Ask YC: So, why are you doing a startup? - <AUTHOR>

This is a simple question: why are you doing your startup? why did you quit your job, or maybe even why didn't you get any? What is your motivation for doing this?
Mine is a personal motivation: I want to do something worth, something interesting. I don't want to look back and see I wasted my time doing worthless projects for money. I believe we have to do some kind of (Spanish) "obra", just like writers, musicians and scientists do: we have to be able to look in the past and say: "I did X, Y, Z, and this has my signature on it".
So, why are you doing a startup? <comment><USER2> I'm in a job that I hate.

I'm tired of working for other people.

I have an insane need to build things.

I get bored very easily.

I want to be the decider.

I love computers.

I love programming.

I want to automate boring tasks.

I want to retire early.

It's an adventure.

I like to hack things.

If I'm not infront of a computer at least once a day I get nervous and irritable.

It's about building wealth.

It doesn't make sense to work my tail off so that someone else can make money off of me.

I want to travel after I'm retired, and I don't want to travel with a wheelchair.

I like working with geeks.

I like to tinker.

gotta go, I need to tinkle...

</comment><comment><USER3> People were willing to pay $100 per hour for me (of which I got to keep about 20%) while I was working on projects I did not believe in, using a language I found completely unsuitable, using frameworks that were a configuration nightmare, while reading blogs for 30% of the time. And they were happy with me!

Now imagine how much happier I can be and how much more I can earn while working on projects I passionately believe in, using the most suitable language and framework I know. I'm working 2 or 3 times as much per week as I used to, but I don't mind.

<comment><USER4> Ouch, billed at $100/hr and got paid $20/hr? You got the shaft.

I agree completely with what you're saying. This is what is driving me away from my job at a software consulting firm at the moment.

<comment><USER3> That's after dutch income taxes.

But my point was that people were paying 5x more for my services than I need to live on, even though I was working at less than 10% of my potential (due to language, tools, motivation, working hours...).

There must be a more efficient way, and I hope this is it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> her: "wow that's a really great site"

me: "yeah, I think it's OK"

her: "wonder who did it.."

me: "well, me and a couple of guys.."

her: "take me to bed you stud.."

:-)

<comment><USER6> That's what _my_ girlfriend says to me all the time...

<comment><USER7> Mine says that she is jealous of my computer, that I spend more time with it than her, and she doesn't even let me use it at night when I could be sleeping next to her. She's going to kill it one day, I know it.

<comment><USER6> OK, I was lying before...but seriously, my girlfriend _really_ says this!

<comment><USER8> you guys have girlfriends? :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two big reasons:

1\. Right now the leverage that a small group of talented technical folks have is huge. Much more so than I expect it will be in 10 years, or it was 10 years ago. I don't want to cede that to the PHBs.

2\. A really useful web startup is a way to touch a lot of people's lives, and ideally improve them in some small way.

#2 is hugely motivating for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm young and have nothing to lose.

I want to change the world (by making something people need).

I'm nerdy and think there is always a solution in technology. People just haven't found it yet.

I'll learn a lot.

I see through the veneer of "traditional" paths of employment.

PG says it all. I send this out regularly: <http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Because I've always wanted to. I love software and the idea of creating innovative things that people want to use. Becoming a professor at a research university was one goal I achieved, and doing a startup is the other.

My situation: I'm 38, I saved up enough money to live on for a year with no other income, I quit my job, I have two kids, and my working wife is 110% supportive. As they say in the casinos, I am "all in".

</comment><comment><USER12> Because no other photo-sharing site does what I want.

<http://ourdoings.com/2007-12-19>

<comment><USER13> Your work has come a long way. Congratulations.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, and thanks for your feedback way-back-when.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps I'm more selfish than the rest of you, but I am starting my company because I want to Win. I want to make a better product than you, have my users love my product more than yours, make more money off it than you, and get more positive press than you. I want to Win, and unlike most people, I really believe I can Win.

<comment><USER15> I hope you do.

And here's the dirty little secret that makes programming startups the best "sport" of all: we all can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I currently work for a startup where I'm not the founder. The company's success is important to me for multiple reasons but I don't have nearly as much at stake as the founders do. Their opinion is that there are lots of things we have to "own" and so I currently spend a lot of time creating new technical things. I don't think this is the best way but I don't question it too seriously. Right now I'm more motivated by flexibility.

That said, when I get around to doing _my_ own startup I plan to create as few new technical things as I possibly can until it is safely out of the startup phase. To me creating new technology is more often than not a huge risk which you only want to do when you _know_ the reward is worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doing a startup is more pain, stress, and trouble than the alternatives. Unfortunately, after trying a majority of the attractive options, I found myself unable to work on anything else except in start ups and my own personal projects. Even if I had billions in the bank, I couldn't imagine myself deriving greater self-fulfillment than pushing myself to the limits in a start up environment.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. Acquire knowledge; 2\. Develop technology; 3\. Have fun; 4\. Maybe change people's lives for the best; 5\. Maybe get rich.

Even if my startup proved to be an utter commercial failure, the 3 first points apply. I can't lose, I've already won! Of course I can win even bigger than now...

Those are my kinds of scenarios: a win for everyone and/or a success no matter what.

</comment><comment><USER19> Because I believe I can create much greater value (through programming) than I'm allowed to at my current day job. In a very pasionate way I _need_ to do this. I'm tired of wasting my time and efforts in a corporate environment.

I can get more done in a day on my code than I can in a month of day job work. Also, (at least in the initial stages) I can structure my work in efficient manner so that I'm accomplishing more and more every hour I spend working.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love creating stuff, especially through programming. I almost started my own "Web 2.0" site while at university, but my study time eventually took over. Then, no longer funded by my parents, I needed a job. I worked for a games company which, one year later, was slowly draining the passion for coding out of me. So I quit, moved country (again) and now I'm living off savings and odd jobs while building a prototype and hunting for co-founders. Woo!

<comment><USER21> Could you elaborate on why you didn't like the gaming industry?

What title(s) did you work on?

I just switched to the gaming industry so I hope the same doesn't happen to me.

So far though, I've just been stoked having an xbox360 on my desk...

<comment><USER20> > Could you elaborate on why you didn't like the gaming industry?

Whoa, Pandora's box! :) I'll try not to break any NDAs and still be informative. Apologies if this degenerates into a rant. A lot of this stuff depends on the developer/publisher pairing you happen to work for, although I talked to quite a few people at Rockstar and it seemed even worse there.

* The publisher is always right. Even if they request illogical, stupid things, which clearly won't work, you have to implement them, only for them to withdraw them later. I spent weeks on stuff like that.

* Even 'obviously' good development practices seem to be considered purely theoretical, at least at the studio I worked at. The code was terrible, the bug count was astronomical throughout the project, because there was never time to fix them, everyone always had to add new stuff. The whole thing didn't even get any serious QA until AFTER the original intended release date. (which eventually slipped by almost a year; I blame all of the above for that)

* Uncompensated overtime is bad enough, but the attitude with which it was handled was the worst part. "No, I'm busy this Sunday" was treated as a serious problem and you had to have a 1-on-2 "chat" with senior management where you'd effectively be bullied into agreeing to working yet more overtime. They even tried to talk one guy out of being best man at his friend's wedding.

* There was always promise of that vaporous concept of bonuses, but to me it was pretty clear that the publisher had no interest in promoting the game, or even in it being a good game. I think everyone else was either lying or wearing their industry-standard rose-tinted-glasses. I left shortly before it was released in the US but as far as I can tell, it never made it into any top-10 sales list. It's not even out in the ROTW. (yet?) I suspect that nobody is getting any bonuses. (if the studio is even still alive by then)

* At least in the UK, game industry jobs are terribly paid compared to other programming jobs; specifically, about 30-50% less. And that's baseline salary, many "real" jobs pay overtime or give TOIL. Non-programming game jobs pay even less; my salary wasn't even enough to cover cost of living, even after being promoted pretty rapidly.

Sure, some of it is pretty cool.

* I personally really enjoy engine programming, which is what I was hired to do, even though I only did that until the engine/tools work was done.

* You tend to work with some pretty smart, if highly cynical people.

* I got to play with a Wii devkit a couple months before the Wii was out.

* You're making games!

I think I'd only work in games again if it was either for a very small company, or it was a company that has made >50% really awesome games that I personally enjoyed in the past. I'd definitely "test drive" the company before I stayed there, i.e. quit within the probation period if it felt iffy. EDIT: Yes, it's possible to be that choosy if you're any good. The industry greatly overhypes how hard it is to get in. Having been involved in the key parts of the hiring process (CV screening, interviews) at the company, I know how difficult it is to hire programmers.

Published game I worked on: Battalion Wars 2.

YMMV.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the in depth response! It was informative!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I felt I had a better way to do something, and that it would be wrong not to find out if I was right.

</comment><comment><USER15> Because the guy who wrote this:

if (MonthNbr == 1) {MonthDesc = "January"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 2) {MonthDesc = "February"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 3) {MonthDesc = "March"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 4) {MonthDesc = "April"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 5) {MonthDesc = "May"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 6) {MonthDesc = "June"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 7) {MonthDesc = "July"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 8) {MonthDesc = "August"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 9) {MonthDesc = "September"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 10) {MonthDesc = "October"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 11) {MonthDesc = "November"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 12) {MonthDesc = "December"} ;

is a retired millionaire while I'm still cleaning up his mess.

I think I can do better.

<comment><AUTHOR> But really, is that it? Are you in a startup for the money, or is there another motivation?

<comment><USER23> Money is not a bad reason.

With money comes freedom in aspects of your life, you no longer would need to work a normal job to get by.

<comment><USER24> If your wants and standard of living balloon, you'll always think you need more money to gain freedom.

<comment><USER23> Absolutely.

The key to getting freedom financially is living well below your means. That starts before you get rich, and has to continue at that point.

Money can either be a tool used by you to build freedom or dig yourself in a little hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Because I got tired of retirement after a year or so...

Because every evening before I fall asleep I ask myself "What have you built/learned today?" and when the answer is nothing for too long I go crazy.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I can't wait to get rich and retire so I can finally work more (on projects unconstrained by financial considerations)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My "hair was on fire" for a tool I desperately needed for my architectural firm that was not available anywhere, and I realized the tool would be equally powerful for any business.

</comment><comment><USER27> 1\. Ego 2\. I relish the idea of creating something new 3\. I love the idea of serving a unique niche and helping promote startups and entrepreneurs 4\. Ego 5\. Working out of coffee shops, drinking decaf mochas all day long is my idea of LIVING it up 6\. Because I never want to have to say "I wish I had!"

</comment><comment><USER28> I read some advice from a lot of people, one of them that made the most impact was Steve Jobs:

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something...almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wanted efficient and secure remote backups, and nobody else was providing them.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's the most fun I could possibly have while working and I feel that I have a lot of power while doing it. Since I'm not rich, I've got to work so this is the natural choice.

Were money no issue then I might focus on some exciting programming/engineering projects that aren't as certain a way of making money but would certainly help change the world.

</comment><comment><USER30> We want to do scientific research. We need to make a bunch of money to be able to run a private research lab and cure AIDS, and working for the man will never pay off well enough.

(to cure AIDS, midway through this post) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47751>

</comment><comment><USER31> I want to work for myself, and with the right people (I'm always on the lookout), and I want to make things that don't suck.

</comment><comment><USER32> I write code that does convenient things for myself. Then, if someone happens to see me using said tool, I think "maybe i can get other people who would also use this".

And it happens. It's wonderful. I'm glad to be in a field where hobby projects can blossom into business.

</comment><comment><USER33> Because I believe I've come up with a novel method of handling user participation in a relatively mature market; it's far stickier than many sites currently in the space, and avoids some of the issues that other 'unconventional' sites have.

</comment><comment><USER34> 1\. To work around like minded individuals, where I learn invaluable skills and we jointly create cool things! (bummer my most desired goal even amongst my startups relative success is still not fulfilled! ) 2\. Create technology that enriches our daily lives 3\. Have enough money to continue creating new things and enough to own middle class income type property & goods.

</comment><comment><USER35> Guy Kawasaki once said that the number one goal of any startup (or any organization for that matter) should be to "make meaning."

I wholeheartedly agree

He also goes on to say that you should be able to fill out this blank with your company.

If ___________________ did not exist, the world would be a little worse off.

</comment><comment><USER36> it is all about the money, and doing something fun at the same time.

If you do something you like, at home, it is a hobby. If you do something you like, and try to get rich, than it is a startup. If you do something you don't like, just b/c to get rich, you will either fail, or be miserable and quit.

</comment><comment><USER37> Building something cool and useful is just doggone fun!

</comment><comment><USER38> Money And to escape the Boredom !

</comment><comment><USER39> I enjoy making computers better.

</comment><comment><USER40> To make the world a more fun place, and hopefully make a boatload in the process.

</comment><comment><USER41> To speed up the coming singularity.

</comment><comment><USER42> to make an impact on humanity

<comment><USER43> A positive one, I hope! ;)</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Alternative to Nagios - <AUTHOR>

Can you help me with some pointers to some non-GPL equivalent of Nagios while offering SNMP monitoring for systems. <comment><USER2> You should give Zenoss(<http://www.zenoss.com/>) a try. I grew tired of Nagios and eventually moved over. I have since then settled on God (<http://god.rubyforge.org/>).

Do note that God is not like Nagios and Zenoss, it is more like a monitoring framework.

<comment><USER3> Echo the Zeonoss comment. I mostly liked it when I tried it ~6 months ago. More "colorful" than Nagios, somewhere between Nagios and OpenView, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why the need for a non-GPL implementation? - Just curious, I'm not a GPL zealot</comment>


EU Bans Claim That Water Can Prevent Dehydration - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html <comment><USER2> That's story is a distortion of the facts.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay- scientist/2011/n...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay- scientist/2011/nov/18/1)

The constant stream of the misinformation has undermined the democratic process.</comment>


Tesla Is Betting on Solar, Not Just Batteries - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2015/07/tesla-is-betting-on-solar-not-just-batteries

<comment><USER2> Kind of odd that this article doesn't even mention the commercial and utility markets for these batteries which garnered about 80% of the initial orders by dollar value. Not clear how HBR could make such a rookie mistake.</comment>


Ask HN: Is piracy actually a problem? (SOPA) - <AUTHOR>

In all the media coverage, it seems to be taken as fact that foreign piracy is something that must be solved.
However, looking at year-over-year profits for media companies, it doesn't look like they're doing poorly. In fact (excepting a blip due to our economic foibles) they're doing better than ever.
Is this assessment correct? If so, why isn't the media picking apart these claims? <comment><USER2> Economist, Dean Baker, thinks piracy concerns are overblown: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3482767>

That said, it's generally not in the economic interest of the incumbent media businesses (particularly the TV Networks, a.k.a. media aggregators) to present the case against the SOPA/PIPA legislation. This is because they are trying to protect their existing revenue streams that come from business models which rely upon traditional media distribution, the internet presents a challenge to this.

When (if) the protests against SOPA/PIPA are presented, it's always balanced against the "fact" that "everyone agrees piracy is a problem that needs to be addressed".</comment>


IBM Offers Up Jeopardy Winner "Watson" To Startups - <AUTHOR> http://wraltechwire.com/ibm-to-offer-up-jeopardy-winner-watson-to-software-startups/12452222/

<comment><USER2> When will this actually appear? Seriously...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know, but I'm really curious to see what they come up with, and what the business model will be. Is this the advent of "Watson As A Service" WaaS, as it were?

Or maybe the beginnings of The Matrix? :-)</comment></comment>


What's killing us? - <AUTHOR> http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/10/whats_killing_u.html <comment><USER3> > 4\. Most of these leading killers are themselves mainly caused by old age. > If "Old Age" were a category, it would be causing by far the majority of > deaths. Again, it's not the case that nothing could be done about this. We > could be doing much more medical research on aging.

I guess most of this article's discussion makes some sense, up until the point above. There will always be a top ten causes of death but those causes wouldn't always be interesting. If we lived 120 able-body-and-minded-years, I would call that success or at the very least progress. How would this top ten graph look then? Probably not very different. Before I read #4 I thought to myself: "gee, as long as we're dying of old age, then that's probably a really good sign." The author draws almost the opposite conclusion.

"We could be doing much more medical research on aging" \-- yes, that's fair. What if research on aging led to us dying of Cancer and Alzheimers ten years later than the baseline? Twenty? Again, progress, but it wouldn't be reflected in this graph.

What might be a really useful use of this data is to show a fifty or hundred- year-ago baseline. What if fifty years ago the pareto included causes like auto collisions or home fires? If that were the case we might want to have some clever quip like: "Regulations: the silent lifesavers." (Regulations are often depicted as tools of the evil bureacracy).

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems a bit of a stretch to say 'There are AIDS activists because there are people who want to express sympathy for gays, to align themselves against conservatives, and thereby to express "who they are". There are AIDS activists, but there aren't any nephritis activists.'

AIDS is a preventable in many cases if people practice safe sex - <USER2> that was not commonly known and/or a taboo topic for a long time. Activists helped change that situation, saving many lives.

If there were Nephritis activists, what exactly would they be doing? What sort of public awareness would they be promoting?

And then there is this: 'There are breast cancer walks, but there aren't any colon cancer walks.' Breast cancer can be prevented by frequent tests and self-examinations. Colon cancer cannot. Breast cancer awareness helps teach woman and society that tests and examinations should be done: not doing this simply because colon cancer is more prevalent (is it though?) seems a rather idiotic utilitarian argument.

<comment><USER5> > Breast cancer can be prevented by frequent tests and self-examinations. > Colon cancer cannot.

Is that true? I was under the impression that colonoscopies can reveal polyps which can be removed, thereby preventing progression to full-blown colon cancer.

<comment><USER4> You're right, but my point is probably still valid: a quick check suggests women over 40 should get a breast exam every year, while men and women should get a colonoscopy every ten years, starting at 40.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is very instructive to listen to Atul Gawande's series of Reith Lectures from a few years ago here.

in "the problem of hubris" ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04tjdlj#play](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04tjdlj#play) , transcript [http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/open- book/2014_reith_lectu...](http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/open- book/2014_reith_lecture3_edinburgh.pdf) ), he makes the very fair point that death is, ultimately, not something we can "fix".

 _We've had I think an about 50 year experiment with medicalising mortality, with casting it as just another problem for us to treat like any other, and I think that experiment is failing. But we have an alternative emerging. It's one where we learn and elicit what matters most to people in their lives besides just surviving, and then we use our capabilities not to sacrifice it but to protect, to protect it – to protect those priorities that people have. And I think that is our opportunity._

</comment><comment><USER7> As pointed out in the comments section, the chart does not account for years of life lost, simply numbers of lives. I'd be interested with whether the ex- post explanation still applies if we did a simple transformation like weighted each category by average age of death. Suicide, homicide and drugs skew a lot younger than heart disease.

<comment><USER8> That's a great point. An elderly man dying of heart disease may be sad, but not tragic in the way a 20-year-old overdosing on heroin is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It feels like the author of this piece lists a variety of interesting observations, some useful facts, and then completely misses the boat.

As a society we put effort into finding ways to help sick people that are not old because we can generally expect them to have a good number of productive years if they are cured. There's a good return value, and it feels just.

This isn't the case with older folk. At a guess, if we found a magical way to cure heart disease and completely take it off the list there, most of those people will still die, a few months/years later, from something else (cancer maybe, or that very descriptive "other" block).

Old age isn't just some single disease we can fix, its a general purpose failure of the body. If you can heal that in a cost effective way (or in any way, really), congrats, you're a trillionare, but I'd bet we'll see full-body cybernetics before we figure out a way to cure aging.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, not everyone dying of heart disease is old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't represent 1-dimensional quantities like proportions or numbers of people as area. This is actively misleading because area it squares the magnitude of differences.

</comment><comment><USER11> _> There are AIDS activists because there are people who want to express sympathy for gays, to align themselves against conservatives, and thereby to express "who they are"._

Millions of people have died of AIDS, and more are dying every day (around 18 per day in the U.S. as of 2014, according to [https://www.hiv.gov/hiv- basics/overview/data-and-trends/stat...](https://www.hiv.gov/hiv- basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics)). If your friend or family member died to AIDS, wouldn't you advocate for its prevention and treatment? To say that these activists are fighting simply to "align themselves against conservatives" is insulting, to say the least.

 _> There are no nephritis activists, because there's no salient group you align yourself with (kidney disease sufferers?) by advocating for nephritis research, there's no group you thereby align yourself _against _, and you don 't tell any story about what kind of person you are._

What about organizations like this? [http://advocacy.kidney.org](http://advocacy.kidney.org)

<comment><USER12> > Millions of people have died of AIDS

Note, people don't actually die _of_ AIDS. They die of something else, that their body can't fight because they have AIDS. Which leads to the interesting question: what counts as a death by AIDS in those statistics? Are some deaths that _might_ be rooted to AIDS not included somehow because of causality uncertainty? (it's not because you have AIDS and die that you died because of it)

> around 18 per day in the U.S. as of 2014

That's... less than 7000 a year, so according to the data from OP, less than homicide (15k), or illegal drugs (17k).

<comment><USER11> From the hiv.gov page: _In 2014, there were 12,333 deaths (due to any cause) of people with diagnosed HIV infection ever classified as AIDS, and 6,721 deaths were attributed directly to HIV._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd dispute both the claim that nobody talks about heart disease, especially in relation to obesity, and also the claim that we "know" how to get people to lose weight in any but the most literal and useless sense. By my second point I mean to say, sure, we know that what we want to achieve is a caloric intake/use rate that leads to weight loss followed by a steady weight, but the real-world success percentage of people trying to do this is abysmal.

</comment><comment><USER13> >Hypothesis: We don't much care about the good of society.

"We" is a very big blanket term. Quite a few of us care about preventable deaths from bad health choices.

However, quite a few people on this Earth exist that don't care very much about the good of society.

These people run the corporations that are VERY GOOD at selling things that kill us, namely junk foods, alcohol and tobacco.

<comment><USER8> Well, also, for any given problem, one might feel like the cure proposed is worse than the disease. Maybe we could "solve" obesity by strictly rationing every person's daily food intake and not allowing them to eat anything else besides what they've been provisioned. Who wants to live in that world?

<comment><USER13> Definitely not I, it's true :)

The nihilistic reality is that none of this matters, everyone will do what they want, people will profit, others will die.

All I ever try to do is provide true information- the user will need to draw their own plan of action from it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the image is completely illegible here: [http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/Willis/huemer2.jpg](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/Willis/huemer2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER15> The illegible labels on this non-enlargable chart are currently what's killing me.</comment>


We should stick with the new normal until a viable vaccine emerges - <AUTHOR> https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/06/23/public-health-policies-have-prevented-hundreds-of-millions-of-coronavirus-infections/ <comment><USER2> Title has been completely changed for submission from the one on the link</comment>


Show HN: Who Is Hiring Explorer - <AUTHOR> http://hnjobs.lsenta.io/

<comment><USER2> How do you extract the tags, is it manually or automatic somehow?

EDIT: Nicely done otherwise, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to help :) don't hesitate if you have enhancement ideas.

The tags are hardcoded, they are keywords I'm interested in. I'm looking for a remote job and there was no way to search for a combination of tags.

You can see the code I used to extract the data here: [https://github.com/lsenta/pow/blob/master/who-is- hiring-2015...](https://github.com/lsenta/pow/blob/master/who-is- hiring-2015/hiring-2.ipynb)

<comment><USER2> Great, thanks!

If I understand correctly, a post with "remote work currently not possible" statement will be tagged as remote? (not that I have a better idea, just wondering how it works :)

EDIT: postings are a bit difficult to read because of (lack of) newlines. Also, I would prefer Verdana to Helvetica, but that's my personal preference...

<comment><USER3> There is an attempt to fix the problem going on at the moment using ONSITE but I don't know if it's working:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9639001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9639001)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks excellent - bookmarked :-) One feature on my wishlist would be a 'location' tag - maybe even if it's US / non-US ...

<comment><USER5> [AngJobs]([http://angjobs.com/#!/jobs/inbox/hn?july](http://angjobs.com/#!/jobs/inbox/hn?july)) allows free custom filters, so you could easily add a location filter, although not possible to combine with other filters at the moment

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah good and useful.Thanks for making this, really. But you fell on the same mistake remoteok.io: when I search for Scala, I find matches with "scalable", "scalability". Can you please fix it?

</comment><comment><USER7> Did you not include sales or are there just not any opportunities in that realm in your list?

<comment><USER8> The monthly "Who Is Hiring?" submissions here on HN are posted automatically on the first by the "whoishiring" user, along with related freelancing submissions. You can find them here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

Typically, the listed jobs are programming and sysadmin related, but on rare occasions you might be able to find "sales" jobs in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for this. It would be great if links were clickable

</comment><comment><USER10> The ultra-thin font and text justification together make text very hard to read on a Retina MacBook.

Here's a screenshot: [http://imgur.com/BnZn8ZS](http://imgur.com/BnZn8ZS)

(Edit -- why downvote this comment? The OP may not be aware that the chosen font is hard to read on some computers.)

<comment><USER11> You got downvotes because some people are sick of flaws in design being bigger talking points than the content. Soemthing I don't agree with. If the design is that horrible then it is a good discussion.

<comment><USER12> He wasn't even saying the design is horrible, merely giving actionable feedback on one design element. I'm sure the site author was grateful, most of us who have released web products would be, I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, pavlov's comment is about readability, not superficial design.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: POS – A basic API to consult Part of Speech of a word - <AUTHOR> https://victorribeiro.com/pos/ <comment><AUTHOR> A long time ago I was working on a sentence generator. I end up studying sentence's composition and part of speech. As I was having trouble to find a free API that would let me consult the POS of a given word, I end up hacking this one together.

When you make a post to the only end point (up to 10 messages) it will return the POS of that word PLUS a suggested word with the same POS.

let me know if you find this useful.

p.s.: I'll will keep this up until my server can handle the requests. I don't believe many people would use this, but if they do, I'll have to figure something else.</comment>


William Sessions, former FBI director, dead at 90 - <AUTHOR> https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Bill-Sessions-Former-prosecutor-judge-and-FBI-15336506.php <comment><USER2> Namesake of the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" message in many classic arcade games:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Don%27t_Use_Drugs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Don%27t_Use_Drugs)</comment>


Execution shapes ideas - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/execution-shapes-ideas/swizec/1532

<comment><USER2> I pretty much agree with this.

In fact, when execution can be cast as implementing a computer program, one can be very formal about comparing ideas and execution; they are related the same way theorems and proofs are.

If we use the Curry-Howard isomorphism; the idea is often a type ("Let's make a program that turns X into Y!") (a theorem) and the execution is often a program (a term realizing that type) (the proof).

So it seems that the value of an idea with no execution (which is not a theorem until it has been proved!) would be abstractly the same value as an unproved proposition. Except now, the proof not only says that the proposition is true, but also realizes whatever that proposition denotes, because it's a computer program. In that sense, execution of an idea is worth a lot more than the idea, because it also provides evidence that the idea is not nonsense.

But who to give more credit to? The idea guy or the implementor? Consider that when we change even a little bit of our execution, we are changing the idea , because it will prove something different. In this sense, both the idea and execution are very much in the hands of the 'implementor,' and the 'idea guy' only provides initial inspiration, which by its commonality is pretty much worthless.

Well, or maybe not; there is value in picking the right initial inspiration and perspective. Is that something only really experienced 'veterans', 'masters', 'talented people', and 'gurus' can have, or can it be explicitly trained and taught, so that this nebulous notion of 'having the right perspective' can be as simple and clear-cut as using a cookbook? I think the latter.

What about when execution consists of other, non-programming factors like talking with the right people, or marketing or whatnot? It's certainly harder to formalize, but I wonder what value there is in treating the non-obviously- programming parts of what is viewed as 'execution' as just another kind of programming, but not done with the usual compilers/interpreters.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm guilty of taking this myth literally myself. Until recently, when I experienced the complex scenario that "ideas don't matter" represents. A better way to communicate this might be: "Ideas don't matter unless proven otherwise".

My experience with "ideas don't matter":

A few months ago I pitched an idea to my idea buddy. We are very committed to financial independence, so he took me seriously. And he asked all the questions he needed to clearly understand what I was suggesting. Still - despite his respect for me - he shrugged it off as me being silly and grasping at straws.

In the weeks that followed I took my hands off my "big" idea to see how well this "little" idea would turn out. The holidays where coming and I needed a smaller project to focus on for the shorter more inconsistent periods of programming time I'd have to invest in a project.

A few weeks later I emerged with a hacked together prototype. I thought to myself.. "I was right, this is cool!". Proud of my programming abilities and pleased that my idea "worked"; I presented the prototype to the same friend.

To my surprise he pretty much flipped out. He went on and on about how simple and brilliant it was. How he had not envisioned of how great the idea was based on my original pitch. I took a step back and related with him, then realized I might be on to something.

After a few more weeks of polish on the prototype, he forced me to present my idea/execution at one of our local developer Meetup's. After boring the 25 participants with other programming topics I presented my prototype. The room lit up with energy and participation, questions fired off from all corners of the room, and the presentation went on to extend past its allotted timeframe. Again, I was caught off guard.

I come up with 5 ideas a week, and there was no reason for me to believe this particular idea was any more promising than any other I spout off at random. I just picked it because it was fun and convenient. Looking back I'm in awe at how this idea was almost as useless as the rest of the ideas I file away. And while I don't yet know if this idea is a "diamond", it has already positively impacted my life for the coming months.

</comment><comment><USER4> The whole point of the "Ideas don't matter" debate is exactly what you're pointing out on your post. People taking the phrase at face value just want to be on the opposing side because they like to antagonize popular opinion. When people say that ideas don't really matter, what they mean is that a great idea doesn't have an iota of influence on the success of a business/project based on said idea, when compared to the execution which can (and most probably will) have a huge influence in how everything turns out. The reality is that better ideas have a miniscule (though existent) influence on a businesses success, while execution of the idea has a much much larger piece of influence pie.

A bad idea most definitely will bomb, but it can be saved by a great execution. A good idea can easily bomb, though it's a lot less probable if it's executed right. The common denominator between both situations is that luck, timing, and execution are of extreme value, while the idea itself takes a back seat to be a secondary concern. Sure it's a lot better to have a great idea (which gives you a few bonus points in favor of actually making it), but what will determine if you succeed is how good your product (and marketing) actually is, if the timing is right, and if you're pretty freaking lucky.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anything tangible or intangible that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset. Ideas aren't special; they're assets, just like any other economic resource. However, ideas are _very_ illiquid. To extract the value of an idea, you have to execute it, which can take months or years and is very uncertain. Liquidity makes assets worth more, so ideas take a significant price cut since they're so hard to "sell". So that's why ideas aren't worth very much...

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is the first well thought-out post I've seen on this subject in a while. Thanks for sharing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I really wasn't sure how derivative it will come out when I was writing it :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN : companies using Gamification - <AUTHOR>

There are a lot of companies using Gamification - FB, Twitter, quora etc all do. Who are the others? <comment><USER2> Hey guys I'm actually writing a piece on this! Why do you ask? I'll have my first post on it next week. Add me on twitter to be notified: @taigeair

There are so many companies using gamification. Some big ones: SAP, Oracle, EMC, Samsung, NBC, Deloitte, Rogers Communications, Bell Media, CA Technologies and eBay.

Check out: <http://success.adobe.com/microsites/levelup/index.html>

There are startups like Box, 4sq, and Codecademy using it too.

Here are some studies: <https://www.box.com/s/0dg61wsrlqu2q1bdmz68>

Take a look at customers of Bunchball and Badgeville.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agreed lots of companies are. In fact, almost all successful companies are in some fashion. It might just not be what you would expect. Fred Wilson touches on it a bit in this video [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/video-of-the-week- the-golden...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/video-of-the-week-the-golden- rules.html?utm_source=pulsenews&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29)

</comment><comment><USER4> Stack Exchange (including Stack Overflow, etc.): <http://stackexchange.com/>

One of Jeff Atwood's blog posts on the topic: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/the- gamification.ht...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/the- gamification.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Lots of non-tech companies utilize some form of gamification:

-Airlines: frequent flyer miles

-Hotels: reward/loyalty points

-Food/Beverage industry: punch cards, LevelUp, GoPago, McDonald's Monopoly games, Coca Cola's QR codes and cap rewards, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's tons, like you say. It's more interesting when it's used outside the corporate world - for example, by the Israeli Defense Forces:

<http://www.idfblog.com/idf-ranks-game/>

</comment><comment><USER7> We're actually trying to work it into our employee evaluations. We're not ready to start doing it yet, but we've got the beginnings of a clue for how to do it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google entered it in a big way with Ingress and the <http://www.nianticproject.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft uses gamification for training - e.g. Visual Studio Achievements and Ribbon Hero.</comment>


He Spoke Out Against Somalia's Terrorist Groups. Now ICE Has Deported Him There - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/03/31/ice-detention-immigration-somalia-refugee/ <comment><USER2> Certainly the conditions sound horrible and should be addressed. They glossed over his convictions, so I searched and found the article below. I can see why ICE targeted him.

ROCHESTER, MN -- A Rochester man was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover officer. Police arrested 20 year-old Guled Muhumed of southeast Rochester during an ongoing narcotics investigation. Muhumed sold or possessed 11 grams of crack cocaine, or around a thousand dollars in street value, at the time of the arrest. Police say Muhumed was pulled over during a traffic stop soon after selling the drugs but as the officer walked up to the car he drove off striking another car at The Villages of Essex Park Apartments. But that didn't stop Muhumed who then fled on foot. After a short chase police were able to arrest him. He faces multiple charges including fleeing an officer and drug sales.

[http://www.kttc.com/story/8294086/drug-bust-leads-to- police-...](http://www.kttc.com/story/8294086/drug-bust-leads-to-police-chase)

<comment><USER3> He went to prison for it already and has kept clean for years afterwards. Do you think he deserves his deportation still?

<comment><USER4> It's certainly a statement about our society that we talk about who "deserves" and doesn't deserve to be deported (not just you, but others and even NPR use that choice of words). As if being deported is a punishment - like prison - for those of us that we can get away with applying it to.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, fair point. Do you have a suitable substitution?

<comment><USER4> It's a good question. Practically speaking, no. The US has done some pretty Machiavellian stuff to kick out immigrants before (eg. See the Mexican expulsion in the 1930s). It's hard to justify that kind of thing given the really limited harm that illegal immigrants have on society. Open borders are also dubious given how many social services the US provides. So this is probably a reasonable policy, but it does create some strange dynamics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I expect he'll do quite well.

First of all, he's going to a place where record keeping for identity is really lax. He can be anybody he wants to be. He can trivially claim to have a different name.

Second of all, he has a valuable skill: fluent English.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's missing from all of these human interest immigration stories is: what _should_ the law be?

If there are any conditions at all it will seem "unfair" compared with citizens. So we either have no laws at all, and make everyone a citizen who wants to be, or we do some "unfair" things sometimes.</comment>


Surprising Details About First American Killed by a Car (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20130912-a-landmark-death-114-years-later <comment><USER2> tl;dr it was an electric car</comment>


No lens? No problem for FlatCam - <AUTHOR> http://www.opli.net/opli_magazine/imaging/2015/no-lens-no-problem-for-flatcam-rice-nov-news/ <comment><USER2> This is absolutely awesome to see, having done (fairly modest - masters level) research in this field in the past.

For the uninitiated, I'll try and summarise my understanding of the general concept of computational photography:

A 'traditional' camera uses a physical system of lenses to focus light to a single point (area really), where the light is captured and recorded, using either film or a digital sensor. The captured light information is then processed in whatever necessary way depending on the capture mechanism to ultimately produce a photograph. But all that's produced is one, singular photograph, that's an exact mapping of the physical properties of the lens system.

Computational photography tries to virtualise aspects of this process by modelling the system's optics, so that extra information can be inferred from the captured light using these models. This extra information can reveal things about the scene being captured (more the computer vision side) or be used to post-process different effects into the image after the fact in an intelligent way that uses real information about the scene (more the photography, art, side) such that the captured information represents a space of possible images of the scene, rather than just one singular point in that space (one photograph).

To increase the quality and quantity of this information, extra sensors, better sensors, different sensors (light field capture etc) are used, and modifications to the system can be made such as coded apertures, adjusting parameters like focal length and exposure time by known amounts, and collecting samples over a range of these modifications. Looks like a coded aperture is used in this technique for example but this article doesn't go into a lot of detail on that.

When you start thinking about the possibilities of working with image 'spaces' instead of photographs, both for practical computer vision applications and just plain cool art applications, it quickly becomes obvious what a fascinating and exciting (and important) field this is, and will be in the future.

It's really, truly, awesome to see an application of this relatively new field of research which could hit the mainstream in a big way - namely thinner, lighter, solid state cameras in phones, which it looks like this research could ultimately lead to. Bravo to everyone involved!

<comment><USER3> So - score my understanding of this. A lens performs a fourier transform, right? So the idea here is that instead of doing the transform with a lens, we grab the raw information and do an fft in software?

<comment> Ono-Sendai A lens doesn't compute the fourier transform of the image, it inverts it (geometrically speaking). On a wave level (far-field diffraction) it does something like the fourier transform.

<comment><USER4> A lens is a convolution. Imagine if a photograph was a 1D signal, then a lens would be a convolution of a signal with a square wave (Lens sliced along one plane). Now, typically when a square wave is convolved with a signal, if you look at the magnitude of the fourier transform, you'll notice that you are multiplying the frequencies of the signal with a sinc function. Sinc functions hit zero amplitudes at various points, thereby destroying information when multiplied. Therefore, if you could create a lens (known as a mask), which didn't destroy signal, but instead was more like a band-pass filter, then you could effectively recover the signal and adjust for amplitude changes digitally. Now take this model to the 3D and you've just created a lightfield.

<comment> Ono-Sendai Calling a lens a convolution is an idealisation. It only convolves the signal on the focal plane/sensor, for perfectly focused light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty amazing, like 'davnicwil said. Personally though, the coolest thing about this is how easy it is to make if you have some way to make the mask.

It uses a Raspberry Pi Camera Module[1], which is $30, with no modifications other than removing the lens and adding the mask.

I wonder if you could make a mask by machining plastic down _very_ thin, and then punching tiny holes through with the smallest endmill you could find.

[1]: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/camera- module/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/camera-module/)

<comment><USER6> Offhand, this seems like a job for a laser cutter more than a milling machine. (But hey, if that's what you've got...) Depending on the cutter, largely its minimum kerf size, a single-pass may produce an entirely acceptable result.

An alternative to direct hole cutting would be to use the laser to ablate an etching mask medium then etch the actual holes into the cut surface, which _might_ produce a better end result. Anyone given this approach a try for high-detail work?

<comment><USER5> I had forgotten that we have a laser cutter at the hackerspace! The minimum kerf on it is pretty bad though, so I bet it wouldn't work.

After reading the pattern, it seems to be more than just holes, though, so it's probably a bit harder to fabricate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The mask kinda looks like a cosine filter rather than just a simple grid to make many pinholes. If so, then it might be a small version of heterodyne light field camera. [http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/Mask/](http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/Mask/)

</comment><comment><USER8> It looks like a Lytro camera, but going one step further. In general, the main idea is the same: using mask and then recovering the full light field.

While it looks that Lytro was/is not a great commercial success, I see that the field progresses. And very likely we will see things which can't be done in a different ways (e.g. pseudo-3D camera for videos... or 3d teleconferences).

<comment><USER9> A Lytro camera uses many small image sensors with many lenses. No mask is involved.

The conventional Lytro cameras are of pretty questionable utility, but light field cameras show some promise for capturing VR video: [https://www.lytro.com/immerge](https://www.lytro.com/immerge)

<comment><USER8> In Lytro there is a mask, but of a different kind - of lenslets. See e.g. this presentation: [http://www.slideshare.net/cameraculture/3-intro- lightfields](http://www.slideshare.net/cameraculture/3-intro-lightfields)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Interesting idea, but it seems like diffraction will be a serious problem for this. Any time you have tiny little holes (apertures) you are going to get a lot of diffraction that will result in very blurry images.

<comment><USER10> Their mask is next to the sensor. Diffraction isn't as much of an issue if there is no propagation.

<comment> Ono-Sendai You can't have it both ways. Either the mask hole is right by the sensor, in which case there is no angular resolution. Or the mask hole is further away, in which case you get lots of diffraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did I miss the example image produced by this camera? I didn't find one anywhere on the site.

Edit: Example images are shown in the included video.

<comment><USER12> There are also images in the paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who last few years got into photography, I can't wait for computation to be used more to produce better images and more innovative systems. The one for example is camera with 16 small sensors that will probably be flop, but will open doors to so many others that will come after it.

I personally can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER9> Direct link to arxiv paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.00116](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.00116)

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems like this is an abstraction on the idea of a light field camera. (i.e. each hole in the mask acts as a tiny piny hole camera in the composite ...)

edit: fix typo

</comment><comment><USER15> Actual output can be seen in video starting here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdgwO_i5p54&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdgwO_i5p54&feature=youtu.be&t=81)

Also... it's just amazing that a college lab can afford to fabricate these prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of insect compound eyes.

<comment><USER17> ISTM that "experts" have long derided the compound eyes of arthropods, since if they were "advanced" they would be like human eyes. Maybe developing cameras that aren't just direct copies of vertebrate eyes will enable us to perceive the benefits of other eye forms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So it is a sheet of pinhole cameras? And the images are focused by selecting from various diameters of pixels behind each pinhole? It looks like a great idea, but some of the descriptions make it seem more than it is.

</comment><comment><USER19> "We can make...wallpaper that's actually a camera"

Uh oh.

</comment><comment><USER20> Similar lens-free "computational photography" techniques have been described for super-resolution microscopy (see below).

In conventional imaging, lenses resolve a sharp image of the target onto the sensor by focusing just the light emitted by the target within the lens' "focal plane" (a volume in front of the lens determined by the width of its aperture and the wavelength of the light passing through it) while blurring light from everywhere else into background noise. One can think of this system as amplifying certain information (the light from the focal plane) while filtering out other information (the light from everywhere else) from the total input light.

In other words, the images formed by lenses are lossy by design. This isn't practically a problem at macroscales, but at microscales the focal plane becomes extremely thin (micron-scale), oftentimes 1/100th as thick as the sample being imaged. To image large cells, for instance, a microscopist might be forced to capture tens or hundreds of images of the sample from different focal lengths (a "z-stack"), then deconvolve them to generate an image in which most/all of the sample is in focus.

Anyway, I think these new techniques are interesting because they fundamentally attempt to capture more of the "information" present in the incident light. The lens does not capture an "image" that can be directly visualized, but rather a more full representation of the wave-field of all the incident light. Generating a conventional image from the raw data requires sophisticated additional processing.

The Ozcan lab has published some really neat (and eminently DIYable) work in this area:

"Lensfree On-chip Tomographic Microscopy Employing Multi-angle Illumination and Pixel Super-resolution", Serhan O. Isikman, Waheb Bishara, and Aydogan Ozcan. J Vis Exp. 2012; (66): 4161. doi: 10.3791/4161\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3487288/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3487288/)

 _" Existing 3D optical imagers generally have relatively bulky and complex architectures, limiting the availability of these equipments to advanced laboratories, and impeding their integration with lab-on-a-chip platforms and microfluidic chips. To provide an alternative tomographic microscope, we recently developed lensfree optical tomography (LOT) as a high-throughput, compact and cost-effective optical tomography modality. 7 LOT discards the use of lenses and bulky optical components, and instead relies on multi-angle illumination and digital computation to achieve depth-resolved imaging of micro-objects over a large imaging volume. LOT can image biological specimen at a spatial resolution of <1 μm x <1 μm x <3 μm in the x, y and z dimensions, respectively, over a large imaging volume of 15-100 mm3, and can be particularly useful for lab-on-a-chip platforms."_

Also see [http://spie.org/newsroom/technical-articles- archive/3979-mul...](http://spie.org/newsroom/technical-articles- archive/3979-multi-angle-illumination-with-pixel-super-resolution-enables- lensfree-on-chip-tomography?ArticleID=x84293)</comment>


How would you improve this tutorial? - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/thomasroderick/blog/2172011--gpuprogramminghereicome

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this tutorial to help technically-savvy scientific programmers (but not necessarily full-on programmers) to install PyCUDA on Ubuntu 10.10. It probably cannot suit all needs, but I felt my roadblocks were common enough (and the limit of my knowledge familiar enough) to warrant a gathering of disjunct information into a small tutorial.

I'm not looking to turn into a professional tutorial by any means. I'm really just wanting to see if there are questions from hackers at my level, not Linux, Ubuntu, Python, or CUDA sages :-)

Thanks HN!</comment>


Ask HN: 8 Days Left on SlateJS Android KickStarter. 50% Raised. How to Complete? - <AUTHOR> The Slate rich text editor for React is, IMO, the best designed rich text editor with the exception of one major failing, it doesn't support Android.
My company spent CAD $50K developing Android support for the previous version of Slate with the hope that the community would take it up which I completed and which we contributed for free. This was after it was one of the most popular outstanding GitHub issues for 2 years.
Unfortunately, several months later the creator of Slate did a major (and really great and probably necessary) rewrite but it removed Android support and it's non-trivial to put Android support back in and that's a big cost for my company (which didn't even get a chance to use that version of Slate yet) to burden alone.
I proposed a paid plugin which many were in support of, but after receiving many requests for a sponsored model and a user committing to help raise the funds, I started a Kickstarter. Unfortunately the user that was originally going to help raise funds got a new job and was unable to commit to helping with the fundraising.
So far, there is CAD $10,500 raised out of $30K but I know that there is another $6500 committed coming in so we are at CAD $17K out of CAD $30K.
There's only 9 days left in the campaign. Any ideas on what to do, who to reach out to and how to reach out to them to complete this fundraising?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sunnyhirai/add-android-support-for-the-slate-wysiwyg-editor <comment><AUTHOR> I'll be checking into the comments throughout the day. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, especially if you had some experience with open source fundraising.

While I've contributed to multiple open source projects, this is quite a different undertaking to raise funds. Thank you for any ideas or advice you have.</comment>


Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/09/stoned-drivers-are-a-lot-safer-than-drunk-ones-new-federal-data-show/ <comment><USER4> As a full supporter of cannabis legalization, I'm also a big supporter of a technology that can instantly detect whether someone's reflexes are impaired by cannabis.

Notice that I'm focusing on whether or not they are impaired, as opposed to the amount in their bloodstream. The point being that people that use cannabis regularly for medical reasons don't seem to be impaired by it at all, while newer or more occasional users are certainly impaired.

It would be fascinating to see what kind of technologies could be used to achieve this that folks on HN are aware of.

<comment><USER5> Right now, there is none. Obviously the measurable amount isn't reliable - <USER2> that has been known to general users for years. And so much of it is personal - a person going out on the weekend and smoking a lot (much like drinking most weekends or occasionally) is going to be really impaired. A regular smoker, who keeps a slight buzz and gets used to it would have very little effect most times. People around them don't have a clue.

I honestly think the best solution would be to regulate the current traffic laws better - including things such as speed limits, yeilding to pedestrians, keeping distance ahead of you (don't know if that is a law) and other things. Not only is this going to help catch people too impaired to be driving, but folks that are simply not paying attention to the road and trying to multi- task while driving.

<comment><USER6> > Right now, there is none. ... a person going out on the weekend and smoking > a lot (much like drinking most weekends or occasionally) is going to be > really impaired.

I think the article is pretty misleading but the conclusion is clear: " _There 's plenty of evidence showing that marijuana use impairs key driving skills. If you get really stoned and then get behind the wheel, you're asking for trouble._".

The problem is that the legal thresholds for THC are so low that "stone drivers" are not actually stone, making the whole federal study flawed.

Here: " _Several states have passed laws attempting to define "marijuana- impaired driving" similarly to drunk driving. Colorado, for instance, sets a blood THC threshold of 5 nanograms per milliliter. But that number tells us next to nothing about whether a person is impaired or fit to drive. _"

If you look at the data, "any illegal drug" is also not correlated with more accidents.

<comment><USER7> > but the conclusion is clear: "There's plenty of evidence showing that > marijuana use impairs key driving skills. If you get really stoned and then > get behind the wheel, you're asking for trouble.".

While the conclusion is clear, it's also misleading. No one disputes that you can get too stoned to drive, that isn't the issue that matters. What matters is whether those too stoned to drive drive anyway like they do on alcohol. Anecdotally from decades of experience I can say they don't, pot doesn't destroy your ability to judge your state of mind so there's no reason to treat it with special exceptions like we do for alcohol. Most long term smokers drive while high, but not while impaired. High != impaired just as drinking one beer doesn't destroy your ability to drive safely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do not read this and think it's okay to drive high. It's not. Do not drive high. Call an uber or something.

I worry that people read studies like this and suddenly justify going out and driving while impaired. Driving is an incredibly dangerous activity on its own. Doing it when you're stoned is a stupid and risky move, and comparing it to how much more dangerous drunk driving is doesn't make it less stupid.

If you've never smoked pot, you don't understand how it feels and affects your thinking/reactions/perception of time and reality. If you smoke pot everyday, it may affect you less due to tolerance, but it's still affecting you, much like a functional alcoholic.

I have nothing against usage and I strongly encourage legalization, but I don't think it's okay to pretend that it's safe to get high and go driving.

<comment><USER9> It's also not safe to drive while tired, on any medication at all (including over the counter drugs), while texting, while on the phone, while not looking at the road, with glasses (they could fall off and you'd be blind), with a heart condition, etc etc.

I think it's safe to assume you drive very often with things that affect your driving. If pot is proven to not affect your driving to a measurable degree, then the only thing that is different between that and random over the counter medication is one is called pot.

<comment><USER10> I don't really mess with cannabis any more, but I think that a lot of folks have strange ideas about how it affects people.

If my only experience with the drug were the first couple of times in college where we were taking bong hits, then yeah, I can see why people would be shocked that you could drive in that state. It took a me a couple of years before I discovered that most of the folks (especially the folks in their 50s - 60s I hang out with) really are just getting a little bit at a time.

It's possible (and I think for many long-term users, more normal) to have only enough to modify your mood and outlook on events without becoming glued-to- the-couch high.

Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D

<comment><USER11> "Pro tip: there is also a difference between having a beer with dinner and chugging vodka shots all night long. :D"

True, which points to the fact that it would be useful to have a well- understood BAC-like scale for marijuana usage, especially as the drug becomes more and more legal to use.

Clearly there's a difference between having one beer and driving an hour later compared to getting behind the wheel while nearly passed-out drunk. Lots of people have a decent approximate sense of what 0.08 BAC is when it comes to alcohol consumption, but everyone who is "high" is just "high" without some sort of well-defined scale.

<comment><USER12> tolerance comes into account, which is why comparing driving on marijuana and driving on alcohol is akin to comparing apples and oranges.

they're entirely, exponentially, infinitely different.

<comment><USER13> As a mathematician, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on "exponentially" and "infinitely" there.

<comment><USER12> it's hyperbole, not science. fair enough, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Alcohol has two synergetic problems for drivers... it reduces reflexes and increases confidence, simultaneously. Less capable, and more aggressive. No wonder it's so awful for drivers.

Marijuana doesn't significantly impair reflexes (as generations of musicians have shown). As for judgment, it tends to make users more cautious, not more aggressive. They're not trying to get around that car in front of them to blow through the used-to-be-yellow light - they're trying to make sure they remember where they're going...

<comment><USER15> > Marijuana doesn't significantly impair reflexes (as generations of musicians > have shown).

As an aside, is music really reliant on reflexes like this? I would assume that the beat of a song gives one plenty of forewarning as to when a melody might change.

And that assumes that the rhythm of a melody doesn't put you in am altered, hypnotic state in other ways.

<comment><USER14> The original association of marijuana and music is in jazz, and playing while stoned is still as much norm as exception among jazz musicians. Jazz is a form of structured improvisation. The raw music actually isn't that complex. What's complex is trying to make a new statement with that music on the fly, while simultaneously listening closely to other musicians in the band, who are making their own statements. Done right, it feels like two (or more) minds thinking as one.

So yes, in addition to the physical reflexes needed to play difficult instruments gracefully, there's a lot of in-the-moment reflex in responding to the music and your fellow musicians.

<comment><USER16> > while simultaneously listening closely to other musicians in the band, who > are making their own statements

Ostensibly, yes. In practice, usually only one person at a time is playing a solo over a predetermined and repeating chord progression.

<comment><USER14> Oh, no. That's not jazz at all! The soloist isn't the only person improvising. The rest of the band is supporting the soloist _by improvising_. The chords themselves aren't simple, static devices. There is plenty of room for expression and communication. A soloist needs to be on their toes, ready for the drummer to just rework the groove for laughs. A bass player needs to catch on to some rhythmic motif the soloist is using, and be ready to drive them home when the soloist does.

Even within totally composed music, a lot of attention is required to keep timing in sync. Performing live music in a group setting requires a great deal of attention to what's going on outside your own mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "At the current time, specific drug concentration levels cannot be reliably > equated with a specific degree of driver impairment"

Massively leading title given the statement actually issued, and their own remarks later on:

> There's plenty of evidence showing that marijuana use impairs key driving > skills[0]. If you get really stoned and then get behind the wheel, you're > asking for trouble.

[0][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220273](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220273)

<comment><USER18> But if they told the truth, they wouldn't get upvoted to the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the comments here, it seems like people either didn't read the article, or just don't believe the study, because it pretty much says it is ok to smoke and drive.

      For marijuana, and for a number of other legal and illegal
      drugs including antidepressants, painkillers, stimulants
      and the like, there is no statistically significant change
      in the risk of a crash associated with using that drug
      prior to driving.

<comment><USER20> From your comment, you clearly read neither the article nor the study. I mean, the article states "There's plenty of evidence showing that marijuana use impairs key driving skills. If you get really stoned and then get behind the wheel, you're asking for trouble" and the study itself cites plenty of other studies which have found strong positive associations between marijuana use and driving impairments.

What it _actually_ shows is that for one particular study the increase in crashes resulting from users testing positive for marijuana (i.e. have used up to a week ago) becomes statistically insignificant when controlling for user demographics. It also threw up anomalies like a [statistically insignificant] _improvement_ in drivers under the influence of smaller amounts of alcohol over no alcohol or drugs, so I wouldn't exactly herald it as definitive.

To argue that they "pretty much says it is ok to smoke and drive" is a grotesque distortion of the actual research.

<comment><USER21> So, we have "impairs key driving skills" versus "no statistically significant change in the risk of a crash". It sounds a bit like _in vitro_ vs. _in vivo_ results. At the end of the day, I'm more concerned about risk factors that actually lead to accidents on the roads.

Why doesn't "key driving skill" impairment from marijuana appear to increase the risk of a crash? My best guess is that stoned drivers are concerned about being pulled over and are able to compensate more than 1) someone impaired but not aware/concerned enough to compensate (e.g. tired or distracted drivers) or 2) someone worried about getting pulled over but unable to compensate as well for their impairment (e.g. drunk drivers).

<comment><USER20> I suspect drivers under the influence being cautious is _a_ factor.

I suspect _majority of drivers testing positive for cannabis were not actually remotely close to being stoned at the time they were driving_ plays a huge role too (possibly also overzealous demographic controls). That's consistent with the study authors' observations that other studies based on accidents which rely on self-reported cannabis use show it to have a large effect on accident rates, and studies which rely on testing to show it has little or no discernible impact on accident rates. They consider the studies relying on testing to be superior in construction. Based on the well-established fact that cannabis use tends to show up in standard tests days after its main effects have worn off, I beg to differ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't argue with this data, but I have to wonder how much tolerance/individuality plays a role in this. I know that I personally could not drive high on THC, my propensity to zone out would almost certainly result in an accident, but I (used to) have friends who drove regularly during and after partaking and I was completely confident in their abilities.

Personally, I think prohibitionists/law enforcement is looking for an easy money-grab and are hunting for justification of their desires rather than responding to an actual harmful issue that society is facing.

<comment><USER23> The headline is simply a lie. The study basically showed that you cannot measure whether someone is stoned by testing their blood for THC. The blood test only proves they were stoned at some point in the past few weeks.

The study did not show that it's safe to drive while stoned, and if you read the entire article they're fairly clear about that.

<comment><USER22> > The study did not show that it's safe to drive while stoned, and if you read > the entire article they're fairly clear about that.

Which is exactly what I can't argue with. My point was in reference to the conclusion of the article, which states,

> So, should we all assume that we're safe to blaze one and go for a joyride > whenever the whimsy strikes us? Absolutely not. There's plenty of evidence > showing that marijuana use impairs key driving skills. If you get really > stoned and then get behind the wheel, you're asking for trouble.

We apparently cannot map concentrations of THC to driver impairment. Which agrees with my anecdotal experience in the matter, that the effects THC vary greatly with individuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This means nothing. The big difference between alcohol and other drugs is that there is a relatively straightforward correlation between the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream and the current effect of alcohol on the brain.

Somebody testing positive for marijuana may not be stoned at all. It could be they were stoned last week and tested positive.

Furthermore, alcohol testing is much easier and is the only type of testing really done by police in the field. Police will try to get you to admit being impaired by other drugs if they stop you, but they do not have anything like the breathalyzer to test for other drugs.

Current data comparing driving impairment of various drugs and alcohol is almost entirely an artifact of the difference in testing methods.

<comment><USER25> Yes, the only thing anyone should take away from this data is, we currently do not have reliable data on impairment vs intoxication on THC. Need controlled studies to collect it

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I remember an article on this in New Scientist back in the 90s that went into a lot more depth. A study showed that while alcohol impaired multiple aspects of driving skill marijuana mostly impaired just time judgement. And stoned drivers tended to overestimate their level of impairment and slow down while drunk drivers tended to underestimate how impaired they were. They actually found that drivers who were moderately drunk and stoned were less likely to crash than drivers who were just moderately drunk because they slowed down even though they were more impaired.

<comment><USER27> Right, there's more involved than just the impairment itself. I was just about to ask if this had something to with stoned drivers driving more carefully just to avoid harsher penalties for possession. Data from states where pot is legal would be interesting.

<comment><USER26> In this case the subjects were given substances in a lab and then used a driving simulator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm going to upgrade my view of this article to linkbait title. The title should be, "THC found to not correlate with impairment in the same way that blood alcohol concentration does".

From the article:

> The study's findings underscore an important point: that the measurable > presence of THC (marijuana's primary active ingredient) in a person's system > doesn't correlate with impairment in the same way that blood alcohol > concentration does.

The story here is that there is no "THC impairment" test like there is a blood alcohol test, not that driving while stoned is safer.

</comment><comment><USER29> You can distort the data all you want, or in this case, put it in an absurd context to try and prove a point, but the fact remains - the legalization of marijuana is _not_ without negative consequences.

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned AAA's findings (legalization followed by a 2x increase in fatal marijuana-related crashes): [http://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/05/fatal-road-crashes- involving...](http://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/05/fatal-road-crashes-involving- marijuana-double-state-legalizes-drug/)

EDIT: Link to the study [PDF]: [http://publicaffairsresources.aaa.biz/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://publicaffairsresources.aaa.biz/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/Prevalence-of-Marijuana-Involvement-Report-FINAL.pdf)

<comment><USER30> Driving while high should definitely be banned, but it kind of seems like they're making a big assumption here.

>The percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes who recently used marijuana more than doubled from eight to 17 percent between 2013 and 2014.

How are they ruling out the fact that since it's been legalized, more people in general are using marijuana?

<comment><USER29> > How are they ruling out the fact that since it's been legalized, more people > in general are using marijuana?

That's exactly the point. No one is trying to say that driving high has gotten more dangerous as a result of legalization - just that it's _inherently_ dangerous (and a certain percentage of marijuana users are going to be driving either way), so legalization only contributes to more usage, leading to more irresponsible decisions on the road.

<comment><USER30> My point is: They're getting this data by doing drug tests of drivers in fatal car crashes after the crash has occurred. Previously, 8% of those drivers had cannabis detected. Now, 17% have it detected.

What evidence is there that the increased cannabis use is _causing_ these crashes, considering you have to control for the fact that more people in general are using cannabis, so in almost _any_ population (drivers in fatal car crashes; fast food employees; school teachers; whatever) you could expect to see an increase in use.

<comment><USER29> Ah, I understand what you're saying now. Still, I think it'd be a stretch to assume that none of those fatalities were actually related to the marijuana use. But I agree, it doesn't necessarily imply causation, just a correlation (which as you say, could in part be coincidental).

<comment><USER31> It's a fine assumption. We could also assume that marijuana use discourages use while under the influence due to increased paranoia. Neither have been demonstrated yet.

All we know from this is that there was a increased detection of thc for people involved in fatal accidents. The reason for this seems obvious to me and I assume it correlates with general increased use among the population. I still conject that "fatal" accidents are used here to push a particular narrative. I don't see any significance in "fatal" versus cumulative accidents or DUI arrests.

If the intent is to prove that there is an increased hazard on the road due to marijuana use, then they need to prove that it's use significantly increases this hazard AND that the rate of drivers under influence has increased. Those are two separate and independent studies.

I'm still waiting to see those studies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm on vacation in Colorado right now, and you can point out the stoned drivers. They tend to drive slow and passive, they fear the merge, and spend lots of time stopped at stop signs making sure they really are stopped and not going to crash. The impression I have is that their judgement and reactions are definitely impaired, but in a stark contrast to the invincibility and carelessness of alcohol induced drivers.

<comment><USER33> You noticed this just on vacation eh?

As a CO resident, maybe you just haven't noticed how shitty our drivers are ;)

<comment><USER34> > As a CO resident, maybe you just haven't noticed how shitty our drivers are > ;)

I've lived in many places, including Colorado, and let me tell you – drivers are shitty everywhere :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That chart has sections for both "Any Legal Drug" and "Any Illegal Drug", and both bars are barely visible. Are they claiming that all drugs, legal or not, don't affect driving?? Because that would be an incredibly stupid claim.

</comment><comment><USER36> Are there any ways to directly measure impairment rather than using chemical trace detection as a proxy for the affect?

Maybe a driver could take a short impairment test on their cellphone or in car computer prior to starting their drive -- if they pass the test then they would have an argument against impairement should they become subsequently involved in an accident... If they fail the test and drive anyway then there's an even stronger argument that they made an irresponsible decision for which they must take responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was watching a documentary the other day about life in a Delhi prison and I was thinking to myself if there's the slightest possibility for me to ever end up in prison for one reason or another, considering of course that I don't have the slightest intention of committing a felony. Then I realized that a driving mistake has the best odds of causing such a thing. It's crazy how many don't take such a high-responsibility task seriously, texting, drinking, smoking while driving.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's studies like this that have caused people in my city to support legally driving while high. I've seen so many people that somehow think there is no effect on driving skills.

I'm all for legalization, but I will not support the potential of endangering other people.

</comment><comment><USER39> The title seems misleading. People with marijuana in their bloodstream != stoned drivers. Marijuana use is detectable for a long time past the point of impairment and the data only reflects that they HAVE used marijuana vs being stoned at the point of driving.

Maybe instead of breathalysers and drug detection kits we should have standardised attention/reaction tests to determine if someone is safe to drive (you could probably even run them on a tablet). This would also weed out (pun intended) tired drivers.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is from February of 2015. Nothing about this data is new anymore.

</comment><comment><USER41> > Stoned drivers are _less dangerous_ than drunk ones

</comment><comment><USER42> KIRO TV in Seattle did a small test of impairment on a closed course with participants using varying amounts of marijuana a few years ago around the time Washington voters were choosing to legalize pot and found similar results:

[http://www.kiro7.com/news/stoned-drivers-hit-test- course/139...](http://www.kiro7.com/news/stoned-drivers-hit-test- course/139144424)

</comment><comment><USER43> The only valid comparison is with a driver that is sober.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder if, as public perception changes on the issue, stoned drivers will be in even less accidents as their own perception changes - i.e. "I'm high on cannabis, but that doesn't impair driving, so my own driving isn't impaired", and thus they drive better. Compared to before, "I'm high, high drivers are bad drivers, so my own driving is impaired".

<comment><USER45> I can't imagine that's how cognition and an activity like driving interact. It's not like negative reinforcement in a social setting (getting demoted at work and as a result getting discouraged and becoming a worse performer, for example) - most people realize driving is an inherently dangerous activity, and most people don't want to die (even if they're doing moderately risky things like driving stoned), so they're not going to have an emotional reaction like "Welp! Guess I'm just fated to drive like shit since I'm stoned right now, hope I make it home, but first lets do some donuts." No, they're going to overcompensate and drive more safely.

If anything, I'd be concerned the opposite effect would occur - <USER3> suggesting that driving stoned is safe will cause stoned drivers to lower their guard and not compensate for their impairment as much, and thus raise stoned driving accident rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Safer than drunk" is a poor choice or words, irresponsible even.

If you drive within an hour or two or three of smoking sticky buds, the risk is not reflexes or reaction time, it's getting distracted by your own thoughts, or zoning out. That can easily translate into driving through a red light. The mind wanders when stoned, which is the opposite of what you want when operating machinery.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm a bit curious if the "any illegal drug" column includes LSD or hallucinogens. Part of me thinks most people have the common sense not to drive while on such a substance, part of me thinks there would be no way to gather data

</comment><comment><USER48> I think a lot of people could have told them that. Including, most likely, some of the researchers themselves as well as a few presidents, especially our current one, and most Kennedys.

</comment><comment><USER49> Was federal data really needed to determine stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones? I thought it would be known that drunk driving is more dangerous than stoned driving.

</comment><comment><USER50> Carl Sagan had some things to say about this topic.

[http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/](http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/)

</comment><comment><USER51> "Neighbor beats his wife less often than other neighbor, new federal data shows"

</comment><comment><USER52> Maybe they get in fewer accidents because they are driving like 8 miles per hour.

</comment><comment><USER53> Confirming what everyone already knew.

Also... Driving impaired in anyway is a big mistake.

</comment><comment><USER54> Both should only be allowed to drive self-driving cars.

</comment><comment><USER55> They must be smoking good stuff when they decided to publish this article :D

</comment><comment><USER56> On the other hand, studies have shown that red wine is good for the heart and chocolate as well. So the best of all worlds is to get stoned, drink a lot of red wine and then drive while eating chocolate. Why is there no study yet showing that?

</comment><comment><USER57> But what about their propensity to drive really slow?

<comment><USER58> Slowing down is the single most effective thing to reduce traffic accidents and injury. Not good for efficiency or smooth flow, sure. But can't claim its not safer.

<comment><USER59> Slowing down is not safer because it significantly reduces the number of traffic accidents.

Slowing down is safer because it significantly reduces the severity of the traffic accidents that do happen.

<comment><USER58> Both; as shown by the statistics (I posted below).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> If anything is true about how this country acts with cannabis, it's that facts and data are pretty much 100% ignored.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've had two friends killed by drunk drivers in two different decades and I have to run on the side of the road

If you are on anything, legal or illegal that influences you, I hope you get a nice long prison sentence for driving impaired.

If you see someone step out of a bar or whatnot that is either drunk or high and goes to drive, please call the police and possibly save someone's life - you don't have to call 911, call the anonymous number for your city.</comment>


SoundCloud turns on ads and Go premium subs in the UK and Ireland - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/02/soundcloud-turns-on-ads-and-go-premium-subs-in-the-uk-and-ireland/ <comment><USER2> Is there any word on an Australian release?</comment>