overrated</comment>


How Browsers Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/ <comment><USER2> _> According to the StatCounter browser statistics, currently (August 2011), the usage share of Firefox, Safari and Chrome together is nearly 60%. So nowadays open source browsers are a substantial part of the browser business._

Somehow this never occurred to me to aggregate it this way. I recall having read somewhere that the server-side ratio is about 70-30. It's quite a milestone as now both ends of the WWW platform have an absolute majority being open source.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to lump Safari into that, even if webkit is open source.

<comment><USER4> If you use that criterium, you also can't lump Chrome into that. I would count the engine, not the browser.

<comment><USER5> But Chromium is, and there's no difference between the two beside branding and Chrome shipping with some non-free stuff: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoo...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome)

<comment><USER6> It depends on what you care about when you say "open". If you care about security/privacy and the fact that you're running potentially Trojan-infected code on your machine, then _any_ non-open code makes a difference.

<comment><USER7> The fact you use a connection to the internet opens yiu to many nefarious means to "screw you over". I can think of subtle things like changing adservers to backbone providers, router protocol redirections, ssl master cert spoofs (care of us govt), and many others.

Unless you were the types that freaked out on mm256.dat and nsakey, use standard security and you're fine.

If you did freak out, im sure we can work out a GPS-login script that watches location, bloodtype, retinal scan, passphrase, and voice scan to get a guest account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like an excellent place to link someone who knows a bit of HTML, maybe some Javascript, but is curious about "real CS stuff".

</comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting. I am always amazed how quickly browsers can update the layout when you work with jQuery to update CSS or the DOM.

</comment><comment><USER10> The bit about how browsers parse malformed html is very interesting - a useful lesson for all developers having to deal with the crap that users tend to produce! ;-)

<comment><USER11> It's also a useful lesson for people thinking about security. When something that is not actually HTML can be interpreted in a browser as HTML, there is a big potential security hole.

For example: At one point, I sanitized incoming user content by parsing it as HTML and nuking almost all markup (I allowed links and italics to pass through). THEN I realized this wasn't good enough, because Firefox was parsing unclosed image tags as though they were closed. The (strict) parser I was using would pass through a user's unclosed image tag as plain text, but Firefox would load it as an image. An attacker could have used that to not only collect visitor IPs (by loading an image on his server) but also to do various things with Javascript -- an image tag can include an onload attribute. (I have no idea if Firefox still works this way, it was about five years ago.)

<comment><USER12> It would make more sense to HTML escape the input than to strip out tags.

<comment><USER11> The goal was to allow link and italics tag, as I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They refer to Tali Garsiel as "she". Sure it isn't a "he" ?

<comment><USER13> Lol. It seems I need to do more web research... Thanks for all the down votes. What a stupid and childish site. Bye Bye Hacker News.

<comment><USER14> HN has elitism problems: it's excessively worried about quality (something it can't really control as the site grows) to the extent that its group action violently downvotes certain posts--such as your rather innocent question.

I guess everyone thinks you should have googled it, but we didn't have the decency to politely request that you google such information in the future?

I feel you.

<comment><USER15> It's an irrelevant question and if a discussion were to spawn from it, it would detract from the actual content. This is a perfectly valid comment downvote.

<comment><USER14> It's a question about the author. It's a stupid question about the author that could easily be answered with five seconds on Google, but that doesn't make it irrelevant, except in the eyes of an indifferent, exclusionary mindset that prizes signal-to-noise-ratio above simple politeness. I ain't asking for people to _upvote_ it, just to ease off on the downvotes and maybe provide a courteous explanation.

<comment><USER16> The question was a sexist double whammy (given both the assumption that "the author of a technical document can't possibly be a woman" and that "the author's gender is at all germane to this piece") that has no place anywhere, let alone HN. If anything should be downvoted, that is the perfect example of one such thing.

<comment><USER14> Or maybe the speaker is from a culture that doesn't know that Tali is a Hebrew name for both boys and girls, or from a culture where Tali is only a dude's name, or... the hypothetical exceptions to your interpretation go on and on. [Ninja-edit] Your ninja-editted assumptions as to what the person meant by his question are an over-reaction: you don't _know_ that's what he meant, you're only seeing hints of it.[end ninja-edit]

It could _well_ be an innocent question, and there's no sense in generating righteous indignation over two sentences.

<comment><USER16> Given that female pronouns were used several times in the opening paragraph, even if one didn't scroll down to the bio at the bottom, to assume that she must be a he, even on the basis of something such as a name (cf. George Eliot) is entirely unwarranted without further reason to back it up. But, you're right, it could have been a case of bad assumptions and only single-whammy sexism (the author's gender is still not germane to the article in any way). And it's still a downvote-worthy comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> thanks for the link!</comment>


An analysis of EPUB3 (and, uh, a bit more) - <AUTHOR> http://sigildev.blogspot.com/2011/02/analysis-of-epub3-and-uh-bit-more.html

<comment><USER2> Awfully ranty. I'll attempt to summarize:

      - JavaScript now optional but discouraged.
      Author surmises this will be abused, decries feature creep.
      - No required Unicode glyph coverage.
      Thus even though content is UTF-8 or UTF-16, you still can't rely on readers actually supporting the glyphs you want to use.
      - Author laments reader software that fails to implement EPUB-specific features and practical result of same.
      The specific case of a certain fruit company is vividly rendered in an extended metaphor.
      - A list of smaller features is discussed in brief.
      MathML support is probably the most interesting to HN.
      - Cannonical Fragment Identifiers.
      A scheme for identifying *any* location inside an EPUB document, is described as over-engineered and unlikely to be implemented by anybody.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of his points are perfectly valid, but some come across as anti-progress. I have a fair amount of experience in the childrens' book publishing industry. Current ebook formats don't supply the features that educators _know_ improve learning. Text on the page is important, but supplementary audio and video are good for learning. Interactivity is good for learning. Right now, the go-to tool for low-level interactive books is Flash. Yes, Flash. How sad is that? Monumental amounts of early-stage learning materials are being published in a proprietary format that is notoriously opaque, and tied to a commercial "player" that is only available from one vendor. We desperately need tools to create interactive ebooks that are based on open standards like EPUB, and we need them soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "This book needs more cowbell."

Funny, I feel that way about most websites ... especially a "website in a box."

I feel his pain and I don't even have to implement those specs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think more developers should get this passionate about specifications.</comment>


Django-piston - A mini-framework for Django for creating RESTful APIs - <AUTHOR> http://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Home

<comment><USER2> Awesome! I've been using django-oauth for sometime now, been looking at django-restapi and so on. But this takes the best of both worlds. And I especially like that it is not tied to the data models, so this means we can build in some business logic.

<comment><USER3> _And I especially like that it is not tied to the data models, so this means we can build in some business logic._

Can you elaborate? I'm doing my first big django project now and am looking for lessons from others!

<comment><USER4> See Jacob's post here: <http://jacobian.org/writing/rest-worst-practices/>

Basically, it's a bad idea to couple something like django-piston too tightly to the underlying models because in any even moderately useful API there will be plenty of resources you want to expose that are actually cobbled together from various different models (or even other storage locations such as a search index or external web service).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, I switch from django-rest-interface to django-piston. The models are very similar, but I think piston is a little cleaner. It also seems to be a little more actively developed (at least, according to the source histories).

<comment><USER6> Well, a lot of the requested changes now require a re-write. And I don't have time for it, unless a project comes along and requires just that. I am not sure what to do about it other than hope someone would help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just looking at Django REST apis last night but didn't find this one. This seems really similar to django-rest-interface, except for the oauth. Anybody know the potential upside/downside to this versus djang-rest- interface?

<comment><AUTHOR> "The Django REST interface makes it easy to offer private and public APIs for existing Django models."

Piston doesn't tie you to a model (although it can), which is very important for any decent sized API. Exposing models is something you want half the time, but there's a lot more to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Haven't tried this out yet, but I'm very optimistic from reading the documentation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yo dawg, I heard you like frameworks.</comment>


Google Earth finally available in browsers other than Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/27/21155707/google-earth-firefox-edge-opera-support-webassembly-code-update-web-release <comment><USER2> One of the reasons they gave for the delay of switching to wasm was that nacl had threading support while wasm didn't (wasm supports running in workers, but communication can only happen asynchronously through message channels, no advanced multi threading capabilities like sharing memory etc). Then spectre happened and delayed the wasm threading support of browsers even further. Chrome has experimental wasm threading now, but other browsers don't. So now the non-Chrome launch happens without usage of wasm threading.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is my usual reminder that Google Earth for desktop is still available and is still wildly superior in terms of features and performance to the web version.

[https://www.google.com/earth/versions/](https://www.google.com/earth/versions/)

(scroll to the bottom, select 'download earth pro on desktop')

Edit: Though to be fair, I just checked out the web version and it does appear to be much better than it was when it was first released. It does now appear that they're actually trying to re-implement most of the features of the desktop app on the web. The lack of historical imagery and the replacement of the 'layers' model with a couple of 'map style' options are the most glaring omissions.

<comment><USER4> Performance is still remarkably better on the desktop app and will be for the forseeable future. I used to run the software over a decade ago on a modest dual core computer with 4gb of RAM without struggle; try doing that with a modern browser experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me the Google Maps and Earth might be the most impressive piece of software in existence. To see it working on standard web technology on competing browsers is awesome.

<comment><USER6> Have you tried Google Earth VR? I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER7> +1. I've used it before going on trips or journeys. When I'm using VR, it causes my brain to remember it as if I've been there. When I'm finally there it just feels like revisiting, and I know where I'm going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not working with Firefox Ubuntu. I disabled all the privacy addons I'm using to no avail. It works with Vivaldi.

</comment><comment><USER9> When Google Earth web used NACL, it was so silky smooth, it wasn't even like it was the web. Even on relatively weak hardware (dual core laptop), it was so nice, didn't skip a frame. First time I tried this in stable Chrome it locked up my entire computer. Took about 5 minutes to be able to reboot. On reboot, when I run it, it's like a slideshow, unusable (Ryzen 3900X 12-core beast with RTX 2060 Super). I really want to get excited about WebAssembly, but this doesn't do that.

<comment><USER10> Today I tried it for the first time (the web version) on my work laptop T490 (Intel UHD 620), Ubuntu with Firefox 73. Everything is super smooth. I'm surprised it isn't for you. It's also smooth on my home Macbook Pro (2015) w/ Fx73.

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised too. I've tried on Firefox as well, and on different machines, dual core laptop (Intel), quad core laptop (Intel), iMac 27" Late 2015. All were silky smooth with NACL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Works on Firefox Dev on Manjaro

</comment><comment><USER12> Not working in MacOS Firefox Developer Edition 74.0b7

<comment><USER13> You might want to uninstall your extensions and try again — it works in a clean install.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't working on desktop Safari (13.0.5).

<comment><USER15> Because Apple still doesn't support WebGL2 (similar to OpenGL ES 3.0) after all these years. Apple is involved with WebGPU, but they still won't even support WebGL2, which kinda pisses me off.

No matter what people say, Chrome is not the new IE, Safari is; and thank god it's so unpopular.

<comment><USER16> You misunderstand the term Chrome is the new IE. IE used to be the dominating browser on the web. Whatever standards IE supported were reverse engineered by other browsers such as AJAX. IE eventually got overshadowed by the open web and fell behind. There used to be websites that only worked on IE, well there still might be. There's too many websites coded and tested with Chrome now using features only in Chrome, breaking other sites, or worse checking if Chrome is being used and ignoring if the browser supports the feature, or worse Chrome implements it before a formal spec, which breaks other browsers who comply with the spec.

<comment><USER17> I think both Chrome and Safari have negative connections with memories of IE. For Safari it's the stagnation of IE6: installed everywhere but rarely updated with new features that other browsers have.

That's not so much of a problem on desktop because people can always install another browser, but on iOS you're literally not allowed to use any other browser engine.

<comment><USER14> The issue is that major updates to Safari follow the same cycle as updates to the MacOS and iOS operating systems, meaning once per year at the current rate. Adding major features once per year (and even then, only once they have been in use on other platforms for at least a year or two) means that Safari can lag by three years in terms of features (case in point: WebRTC).

<comment><USER15> > _means that Safari can lag by three years in terms of features (case in > point: WebRTC)._

In the case of WebRTC, it's even worse than that: public stable releases of Firefox and Chrome supported WebRTC by early 2013, but Safari took until late 2017. That's _more than five years_ for an extremely popular feature (I had three professional engagements where we had to integrate a native WebRTC client component into a Cordova application, and couldn't support that feature on iOS through the browser, before they finally released it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wait, what? I switched completely from Chrome to Firefox in mid November (so happy about the move btw) and had Google Earth on Firefox from day one. Is this article missing something or is it me?

<comment><USER19> Maybe you're confusing Google Earth and Google Maps? That happens sometimes.

<comment><USER18> ohh, a Joker *slow clap

<comment><USER20> ...except they're right. Google Earth hasn't been available in Firefox until today. Either you're mixing up Maps and Earth, or misremembering.

<comment><USER18> This is not facebook, this is HN. You can't possible conceive that a user of HN does this confusion, do you? Because in that case you are not only insulting my intelligence, you're insulting yours as well. Also a simple click on my name and reading a few answers I've given here could tell you I am definitely NOT the usual facebook user who somehow got lost and ended here.

Let me tell you again, so there isn't any confusion: Starting mid-November last year when I switched from Chrome to Firefox, I had google Earth from day one on Firefox. And yes, I am very much aware the difference between not only google earth and google maps but also the difference between google maps 2D and google maps 3D possibilities. I have kids, I use all these 3 tools when my kids are doing their Geography homework. Is it clear now?

<comment><USER19> Well, my apologies for trying to help, I guess. I try not to make any assumptions about your background knowledge, and am not going through everyone's comments before replying to them.

I know this is unasked for, but I do think it would save a lot of frustration and make for more pleasant interactions if we try to assume other people have good intentions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/bitcoin-homeless/ <comment><USER2> There were a few points that the article didn't bring up. I was surprised that they didn't discuss the speculative value of bitcoins. There's no way that the value of a dollar in your pocket will suddenly double, but the value of a bitcoin has and will again. Obviously volatility isn't all fun...would you want your salary paid in bitcions? In the current market you might actually come out ahead over the next few years.

The second thing is that these bitcoin payment systems only work because they dodge the minimum wage. There are a lot of things that homeless people could do if it was legal to pay $.60/day. The minimum wage does a lot of good, but the people in this article didn't seem to mind the situation. I think it's because a lot of people don't think of working online as "real work" and are ok with low paying tasks.

All in all this article was a feel good hit. Bitcoin allows homeless people to avoid the shame of begging and the risk of robbery. They receive support from their community to earn legitimate money by doing real work. Of course fake youtube views and button pushing aren't very beneficial to society, but I think there will be more useful work for them and others in the near future.

A functioning human brain is a very rare thing in the universe. The way we get ahead is by utilizing everyone of them that we can find. We often write homeless people off as a drain on society, but there's something to be said for everybody pitching in, even if just a little bit.

<comment><USER3> _The minimum wage does a lot of good_

Interesting you say then when you can clearly see that actually hurts those people.

<comment><USER4> Its almost like it both has advantages and disadvantages... How crazy...

<comment><USER3> You're right, I didn't consider employers of illegal workers and the automation industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the picture of the "homeless" guy using a laptop newer than mine, with his pet, nice bike, playing a video game while he smokes a cig. He also has an energy drink... as if he needs it to get through his day of sitting around. It's people like him who are hurting the homeless people that are actually in need.

<comment><USER6> Wow, you guys talking about how this guy should have an apartment or something because he has a laptop are lacking in empathy.

When was the last time you met the eyes of one of these good-for-nothing, lazy, bad-smelling, disgusting … _things_?

If you can't even meet eyes with a homeless person, let alone really observing the person, you can't even put yourself into their shoes, feel what they feel, and see the world from their eyes. If you can't do that, then you lack empathy.

And when you lack empathy, that's the seed of prejudice.

Or how about this article, posted here on Hacker News: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/These-young-SF- profess...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/These-young-SF- professionals-choose-to-live-in-RVs-4778625.php)

Those are startup founders that live in RVs … because rent is too high in the Bay Area.

There are indeed homeless people who are mentally or emotional unstable. Not all homeless people are like that. And there are mentally and emotionally unstable people who live in homes. And then, there are systemic problems where rent prices have driven people out of affordable homes.

As to the point about how having laptops point to a confusion in Maslow's Hierarchy, I think that demonstrates more of the commenter's lack of understanding of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

It is true that shelter is at the bottom of the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is part of the human need to seek physical security, and is the foundation for the higher level needs. However, "shelter" is so much more than an apartment or a house. An apartment and a house are _socially approved_ shelter. Shelter is anything that will help you maintain homeostasis. It can be a cave. It can be survival shelter in the woods. It can be under a freeway bridge. It can be in a cardboard box. It includes clothing.

When you are in survival mode, you are not thinking about socially-approved shelter. You are seeking _any_ shelter. People who go out into the woods without a lot of training in wilderness survival tends to flounder around when things go bad. Their minds, being unable to accept the situation as-is, keep thinking that civilization will save them somehow, and cling to that. "If only I can get out of these woods or find a ranger, I would be safe." Instead of "Oh shit, a bad storm is coming, I need to get under covers NOW."

Likewise, having talked to some of the homeless, I was told how you can pick out the newly homeless. They have so much pride (and shame), it kept them from receiving help -- food, or shelter, or whatever. They are clinging to behaviors that are socially-approved. Social approval is higher up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Believe me, if you were somewhere public and you hear gunshots, and you felt your life threatened, you will probably _run_. And you won't be thinking that the place you are running to is private property or not.

Finally, comments like these suggest that the commenters have not examined their concepts thoroughly or looked into their own feelings about this.

People who live outside the socially-approved box are _threatening_ to people living inside the box. This threat goes beyond the surface, "oh, he is going to mug me." The aversion and disgust that keeps people from empathizing with the homeless comes from pack behavior. Humans tend to aggregate in groups, reject outsiders, and severely punish anyone who betray the pack.

This punishment is _exactly_ the kind of reflexive emotional response risk- averse people have when you tell them about startup idea. "What's wrong with these people? They must be crazy!"

It is also the emotional reaction that leads to comments like, "If he can afford a better laptop than I, he can afford an rent. There must be something wrong about him."

That's bullshit.

<comment><USER7> _When was the last time you met the eyes of one of these good-for-nothing, lazy, bad-smelling, disgusting … things?_

That's a fairly vile perspective to project onto someone you're trying to have a productive conversation with.

Please treat folks on hn with a bit more respect.

<comment><USER6> I've watched people and how they actually react to people on the streets. I've watched myself. When aversion arises, I have seen this reaction.

Does everyone on HN have this aversion? No. I can't even see your faces, hear your voice. But _everyone_ has _some_ kind of aversion. There is often something vile lurking within the depths of people's hearts. It's ugly. I wrote that to give you the reader, a sense of empathy for the people who turn away in disgust from another human being, and believe me, I've seen that kind of reaction in person.

I've seen it in people walking down the street being solicited by the homeless. I've seen it in mothers and fathers turning away from their children. I've seen it in politicians, and activists. I've seen it all sorts of ordinary people.

I don't know if _you_ react that way. You might. You might not. You might even react this way, and don't even know it.

The only way to be truly respectful is not to hide this, but to bring this ugliness out into the open, to really look at it, and to accept that you have these feelings -- whatever those feelings are -- arising from you. Who knows? You might find the deeper root causes for those feelings.

<comment><USER7> "Some kind of aversion" is a long, long way from seeing other human beings as " _things_ ".

I think it would be better if we all acted as if hn were populated by people much closer to the former end of that spectrum.

<comment><USER6> > "Some kind of aversion" is a long, long way from seeing other human beings > as "things".

Every moment you to avert your attention, you are treating a person as a thing. You stop seeing the person and react to the aversion instead.

This is something that happens with pretty much everyone.

The difference here is for me, I am seeing people who, from time to time, will have aversions, and will in that moment treat that person as a thing. For you, it seems to be an unforgivable act that once committed, can never, ever be redeemed. I think that latter is another form of typecasting, don't you think?

I think it is useful to recognize that each of us have done this in the past, as a way of being aware of what is happening in the present moment. So that, when you _do_ find yourself walking down the street, and you are busy, rushing to somewhere else, and someone asks you for change: do you at least stop, look at that person in the eyes, and sincerely tell that person, "No, I don't have change for you. Sorry."?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know, it just sounds a sensational story to draw readership. Yeah, maybe he did it for couple of days/weeks, but doing this in a disciplined manner for a long time to earn measly couple of dollars does not make sense all.

<comment><USER9> Yes, certainly a tech-meets-social-issues story like this is shining fodder for Wired which is certainly an occasion to ask yourself "why does someone want me to believe this"...

Meanwhile, I, too, have been considering the longer-term effects of this article. Without making judgments on anyone, it seems the larger effect of these men is to "soft-launder" bitcoins back into cash. They (aided by brokers like Gyft) are on the bitcoin -> cash side, while in parallel, there is a large world (substantially underground) of cash -> bitcoin people.

If this model is true, the sustainability of the operation will continue and vary/grow as long as the parallel, (somewhat underground) world of BTC does. If this is true, the food these gentlemen eat is the result of a mild additional transaction fee for sustaining the complementary shadow world, which shows zero signs of folding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like you could make more than .60 a day doing Mechanical Turk jobs. It'd be a little less mind numbing than watching commercials every day.

<comment><USER11> cmd-F Mechani

Oh, there you are.

Exactly. You can easily make ~10cents a minute, that's 6 dollars an hour. It's probably pretty hard work but the premise of this is just so...

If you're homeless in america, sign up for mechanical turk. You'll make more than enough for food.

<comment> super-serial How do you make 10 cents a minute? Have you ever tried?

When I needed money I tried... I made $2-$3 per hour writing articles. Transcribing audio, doing surveys and small 5 cent tasks all paid less per hour.

<comment><USER11> I've only ever created HIT's. Normally paid waaaay over $10 an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From some of these comments, it amazes me that people want to dictate how others should live their lives while doing nothing to improve the situation or to solve the systemic forces that faces the individuals mentioned… unless some of you happen to be on the Federal Reserve board or a CEO at a TBTF bank that owns shares in it, because _obviously_ they are very, very good at allocating capital and resources to us all, while we tell more people to participate the in bread and circuses in order to be _useful_ in this society…

"What you eat don't make me shit, and who you fuck don't make me come"

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that it is not a property of bitcoin or cryptocurrency itself that is allowing these folks to supplement their income with "manual" labor. Instead it feels like the fact that it's a new, relatively unexploited market that is enabling these ventures to scrape together the people and resources necessary by using extremely thin margins. I can't imagine this will be viable for long as more people get into it.

Sure, you can provide clicks in exchange for bitcoin, and that might help some homeless people right now. But what happens when that becomes over-saturated and/or youtube et. al. get better at preventing that? Amazon Turk + BTC could be viable.

> This is the only property for which Dale is currently accepting digital > currency, but so far, he says, "it's been a good experience because bitcoins > have gone up in value, so it's more than I would have gotten in regular > dollars."

I bet he won't be so happy when the price swings in the other direction. Therein lies the eternal problem with BTC for trade on a scale even beginning to approach that of what goes on in the world today.

<comment><USER14> Im really surprised that doesn't exist yet. YC applications still open? :)

<comment> mkr-hn There are already microtask sites similar to Mechanical Turk that pay in bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > He doesn't have to worry as much about getting robbed.

Er, laptop?

<comment><USER16> He could have an online wallet or have his wallet.dat file synchronized to SpiderOak, DropBox, et al.

<comment><USER17> I think the idea is that his laptop could be stolen/robbed.

They are often worth a bit of money. But I bet there is a performance/age/fencing/cost point where it isn't worth it to rob someone for it.

<comment><USER18> Do thieves understand this?

<comment><USER19> Crackheads trying to get their next fix just take any sort of electronics and get $10-20 for it. It doesn't generally matter what it is - they'll take it if they can get their hands on it & want to unload it ASAP. If they've been strung out & off the grid long enough, they might not know the difference between a walkman and a iPhone.

A professional thief, OTOH, probably does know what's worth taking and what's worth keeping. The problem is that, while committing a robbery, you don't exactly have the time or resources to go on eBay and price check everything you see. It's more practical to take everything that might be valuable & then figure out what's worth trying to sell after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just so everyone knows, the calculation with watching videos at BitcoinGet is wrong. They would be making 6 cents for watching 12 videos and not 60 cents. This makes it even less of an incentive to go there. I am surprised they do.

The site pays 40uBTC/video, which converts to 40*10^-6BTC = 0.00004BTC = $0.005(assuming 125USD/BTC) = 0.5 cents/video = 6 cents/12 videos.

Also, it is a Silicon Valley startup Virool that offers these videos, not BitcoinGet per se.

<comment><USER21> If true, seems like a pretty big oversight by the author and editor. They claim 0.0004 BTC per view, when in reality it's 0.00004? Your math checks out, but I'm not familiar with what the site actually pays.

While it was a good read about the other merits of bitcoin, there's a pretty huge difference between earning 60 cents a day vs 6 cents a day...

<comment><USER20> I am pretty sure that the payout per video is 40 micro bitcoin (it was recently dropped from 50 micro bitcoin). Unfortunately to see this number, you need to register. It's a common amount for watching one Virool video (e.g. another site ABitBack pays only 30 micro Bitcoin per Virool video).

I am surprised too that the error hasn't been corrected yet. The difference is 10 times, which isn't insignificant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some of the comments on that article are surprisingly nasty

<comment><USER23> Comments on general news sites tend to be cesspools in general. Oddly, the same people posting weird vitriol about how America is being ruined by freeloading parasites seem to be: 1) not highly educated; and 2) able to spend hours and hours a day posting angry comments on news websites. I wonder where they're getting their own income from. Are they all retirees and students? People on SS disability? Stay-at-home parents whose spouse works? Survivalists in an internet-equipped cabin in Montana?

<comment><USER24> Conservative political groups in the USA pay people to basically troll on major news sites/message boards/blogs:

[http://www.alternet.org/story/149197/are_right- wing_libertar...](http://www.alternet.org/story/149197/are_right- wing_libertarian_internet_trolls_getting_paid_to_dumb_down_online_conversations?page=0%2C1)

<comment><USER25> That's a great conspiracy but I'm not sure those folks have that much market share in the grand scheme of things (and it's possible liberal groups are doing the same thing). I don't know how many news site comment sections you tend to frequent, but I feel like I've seen just as much "dumbed down" liberal "trolling" as the reverse.

<comment><USER9> heh. I bet the political leanings are simply an artifact of the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory. [1]

[1] [http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/uncat/dickwad- th...](http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/uncat/dickwad-theory.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Funny. Photo on the second page has a subtitle "Angle mines bitcoins on a park bench." [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/wp- content/uploads/2013...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/Bitcoin-Homeless-13-660x440.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER27> there should be a service that combines amazon turk with bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER28> The math doesn't add up.

At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin.

At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin.

The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.

<comment><USER17> "Why don't these people get jobs?"

Because: THERE. ARE. NOT. ENOUGH. JOBS.

* The economy crashed a while ago. We still haven't recovered all the jobs we lost, by either absolute or percentage.

* Increased automation and efficiency is slowly removing those jobs you just described. Exec, a YCombinator app, makes a more efficient and automated solution to craigslist cleaning jobs. This is happening in every sector in this country. These changes ELIMINATE JOBS, these jobs will never come back. And the jobs they create do not replace the ones they removed, not in quantity, or in aggregate tax quality (i.e. one well paid programmer does not replace the amount of tax revenue from 4 people splitting the same salary. Let alone the fact that executives often take a cut of that increased productivity for themselves. Let alone the fact that it puts more load on welfare for the 3 lost jobs).

* Every single one of those jobs you just listed likely requires a number of things in today's saturated jobs market: High-school or college education (too many people, not enough jobs, means overqualified hiring requirements), a permanent address (hard when you are homeless), a certain appearance (hard when you are poor, without a place to live or bathe), some sort of experience (hard to get in this job market, especially when under educated, in poor health [mental or physical], and every other reason here), transport to and from work (or even for the work), ect.

I think you need to take a step back and look at the whole picture, it's a dire one.

<comment><USER29> There are always enough jobs. There aren't enough jobs that people are willing to do for the money others are willing to pay. If I knew someone near me was living on <$1/day, I would raise their pay to $5 to do something mundane. If that person could find 15-20 of me, they are above the poverty line. My standard of living has gone up and so has theirs AND they now can circulate that money to others in their service - and so it goes on.

The problem isn't a lack of jobs, it's the draining of capital flow that happen when the monetary system dries up. Whether you believe that to be unfairness or just some players being so adept at the game... that doesn't matter.

The ball needs to move or people who want to play the game will be sitting out. If the ball is kept moving, even artificially, anyone who wants to play will get to play. The only ones left out would be willingly out or mentally/physically unable to play at all.

Right now, we let the game rules be such that some smart shits helped some lucky shits collect the ball and now the dumbshits think the pile of "money" is worth something when not in circulation. Look at all my symbols of currency! Doesn't matter if it's dollars, metals/commodities, or the butcoin... without a functioning-thriving ebb and flow of currency, everyone is poorer.

Spend like death with 0 is the goal. Don't take on debt or get greedy. We'll all live better.

<comment><USER30> "There are always enough jobs." That's patently rubbish as can be seen all around the (1st) world at the moment.

However, I don't agree with the parent's comment that technology causes a lack of jobs - also obviously untrue if you look around you.

Currently we're on the tail-end of a recession, thus money isn't moving around, thus it's harder to insert one's self into the money stream.

As people start spending, jobs pick up. This is already happening in most of the richer parts of the recession hit world. Here in the UK, unemployment has been dropping steadily. New small businesses are appearing fast. Manufacturing's on the way up.

FWIW, I agree with everything after your very first sentence.

<comment><USER31> The fact that there aren't currently enough jobs could very well be an unquantifiable negative externality of having a minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ok, so I am paying around 30k of my hard earned money as taxes from working 10+ hours every day, just so this guy can do nothing all day long and get free food stamps...I would rather spend this money on my kids and family...

<comment><USER33> I know, right? Let's take back all these entitlements from these lazy poors. If they really want to eat they should get a job like the rest of us.

And let's have a word with the inefficient government bureaucrats. How do they start with your hard-earned 30k and end up with just enough to give this guy food stamps? Totally inefficient if you ask me.

<comment><USER34> >> How do they start with your hard-earned 30k and end up with just enough to give this guy food stamps? Totally inefficient if you ask me.

They started it with the welfare system, good idea but then let the majority of its users abuse it rather than finding work. They started it, they keep it going because their users vote for them which keeps them in power.</comment></comment></comment>


Ever Plugged a USB in Wrong? (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/06/21/734451600/ever-plugged-a-usb-in-wrong-of-course-you-have-heres-why?t=1561497376866 <comment><USER3> Back in the early '90s, when 100 MB was a big hard drive, we were doing a project for a company that had access to some early, very hard to get, units of a 1 GB drive that IBM was going to be introducing later that year.

I somehow managed to fry one by plugging in the power connector upside down. This should be possible, as it used the 4-pin connector from the middle of the top row here [1]. That and its mate are not symmetrical and are made of a pretty stiff plastic.

When I told the company we were doing the project from that I had fried one of the pretty much irreplaceable test drives I expected them to be very upset.

Instead, their owner laughed and admitted that he had also fried two of them that way.

Even better, his contacts inside IBM told him that something like 30% of the drives were failing testing during manufacturing, and that had been traced to IBM testers plugging in the power connector upside down and frying the drive!

It turned out that for some unfathomable reason they were using a power socket on the drive that had a very flexible plastic hood. It turned out that the force needed to plug in the keyed connector backwards, bending the hood out of the way, was not much more than the normal force to plug the thing in the right way because the plastic was so flexible.

[1] [http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html](http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't really address why one plugs it in wrong more than 50% of the time. John Siracusa had a great analysis on this on the ATP podcast a few months ago: Even if you have it in the correct orientation the first try, it inevitably catches a bit and you think you've done it wrong. You don't want to break anything, so you flip it to try the other way. That is now the wrong way and won't fit at all. So you flip it again and it goes in. So, 3 tries if you had it right the first time, 2 tries if you had it wrong the first time.

<comment><USER5> My (non-technical) friend solved this ten years ago: "holes up"

<comment><USER6> Go through your drawer of USB cables. You'll see that a lot of Type-A connectors now have the holes on _both_ sides!

<comment><USER7> There are several ways to tell visually which way it goes. Holes up and the fat plastic part (look into the connector on the cable) down. On top of that there is often a USB logo on the 'top'. Finally you can remember. heheh. With a bit of effort I've managed to get my USB plugging in to be about 90% accurate but I'm still caught out by that factor they mention in the OP - <USER2> it catches, you doubt and reverse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article addresses the reason it was made non-reversible (cost) but does not address why the plug was made rectangular, which gives it no visual or tactile feedback for orientation. HDMI for example is non-reversible but it's obvious (more or less) which way to insert it.

The only reference in the article is,

> The Intel team led by Bhatt anticipated the user frustration and opted for a > rectangular design and a 50-50 chance to plug it in correctly, versus a > round connector with less room for error.

Which sounds like a post-hoc rationalisation for a bad design to me. I find it hard to believe they did this intentionally.

<comment><USER9> That sounds more like "Well, it's not as bad as PS2 connector at least."

The worst part is that they already had a good example of a connector you couldn't plug in backwards, was sturdy, hot-pluggable, and could easily accommodate the number of pins they needed: The Gameboy Link Cable.

<comment><USER10> PS/2 seems entirely rotationally ambiguous without looking at the pins, or at least seemed so to the younger version of me. It still stands out as the most painful part of computing during my childhood.

<comment><USER11> PS/2 male connectors have a set of grooves and rotationally asymmetrical rim. I had always been able to plug them in blind on the first try.

<comment><USER12> And the "top" is usually flat so you can put your thumb on it and push in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _you go to plug in your thumb drive. You try once. Failure ensues. Metal clashes with metal. Humiliated and discouraged, you flip it and try again. Failure, again! How could this be possible?_

I hoped the article would explain also why the above happens, not just why the design decision which leads to the above was made.

Although I think it's not just the shape, but a combination with other things. Thingking in the direction of: most ports are all black and/or hard to reach so from a distance you just don't see where exactly it will fit so you just try and don't get a proper match. I.e. I never ever have this problem when pluggin into a socket which is right before my eyes and/or e.g. has the central plastic piece in white since then you can clearly see how to match them. Further ideas?

<comment><USER14> " _I hoped the article would explain also why the above happens_ "

If I had to guess, I'd suspect that it's because there are a couple of ways to get it wrong when plugging in a USB drive or cable. You can get the orientation wrong but you can also accidentally put it in at a slight angle and have it catch. In the later case, just slightly adjusting your approach would get it in, but because you know that there is a chance of you having got the orientation wrong, you automatically assume that that was what happened and flip the orientation instead and end up flipping it back when you realize you were right the first time.

I suspect that the reason we make that assumption, that we got the orientation wrong and not the angle, is that that's actually what happens the majority of the time when we fail to insert a USB connector. We discount the angle problem because it happens so infrequently, and when it does happen we just get the impression that we got the orientation wrong, twice, which is something that sticks with us. Hence, the sense that there is a paradox about the orientation of USB connectors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> RJ-45 and USB ports are exactly the same width. If you plug in a USB port blindly, you can feel it make contact with the sides of an RJ-45 port.

I found this out trying to fix someone's printer. I even un- and re-plugged the cable and it still wasn't detected. It wasn't until I actually looked at the back panel that I noticed the printer's USB cable was plugged into an RJ-45 network jack.

<comment><USER16> I also discovered this while trying to plug my telescope's camera USB cable into my PC in the total darkness, and wondering why the camera didn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> (1) I remember the time I mashed a USB plug into an e-SATA socket and thought I did something horribly wrong, but then I heard the beep saying that the computer recognized the device and I looked it up and found out you really can mash a USB plug into an e-SATA socket and have it work.

(2) USB-C eliminates the problem of putting the cable in upside down, but it adds the problem that there are different kinds of USB-C cable, you might pick the wrong one, get a fake, etc. It's a tough problem to make one cable that can "do everything" but not make the cable to plug your mouse in crazy expensive.

(3) I've seen quite a few devices (PCs and tablets) where the Type-C connectors seem to be floppy and not well connect to the circuit board. I haven't had one outright fail, but I think it's just a matter of time.

<comment><USER18> I had a Nexus 5X for a few years and the USB C port started progressively giving out at around 8 months. I had to lay it down flat find a position where it would charge and hope no gust of wind would hit it. Forget charging it while using it for navigation.

I like the idea of USB C, but actual my experience with it makes me happy to currently be on a micro. You just learn which way the plug goes. USB A on the other hand, that's trickier...

<comment><USER19> If I am only charging and not using the cable for data, I have started to rely on imitation Mag safe type plugs for phones and other portables. Since the lifespan on both USB-A and USB-C is limited, hope to make stuff useable until the battery needs to be replaced (if possible) instead of a mechanical failure of the port itself or wearing down the contacts too much for use - my 2012 Macbook pro USB ports are super loose and only work if I plug the cable in just right for this reason I assume.

<comment><USER20> They make 20-pin magnetic adapters now that can carry data as well as power. Last I checked they were like $30 each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One cool trick: the USB standard [0] dictates that USB A type ports should be oriented "toward the host". On a computer, this means that the thick part of the plug should be facing toward the top surface motherboard. As long as you start in this position, you've got a good change of getting it in correctly on the first try, assuming you aren't blindly feeling and end up putting it in an RJ45 or HDMI port.

[0] [https://www.phoenixcontact.com/assets/downloads_ed/global/we...](https://www.phoenixcontact.com/assets/downloads_ed/global/web_dwl_technical_info/USB.pdf)

<comment><USER22> I don't know which way all my motherboards are oriented. Opening the case isn't easy.

<comment><USER23> motherboards are almost always going to be mounted on the right side of a tower (facing left) or facing up in a sff/nuc/laptop. if all else fails, look at the io shield. the side where all the ports line up is where the io ports are attached to the motherboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > A USB that could plug in correctly both ways would have required double the > wires and circuits, which would have then doubled the cost.

I don't think this is quite true. You wouldn't need double the wires.

<comment><USER25> That's correct. In fact, if everything were AC coupled (signals and power) it would be easy to reverse 180 degrees. The original USB was to replace kbd/mouse 'PS2' connectors, and some audio devices - the original maxed out at 12 Mb/s raw. Given the mishmash of connectors at the time, USB even with 50% insertion rate success was pretty darn good. It seems much less good in hindsight. One does have to wonder why they didn't try to fix this when they went USB-C -- they did only half the job.

<comment><USER26> which part didn't USB-C fix?

<comment><USER27> Still gotta line it up.

<comment><USER28> And push it all the way in until it clicks home

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I still prefer USB-A fitting on the third try over USB-C, which may fit on the first try, but then mysteriously fails to work properly half of the time due to factors like badly designed cables or worn solder joints on some of the "reversible" pins.

</comment><comment><USER30> > The Intel team led by Bhatt anticipated the user frustration and opted for a > rectangular design and a 50-50 chance to plug it in correctly, versus a > round connector with less room for error.

Why not a shape that can't be rotated, like Displayport or HDMI?

<comment><USER31> Both of those came after USB 1, yes? So they would have that history _behind_ them. A precursor can't be criticised for laying the foundation for better descendants.

Later usb dont have that defense. Those micro usb abominations have no excuse. They are just waiting to break and become landfill.

<comment><USER32> Let me tell you as someone that was there, man, when USB came out. Everything else that plugged into my computer had a non-symmetrical shape. Serial ports, VGA, DVI, SCSI, even PS/2 which had a flat spot that told which way was up.

Now imagine someone showed me a new connector that _looks_ like it could go either way, but only one way would work. They had a clean slate, and that's what they came up with? From my perspective at the time, that was the dumbest fucking thing I'd seen in a long while.

<comment><USER33> > Everything else that plugged into my computer had a non-symmetrical shape. > Serial ports, VGA, DVI, SCSI, even PS/2

Heck, even USB B-type connectors.

<comment><USER34> I've only ever seen female B connectors on peripherals. Do they make motherboards that have them?

<comment><USER35> Raspberry Pi?

<comment><USER33> The type B port is for connecting the Pi as a peripheral. It has separate type A ports for connecting peripherals to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I feel like I am the only person who can plug one in correctly the first try >90% of the time. The trick is simple, look at the damn connector first.

<comment> Brave-Steak Okay, and what's your trick for knowing which way around the plug is?

Edit: Whoops, meant port.

<comment><USER37> It has a symbol printed on the side that's "up".

<comment><USER38> People keep saying this, but I have at least a half-dozen (admittedly cheap) USB cables with no symbol or logo printed on them at all.

<comment><USER37> Oh that's no good. Time to grab a pocket knife and make some marks. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Every device I've come across has it set up so that the plastic part should be inserted closest to the floor (horizontal plugs), or closest to the centre of gravity of the device (vertical plugs).

I don't know if this is specced—otherwise it's very interesting that all the manufacturers agreed to this kind of arrangement.

<comment><USER39> Actually I just found this:

[https://superuser.com/a/1260944/83295](https://superuser.com/a/1260944/83295)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> USB-A plugs have spin 2/3.

<comment><USER41> Proof That USB Cables Exist In a 4-Dimensional Space: [http://www.smbc- comics.com/?id=2388](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2388)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > A USB that could plug in correctly both ways would have required double the > wires and circuits, which would have then doubled the cost.

why couldn't they have used a notch / tab like other connectors do? not durable enough?

<comment><USER43> I'm pretty sure some Apple USB had a notch. But I think it wasn't to help to plug it in, I think it was to ensure it was directly plugged into the computer without using a cable extension. But I don't remember well, it's only speculations.

<comment><USER22> You got it backwards. The notch was for compatibility with the extension cable, which had a lug because USB extension cables are not allowed by the spec (too much distance for the signal), so the lug prevented you from using the extension cable with a device that might fail.

<comment><USER44> Also this way you can't plug two extension cables into each other, because the cable didn't have the notch, only the lug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Text-only link, for those who haven't got a redirect rule: [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=734451600](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=734451600)

</comment><comment><USER46> I've found that if you try to plug a USB male into a USB 3.0 jack backwards, you can wedge the male connector substrate under the female connector substrate, causing it's connectors to short circuit with the housing, blowing a polyfuse that shuts the PC down abruptly. The problem is the substrate on the female connectors isn't adhered to the wall of the connector, and can bend far enough to touch the opposite wall and blow.

I'm surprised there's not more stories like this lately.

<comment><USER47> >I'm surprised there's not more stories like this lately.

Probably because what you describe requires an unusually high amount of force to be applied to the connector, causing most people to stop before damage is done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> i thought it was because of usb superposition:

[https://m.imgur.com/gallery/kYGTLjc](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/kYGTLjc)

</comment><comment><USER49> This "Decline and visit plain text site" button is by far the best functionnality that they could've added

</comment><comment><USER44> > _In fact, Bhatt has not made a single penny from his USB design, because > Intel owns the patent._

Does Intel not award patent bonuses? I think they're finally being phased out but historically big tech companies have given bonuses to employees who are awarded a patent.

</comment><comment><USER50> Any insights as to why we don't have more connectors in a round form factor, such as headphone jack?

</comment><comment><USER51> For what it's worth, I think this is the thing that USB-C has really gotten right: it works both ways.

<comment><USER52> And...

for a USB-C to USB-C cable, you can use either end of the cable!

Grab one end of the cable, either end, and it plugs in (flipped either way).

You can plug a phone into a laptop. You can make either one of them be the "host" and you can control which one will charge the other one, or that no charging will occur at all. (At least with Android and a Pixelbook.)

<comment><USER53> this is an anti-feature in my eyes. there's no way to predict what will happen when you connect two host-capable devices.

<comment><USER52> With a Pixelbook and Android phone, it is completely predictable.

You choose which does what using UI controls on each device.

You can specify whether this device will provide charge to the other device. Whether this device will share files with the other device. And the other device can specify that it will be charged, and will receive files.

There is no guesswork about it. No mystery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> And all that was ever needed was a colored bar on the outside of the plug and the jack.

</comment><comment><USER55> My experience with Apple laptop, iPhone, etc. plugs that are reversible is that you inevitably end up twisting the cord to a point where its rubbery shell breaks. That never happens with USB, where the minimal viable twist is "twice over" which the outer material doesn't accept, making it untwist on the other end.

<comment><USER56> That really isn't my experience. Plugs break usually because they're pulled, for example from using the device while it's plugged in to charge. I'm not talking about violent pulls from a phone falling of the desk, just the stresses, bends and twists of normal usage.

This happens eventually on all types of cables, USB, Apple branded cables, earphone cables, everything. Higher quality cables last for longer, even much longer, but not forever.

<comment><USER55> But earphone cables rotate in place. So do the thicker kind of ordinary audio cable.

USB cables don't rotate in place, but you have to exert a lot more effort to twist them twice (so they plug in). Reversible cables have a lower barrier to twisting.

(I'm repeating myself a little, but that's because what I had just written sounds confusing in re-reading.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> (1) I plug them in correctly one time.

(2) I mark the top side outline of the USB symbol with a white paint marker.

(3) ...

(4) Profit!

<comment><USER22> Why is 2 after 1? It would help 1 succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Apple solved this for all time with their magnetic orientation-agnostic connectors, and then didn't let the rest of the world have it. Vantablack bastards!

<comment><USER59> The last thing I would want is a peripheral whose data connection was on a MagSafe connector. It's specifically designed to be able to disconnect easily by accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does the article actually explain WHY?

<comment><USER61> Yes. It would have required double the wires and circuits, increasing the expense of the cable. That would have made it a difficult sell to computer manufacturers.

Not quite sure I follow that argument, but I'm not a hardware person. Nor am I looking to be one.

<comment><USER62> Doesn't explain why it wasn't made a trapezoid shape like many common connectors (serial, parallel, VGA, SCSI) of the time were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The part of the plug with the usb logo (the wire thing splitting in three) goes on top.

<comment><USER64> Got a desktop in a tower case, USB connectors on the back plate( | | ) have no "top"

<comment><USER65> The "top" is the side furthest from the motherboard.

<comment><USER64> Interesting, is this a universal thing?

<comment> compiler-guy It was the plan, and the most common result. But no, it isn't universal. For one, not all usb cables even include a logo or marking for the top of the cable.

<comment><USER66> You can, with a cable, rotate it another 90 degrees and visually identify the top.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The New York Times wants a taxpayer funded bailout - sahin-boydas https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-journalists-newspapers.html <comment><AUTHOR> The current HN headline violates the rule demanding that the source headline be used unless it is clickbait,violates the rule that the HN headline itself must not be clickbait, and violates the rule that the HN headline should not editorialize on the content of the source article, and violates the rule (well, it should be a rule), that the HN headline should not _literally invert the message of the source article_ , which does not argue that the NY Times or similar outlets should get a taxpayer funded bailout but rather that for- profit ad-driven media _should be allowed to die and not be rescued by government_ , to allow a new model to emerge.

</comment><comment><USER2> They are not essential to the overall health of the economy and in no way should be given a tax payer funded bailout. As far as the journalists go, they should be offered the same benefits as any other worker that lost their job. Just because they can write about their plight does not make them special.

</comment><comment><USER3> The actual article headline is "Bail Out Journalists. Let Newspaper Chains Die"

</comment><comment><USER4> What's wrong with Chapter 11?</comment>


Burger King are giving away a free Xbox Game Pass to customers - <AUTHOR> https://geekyjar.com/burger-king-are-giving-away-a-free-xbox-game-pass-to-customers/ <comment><USER2> They are also cutting down south american rain forest to grow soy beans to feed their cattle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh Damn!! They are now really giving away free global warming gases to nature.</comment></comment>


Trump White House quietly cancels NASA research verifying greenhouse gas cuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts <comment><USER2> Republicans have been anti-science (and education in general) for decades. Is this surprising to anyone?

There is no way to be both pro education and science and also be pro- Republican Party as it is today.

<comment><USER3> I hope there is a level of funding for science and education at which you'd say there's too much.

<comment><USER4> Sure, you can't throw an unlimited amount of funding at anything and have its productivity scale accordingly.

The difference here is that we're at the point of straight up denying that there's a problem and removing all funding from important programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this case the adjective 'potentially suicidal' belongs in front of 'White House'. Un-freaking-believably stupid.</comment>


Response to Marc Andreessen on Secular Stagnation - <AUTHOR> http://larrysummers.com/2015/01/12/response-to-marc-andreessen-on-secular-stagnation

<comment><USER2> From a non-economist point of view, the bit about deflationary technological advancement doesn't seem hard to understand at all.

Summers claims it makes no sense because price changes are accounted for in GDP. I'm willing to bet that GDP is _not_ adjusted for Moore's Law, or we would have had much higher official growth numbers than we've had. Every iPhone is a more powerful computer than an early-90s supercomputer. Each iPhone sale does not add as much to GDP as each supercomputer did, even after adjusting for our modest inflation.

And yet that computational power is improving people's lives in all sorts of ways.

<comment><USER3> There's usually a paragraph in most introductory macroeconomic textbooks, as they introduce the definitions of nominal GDP and real GDP, to the effect of "Real GDP is GDP deflated by the price of a basket of goods. It cannot account for qualitative improvements in the nature of goods, nor can it account for substitution effects where an old good is completely replaced by a new good of equal price but higher quality. These effects are difficult to measure and difficult to quantify." And then because they are difficult to measure and difficult to quantify, they are ignored in the rest of the textbook.

It's telling that a professional economist like Larry Summers can forget that paragraph. When you work with models day in and day out for your whole career, the models quickly _become_ reality, even if the models have known flaws and blind spots that become very apparent when you apply them to everyone else's reality.

<comment><USER4> I still remember the first day in my college freshman year Econ 101 class. The professor began by explaining how the foundational idea of the discipline is that people are rational actors who make decisions by weighing costs and benefits. I thought of all the actual people I knew, every one of whom had made major life decisions based on impulse, emotion or stupidity, and thought "welp, so much for economics then."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the decline in real interest rates is explained by the market's coordination toward systemic risk collusion:

Now that we know that governments bail out inadequately hedged systemic risk, we might as well all play a new game in which we ignore those risks entirely. Perhaps in the past we under-hedged, but now we don't have to hedge at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Original tweet storm can be found here: [http://www.yvoschaap.com/pmarca/](http://www.yvoschaap.com/pmarca/)

</comment><comment><USER7> "From an economist's point of view, this paragraph is very hard to understand. Real GDP and productivity statistics are calculated after adjusting for price changes – so they are unaffected by inflation or deflation."

Glad to hear that Mr. Summers has had a change of heart on deflation being bad for real GDP. Progress!

</comment><comment><USER8> "From an economist's point of view, this paragraph is very hard to understand. Real GDP and productivity statistics are calculated after adjusting for price changes – so they are unaffected by inflation or deflation."

<comment><USER5> > they are unaffected by inflation or deflation

In other words someone picks a basket of goods and those price changes are measured.

Economists have every incentive to get this right. I think they probably do, but if you see the world progressing in a "singulatarian" way toward exponential growth in many areas, it's unlikely that the basket of goods chosen accurately tracks the broader trend.

Also, if such a singulatarian world is happening, economists, by virtue of not believing that to be the case, would correct for those goods when formulating the basket used to track price changes.

One final point: There are enough seemingly price-stable goods where the prices are actually the result of factors other than pure supply and demand (such as unknown risk premiums, etc.) which if they end up in the basket of goods could cause systemic bias, since those risk premiums may not be structurally stable in either direction.

From a policy perspective, we must recall that interest rates are a blunt instrument and it has been a major goal/concern of the Fed to come up with other, smaller knobs to turn. One of these is QE policy, others are regulation and enforcement mechanisms that impact capital flows in a broad way (but less broadly than interest rates).</comment></comment>


San Francisco ballot measure aims to ban circumcision - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/18712852

<comment><USER2> This is a compelling issue, most of the ideas around hygiene are myths, and it isn't entirely too crazy to call this a mass ritualistic mutilation of men.</comment>


How to Record the Cops - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/21/how-to-record-the-cops

<comment><USER2> This still doesn't prevent me from getting arrested.

</comment><comment><USER3> The footage of the cop doing the dirty deed will be thrown out as illegal video recording. And the fact that you took the footage will be used against you to prove you are guilty of federal wiretapping getting you 5 to 10 behind bars.</comment>


Magic Mirror - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/magic-mirror/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" Rather than use an actual mirror and project the data upon it, the Magic Mirror uses a widescreen monitor that has been put in a portrait orientation with an acrylic two-way mirror on top. With the right lighting and display tweaks, it can be reflective enough to use as a mirror while also displaying the weather data."_

The magic behind what is really a simple system.</comment>


Thousand-robot swarm self-assembles into arbitrary shapes - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/thousand-robot-swarm-self-assembles-into-arbitrary-shapes/ <comment><USER2> That locomotion system is really interesting. Using three rigid legs and vibrating them individually to achieve directed motion. Does anyone have any more information on how that works?

 _Update:_ I found a paper that describes something similar. It is vastly improved by a vibrating table — Does anyone with access to _Science_ know if Harvard used one? [http://wiki.polymtl.ca/nano/images/a/ae/C-2007-NW-AIM- ANguye...](http://wiki.polymtl.ca/nano/images/a/ae/C-2007-NW-AIM-ANguyen.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I wrote about these (actually, a lot of the prior art) on Hizook: [http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/09/08/infrared-remote- contro...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/09/08/infrared-remote-controlled- rc-steerable-vibrobot-created-naghi-sotoudeh)

They're little more than a vibrobot (ie. a hexbug nano) with dual vibrating motors that preferentially steer and move. It's easy and elegant. They make for a great teaching toy!

<comment><USER4> Oh so it's like a BEAM bot? Only this seems decidedly not analog, as per what I remember BEAM was supposed to be. That reminds me to go get a soldering iron, I've always wanted to build a solar roller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This work comes out of Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, which was not on my radar before today. Apparently just last week they released some even more impressive work (in the sense that I would not have thought it possible) on a self-folding mobile robot: [http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/162/robot-folds- its...](http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/162/robot-folds-itself-up- and-walks-away)

The video of the robot self-folding (and walking away!) at about 1 minute in blew me away, highly recommended to anyone who missed this story last week.

<comment><USER6> If you want to keep up with robotics maybe a bit better, I believe the folding robot was spammed to /r/robotics last week or the week before. I'm not trying to be critical or anything, just letting you know that that link was quite popular on a popular robotics forum ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Next step would be to optimize the placement algorithm I think. The 'K' example is the post obvious. You could have robots start creating the lower right quadrant and correct their position as the rest of the group gathers.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is something very powerful when something about a robot's behavior looks animal, at least from the perspective of an animal. It feels like proof we're going in the right direction.

Another really good example is a video of one of those boston dynamics animalbots losing its balance on ice and then regaining its footing. It's hard not to anthropomorphize and ascribe an emotion. Even worse when it's deliberately kicked off balance by a human. Bad person! Poor robot.

These things move like organic life.

<comment><USER9> I'm speaking through my hat, but I believe many of those behaviors are inspired from the animal kingdom, which could explain why the result looks animal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is pretty cool, sort of combines two fun disciplines, robots and cellular automatons. So the art installation here is swarm robots that use pre- programmed neighbor visibility setups but I'm going to have to think longer about ways you could do this with minimal localization information.

</comment><comment><USER11> I notice the video says "The algorithm for self-assembly allows for the provably correct formation of any simply-connected shape". I wonder what goes wrong if it's not simply-connected. Or is it just that they can't prove that it works in this case?

</comment><comment><USER12> >Charging was initiated by sandwiching all the robots between two conductive surfaces.

sideways - i see a completely automatic Prius(Volt/etc.) plugin just parking between 2 flexible plates sticking from the parking wall.

Anyway, feels like Episode 1 is upon us.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Each robot has simple capabilities, and is susceptible to many errors. To compensate for this, they must work together."

Just like people.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's really pretty impressive work. Will be interesting to see the fruits of their labours at smaller (and larger) scales.

</comment><comment><USER15> I kept rooting for a flood fill algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER16> Minimalistic software is one thing. But a minimalistic hardware system like this is quite a feat. Chapeau!

</comment><comment><USER17> Extremely impressive. Going to be wild to see where this area of research goes in the next 1-3 years.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wired has a good write-up, too:

[http://www.wired.com/2014/08/largest-robot-swarm- ever/](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/largest-robot-swarm-ever/)

The quote at the end, about needing a larger table to handle a bigger swarm, made me think of the movie Jaws: "We're going to need a bigger boat."

</comment><comment><USER19> If we can get these babies down to nanoscale size, will we have invented Transformium?

</comment><comment><USER20> I think people who are unimpressed are underestimating the potential power of this kind of work... this could be the very beginning of a real life holodeck, where trillians of nanobots self assemble.

</comment><comment><USER21> Remember Replicators from Stargate? Be ready.

</comment><comment><USER22> _> and maybe even art_

hahahahahaha.... oh scientists....

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ6pehGKdW4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ6pehGKdW4)

</comment><comment><USER23> I feel like this research garnered attention only because (1) it uses little robots and (2) it came from Harvard. A computer simulation could have demonstrated the effectiveness of the underlying algorithm just as well. I also suspect if this same project had been done at a state school far fewer people would notice.

<comment><USER24> The underlying algorithm is terrible. It took over 11 hours to get 1,000 robots into a vary rough shape. However, actually building something that works in hardware is hard, Bulding a better algorithm is far less so.

<comment><USER25> It took 11 hours because of locomotion method of the Kilobots - they use vibration to move. Without at least looking at the paper, and probably studying it in depth, it would be hard to determine how good the algorithm is.

It is definitely nothing revolutionary, however bot movement is not externally controlled. They figure out their own relative positioning and where they need to go. Moreover they do that only based on short range led communications. So they communicate with small number of other bots at the same time (I think one, but I am not 100% sure), as opposed to lets say using central router to communicate all at the same time.

TL:DR Sensors, movement systems, and precision are shit on purpose, so important part that distributed algorithm actually worked.

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure it's externally controlled to some extent. Otherwise, how would they know what kind of shape to build, and even more importantly, how to scale it - to do that, you have to know the total number of robots, something which cannot be discovered locally.

<comment><USER27> The article answered those questions:

 _First, all the robots are put together in an unformed blob and are given an image of the desired shape to be built. Four specially programmed seed robots are then added to the edge of the group, marking the position and orientation of the shape. These seed robots emit a message that propagates to each robot in the blob and allows them to know how "far" away from the seed they are and their relative coordinates. Robots on the edge of the blob then follow the edge until they reach the desired location in the shape that is growing in successive layers from the seed.

The algorithm had to account for unreliable robots that are pushed out of their desired location or block other robots performing their functions. Nagpal's team overcame this challenge by implementing strategies that allowed robots to rely on their neighbours to cooperatively monitor for faults. They also avoided relying too heavily on exact positioning within the shape boundaries._

<comment><USER26> Maybe I'm not understanding the quote correctly, but I see no explanation of how they figure out the correct _scale_ (i.e. the size of a shape - obviously, with 4096 robots, they could make the shape twice as big).

<comment><USER27> I was pointing out that it's _not_ externally controlled. If you want a full understanding of the algorithm, you'll probably need to read the paper. The supplementary material and the full paper go into this in detail. The supplementary material is a pdf, which I can email to you if you want to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I believe I've read this story somewhere before.

[http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Decision-Daniel- Suarez/dp/0451417...](http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Decision-Daniel- Suarez/dp/0451417704/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386990144&sr=1-1&keywords=kill+decision+suarez)</comment>


How to Rescue an Underperforming Employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.happierco.com/blog/how-to-rescue-an-underperforming-employee/ <comment><USER2> This is in essence addressing many of the circumstances which lead to burnout, and 'underperforming' is just code for that. Having been in the employee's position this time last year, I would have welcomed any of these steps, instead I got gasoline dumped on my fire and burned out more thoroughly than at any point prior in my life.

<comment><USER3> Definitely agreed with that. We've found that "underperforming" is most likely than not the fault of company management and/or culture.

Hope you've recovered from the burn out!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to negotiate valuation of a startup at seed stage? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I understand that it might seem like a "case-by-case" type of question but I hope someone can offer a generalized advice as well.
The situation: startup has an offer from early stage investor but the offer has lower valuation than startup is willing to accept. If startup takes this investment at proposed valuation and then raises the rest of the money necessary for the seed stage, it spend well over 25% equity recommended to set for seed stage [by Paul Graham].
It seems that such negotiation may easily end up in a pointless Valuation-A VS Valuation-B discussion. Which incentives can startup offer to seed investor in such circumstances?
Basically: Lets set the cap at $Y so that.. <comment><USER2> "No". That's basically the most effective tactic you can use in a negotiation - walk. You don't need an explanation other than "We're not willing to do a deal at that valuation."

If you want to elaborate in the hopes that you can work out a compromise solution, the description you wrote here is fine, except that you shouldn't reference the 25% guideline as being set by Paul Graham. Instead, go back and read the essay where he laid it out and understand the reasoning behind it, which is probably something like "If we take your money at this valuation, then after the remainder of the seed round and further dilution from further rounds, there is not enough equity left for founders to make it worth our while."</comment>


Flamethrower Drone - <AUTHOR> https://throwflame.com/tf-19-wasp/ <comment><USER2> What could possibly go wrong?</comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts and experiences on third party router firmware? - <AUTHOR> Hi people of HN. I have bin a long time user of different router firmwares Openwrt, Ddwrt, Gargoyle and Tomato. For a list of router fermwairs see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_firmware_projects
I am now using a Linksys WRT1900AC AC1900 with Gargoyle on it and i have 2 APs that are TP-LINK Archer C7 flashed with LEDE.
The wrt1900 ac is set up as a router and the c7s are setup as dumb APs.
I would like to know if you use third party firmware and which one? If you don't use third party firmware why not? If you have thaught about flashing your router with third party firmware but haven't I would like to know why not? what stopped you?
I came up with the thought about starting this thread after reading a number of articles about attacks on routers. Like this one: http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/12/home-routers-under-attack-in-ongoing-malvertisement-blitz/
The reason I use Gargoyle on my mane router is for it's really good QOS and family safety features. Gargoyle is built on top of Openwrt witch is Linux baste. It has a plugin system witch lets you install plugins like it's grate addblocker and a ping watch dog. https://www.gargoyle-router.com/index.php Latest Gargoyle builds for the wrt1900 AC can be found here: http://lantisproject.com/gargoyle_mvebu/newgui/
On my APs i use a build of LEDE from here: https://kau.toke.dk/lede/airtime-fairness-builds/ar71xx/generic/
The LEDE build has new airtime-fairness patches for the ath9 and ath10 wifi drivers in it made by the guys over at make wifi fast. https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/make-wifi-fast/ http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/make-wifi-fast/
I am Hoping to help any one who would like to flash there router out. I am a mod on the Openwrt and Gargoyle forums. I have no vested interest in any project apart from helping people.
Thanks for reading and sorry about any spelling mistakes. :) <comment><USER2> I used to use Tomato, and I was satisfied with it, but the problem was that typical home router is weak hardware. Once I started hosting things, it just couldn't keep up.

I moved to fanless PCs (like ALIX / Netgate / Soekris) running OpenBSD. A 500 MHz x86 beats the pants off of the neglected MIPS chipsets most home routers are built around.

OpenBSD because pf is just easier to manage than iptables, and having all of the config as text files makes it easy to track changes with source control.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool I did think about getting a small form factor PC to run OPNsense, but a verry nice man of the Gargoyle forums posted me the WRT1900 AC v2 which has a 1.6 ghz duel core CPU and i don't host any thing. For what i use it for it does just fine. One of the things that keeps me with Gargoyle is it works grate with a screen reader which i have to use as i am blind. I can use ddwrt and openwrtI just like the lay out of Gargoyle better.

<comment><USER2> Another benefit to fanless PC is that being able to install custom software is a given.

Back in my old custom firmware days, I always had to be careful about router revision numbers to make sure I was getting a model that I could re-flash. Sometimes, the hackable revisions were in short-supply.

Perhaps that is less of a problem these days?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it can still be a pane with some routers. TP-Link are constantly making very small upgrades to routers and making a v1 v2 pissing people off lol The werst thing is wen they make a v1 and then a v2 with a completely different chip set.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gnome 3.32 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnome.org/news/2019/03/gnome-3-32-released/ <comment><USER2> Fractional scaling in Wayland is great news.

Until now if you had linux on a high resolution touch screen computer you had to make do with a subpar experience. It doesn't matter which combination of X11/Wayland and KDE/Gnome you chose.

In X11 : touch support is bad to the point of being unusable but you can scale the UI with fractions.

In wayland : touch support is better but you can only scale per unit (100%, 200%) which makes things either way too small or way too big.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > This release features a refreshed visual style ranging from an entirely new > set of app icons to improvements to the user interface style. Many of the > base style colors have been saturated, giving them a more vivid, vibrant > appearance. Buttons are more rounded and have a softer "shadow" border. > Switches no longer use the explicit ON and OFF text, instead using color to > indicate state.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Switches no longer use the explicit ON and OFF text, instead using color to > indicate state.

This is my only complaint, it's not to bad in the default theme but can be confusing with others. Having the text used used very little additional space and was completely unambiguous in every theme.</comment>