Show HN: Hasura – Fast, instant GraphQL APIs on Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine <comment><USER2> This is very impressive. Congratulations!

What I'm not seeing is how do you envision enforcement of complex business rules when using this API. Examples (silly, but you get the idea):

\- The price is only visible for projects of type "whatever".

\- The price may only be updated when it is not closed (closed_date is null)

\- The project is only visible on mondays

The other point I don't see is how do you expect to trigger side-actions when changes are made. For instance:

\- Send an e-mail when a project is created

\- Call a webhook when a post is modified

Finally, and this may be from my lack of expertise with GraphQL, how do you deal with recursive data structures? For instance, how would you store and fetch a tree of categories?

<comment><USER3> > What I'm not seeing is how do you ..

You can write fairly complex rules with the access control layer ! The first two conditions are possible (except for the project is only visible on Mondays).

      allow select on rows which satisfy this property:
      { "project_type" : { "_eq" : "whatever" } }

      allow update on rows which satisfy this property:
      { "closed_data" : { "_is_null" : true } }

The idea is simple, we provide a boolean expression based access control layer which can use variables from headers. When you can't specify it using the access control layer, you can write this in your own graphql layer and schema stitch with hasura. So you only have to write what is not possible with the access control layer.

> The other point I don't see is how do you ...

You can use the tooling around Postgres ! You can create an `ON INSERT` trigger on the table and listen to these events.

We're launching something very cool in the subscriptions/event-source to solve these kinds of problems. We also have 2 nice projects that work independent of the graphql-engine to help with change subscription on postgres (skor[1], pgdeltastream[2])

[1] [https://github.com/hasura/skor](https://github.com/hasura/skor) [2] [https://github.com/hasura/pgdeltastream](https://github.com/hasura/pgdeltastream)

<comment><USER2> > u can write fairly complex rules with the access control layer

Oh, I see. As a suggestion then, many business rules are not tied to roles. You may want to look into some "always enforced rules" or something like that, to avoid having to repeat these rules for each role (and the maintenance nightmare this entails).

> your own graphql layer and schema stitch with hasura

Again, I'm not versed in GraphQL in general, so this is from my ignorance. Maybe you could provide some example/tutorial on "stitching your own GraphQL apis with hasura" (your other examples, posts and tutorials are awesome btw!).

> You can use the tooling around Postgres

Fair enough. I've always found a bit hard to properly manage and test these native features (much harder than managing/testing pure code), but it is a sound solution nonetheless. Maybe you want to hint to these other projects somewhere in hasura's docs (I've checked them and couldn't find it, but maybe I'm just blind/didn't look hard enough).

Again, awesome project and good answers. I can't stop going through possible pet-projects to try this out soon! :)

<comment><USER4> > Maybe you could provide some example/tutorial on "stitching your own GraphQL > apis with hasura"

We have an example of schema stitching in this repo [https://github.com/hasura/graphql-schema-stitching- demo](https://github.com/hasura/graphql-schema-stitching-demo)

It stitches a weather API schema and a person schema. Hope it gives an idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Super happy to announce the first open-source release of the Hasura GraphQL engine.

This is a standalone service that gives you GraphQL on Postgres. It comes with fine-grained access control that can integrate with any auth provider. It can also work with any existing postgres database as is, and allows you to expose select tables/views across your postgres schemas over GraphQL.

Looking forward to your feedback!

<comment><USER5> How does this project relate to prisma?

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm one of the core contributors to the project.

Hasura and Prisma have very different approaches and end-goals at the moment.

TL;DR: Very simply put, Hasura is postgres first and adds an access-control layer to make it possible to query from the front end directly.

The longer version:

Prisma is intended to be a GraphQL ORM to Postgres (and several other databases with a common API) whereas Hasura is more database first and intended to let you leverage Postgres features over GraphQL.

Hasura comes with and lets you use any postgres migration system and then gives you GraphQL on top of it. This is what allows Hasura to give you GraphQL over any existing Postgres database and application even.

Hasura also comes with an optional access-control layer that makes it feasible to be used by frontend clients directly. This access control is inspired from postgres's RLS but does not depend on or use postgres RLS and can be coupled with application logic/auth.

<comment><USER6> > Prisma is intended to be a GraphQL ORM to Postgres

Sorry to be hijacking this thread, but how would you say Prisma compares to something like Graphene (with an appropriate ORM adapter). I've only used Graphene with Python and the SQLAlchemy adapter, but it sounds pretty similar? Is Prisma typically used as the only ORM in project, or is it used in conjunction with some other ORM?

<comment><USER7> Happy to provide a more thorough answer :-)

You should think of Prisma as the data layer for your applications. If you look at large tech companies who are typically ahead of the status quo for how to build applications, then you see that there is a trend to move away from traditional ORMs.

Twitter has a service called Strato that manages data access for all their services. Facebook has TAO that serves a similar role. Prisma is an open source implementation of that pattern.

If you are building a GraphQL API using for example Graphene, then you could use Prisma as your data layer, but Prisma can also be used in non-GraphQL applications. If you are using the Nodejs implementation, then you can take advantage of schema delegation to simplify the implementation of your resolvers. The GraphQL ecosystem is still evolving, so these capabilities will come to more languages in the future.

So in short - Prisma replaces SQLAlchemy, not Graphene. Hope that provides some clarity :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice work. There are several competitors in the automagic Postgres REST/GraphQL space, and you're nailing documentation and ergonomics here. Your site and the Hansura Console sets your project apart from the rest.

</comment><comment><USER9> GraphQL is interesting although it doesn't appear to be answer to designing better APIs (poor modularaization, monitoring, and tooling come to mind). "Mutations" look to be an afterthought, and schema/ui are not impressive either.

Above plus companies tripping hard to monetize tooling around something that you get completely for free with REST...

Even as UI engineer I don't get the appeal of it - state, caching and all the "performance" tuning make it too complicated.

</comment><comment><USER10> First glance reaction: Awesome, just the thing I need.

Then I saw the fine print: AGPL. Haskell.

The thing might be awesome, but the combination of the legal risk from AGPL (very little legal precedent for AGPL, especially outside the US, so the real legal implications of the license are very murky) and maintenance risk from Haskell (finding good Haskell developers is hard, and the learning curve is brutal), makes it a lot harder to choose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm...Haskell was an important initial choice for us because of our team's comfort with the language and also because it's neat to implement parsers and compilers. The Hasura engine is essentially a GraphQL to SQL compiler :)

I'm not sure I understand your point about AGPL? Do you have the same issue with the MongoDB license and would hesitate to use Mongo because of their AGPL? Why is this different? Just curious, would love to understand where you're coming from!

<comment><USER10> I'm sure Haskell is great, just saying its a bit of a risk to add to your stack if you don't already have Haskell developers in house.

That, and the AGPL issue are both more important in this case (compared to MongoDB), because of the position in the stack that Hasura GraphQL Engine (HGE) would have. In the MongoDB case, we would almost always have an application server between Mongo and the GraphQL client, where custom business logic could be implemented, so Mongo can be treated as an external system whose source code we do not need to modify (like PostgreSQL in the case of HGE).

In case of HGE, the GraphQL client would talk directly to HGE, and thus any customisation would most likely need to happen inside HGE, whether by plugins or patches or whatnot, making it tricky to avoid having to open source your custom business logic (as well as probably having to write it in Haskell).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! That's interesting.

We didn't intend for Hasura to be something like a boilerplate that you would modify. Mostly because it's harder to work with upstream changes when you work with OSS software like that unless it's an explicit library type dependency. What OSS service type component do you use (know of?) that is used in this way?

Currently, we encourage users to use GraphQL schema stitching to customise their GraphQL schema/resolvers treating HGE almost as an external GraphQL service.

<comment><USER10> I see. Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist, but I imagine most products would need custom server-side business logic, and that business logic would also need to talk to the database. So I guess you could put your own GraphQL server in the middle and just proxy some queries to Hasura and answer others with your own custom code.

But if you're already building a separate GraphQL server with database integration, the business case for HGE is weakened, since you might as well build the same logic in the other system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a bit of a dumb question: where does GraphQL fit in a stack? I've seen in used primarily as a means of aggregating a bunch of disparate microservices, but then I see things like this that put it in the role of app server, almost. What advantages does this give over, for example, a Rails API (also on Postgres)? If it is supposed to fill the role of app server, how do you handle things more involved than simple CRUD operations? Like, if I sign up a user, how -- in a GraphQL world -- would I send a welcome email, typically?

<comment><USER12> I see GraphQL as a _protocol_ replacement for REST. With REST you have the following problems:

* Responses either contain more data than you need, or not enough data (e.g. you need data for related entities as well).

* With REST, if you need data for related entities then you need to perform additional REST calls, resulting in more network roundtrips.

With GraphQL you can specify exactly what you want, and the server responds with just that, in a single call.

<comment><USER13> We're experimenting with it on a new product at my company, and this is how we use it. Specifically, we use it as an API gateway in front of a bunch of restful services.

Another benefit is a more robust type system than you get with JSON. GraphQL supports union types, interfaces, etc., allows you to provide more strongly typed contracts between the backend and frontend.

One downside though - while the responses can become smaller, with fewer round trips, the requests get A LOT bigger (than with REST), as you have to specify every field, subfield, etc. This is especially true if you make heavy use of union types - then you have to specify all the fields, sub fields, etc. of all the various concrete members you might get back. Like requests with payloads over 1KB is not uncommon. If you're polling, and the result of the polling is generally an empty response, you may end up sending significantly MORE data over the wire, not less.

<comment><USER14> If you're sending large requests polling for an empty response most of the time, that might be a good use case for a custom directive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am very hesitant to couple the business logic of any application to the transport layer (GraphQL) or the persistence layer (Postgres) for that matter.

<comment><USER16> If you're not going to couple any business logic to the persistence layer, then what the hell is the point of using a RDBMS?

<comment><USER15> Your reply suggests you either couple everything or nothing. It's more nuanced than that. Everything is a trade off. With that said, it looks like this library will position itself in the center of your architecture — and I would be very _hesitant_ to do that.

<comment><USER16> Of course anyone should be hesitant to over-model the business domain in any part of the application including the database, but the entire reason of existence of the RDBMS is to maintain consistency with _something_ , and if that something isn't the business domain, then what good does it do?

<comment><USER15> I don't know where over-modeling fits in the argument. Business logic in an isolated part of an application is likely to age better than something that is intertwined with a database or other external dependencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Impressive! How's it different from postgraphql ([https://postgraphql.github.io/](https://postgraphql.github.io/)) or postgraphile ([https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/](https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/))?

<comment><AUTHOR> Broadly similar projects! The emphasis of Hasura is to make it seamless to work with existing databases.

The primary difference is how authorization is handled. In Postgraphile, you map your application roles to Postgres users and define policies using Postgres's RLS. With Hasura, you define rules on roles (similar to Postgres's RLS) but it integrates into your existing auth system using webhooks.

Also, peripherally, we have quite a bit of tooling with an admin UI and a rails-like migration system to make the dev workflows easier :)

<comment><USER18> > The emphasis of Hasura is to make it seamless to work with existing > databases.

Yet, I spent 15 minutes searching for example of using Hasura with an existing schema. Your "Getting Started" page has two examples: Deploy on Heroku and Run with Docker - in both cases, using a fresh database, not an existing one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bugger! Sorry for the inconvenience. We're updating the docs now to make this easier to navigate too.

EDIT: Docs updated, we'll keep improving it too :)

<comment><USER18> Can you share the link? This page still refers to new database: [https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/getting- started/in...](https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/getting- started/index.html)

Homepage has the GitLab example, but not actual "Getting Started" page.

<comment><AUTHOR> For Heroku: [https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/deployment/heroku/...](https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/deployment/heroku/using- existing-heroku-database.html)

For Docker: [https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/deployment/docker/...](https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/deployment/docker/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oops! GitHub is down :(

We're on [https://hasura.io](https://hasura.io) too.

<comment><USER19> Huh, I just tried it and Github is up (making this post 2 minutes after the parent). Located in EU if that makes a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a newbie to GraphQL who is having some growing pains adopting a UI for a data warehouse that was basically bolted onto a REST API designed for backend queries, can someone help me understand what the pros and cons are for something like this vs hand rolling all of the backend GraphQL stuff yourself? We have been evaluating switching/offering a GraphQL backend for our UI to consume for our product since it seems well suited to our use case but so far the effort required has outweighed the gain we would get from it. Because of this a somewhat turnkey solution like above might be more appealing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it depends on how much business logic you have in your REST API layer. If you can get away with using a turnkey solution like hasura with the right access control rules or by adding schema stitching then it would save a lot of effort.

I think the best thing would be to try a turnkey solution for your appliaction's database and then evaluating the effort saved. Turnkey solutions also might end up partial effort if not all. For example, Hasura is a great fit for incrementally adding read-only GraphQL queries which is where a lot of benefit of GraphQL for the UI lies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We at Sale Stock (fashion e-commerce in Indonesia) built an in-house system similar to this but more automatic and works with CockroachDB. Not open source yet, but might be interesting to you guys: [https://speakerdeck.com/salestock/laskar-high-velocity- graph...](https://speakerdeck.com/salestock/laskar-high-velocity-graphql-and- lambda-based-software-development-model) (skip to around mid-way, first half is intro to GraphQL)

<comment><USER21> Interesting. Does this mean you plan to release it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great job!!! Looks awesome

I see that one of the ways you want to monetize this is by offering support. Providing support is a good approach to monetize an open source project but it's not very scalable. Have you thought of any other ways you can monetize this?

If others in the HN community can pitch in with any ideas they have on how to monetize an open source project that would be great as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> Really cool! Congrats.

It would be awesome if it could be made compatible with Postgraphile ([https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/introduction/](https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/introduction/))

</comment><comment><USER24> This is exactly what I was looking for. I will give it a try on my next project.

<comment><USER25> Please do reach out to us on discord [1] if you have any questions whatsoever :)

[1]: [https://discord.gg/vBPpJkS](https://discord.gg/vBPpJkS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I work with a Django app on Postgres, and I'm not sure how I would migrate that to GraphQL. How things play out in terms of django specific tables? What about relationships between tables? We mostly use the Django app to expose REST APIs, which deal with making complex queries using QuerySets to Postgres. Moving this to GraphQL mean that all the business logic that sits on the REST APIs need to be moved to the frontend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it depends on your app. Technically, you have to rebuild your app to speak GraphQL to the frontend instead of REST. Internally, your GraphQL resolvers (like URL handlers) would then do similar work with using QuerySets as you're doing now.

If you'd like to leverage Hasura, it would be a good fit to potentially replace the "read" portions of your app with GraphQL quite easily. And then eventually you would have to move to writing a GraphQL gateway to handle some of the transactional logic and delegate the other stuff to Hasura via schema- stitching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thank you for releasing this. I am impressed with Hasura! No knock on postgraphile, I am trying that out too as well as prisma, but this looks very well done and the boundaries are clear (like postgraphile, views are important to make things work). Your UI is going to make people happy.

I have two questions: 1. can I point the hasura cli at my local install? and 2. Can we have UUID fields? I'd like to use them as primary keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes and yes. 1\. [https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/migrations/enable-...](https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/migrations/enable- migrations.html)

2\. For UUID just do what you would normally do. We don't have it on the column drop down but you can create the table via the run_sql window with the right type and default value, if you're generating the UUID server-side

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have been playing around with it. It's great.

Better support for ENUMS and MANY TO MANY relationships would be very needed though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

We're adding docs for enums as we speak. What did you find lacking around the many-to-many?

<comment><USER27> For 2 reasons inserting is tricky and querying is not super intuitive.

Example: I have 3 tables pages, page_blocks, and blocks.

\- Inserting blocks into a page is tough.

\- To query it's not very intuitive I would like to do.

pages {

      blocks {

        id

      }

}

& not

pages {

      page_blocks {

        blocks {

          id
        }

      }

    }

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it! Thanks for the note, and we should be able to make this better very soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> no-such-address This is a good trend. Will we see more work aimed at separating the data model and human interface (to make programming with attributed graphs safe and convenient) from back end issues (how to store data and process queries efficiently, where traditional databases are already very advanced.)

</comment><comment><USER28> Almost a third of the codebase is written in Haskell, that's really nice to hear ;)

<comment><USER25> The GraphQL Engine is written in Haskell, the Console in JavaScript and the CLI in Go. The repo contains all the three components. :) (I am one of the maintainers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great to see another project at this problem! We've been internally building something very similar but it uses Kotlin (Java) instead of Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why does hasura.io block residential network providers in Poland? I need to use VPN to just check the docs. That does not bode well for users.

<comment><USER31> I wouldn't imagine that to be intentional, possibly upstream infrastructure is blocking somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How does it handle batch execution of queries?

<comment><USER3> We do not batch queries. We take a slightly different approach. We convert the GraphQL query AST into a single SQL query (no matter how nested the GraphQL query is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is going to get tested today for a project. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> So cool! Please do reach out to us on discord [1] if you have any questions whatsoever :)

1: [https://discord.gg/vBPpJkS](https://discord.gg/vBPpJkS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> there is mention of GraphQL proxy - any idea about any available proxies for GraphQL at this moment ?

</comment><comment><USER35> Any subscription support?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in an early preview right now, and we should have something in a week or two! Just going through some performance and security checks over the next few days.

Do feel free reach out to us via discord if you'd like to take it for a spin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Fast, instant"? That's, err, just dumb. Fast perhaps. Instant, never.

</comment><comment><USER37> GraphQL is basically the new Mongo, so of course someone will try doing it in Postgres.

<comment><USER38> Heh i kind of agree here. Reasonable docs , easy to bootstrap and completely unaware of the underlying performance probs you are about to create bc it "just works". Curious to your reasons though ?

<comment><USER37> It's seemingly a complete nightmare from a security and architecture perspective. And front end devs and bootcamps love it.

I've never used it so my opinion isn't fully baked, but every time I look at the docs I'm just like wtf.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the facebook team (and others in production I'm guessing) addresses some of this by only having a whitelisted set of queries in production. So you get the GraphQL flexibility during development, but a effectively a static set of APIs in production.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: 50k round not taken seriously by angels? - <AUTHOR> I am raising 50k for my startup Blastchat on iOS! However, "people" are telling me I should ask for more money because serious angel investors will not invest because I am only asking for 50k! What's up with that? <comment><USER2> "People" are right, if you're talking about angel investors who are professional and subscribe to, say, Valley-or-equivalent norms.

Why?

1) Your investors will model $50k as being gone in an eyeblink. In the Valley, that's ~3 engineer-months. Angels will want your round to last about 12~18 months.

2) All entrepreneurs raising their first round are inexperienced in some way, but for better or worse, the combination of not knowing angel investors want rounds to be bigger and not knowing $50k will be gone in an eyeblink shouts Particularly Inexperienced Entrepreneur Here, which counsels against angels believing that your company will be the one out of 10 which > 10Xes their money. Angels absolutely, positively must invest in that company, and it's _hard_ , so they reserve all their shots for companies they think might be that one.

3) You're horrifically mispricing your company relative to market conditions right now [+], which you would think would suggest a savvy investor would think "Hmm deal of the century", but which actually mostly signals "Stay way the heck away" because of the power law of startup returns ("If you make a practice out of getting great deals on good startups, you will lose money; you need to make get good deals on great startups.")

There are more fish in the sea that investors, by the way. If you really and truly need only $50k to make this business a success, one might suggest friends-and-family and/or bootstrapping and/or -- and one hesitates to suggest this but one may have used it before -- credit cards.

[+] If your company is investable, it is worth > $2 million right now. I'm taking the liberty of assuming you aren't valuing the company at that because no one does a round for < 5%.

Your company may or may not actually be investable. If you're curious, you can read on Venture Hacks. Fair warning: what the Valley institutionally considers as investable is, if one takes it as a judgement of one's worth, pretty brutal for most people building tech companies. (It's not -- I've had basically no investable company in my career until maybe the current one -- but many people wrap their self-worth up in what investors would say about their businesses for some reason or another.)

<comment><USER3> Right on. One thing to note is that I have definitely seen angel investors invest <= 50k into companies, but it's always been on top of (following) a larger angel/VC leading the round. E.g. one person contributes 500k-1M, a bunch of angels contribute <=50k. But that's not the OP's case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The amount has little to do with whether an angel investor will be interested in you. They will want to know whether you can a) make your relatively small company into an actual money making organization and b) whether they'll have enough skin in the game to be profitable. If you are asking for $50,000, but are giving away 50+% of your equity, they won't be interested because you aren't a serious entrepreneur. If you are asking for $50,000 and really need $500,000 to get a demo or a mvp out the door, they won't invest because you'll never get out of the gate. Your business plan and equity agreement mean way more than the amount. Heck, if it turns out you are the right fit and need more down the road, they will be one of the first groups to reinvest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we are raising 50k at 1m valuation . . . . . I'm guessing they are saying this because the valuation is too high? Maybe investors want more equity . . . . Or they assume that we will need more than 50k to grow which will increase our valuation?

<comment><USER4> How did you come up with a $1MM valuation? Do you have users? If so, how many? What is your path to profitability? That's a 5% stake which might be ok. It really depends on a number of factors. My guess is that in the iOS app market for a chat app in 2015. I think that might be high. But you might also surprise me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well we have been unofficially launched for two months and just passed 1,000 MAU'S. We have a couple of high profile users (NBA ALL STAR) and we are going to launched again on Product Hunt next week by a well known influencer . . . . The market is growing and we are solving a problem that many others have abandoned. It's just about growing this thing. We need 50k for the next year to focus on growth and increasing the valuation.

<comment><USER4> I'll try to tread on this gently. The theme of my comment is "I don't invest in hopes and dreams, I invest to make money."

I know you are saying you are working to solve a problem that no one is looking at but when you say "chat" and "ios" I can only think of saturated markets. You have all sorts of chat solutions for all sorts of needs. What makes you different? What will get you millions of users? Saying you have influencers and NBA Stars brings to mind, well, twitter. And honestly that doesn't help. You have an up Hill battle to convince me as an investor. If you can, I'll invest.

Second, your valuation is way off. Within the last 18 months we have a really successful sale of a venture backed chat application, whatsapp. They got $42.20 per user valuation. That would place you at a $42,200 total valuation. Of course, that's just a fake valuation, you aren't there. The only reason whatsapp got that much was because of the volume of non-US users they had. You have no volume. You are trying to sell me that you are work $1,000 per user. That's an up Hill battle as well. Unless you have a massive market differentiator, it's a tough sell.

I'm not saying it will be impossible. But you need to show me how I am going to turn my $50,000 into a lot more. If you can pay me back within a year, I'll take $75,000 total. If you need it for 10 years, I better see a 1000% return. Remember, many other people have startups which will give me that type of return. You have to show me why you're better than them.

<comment><USER3> This is really inaccurate. These sort of metrics have very little relevance in seed investing. For better or worse (and some of the savviest seed investors have done ludicrously well this way), seed investing is not about your numbers; it's about the team, the market, and the idea. No reputable seed investor in Silicon Valley calculates seed valuations this way (a scaled function of Whatsapp's valuation and the startup's own user numbers).

<comment><USER4> I appreciate your dissenting view. I don't mean to say this is the only metric by which a seed fund will evaluate a business. If it was likely that there was any market for ephemeral twitter, then the per user valuation would be totally meaningless, you're right. But after looking at blast chat these would be my questions. How do you grow from 1000 users to something higher? How do you turn a profit for me? Of course if the team were amazing and the product had any hope of being pivoted into something lucrative, I would be interested. But, from the looks of it, to me, it's not.

A few other thoughts. Nothing about this post says that this group is in the valley. Not all seed investors are in the valley. Not all companies are in the valley. It's a poor assumption to think they are.

Seed investors want a very healthy return on their investment and they want it relatively quickly. You may invest $5,000,000 or $50,000,000 or whatever amount you'd like blindly in whatever increment makes you feel good. But if you don't evaluate the investments you are making, you won't he investing for long. The "Savy Silicon Valley investors" don't invest blindly.

I've been told many times when rejecting a company that I have made a poor choice because of x, y, or z. My reply I'd always the same, "feel free to pull out your own $50,000 and invest. I have plenty of opportunities." I don't mean it to sound snarky. It's just reality. Investors always have processes. This is mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They _may_ be right. But the good news is: You don't need investors (plural)... you don't need all the Angels in Silicon Valley to fawn over you. If all you need is 50k, then you just need one good relationship with one good Angel. What the masses of investors think about you doesn't really matter, just try and find the one who's the best fit.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can't even hire one person with 50k.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, my team & I can live off of 12 months and work on Blastchat 24/7!

<comment><USER7> Where are you living to be able to live off of that with a team for a year?

<comment><USER8> I am curious to see the answer to the question @SEJeff asked. How big is your team for you guys to survive on $50k for an entire year?

<comment><USER9> I believe it was a poor attempt at sarcasm.

<comment><AUTHOR> No sarcasm . . . How is it not possible to survive for a year for 50k? . . . We do not need an office or need to hire any employees - we just need some hustling cash! . . . where are you guys from?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Typkov - Generate typing lessons from your own writing (Clojure/Noir) - <AUTHOR> http://typkov.stevelosh.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Typkov is a little webapp I made this past weekend. I'm learning Colemak, and I wanted more gtypist lessons to practice with, but I'd prefer lessons that would let me practice the kind of things I usually type.

You paste in some text (like blog entries, essays, code, and such that you've written) and it generates typing lessons based on that text using simple Markov chains. So instead of practicing random words from the dictionary you can practice with the kind of stuff you actually write in real life. It works surprisingly well.

Right now it outputs files for gtypist and ktouch. If there's another program you'd like supported let me know and if the file format isn't too terrible I'll add it.

It's open source (on BitBucket and GitHub), and I also recorded myself as I made the initial version, so if you like watching programmers work you might like that (though I'm pretty new to Clojure/Noir).

BitBucket: <http://bitbucket.org/sjl/typkov/>

GitHub: <http://github.com/sjl/typkov>

Screencast: <http://youtu.be/uTwnoZEw7FE>

<comment><USER2> Could this be used to generate typing lessons for programmers? One of the things lacking from many typing tools is practice typing symbols as used by programmers - I guess random code would be difficult to generate though and you'd need to specify language etc, although maybe just pasting in your github projects would be sufficient as learning material.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works fine with code -- it basically just splits on whitespace and considers anything in the result to be a "word".

The code won't make sense, and parens/brackets/etc won't be balanced, but you can definitely use it for practicing.

EDIT:

Here are a few drills it generated when I gave it its own source code:

        # Lesson generated by Typkov

        Lesson 1
        (string/split (sanitize text) #"\s+"))) dict [w n] 0))) (rest words))))))
        lessons)))) (defn sanitize [s] (-> s (string/replace \" \"))) (defn
        [lesson n] (let [w n] (let [initial-word (random-choice (keys dict))))
        (defn markov-dict ([words] (markov-dict words) n "\n" (join-n lines)))) (defn

        Lesson 2
        text 24) [:text "You must enter a decent amount of
        "])))) "G:MENU\n"))) (defn random-choice [coll] (nth coll (rand-int n))] (loop
        data))) (render "/" data) (not (form-valid? data))) (render "/" data)
        data} (t/home (:text data) (t/home (:text data) (not (second words)]

        Lesson 3
        n] (let [initial-word (random-choice (keys dict))] (case format n] (let
        [w (first words) lessons (repeatedly n (partial string/join "\n")) (def
        \' \') (string/replace \" \"))) (defn markov-dict ([words] (markov-dict {}
        get-lesson [text format n] 0))) (rest choices))))))) (def join-nn (partial

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that file upload could be interesting. :D Maybe some GitHub integration, like create lesson directly from Rails rep. (but not exacly importante this one!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh:

        find . -name '*.rb' | xargs cat | pbcopy

And paste all your Ruby files in :)</comment></comment>


What it's like to be way too popular for a day - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2015/01/05/popular-for-a-day

<comment><USER2> > I now need to write everything with the fear that any hastily written > article might end up on TV, with the most extreme word in the article > singled out with my name on it forever.

> I'll keep writing — I can't stay away. But academically, it's not worth the > risk.

I often, in my role as a community manager, call people out on their words, and they act like no one should be reading them anyway, not really understanding that their statements are public. If you are writing something, or saying something, and you are doing it quickly and harshly, it doesn't seem like you should be able to paint yourself a martyr who now has to live in fear of when you make a "mistake": this sounds a lot more like "careless"?

</comment><comment><USER3> In February of 2010, I was asked to appear on CNN in response to Andrew Joseph "Joe" Stack III having burnt his house to the ground, then crashed his airplane into the Austin, Texas Internal Revenue Service headquarters.

Joe did that in protest of IRS Section 1706, as well as the law behind it. He was and I am a software consultant. 1706 also effects consulting architects and consulting electrical engineers.

I was glad to appear on CNN - look up "Michael David Crawford" on YouTube - but just afterwards, all the local TV stations wanted to interview me as well.

I would have been OK with that however I was on a showstopper bug for my client. I finally granted just one local interview, but on the condition that the TV station would not in any way present my opinion as representing that of my client. They were OK with that; while they interviewed me in the parking lot at work, the camera was facing away from my client's office.

After a while I got so very many requests for local interviews that I powered off my phone. I also emailed a profuse apology to everyone on my project.

They were all quite supportive of my taking most of the day off to appear on TV. However my client at the time was on the ropes financially. I didn't want anyone else to lose their job just because I was enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sadly, over the top is about the only way a lot of companies take notice of a problem. How many times have we seen widely spread stories making a company fix a situation? It's also the nature of the modern journalism beast. Page views are cash, so sensationalizing everything is how its going to go. He should be happy the headline had something to do with what he wrote.

Maybe, just maybe, someone at Apple will authorize Snow Leopard part 2.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't sweat it Marco. The people that really care understand the core points and know you're on to something. They also know the media just used you for pageviews. The other people have already forgotten they read that today.

<comment><USER6> That's my take on this too. What should be worrying him is what he already said on Twitter:

>I'm scared of having damaged my relationship with Apple, but it wouldn't be spreading so widely and quickly if it didn't resonate with many.

You know where else people fear to criticise an institution? Totalitarian regimes. At least that's how I as a developer perceive Apple lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it was a good thing, as it helped to increase public attention over Yosemite's problems and thus puts more pressure on Apple.</comment>


Israeli soldiers who relied on Waze blundered into a deadly firefight - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/battles-erupts-after-israeli-soldiers-follow-apparent-gps-error-into-palestinian-zone/2016/03/01/940307ef-503f-4a98-8abb-01cf6357a850_story.html <comment><USER2> That's a somewhat misleading headline.

From the article:

 _Agence France-Presse quoted a Waze official as saying the device setting to warn about areas "dangerous or prohibited for Israelis to drive through" was off.

"In this case, the setting was disabled. In addition, the driver deviated from the suggested route and, as a result, entered the prohibited area," the official told the news agency._

<comment><USER3> Or just maybe, militar personnel ough to rely on their government's reconn/intel reports instead of using customer grade apps that were never designed for wartime usage.

<comment><USER4> Wait, are there military "Waze" deployments? That'd probably be pretty useful, yes? In addition to the routing information, a military could have an "enterprise" Waze that contained a bunch of intel marked on a map based on reports from the field.

<comment><USER5> There are military GIS systems, probably not Waze :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, a Palestinian was killed in the turmoil.

<comment><USER7> Is driving a single vehicle into a camp enough of an offense to warrant Molotov cocktails? It seems like drawing the attention of the Israeli military is not something the average refugee would want.

<comment><USER8> Certainly not, but dismissing a human death like "oh by the way they just ran over a cat" is not warranted either imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note that the event ended rather "peacefully". They mention Hannibal protocol was initiated - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive). It can end up rather horribly bad to the local population as it happened in 2014 where large parts of a city got distroyed and scores were killed because IDF wanted to cut all the possible escape routes of kidnappers with the hostage.

</comment><comment><USER10> In today's world, it is so easy to get caught up in the technology craze. We have all done it. The problem that people don't seem to realize is that while technology is great and it can do amazing things, it can also harm us. We use our phones for GPS, accessing information, etc. and we begin to forget how to "defend" for ourselves. Think about it, when was the last time you had a question and DIDN'T google for the answer after giving it a seconds thought? When was the last time we applied ourselves and critically thought about what we were trying to learn? Technology should be an aid, not a crutch.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't even get them to update the app to include high wind reports, much less "people are shooting at us!"

</comment><comment><USER12> Remember kids, stay away from the refugee camps created inside your country.

<comment><USER13> Especially when you're a soldier of the army they're seeking refuge from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate GPS with a passion : it makes you dumb. Don't think and just follow the synthesized voice.

Knowing where you are is a skill that gets better when you use it and that rusts when you don't. This is why I still use a paper map in my car or in the woods, it forces me to think and it's very gratifying when you realize that you know exactly where you are and what path to take.

Admittedly I still use my smartphone when I don't have time to wander a bit.</comment>


Show HN: KytePhone turns any Android into a kids-friendly phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.kytephone.com

<comment><USER2> Can i get an old person version of this with big type and no distractions? My gran still has issues just making calls on a mobile phone and as much as i'd like her to be able to send and receive text messages, all attempts have failed.

<comment><USER3> I can see the reasoning for this but I cannot see the reasoning for giving older people (who have trouble with technology) smart phones.

The best option I could possibly think of for an old person that can't grasp the concept is something like Siri for sending/receiving text messages (though I haven't used it so I have no idea what the learning curve is). Otherwise just give them a phone that acts like a phone.

<comment><USER4> My grandmother (91) is still mentally sharp (though a little forgetful now, but still surprisingly unforgetful for her age) but has difficulty using the simplest of nokia phones - things like the fact that you have to press a button to dial, or to hang up, confuse her after a lifetime of non-mobile phones.

I've never seen her try a smartphone, but I imagine having a touchscreen with big buttons that say "dial now" and "end call" would be easier than dialing in a number and thinking "I know there was something else I had to do now..."

<comment><USER5> Why not detect when they've typed enough numbers and automatically connect?

libphonenumber validates numbers based on your locality: <http://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/>

<comment><USER6> Have to see how good that works in Germany.

Prefixes/area codes are different length:

+49 30 ... -> Berlin +49 221 .... -> Cologne +49 2389 ... -> Small town where I grew up

If you solve that, you'll notice that the number afterwards has the same problems on a bigger scale.

Some (especially small towns) have 3 or 4 digit local phone numbers. Big cities go up to 7 (Or more? No idea, but I know numbers from 3 to 7 digits in length). And length varies within the same area code. So (area) 1234 might be valid, as is (area) 12356.

I fail to see how that could work reliably. Thanks for the link - now I'm trying to figure out what they know that I don't. :)

Edit: Skimmed the project. They have a binary (protobuf?) file for phone number metadata which seems to be a huuuge number of regular expressions.

For the reasons listed above I claim that that way you cannot find out if a number is 'done' typing using this library. Looking plausible? Yes. But you cannot replace the dial button in DE for all I can tell.

<comment><USER7> It's obviously _possible_ to encode all phone numberd, since, you know, your landline doesn't have a dial button, but calls connect.

Timezone data is a (smaller) mess, but that has been encoded in a library.

<comment><USER6> I very well might be mistaken. But I don't buy it.

My landline is constantly connected to the operator. My totally clueless understanding of this voodoo box called telephone is that each digit is passed on to 'the system', initiating a call when I hit a valid number (or resulting in an error tone).

I do not believe that it is possible (outside of the telephone network) to encode this information. You could create a huuuuge snapshot (a digital phone book..?) and by the time that data is on any device you care about it's already out of date.

Sorry, I don't believe you and don't think that it is obvious.

Edit: Stole the idea of checking the wikipedia link for DE from the UK sibling thread. See:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/+49>

Note things like

" (0xxxx) xxxxxxx

In area codes that use four digits, newly assigned numbers (for all locations from May 2010, some cities earlier: e,g, Heidelberg already in May 2003) have a length of seven digits, also yielding a total length of eleven digits. Grandfathered numbers may be as short as three digits (seven total) in very rural areas."

Reread the last sentence. Not feasible. End of story. You know if a number is valid if you try to call it.

You could say 'aaah, but new numbers follow scheme X so lets just have a database (phonebook) of all current numbers first and fallback to the rule later'. No idea if that would work and how it reacts to someone canceling his contract for one of these gazillion 3 or 4 digit numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a really good execution.

I had a similar idea except it was for old smartphones without data service. There are millions of them floating around out there that would make perfect household mini-tablets for kids.

<comment><USER9> As the father of two kids who beg to play on my phone all day I think this is a great idea! I have an old Android phone which I would love to let them play games and take pictures on. Maybe there are even some specific kid friendly wifi apps they could use. (Send pictures to grandparents?)

<comment><AUTHOR> The nice thing about Kyte is that it doesn't mess with any of the phone's data. This means you can install it on your own phone, log in and give your phone to your kids. When you need it back, you just log out and have your phone back.

<comment><USER9> I don't think Kyte solves quite the same problem for kids from 1-6 years old or so. I never let my 4 year old out of my sight with my current phone. So I don't really need a 'kids mode' for it. I'm more worried about what they'll do physically to it :) I'm more interested in turning an old deactivated phone into a toy that I don't have to care about if it gets flushed down the toilet.

<comment><AUTHOR> In it's current state, I think Kyte is great for kids ages 6-10, ie, those who are ready for their first phone, but who would have to get a dumbphone right now because their parents don't feel comfortable giving a full smartphone.

Over time, I hope we'll get Kyte to a stage where it's useful for kids both older and younger than this age range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks like an excellent implementation of a great idea. It's actually somewhat similar to what we do at Famigo (see <http://www.famigo.com/sandbox/>), though we're much more about content management and recommendations than GPS and telephony features.

With respect to the location feature, AT&T actually offers a somewhat similar service called AT&T Family Map for a monthly fee of $10-15. I believe that's a white-labeled version of an existing app (it might be Life360, not sure) with some integration into their back office APIs. I really encourage the Kyte folks to do some investigation here; other carriers might be looking to solve similar problems with respect to family location. That is, after all, the carriers' most lucrative market segment.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love the idea and would be interested in encouraging people I know to try this out, but I need to know who the customer is for this product... the privacy of children is something that seems extra important to protect rather than sell to advertisers or whoever is paying the bills for this product.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely something we need to address on the site, and we'll update it in the next few days.

We think showing ads to kids or selling their personal information is completely unacceptable and will never do that. The way we plan to make money is though the classic fremium model - the basic features (including the ones we have right now) will be free, but we'll ask parents to pay for premium features.

Right now, carriers charge $10/month for GPS and $5 for call limits. We want to give these away for free and provide parents with real value they feel good about paying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, I have a stable of old android phones I will try this on. Quick q -- my gnexus claims it is not compatible with kytephone. Why is that?

<comment><USER13> Incompatible with ICS, maybe?

<comment><USER14> I suspect so because you cannot get rid of the onscreen system bar along the bottom.

I wish Google would create a security permission for apps to be able to turn this bar off.

<comment><USER15> Allowing it would create security issues; nothing to stop the app from showing a fake system bar that appears to let you out of the app, but actually keeps you in and snoops information. And having no hardkeys means there's no 'safety hatch' that you know will get you out of the app (like Flash's "esc to close" warning)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love this. But the landing page looks like some interstitial ad which my first reaction is to look for a "skip this ad" link on top.

</comment><comment><USER17> My wife and I were actually just talking about something like this a couple days ago. Great idea, and looks like a great implementation! Great to have a way to limit what the kids can do and with whom, so the phone remains a tool and doesn't become a distraction and/or addiction for the kids. Maybe I should put this on my own phone! :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I feel bad for any kid who's forced to use this instead of a real phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kyte is currently aimed at young kids, around the ages of 7-10. At that age, no parent feels comfortable giving a full smartphone, so kids either end up with no phone or at best a dumbphone, if they really need to stay connected.

Our intent is not to censor or limit kids, but the exact opposite - we want to make a product that gives parents peace of mind so they'll be able to get their kids the smartphone they want.

<comment><USER18> I suggest you not try to speak for every parent. Also, it'd be best if you didn't use euphemisms for censorship.

<comment><USER19> I'll bite - no _good_ parent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was actually looking for something like this recently - this look great! I'll definitely try it out with my son when he gets a little older.

One feature I would love to see is the ability to set time limits on gaming - like you can have 1 hour of playing games per day, or 5 hours per week. I've tried looking around for apps which would do that and there is nothing good.

</comment><comment><USER21> While I think that the general idea is great, I'm a bit torn about the monitoring. Not so much about the location, more about what they did with the phone. To stay within the realm of flying devices, it does sound a bit helicopter-y to me. Is it really healthy for either party to go through usage logs to find out how long they played Angry Birds etc.?

<comment><USER22> It's all about how old the kids are. To me, this is clearly not appropriate for teenagers, but entirely okay for younger kids. I don't think it's targeted at teenagers either -- restricting the numbers called is something they wouldn't go for.

<comment><USER21> I got that, my concern isn't about the privacy, but about micro-managing your kid's life. The fact that this is in the intro video makes it appear to me as an essential feature. No "oh, by the way, if you really want to you can check what your kid did today", but having it as a prominent feature of your web management platform.

My worries isn't "should parents be allowed to know that", but "should parents _care_ to check that all the time".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just wondering why it's seemingly limited to US only at the moment? (Or at least, not the UK).

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my bad in the developer console, it should be available world-wide now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _Your name so we know what to call you._

The name of the person who's setting this up? Or the kid's name?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the parents name. By default, it'll create and add that contact when the phone is first activated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Second startup this week I've seen involving kites. Same typeface too ;)

Looks great! Plans for monetizing it?

</comment><comment><USER26> whats to prevent the kid from turning the phone off and on again to exit the program and get normal access?

<comment><USER27> I don't know how they would disable that and the home button on a non-rooted phone.

<comment><USER28> The home button sends an intent that this application would just act as the default receiver for (just like the Amazon Fire tablet does for its custom homescreen), though if they are still giving access to the Market, a kid could install another launcher that responds to that intent and switch out of this app.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but the intent of Kyte Phone is to make the phone simple.

If the kid can replace the default launcher, she does not need an special UI in the first place.

(If all you want to do is micromanage your kid's life through GPS monitoring, is it possible to install a hidden GPS tracker?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would this work for Android tablet as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> It only works on Android 2.2 and 2.3 right now, but we will get it working with tablets and 4.0 phones soon.

We've heard from parents that they hate it when their kids mess around with their tablets, so I think it'll work well on tablets.

<comment><USER31> I only hate all the annoying popups that mess up the experience for my kid (18 months). I just want him to be able to stick to one app, maybe even just scroll and zoom around (I have no dedicated children's app, used Google Maps for example - or even the Touch Screen test app which displays colorful circles where you touch the screen).

There are too many elements on the tablet that trigger some overlay over the current app and that are not easy to get rid off (for example the close button doesn't work while you touch some part of the app behind it).</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Rails 4 CMS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/websitescenes/cms_admin2

<comment><USER2> Could you please provide clear installation instructions? I can create a live demo for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not a gem yet, so projects currently have to built off of clones or forks. So I would git clone [https://github.com/websitescenes/cms_admin2.git](https://github.com/websitescenes/cms_admin2.git) and run bundle install. Not too much overhead in setting up but some things may need to be tweaked for deployment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you have a live demo somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will probably have one up in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for asking.

<comment><USER4> I am quite interested. Please post on HN again when you have a demo.</comment></comment></comment>


Dan Bricklin: Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet - <AUTHOR> https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_bricklin_meet_the_inventor_of_the_electronic_spreadsheet#t-700391 <comment><USER2> Link to the beginning of the video: [https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_bricklin_meet_the_inventor_of_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_bricklin_meet_the_inventor_of_the_electronic_spreadsheet)

</comment><comment><USER3> Once heard someone say the electronic spreedsheets were one of the very few things (3) in IT that have been invented in the past 40 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please modify the url by removing the trailing "#t-700391" so that the video will start at the beginning rather than at the end.</comment>


From Zen Buddhism to Preying on Vulnerable Women (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/from-zen-buddhism-to-preying-on-vulnerable-women/281475/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I guess this is a case of desire causing suffering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shimano may not have been a good guy, but its kind of weird how its framed as the evil man exploiting the poor, vulnerable women, rather than a consensual act between 2 people.

<comment><USER4> I agree if a man sleeps with a consenting woman but later chooses not to enter a romantic relationship even though she wants to, that's not evil by itself. Some people would say that he's "using her for sex" or a "womanizer" or whatever, as if sex includes an implicit promise to enter a relationship; I would disagree.

But that's not what's going on in the case of Eido Shimano. He was a teacher sleeping with his students, which is generally considered unethical. He appears to have led his sexual partners to believe that they were in a monogamous relationship, then cheated on them. He repeatedly harassed a woman who refused his advances. And at least one woman accused him of groping her, which is just plain illegal. I think it's fair to call that behavior "evil" and "exploitative", and I don't see anything weird about the article framing it that way.</comment></comment>


Human powered helicopter on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1594333219/make-aviation-history-with-a-human-powered-helicop <comment><AUTHOR> This team is aiming at the Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Competition, discussed on HN before[0]. The head of the team, Neal Saiki, has human-powered helicopter experience[1]. They're competing with a quadcopter design from the University of Maryland[2].

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=808828>

[1] <http://www.ntsworks.com/Helicopters.html>

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Maryland_Gamera_H...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Maryland_Gamera_Human_Powered_Helicopter)</comment>


Science Is in the Details - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/opinion/27harris.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Relating this to your previous submission from the Boston Globe, is Francis Collins the answer to the concerns raised about Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, or is he part of a worse concern?

Thanks in general for all the interesting submissions about imparting science knowledge to the general public.</comment>


Introducing the 3D-printed raspberry - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27795205

<comment><USER2> I assumed at first glance that it was a 3D-printed Raspberry Pi. Regrettably, no, this is an actual raspberry.

I guess it'll be a few years before we can get a Raspberry Pi-powered 3D printer that can be used to 3D-print a Raspberry Pi.</comment>


Advertisements in Community Driven World - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineeringrowth.co/post/advertisements-in-community-driven-world <comment><AUTHOR> How do you use communities in your product growth strategy? Are you part of any community? An article on how communities evolved into the future for product development.</comment>