I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/apple-daily/f5f8c807d868

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry to be the adult here, but this is a really childish way to handle what amounts to a problem with your supervisor. There are ways to deal with this that don't involve jeopardizing your (and your contracting firm's) image and then throwing a temper tantrum online.

Other than the shitty boss, the other problems were silly (hours, commute, meetings). Were you really surprised by the commute? This is something you should've known beforehand.

Some jobs suck, either try to fix it or leave. But don't act like a baby.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. You had me thinking, "If you had a bad experience at Apple, I should look you up and invite you to interview here where I work."

Right up until the part where you walked out without trying to talk to your boss, your boss's boss, or your contracting company.

Whether you leave should be a reflection on the work environment. How you leave should be a reflection on you. Better luck next time - perhaps something less corporate?

<comment><USER4> Did anyone else notice how his leaving without notice was unprofessional, but none of what led up to that decision is being labeled unprofessional?

Yeah, it's funny how that works.

<comment><USER5> That's probably because they read the whole article. In my opinion, walking out on a job without giving notice denotes a lack of judgement. So immediately I wonder if those "insults" from the boss really were insults.

He also complained about the commute and the long hours, but he knew about those and agreed to them before taking the job.

Finally, he makes no mention of trying to speak with HR or the agency that got him the job to resolve the problem. In fact he makes no mention of trying to resolve the problem. Granted he was contract and claimed those who were on contract and rocked the boat faced reprisals, but if you get to the point where you are ready to quit, who cares? try and make it better and if it gets worse, leave like you were going to do anyway.

<comment><USER6> No designer walks out on Apple lightly. But sometimes things are bad enough that you can tell you arent in the right place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow.

There are a lot of negative comments that I find surprisingly imbalanced in how they view the employer-employee relationship.

Employers have the balance of power in almost any working relationship, and should take some responsibility in creating satisfactory employment conditions. Allowing bad management to mishandle employees is an abuse of that power. If a new employee doesn't choose to speak to HR, it's most likely because HR are doing a crap job of making new employees aware of what support they offer, if any.

Apple (the company) certainly wouldn't think for one second about breaching contracts where the benefit outweighed the risk of legal consequences. We might say "that's just business". So, why should you personally care about breaching contracts if turning up to work has such a strongly negative effect on your life?

I personally want to say to this guy: well done, you did the right thing for yourself. Find yourself better employment.

Sorry that this job didn't work out, and I'm sorry it was so bad that you felt you had to take a (small, temporary) hit to your reputation, but if you needed to get out of there so bad, it was worth it: best of luck for the future :)

<comment><USER8> There might not be so many negative comments if the author had done a better job of defining what was so bad.

What exactly was the producer saying? No examples given. Why didn't he even attempt to speak to HR? No reason given. What did his co-workers say about the situation? What was the catalyst for walking out on that particular day? ie. Why not take a day off to consider options?

I had to make a lot of assumptions to fill in the blanks.

From the information given, it sounds like he didn't like his producer and wasn't happy about the commute. Neither of which is remarkable.

<comment><USER9> He did ... insults, extreme micromanaging, etc.

<comment><USER8> Never cited explicit examples or quotes.

<comment><USER9> Yawn. Really that is the best you can offer?

He did. He cited examples of the boss micromanaging him and how that occurred. Where you there? How would extra juice detail validate his case? How would you know that he didn't make up the detail? Do you demand voice recordings?

<comment><USER8> Good job contradicting yourself.

I'm sure there's a subreddit out there somewhere where you'd fit in beautifully. Best of luck. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If he had valid cause to walk out, surely he could've gone to HR with his grievances against his boss? Since we're only getting one side of the story here, I have no way of knowing what parts of his story are true and what's been embellished. The story we're hearing is that a guy's boss was a jerk, but what if he himself was being an insufferable diva and his boss had no intention of renewing his contract for that reason?

For some reason I don't feel like Apple suffered a great loss here.

<comment><USER11> > If he had valid cause to walk out, surely he could've gone to HR with his > grievances against his boss?

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA! <sniff> Ah, you youngsters ... I needed a good laugh.

HR works for the company. Their goal is to keep the company out of legal hot water. Any other goal is secondary--solving employee problems doesn't even register.

Should he have stuck it out? Yeah, probably, but there are some bosses that are beyond unacceptable--and the boss was likely to shaft him on a review if he is that bad.

Yes, he should have talked to the contracting company before doing this. That way they would have known to steer their folks clear of that asshole boss--and they could have probably gotten his contract reassigned.

<comment><USER12> If that's your view of HR and what your company's HR department is like, I pity you.

HR is certainly working for the company, but the whole point is that they help mediate issues to avoid litigation. In order to do this, they need to provide as much assistance to employees as possible. In fact, it's in the company's best interest for their HR department to offer as much help as possible to employees.

If a HR department just brushed off complaints, it could be catastrophic for the company if that employee took legal action.

Your view of HR is extremely narrow.

<comment><USER9> Nope it is extremely factual. HRs job is to protect the company from stupid lawsuits and labor law violations. HR is not an employee advocate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Never, ever take "prestige" instead of pay. Because prestige is only worth anything if you can cash it in. So what does this mean, it means the sort of people attracted to "prestigious" companies are only there to get their tickets punched so they can get a more lucrative job elsewhere in a year or two. That creates a weird dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER14> I see people saying he should have given two weeks. Why? Companies don't give you 2 weeks notice when they fire you or lay you off. With that said, he should have talked to his boss. You are an adult. Yes, tell him that you don't find his jokes funny. It could be that he's trying to be funny without being insulting. If it continues then you can say for sure that the guy is an asshole. He handled it badly by not communicating. After talking to his boss, he could have reported him to HR. He could have also sort for openings in other departments. Two wrongs don't make a right, but I don't think his not giving 2 weeks is a wrong. The only reason I would give 2 weeks is that I'm in the middle of a project that my leaving will disrupt. However, should I be very uncomfortable and after having escalated my issue to the proper channels and no response? I would quit on the stop. Life is too short to be afraid of a big company. Quitting is your way of firing the company especially if you are of value. Good employees don't leave companies for the most part, they tend to leave bad management.

<comment><USER15> He wrote also this "My coworkers that stood their ground and set boundaries seemed to end up on a shit list of sorts and were out of the inner circle of people that kissed the producer's ass."

So, I do not think it was a case of misunderstanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I understand that nobody should have to work for a boss like that, I don't understand why he didn't give two weeks' notice.

He would have gotten out of there quickly enough without damaging any other relationships and, being on a term contract, there's a good chance he would have been asked to leave immediately anyway.

<comment><USER17> I think he was trying to make a statement. I agree in the long-term what you suggest is better, but I also understand the short-term impulse to say "fuck you" with action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think walking out like that is professional. Sure, some companies can their employees without a notice, but that is not professional too.

You definitely should've spoken with either his supervisor, or even the recruiting company. Apple is a large entity, and even though you didn't enjoy the meetings or the commute, fact is that's how they operate there.

I've had bosses who were like that and worse. One boss would shake my chair when I'm working just to get my attention.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe it is the writing style but I find the author self entitled.

If you take a job and it turns out it isn't what it seems you don't resolve anything by just walking out. Being impulsive rarely gets you anywhere.

That said I've heard from friends that the working environment at Apple is tough.

</comment><comment><USER20> Speaking under anonymity, as I'm currently employed by Apple. I want to state that my opinions are mine and mine alone, and form from my experiences with the company.

This guy is an unprofessional whiner, and I would never consider hiring him.

Short list of what annoys me from his article:

\- He was hired as a contractor under the retail division, but his overbragging would lead you to believe otherwise.

\- As soon as he was picked up as a contractor, he goes and updates everything to allude that he's employed by Apple. As someone who spent my first years also as a contractor (I've since been hired), this is incredibly unprofessional and against the code of ethics. At Apple you learn that you're part of a team, that you are just one piece of the greater picture, so to brag so much when you are such a small and new piece, is incredibly conceited. I would have never let him work on anything secret or prolific - he seems like the guy who would hog all the credit.

\- As someone who contracted for over a year, if I had misgivings about my manager, I would have spoken up. If I couldn't have gained the courage to talk with the manager directly, I would have gone to his superiors, or to at least the contact person at the contracting agency. From my experience, Apple's management hierarchy is built to facilitate things like this. I'm sure his boss's boss was around, and all he had to do is speak up if he really had such strong grievances about his treatment.

\- I find it hard to believe that he was really worked that hard. Additionally, if he had such strong reservations about wanting to have normal work hours and being home at an early hour, he should not have picked a job that required a 45+ minute commute.

So not only does this guy quit in a wholly unprofessional manner, but now he has the audacity to go all over the Internet to whine about it.

Good luck finding a new job, buddy, at least you have good design chops. But I can't see any corporate company wanting to hire him after this, and I can't imagine he'd have better work hours at a startup.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the top reasons that people leave a company is their direct supervisor. Even a good company culture and great pay can be overturned by a difficult boss.

The takeaway for entrepreneurs is - hire your managers very carefully, and promote your staff into management roles very, VERY carefully. Just because someone is a great developer/designer/marketer/product manager, does not mean they will make a great manager.

<comment><USER22> And the takeaway for employees is: give your employer a chance to solve your problem. Don't assume that everyone knows and intentionally tolerates the bad behavior that is bothering you.

<comment><USER9> Nope. Life is too short. As he pointed out it was taking away from what he discovered he really wanted: a family life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> He really needed to talk to his contracting company and tell them what was going on. They generally will be able to help or at least extract you with a minimum of professional destruction.

On a secondary level, someone needs to step up and tell the next level about this type of boss. They probably won't listen, but this boss is hurting others and someone needs to push the first domino.

</comment><comment><USER24> Bad bosses are everywhere. Two weeks notice would have been a better way to go. People quit companies because of bad bosses. If he didn't even talk to HR or escalate anything, then shame on him. His impact will be minimal and everyone will move on instead of solving the larger issue.

<comment><USER9> why bother? It was clear that the boss was considered excellent by the company.

I would have not bothered to send the email that is my only feedback.

<comment><USER8> _" Silence encourages other bad behavior and contributes to a toxic atmosphere."_

Sound familiar?

It should. That's a quote from one of your previous comments.

<comment><USER9> Sending a parting shot to someone who doesn't care is not breaking the silence. The boss just deletes the email and points to it as proof that Jordan was a bad fit, such an email is a waste of energy and a weapon to be used against the sender

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While I'm sure he thought it was a story worth telling, walking out without making any attempt at reconciliation was just unprofessional.

What's worse, potential clients are going to Google his name, find this and then wonder if he'll bail on a project as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> People don't quit jobs, they quit bosses in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've heard a lot about Apple's internal secrecy, and culture of working very hard, but I really hope this horrible boss was an outlier.

<comment><USER20> I've worked with multiple teams in multiple divisions, and I've never experienced a manager like the one described. In fact, Apple has had the most professional managers I have ever had the experience of working with.

<comment><USER26> I've known both a few utter tools at Apple (who got forced out) and a few people currently there (who are amazing).

I guess what I'm most interested in is: does Apple have a way to get rid of bad managers? Amazon doesn't seem to, from what I've heard, and Google has some who become "politically entrenched" and thus hard to eliminate. "Only have great managers" is probably an impossible goal, but some kind of correction process is both necessary and probably a reasonable thing to implement.

<comment><USER20> I'll admit in the corporate world it's a slow process to weed out any bad apples (pun not intended), but it does happen. There's accountability on every level.

I knew of a manager who wasn't very good, and once his directs escalated the issue, it was only a month or so until he was out the door.

There's also a sort of probation bad employees can be placed under, but I hear once you're in that boat, it's nearly impossible to get out from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can understand why he didn't put in notice. Who wants to work 2 weeks under a boss that already treats you badly once they know you're leaving? That would be miserable, and for some people, the shame of leaving without notice is less than the pain from facing that manager for another two weeks.

<comment><USER28> Working your notice is not about a oiding shame but about avoiding lawsuits for breach of contract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how much of this tension was caused by going through an agency versus being a direct hire. The very short interview and subsequent time locked contract seem bad.

<comment><USER30> It seems like most of the tension was caused by having a terrible boss.

<comment><USER29> They may have matched him with someone different after a full interview loop though. Did he even interview with or meet his manager before accepting or starting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This sounds remarkably like my brief experience as a contract Java dev for a certain large semiconductor company in the Portland area.

</comment><comment><USER32> The only thing that matters is what his contract contained in the way of the notice. "Two weeks notice" is quite obsolete these days, given how companies treat workers anymore. If it isn't in the contract, then to hell with that and any idea about "treating a company with respect" or some of the naive stuff people are commenting on. Respect runs both ways.

"Two weeks" was de rigueur when I started my career - but I am old and the social environment or relationship between capital and labor has changed dramatically in the 25 years I've been in IT. Companies will do whatever they can get away with, even if it might be illegal-ish, and especially if it is a badly run company run by jackasses. Apple... well, I would never take a paycut just to work at Apple; I understand his enthusiasm, and the chance to get "Apple" on your resume, but if the situation was as intolerable as he says, then I certainly wouldn't say "tough it out"

Also, the logic behind two weeks notice was that payroll, in the old days, was two weeks behind the time you've currently spent on the job. So you had to stick around for two weeks to let that catch up (and wrap up projects, transfer knowledge, etc). Logically, at this point, you'd take your unused vacation. That logic doesn't apply anymore - and also contract workers are different than full time employees, so the rules are different.

But he should have spoken to HR at least, or some other boss, if only to get it down on paper exactly why he was going to leave - at least to prevent them from claiming damages or such due to his unexpected departure.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am reading Peopleware right now. This really sets the boss to be the worst of the worst.

</comment><comment><USER34> It seems like every organization practices some sort of hazing or 'bootcamp' techniques for new people. It's a way of testing people out to see how they react and it also seems to be human nature to do so. He didn't pass the test so some other contractor will get hired full-time.

<comment><USER35> _It seems like every organization practices some sort of hazing or 'bootcamp' techniques for new people. It's a way of testing people out to see how they react and it also seems to be human nature to do so._

No, it is not normal for an organization to haze new hires and I am sorry if that is the only behavior you have ever experienced in your career. If you ever find yourself in that kind of environment, you need to transfer to another department or leave the organization. In the case of legal harassment, you may report the individual to HR, even if you are a contractor.

Under proper management, new hires are treated like gold. They are, after all, the future of an organization. New hires would be raised like they were part of a family and an abundance of good will should be provided.

<comment><USER36> > No, it is not normal for an organization to haze new hires ...

It's a common phenomenon, and "normal" is a problematic criterion in any case. If by consensus people deem it useful as part of a spectrum of acceptable behaviors, then an appeal to "normal" loses all meaning.

I agree with you that people who find it upsetting or demeaning should leave, but by doing so they may pass up an opportunity to change the world. Not all human breakthroughs are accompanied by everyone behaving according to the strictest standards of decorum. Just ask an astronaut -- I'm sure she'll agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't about Apple. This is about a shitty commute and a bad producer.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent. Apple needs to lose more people to get the message.

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember realizing in the mid-2000s how much I liked the things Apple made (still do), but would never want to work there. There are reasons why the things they make are so nice.

I deduct no points for his walking out without notice. Somehow, I think they will be okay.</comment>


sshuttle: a new kind of userspace VPN - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201005#02

<comment><USER2> Why not use the built in dynamic port forwarding / proxy feature (-D switch) which pretty much makes your ssh client a socks proxy allowing you to connect to any arbitrary number of hosts:ports on the server side?

Or am I missing something obvious here...?

<comment><USER3> I've always found ssh's port forwarding to be unreliable; it freezes up randomly and seems to do synchronous connect(). It also doesn't do its buffer management correctly, so you get huge lag on other connections when you're using a lot of bandwidth on one port.

Plus, socks requires you to reconfigure every single bit of client software to use it. sshuttle just magically works because it uses the kernel-level transproxying.

You would also need to decide, in each client application, which IP addresses should use socks and which shouldn't; otherwise you'd end up forwarding _everything_ , which is no good either. You can configure sshuttle on a per- ip-subnet or even per-ip-address basis and it affects all your client software.

<comment><USER4> I'm running OSX, so many of the advantages don't really work for me.

* Socks on Mac is a tickbox which is pretty much system-wide. I can turn on or off in two clicks anywhere in my system. UNIX socket programming isn't wrapped, so curl and wget don't follow the rules, but all mac apps do. If that wasn't enough, Socks rules are both per-host and per-subnet configurable.

* I've never done UDP over ssh -D, but I do use ssh for the majority of my traffic and haven't had any trouble.

That said, this does look useful for those rare cases when I can't muck about with the GatewayPorts sshd config on a system. That's a _really_ rare case though, as typically I will just pay Amazon $.08/hr to bring up something with root access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone successfully used this as a VPN between the US and China?

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not just use OpenVPN? It seems to solve these problems too.

<comment><USER7> OpenVPN requires that the other side have OpenVPN, and that you have been set up to be allowed access to it.

All that sshuttle requires is that you have plain old ssh access to the other side.</comment></comment>


Is the written word holding back mathematics teaching? - <AUTHOR> http://www.iijiij.com/2011/09/28/is-the-written-word-holding-back-mathematics-teaching-010874

<comment><AUTHOR> two key conclusions from a study by Mind Research Institute <http://www.mindresearch.net/> (1) low achievement in numeracy is largely accompanied by limited literacy (2) games for teaching mathematics can be strategically (and easily) designed exclusively for the purpose of making dramatic numeracy improvements achievable completely independently of literacy

</comment><comment><USER2> This is not a new idea. Iverson's original notation for APL came out from trying to apply the same insight.</comment>


Hey Japan, What's Up With Your Startup Culture? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016958/hey-japan-whats-up-with-your-startup-culture <comment><USER3> Interesting how the article explicitly tries to set up a contrast between the image of the entrepreneur in Japan ("selfish, greedy, untrustworthy") and America ("Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg"), when those adjectives accurately describe those people.

Edit to expand on that a bit: Mark Zuckerberg fights constantly to block undermine his users' privacy decisions and feed more personal information to advertisers; Steve Jobs lied to Wozniak's face to cheat him out of $2150, refused to acknowledge his own daughter for years while she grew up on welfare, and didn't allow Apple to give to charity during his life.

Japan's stagnant corporate culture needs shaking up, but Jobs and Zuckerberg are not good role models for how to do that responsibly.

<comment><USER4> > those adjectives accurately describe those people

I think there's a big difference between someone who blatantly broke the law, like Horiemon, and someone who failed to contribute as much philanthropically as people would have liked to have seen (Jobs). Moreover, we have examples of successful entrepreneurs who have given back (such as Gates).

<comment><USER5> "who failed to contribute as much philanthropically as people would have liked to have seen"

Given some of the stuff coming out after his death, it seems to be more of the case he didn't satisfy people's need to hear about it as opposed to doing it. And since he died very early, we will really never know what the final word would have been.

I guess I would be a horrible billionaire too, since my father taught me it is impolite and improper to brag about giving. I can see why Gates does it (publicity is needed to make his goals), but that is not always the case (and sometimes, it messes up what you try).

<comment><USER3> The part where he cheated his best friend and his daughter out of large sums of money (child support, in his daughter's case) are at least as important to my evaluation of his character as the charity thing.

I have heard that he'd become somewhat less of an asshole in his later years, and I know he reconciled with his daughter at some point. I hadn't heard about stuff coming out after his death, though. I'd like to see a source on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The answer is clear.. culture. and thats not only in japan

This is neocolonialism kind of thought pure and simple.. why instead of asking why country X dont have the same cultural values of country Z (as if country Z have some sort of superior values), maybe whe should ask what county X really needs? and what is its own natural path?!

different cultures SHOULD follow different paths, and thats a good thing...

did you ask if country X has something to teach to country Z? im sure it has..

why the senior culture of japan, of respect to the older people is inferior to the arrogant youth culture that doesnt have any respect for the older and marginalize them?

The sad history of ocidental intervention to conquer and profit of the oriental japan in the 1800´s, anihilizing its milenar culture, and the crush of the samurai class by the newly born ocidental-like army has nothing to teach us?

The japanese people are more happy now than before?

its alrigth to ask about the startup culture of country X, but lets take care of the moral tone of superiority, like if some culture could be granted as superior to any other..

we should know better by now.. we need ways to make different cultures to flourish in its own way and path.. the right thing to ask is.. "what can the values of my culture do to help the culture of country X to flourish without them to loose their cultural identity?"

instead of "hey you guys why are you guys are not like us, if what we are are better?"

<comment><USER7> I agree. Maybe the respect of seniority in Japans society is actually a good thing, and perhaps their society would have been worst off with more entrepreneurs.

I always feel like one thing that is missing in the western-american culture is respect of seniority. And especially for the current 25 and less in the work force.

<comment><USER8> A foreigner, I live and work in Japan, visiting companies large and small. I agree with this sentiment in principle. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Japan's system. Indeed it has in the past brought wealth to the whole society. Nevertheless, right now, this model is failing hard. What is needed now is for Japanese people and companies to invent the future. Instead they seem to be waiting for a new model to follow, which they assume will come from outside. Japan is capable of huge transformational change in a short time, but it prefers to wait until no alternative remains. While some other societies, tend to have their (r)evolutions one entrepreneur at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would like to hear more Japanese weigh in on this, but I have lived in Japan for more than 11 years and think this is a horrible fluff piece written by someone with little more than stereotypes & superficial knowledge of the country.

A few specifics:

\- "Japanese-English" tends to take words from foreign languages and use only one specific meaning. The words "entrepreneur" & "freelancer" have negative connotations, but not the ideas behind them. We just call ourselves "founder" & "contract expert" and get along just fine

\- China, India & Japan have rather large populations, in case you haven't checked wikipedia recently. There are some VERY large on-line companies here that dwarf many (most?) western companies, that you simply haven't heard of.

\- "Life-long employment" & all the ideas people have about it in Japan died when the Bubble burst back in the 80's, and was crushed during the latest recession. There is still a system that makes job-hopping difficult, but most Japanese - while they may not expect to change companies during their career - no longer look at it as some sort of unmentionable thing that could never happen to them.

\- There is actually a quiet boom among upper level management to leave their companies and start new companies. Years of frustration with the old-fashioned corporate culture & reaching a point where they can do so with a bit of security has done a lot for this movement

\- And finally, as a personal observation - IMHO, there are few people like the Japanese for becoming so passionate about a subject that they will finally leave their jobs and start that tiny, overly-specific shop or bar or restaurant simply because "it was always their dream". The type of completely impractical thing that everyone in the US would urge them not to do - <USER2> we always look at these ideas as "will it make you a millionaire?".

Perhaps because life IS so regimented here, people have a little cornier sense of romanticism about "chasing your dream", and cut a lot of slack that they wouldn't give someone who was just chasing a get rich plan.

So, in summary - I wouldn't put a lot of effort into analyzing this article, if I were you.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Japan is a rich country, with one of the best education systems on Earth._

I'd call this -- aside from being very, very questionable -- an important missed point that might otherwise have been a cornerstone of this article.

The Japanese educational system, from preschool to college, is built to do one thing: Prepare Japanese people to pass Japanese standardized tests for the purpose of obtaining work with a Japanese company.

The author's other points aside, I don't see how this could possibly _not_ contribute to a weak entrepreneurial culture.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is off-topic but: >"After World War II," Ohashi said, "40 years ago, [Japanese] people took risks. But _Japan is almost a developed country now_ ," and many have grown complacent.

Interesting how a 40 years-old in Japan think that.

<comment><USER12> I thought that was quite interesting as well... But it's the CEO who's 43. Ohashi, the PR manager, his age was never mentioned, I don't think.

EDIT: They did mention this though: > Ohashi, like most of Terra's 15 employees in their mid-twenties, ditched the prospect of working for a famous company to take a risk at a job where he'd be challenged.

So I assume he's in his mid 20's like the guy who's 26 at the beginning of the article.

<comment><USER11> Oops, thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article quotes someone as saying: "Selfish, greedy, untrustworthy: That is the image of the entrepreneur in Japan since around 2000"...I don't think Startup culture in America avoided that image after the dotcom bubble and even with all of its success, there is still a lot of suspicion

</comment><comment><USER14> "If you're stuck in a system that promotes by seniority, it's living a slow death, like animals on a farm. I wanted to be in a tough, competitive place."

Seems to be applicable to academia, globally.

</comment><comment><USER15> Being risk averse isn't always bad... And while Japan doesn't have a Google, they do have a number of very successful companies. For a country with effectively no natural resources, it's amazing what Japan has accomplished...

</comment><comment><USER16> America is different from Europe and Asia. We accept failure here. The cultural generalities in Europe and Asia do not reward try and try again. They hide failure. In America, we tend to celebrate it, just look at our gossip magazines.</comment>


Show HN: Building a Deep Learning Powered GIF Search Engine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@zan2434/building-a-deep-learning-powered-gif-search-engine-a3eb309d7525#.q6sm3hobp <comment><USER2> Here's a direct link to the GIF search engine: [http://deepgif.tarzain.com/](http://deepgif.tarzain.com/)

It's really incredible how it finds phrases like "clapping man" and "laughing dog".</comment>


Ask HN: Refer 3 friends and get your invite faster. Does it work? - <AUTHOR>

It's getting a little boring.
It sounds like a good idea, but I would be careful and do some tests before running with it for good.
I've signed up for 3-4 launch lists in the last few days and everybody is hopping on this bandwagon. It's starting to turn me off. You don't want to do that to a potential early adopter.
At the end of the day it probably really depends who you're targeting. It might work better for social media marketing types than hacker types who don't want to be gamed for your gain. <comment><USER2> Honestly, if there were a service I found compelling enough, I'd just create throwaway e-mail addresses and refer myself.</comment>


Online.net servers up to 70% off from the original prices - <AUTHOR> https://newsletter.online.net/ad05fe6db8aecb368d50171be55436e0/en.index.html <comment><USER2> 404 not found

<comment><USER3> Everything is fine here, BTW all offers are here: [https://www.online.net/en/winter-2017/sales](https://www.online.net/en/winter-2017/sales)</comment></comment>


3D on the ZX Spectrum 48K - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2020/08/17/3d-on-the-zx-spectrum-48k/ <comment><AUTHOR> See also the author's GitHub page (linked from the Hackaday article): [https://github.com/ttsiodras/3D-on-a-ZX- Spectrum-48K](https://github.com/ttsiodras/3D-on-a-ZX-Spectrum-48K)

Perhaps this will sink to the bottom of the submit queue, but I enjoyed reading about his project.</comment>


Show HN: Deckchair – Holiday Management for Small Teams - <AUTHOR> https://www.getdeckchair.com <comment><USER2> This looks nice, but in a company that requires us to use a very clunky (but improving!) ADP site to actually file a time sheet and manage/request time off, this would just be an extra step on top of steps we already need to take.

</comment><comment><USER3> s/abcent/absent/

s/your going/you're going/ (or for style reasons perhaps s/your going to/you will/ )

There are some weird capitalization issues, too (e.g. "Simple, Easy to use", e.g. "Slack integration" in a list where every other entry is all-words- capitalized)

I'd suggest that in general, your copy feels a little choppy to me, and if/when you start making a little money, I'd pay someone to fix it up.

HTH

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with jholman about getting the text improved. Lots of weird tense changes and awkward sentences through out.

That's easy enough to fix, though. I'm more interested how this compares to (or integrates with) third party software like ADP and UltiPro. Seems like this would be targeted to a really small niche of companies that are too big to handle holidays informally, but too small to buy a more full featured HRIS.

</comment><comment><USER5> Channeling patio11 here, but CHARGE MORE! Or, more to the point, have some ways to price-discriminate. Maybe on # of employees; maybe on features; maybe integrations or SSO or whatever.

Obviously you're not (currently) targeting Big Enterprise, but even within your present target market there's got to be a difference in how much value you're delivering for different clients... price based on that!

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty nice to handle holidays. However the copy needs a bit of work as well as some prices of the UI/UX. For example:

\- First steps you have the text

      - Step 1: "Save Step 1"
      - Step 2: "Save and Proceed"
      - Step 3: "Add employee"

You should align the text of each button such "Next step" and "Finish".

\- Provide more text on each of the step to give better context with perhaps an example or an average for a specific country (selecting a country and auto- completing these fields with the average would be nice).

\- Lot of lost space in Step 2 Setup Statutory Holidays. You could make the numbers bigger and space out evenly the selected days. Also it was quite weird to have an extra step with the selected days starred.

\- Provide integration with 3rd party platforms: Google Calendar, Slack, login with Google account, etc.

\- Provide a way to delete an account. How do I do that right now?

All in all it is pretty cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Many thanks for all of that. Send me a mail - email@example.com and I'll sort out the account deletion. Or alternatively a cancel subscription under billing you can use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks pretty nice, nice and simple. I didn't sign up because I am not managing people's vacations, but I definitely would if I were that person where I work. Value proposition is immediately obvious. Great name too

If you're serious about making money off of this, though, I'd highly recommend some form of per-seat pricing.

Per-seat pricing aligns the usefulness of the app with how much people are paying. Would you really want (for example) a 100 person team to be only giving you 15 pounds a month for what is probably _days_ of saved administrative time per year? Off the top of my head $15/user/year seems like a good price to deal with vacationing. Though ideally that number is MAX_NUMBER_YOU_CAN_CONVINCE_PEOPLE_TO_CHARGE/user/year

<comment><AUTHOR> I did think about per user pricing but a flat price seems so much more appealing than competitors in the market. You are right though, size of the market likely isn't that big. Thank you for your feedback.

<comment><USER8> >>You are right though, size of the market likely isn't that big

Why do you think that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does it have any kind of calendar integration? If it can integrate with our teams google calendar this is perfect for us.

<comment><USER10> We provide Google and Outlook calendar integration:

[http://www.staffsquared.com/hr-software/features/online- cale...](http://www.staffsquared.com/hr-software/features/online-calendar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks interesting. It won't be hard to do UX better than the competition (like [https://www.myhrtoolkit.com](https://www.myhrtoolkit.com)). Getting people to migrate from their current system will be difficult though.

You might want to update that iPad screenshot. Use the new look iOS.

</comment><comment><USER12> Provide a price in dollars. People outside of UK don't know what the value of pound is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added a basic converter for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps its just me, but use a deckchair for the logo, or place one on the beach?

</comment><comment><USER14> we have created similar app which we open sourced at www.github.com/diacode/holidays we have pretty nice ui and slack integration, check it out</comment>


Oxford is hellish - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/02/oxforduniversity

<comment><USER2> I went to second-string US liberal arts school but I still recognize the three tribes. So the article is interesting but it also has an onion-ish quality. "The rich aren't as happy as you think, news at 11:00".</comment>


Disconnect Search, Built By Ex-Google And Ex-NSA Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/07/disconnect-search-built-by-ex-google-and-ex-nsa-engineers-lets-you-use-google-bing-and-yahoo-without-tracking

<comment><USER2> _Ex_ -NSA? Are they sure about that one?</comment>


Learn or outsource? where's the right balance... - <AUTHOR>

What's your advise for someone who can't program, although wants to build an online business.
I have a technical (network/security) background and have recently taught myself perl for a side project. I'm also learning php basics to fix a whole.
There is a difference between stumbling through perl/php to fix a problem, and building an successful web application.
The obvious answer would be to partner with a programmer, that aside.
Should I be thinking of learning/outsourcing?
With offshore pricing so competitive this would seem the option if I can manage the process.
Concerns: In the YC application, this is flagged as a concern (http://news.ycombinator.com/s2011form).
"Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it?"
Concerns: I could pick up RoR or run with PHP, although learning from scratch my code is going to be messy and sometimes completely wrong. I accept this is part of learning to program, but my goal is to build a business not become a programmer.
Paying for outsourcing isn't an issue.
Has anyone got experience or advise I can learn from to get the right balance?
Cheers
M <comment><USER2> "but my goal is to build a business not become a programmer."

I believe there's your answer. Outsource for the former, learn for the latter.

<comment><USER3> In outsourcing, how do you prevent the Winklevosses-syndrome from happening to your project? Of course you want someone with The Zuck's coding ability but it's pretty hard to measure greed

<comment><USER2> I think Fb/Winklevosses situation is an outlier, very unlikely to happen to you. I don't know the size of outsourcing market, but its probably pretty big and as far as I can tell there isn't overwhelming evidence that outsourcing means someone else will steal your idea and get rich off it.

Besides how much did they get from from the lawsuit anyway?

P.S. I freelance and I'm glad to sign a NDA before starting, not that I need one to stop me from stealing their ideas. First I don't really care. Ideas are great, but they need lot of work to make it happen. Two, my projects list (like almost any other programmer's) is full of stuff I'd try if I had 36 hours in a day and needed no sleep.</comment></comment></comment>


Samsung Vibrant Froyo upgrade finally coming January 21 - <AUTHOR>

After all the discussion here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2116437), it appears T-Mobile is manning up, admitting they caused the delay, and releasing (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376045,00.asp) Froyo for Vibrant phones starting Jan. 21. It's interesting to note that T-Mobile is claiming responsibility, and not Samsung as most speculated.<p>Now, whether this is true or not is a completely different story... <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2116437>

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376045,00.asp></comment>


Jet-Powered Flying Taxi Startup Seeks Safety Approval - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-17/jet-powered-flying-taxi-startup-lilium-seeks-safety-approval <comment><USER2> It's exciting to see how startup redefines the world as we see it. If this new mode of transportation pushes through then traveling has just gotten a lot faster. Hopefully, it's going to be a lot safer as well.</comment>


Android Pay launches in UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36320321 <comment><USER3> Well, it doesn't work for me at the moment (Nexus 6P). I'm getting "Android Pay can't be used" message when trying to add a card. It's worth noting that my bootloader is unlocked and the phone is rooted (stock ROM). It will be a shame if it requires phone not to be rooted, because as much as I'd like to use Android Pay - I like my ad blocker better.

<comment><USER4> This is almost certainly because it is rooted, IMHO. All the serious banking/payment apps I have seen won't run on a rooted phone as they can no longer be sure of the integrity of the device.

<comment><USER5> I haven't rooted and it says "Android pay is not available"

<comment><USER5> This turned out to be because I also had the HSBC app installed, and there is a global setting to choose which contactless provider to use. Helpful error message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "...although Barclays customers will not be able to use Android Pay. That is because the bank is going it alone, making contactless payments available through its own mobile banking app."

Barclays being one of the major banks in the UK

<comment><USER7> They're doing this again? I thought they already caved for Apple Pay.

<comment><USER8> Give them time, once their customers realise they're being shafted, they'll soon change their mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I've had a preview of the Android Pay app, and if anything it is even > simpler to use once you have uploaded your cards to the app.

That'll be amazing. I just got an Apple Pay enabled iPhone and I'm loving it. Used it on the London Underground, with the Starbucks app, at McDonalds, and it's wonderful.

Gone are the days of having to fish out all my cards from my wallet to find the card I want to pay with.

If Android Pay can deliver an as-good or better experience, fantastic. This is good news for everyone.

<comment><USER10> I hope you prep it before you use it on the underground, otherwise you'll cause a pileup behind you.

<comment><USER9> Of course. I'm not an animal. :-)

I used to get really frustrated when my Oyster card or contactless credit card fail on first read. Didn't happen often, but often enough to annoy me. Has yet to happen with Apple Pay, but I've not been using it anywhere near as long. It's definitely quicker to read Apple Pay than it is to read my Amex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad they have finally launched in the UK. My GF is ALWAYS leaving the house without her bag and with no money, but she always has her phone on her. At least now there is less chance of her needing money and not having it on her. I do wish they had support from more banks though.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this might be too late, all the banks have launched contactless cards themselves. It may be convenient to have them in your phone (irregardless of any security risks), but I mean if you already have a contactless card, what's the point?

<comment><USER13> contactless card are less secure than an tokenized mobile app because contactless card send you credit card number with NFC without encryption.

Tokenized app send one time credit card number.

[http://www.planetbiometrics.com/creo_files/upload/article- fi...](http://www.planetbiometrics.com/creo_files/upload/article- files/apple_pay_-_what_do_we_know.pdf)

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/05/android-pay-will- emb...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/05/android-pay-will-embrace- tokenization-mostly-replace-google-wallet/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandcon...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/12061474/Contactless- cards-spark-security-fears.html)

<comment><USER14> > contactless card are less secure than an tokenized mobile app because > contactless card send you credit card number with NFC without encryption.

Only in the United States. In mainland Europe NFC has always used EMV authentication between terminal. Also as an aside: a european credit card's number alone is kinda useless.

<comment><USER15> I'm not quite sure that's the case. Using an NFC app on my phone, I was able to get my credit card's number without any issue. Also had the expiry date and a list of transactions.

[https://twitter.com/edent/status/724639270284189696](https://twitter.com/edent/status/724639270284189696)

True, it didn't have the CV2(?) number on the back - or my address - <USER2> enough to make me buy an NFC shielded wallet.

<comment><USER16> is that info stored inside the card?

<comment><USER15> On some, yes. My MasterCard had a list of previous transactions. I wasn't able to get anything out of my Amex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't work for rooted phones [0]. I guess I'll have to wait a little longer before mutilating my contactless card.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/Pkx4SRP.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Pkx4SRP.jpg)

<comment><USER18> [http://www.xda-developers.com/google-security-engineer- expla...](http://www.xda-developers.com/google-security-engineer-explains- issues-with-root-and-android-pay-in-the-xda-forums/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The last coffee I bought before leaving Shanghai was difficult because the register was nearly empty. Every customer in line in front of me had payed with their phone. While I waited, I watched every customer behind me do the same.

Even African economies have more extensive mobile payments (though I don't envy the motivation).

We're behind on this one.

<comment><USER20> And it's a very dangerous situation. It will make the cash disapear more, and more, meaning big entities will control money more and more and individuals with a have smaller and smaller margin to build things that are not aligned with them. If (when) anything goes wrong, citizen will have no safety net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Replacement of the Oyster card would be pretty cool, especially for tourists. Assuming they can still calculate the smartest price at the end of the day.

How secure is NFC in general? How are these payment systems protecting against someone setting up a fake system to read out CC data?

<comment><USER22> > Replacement of the Oyster card would be pretty cool, especially for > tourists. Assuming they can still calculate the smartest price at the end of > the day

It already works as an oyster replacement as it's the same technology for contactless cards. Contactless cards get the same fare caps as oysters

<comment><USER23> Works as an oyster replacement, for 'pay as you go'. Not if you have any kind of travelcard, AFAIK.

<comment><USER24> You can use it for a Monday-Sunday travelcard [https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and- payments/contactless/what-is-ca...](https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and- payments/contactless/what-is-capping#on-this-page-3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can confirm this is now live.

Using latest Android pay app from APKMirror, nexus 6p and HSBC card I've made my first Android pay purchase ever.

That coffee tasted oh so sweet!

</comment><comment><USER25> Just used it - absolutely faultless. Slick implementation, although the MasterCard verification system is being hit hard this morning.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wish my John Lewis credit card was supported. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find these products like Apple Pay and Android Pay to be too old-school, doubling down on the dependence on banks and credit cards. They need to go ahead and load funds into the app like a digital wallet.

Two links about this (first link is by me) (1) [https://medium.com/@firasd/mobile-wallets-in-india-growth- op...](https://medium.com/@firasd/mobile-wallets-in-india-growth- opportunities-slide-deck-70539cc003c8) and (2) [http://adage.com/article/opinion/china-s-mobile-payments- war...](http://adage.com/article/opinion/china-s-mobile-payments-war- global/301488/)

<comment><USER28> This is something a company I used to work for tried to do and failed. I do agree thats the way to go but there are some obstacles we didn't manage to overcome: 1\. trust - will people trust their money to be deposited in the digital wallet? unless you have a massive banking institution behind you the public might not be so eager to use your system. 2\. you need a convenient way to transfer money to digital wallet. if that method is a credit card the whole system breaks down because someone has to absorb the cc transaction fee. 3\. banks have good relations with Visa/Mastercard/Amex and cause friction when you have to deal with them for a system that takes away profits from the credit card companies.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, maybe they're taking off in India and China because of a "leapfrog" opportunity. For example, pre-paid digital wallets are used to pay for ride- sharing, whereas in the U.S people just use the same card that they already use often at CVS, Starbucks etc.

The other aspect that I think a lot of financial innovation will depend on is a "killer app". In India it's been phone 'recharge'\--most people have prepaid phones, so you can add balance using the mobile wallet app instead of going out to find a nearby shop or kiosk to do it for you. And in the case of China, WeChat integrates so many services that it makes sense to have a wallet integrated into its many offerings. In the U.S, Venmo is instructive too, about focusing on a product rather than a method or technology.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pre-seed startup, should we get patents filed before demo day? - <AUTHOR>

How much would a patent filing (i.e. it would be patent pending) on biometric technology increase valuation for a pre-seed two-person team startup based in London and funded by an accelerator?
We have two options: 1) Focus on getting end-users with an app we will be releasing to showcase our tech 2) Focus our time on filing a patent
Due to time to the demo day we can realistically focus only on a single point. Could not find a definite answer myself, so asking has anyone been in similar situation?
I appreciate there cannot be a binary yes/no answer, so I am really looking to better understanding the tradeoffs based on first-hand experience! <comment><USER2> For US (not sure if it's the same in UK), you might go with a provisional patent filing only. It's a lot easier and less expensive to file. You then have a year (I believe) to file for the actual patent.

My firsthand experience is with software, as opposed to biotech, and there the answer would usually be to focus on customers first. But I know that patents are more important to biotech investors, and companies. Hopefully the accelerator funding you has enough mentor presence in your space to get a more definitive take on the tradeoffs and timing.

<comment><AUTHOR> UK also has provisional ones. That is exactly our strategy if we were to decide to file one, thanks!

(as a side note, we are working on biometrics not biotech: [http://www.lockergnome.com/technobabble/2005/03/17/biotech-o...](http://www.lockergnome.com/technobabble/2005/03/17/biotech- or-biometrics/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't take this the wrong way, but why isn't your accelerator providing a qualified lawyer who can counsel you on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> They did. Consulting is only advisory and includes patent research. Anything else and we would need to pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the success of what you're doing depends very heavily on the patent, then focus on getting that above all else. Given the time trade off you're talking about, be very sure about that.

It's probably a difficult equation to resolve, or you wouldn't have posted for input here.

If the patent is strong, important to what you're doing, and likely to be approved based on research that has been done on existing patents, then it should boost the value of your seed round very meaningfully (and it's important to find investors that understand the value proposition). If any of those three things are not true, then your patent filing is not worth focusing on exclusively (that is, put more time into the product / users, put some time into the patent).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input!</comment></comment>


7-way Venn - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/7-way-venn

<comment><USER2> That's very attractive but not very informationally useful. I think Tufte would probably want to kill it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I compare prices from different suppliers with different offers? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in England.  There are about 5 main suppliers for "mobile broadband using a dongle".  They sell the products based on whether you're on a contract or paying as you use the product.  They also have different up-front charges, or contract lengths, or data limits.<p>What's the best way to represent this data so it can be easily understood? <comment><AUTHOR> I guess including the data is useful so here it is. Do what you like with it.

\---

Prices for Internet dongles and mobile broadband in England.

Vodafone.

Pay As You Go plans

ONE OFF CHARGE = £24.99

Comes with 500MB data for up to 60 days

Additional 500MB top-ups are £5 up to 30 days

The AUP is not mentioned.

30 DAY PLANS

very occasional user

ONE OFF CHARGE = £19 250 MB data for 30 days 30 day agreement (need credit check)

£3 per month

Each additional 250MB costs £2 per day.

\---

Occasional user

ONE OFF CHARGE = £19 500MB data for 30 days 30 day agreement (need credit check)

£7.50 per month

£7.50 for each additional 500MB

1GB free BT Openzone wifi for 30 days

\---

Regular user

ONE OFF CHARGE = £9

2GB data for 30 days

30 day agreement (need credit check)

£15 per month

£15 for each additional 1GB

1GB free BT Openzone wifi 30 days

\---

18 MONTH PLANS

occasional user

dongle included

2GB data per month

£15 per month

2GB free BT Openzone wifi

\---

Regular user

dongle included

£20 per month

2GB data

4GB BT Openzone wifi

</comment><comment></comment><comment>====

O2

"It's perfect for sending a quick email, checking Facebook or shopping on your laptop. It's not for you if you want to download big files, watch TV, or play games."

PAY AND GO STARTER KIT

DONGLE ONLY Dongle cost -£20.42

1GB Dongle included £30.64 for 3 months 1GB data unlimited WI-FI (BT Openzone, claims not Mac)

\-- 2GB Dongle included £35.74 for 1 month Includes 2GB data unlimited WIFI (BT Openzone, claims not mac)

\-- 1 GB monthy top-up £10.21 30 days rolling contract? unlimited public wifi

Marketing opt in required.

FAIR USE: mentioned but not available. (No streaming?)

=====

ORANGE

ONE MONTH

SMALL 500MB

£10 dongle

£10 per month

5.1p per MB out of bundle data cost

MEDIUM 1GB Unlimited BT Openzone (3GB fair use)

£5 dongle

£15 per month

5.1p per MB out of bundle data cost

LARGE 3GB unlimited BT Openzone wifi (3GB fair use)

Free dongle

£30 per month

5.1p per MB out of bundle data cost

DATA BUNDLE

1GB £10

=====

3 (the company 3)

SIM ONLY PAY MONTHLY

5GB 1 month £15.99 10.2p per MB out of bundle

1GB 1 month £7.50 10GB 1 month £15 a month 10.2p per MB out of bundle

SIM ONLY PAYG

1GB / 30 days £10.49 3GB for 3 months £20.49 12GB for 12 months £70.49

BASIC DONGLE 15 GB month 18 month contract £20.99 month

PAYG 3GB for 3 months £39.99 PAYG 1GB for 30 days £29.99

1GB month 24 month contract 18 month contract £7.87 month</comment>


Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.annalsthoracicsurgery.org/article/S0003-4975(20)30860-2/pdf <comment><USER2> The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few of those people got something out of it, then it will likely have had more impact than the original paper.

[https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY](https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY)

<comment><USER3> Most research is not useful or suitable to the wider world.

<comment><USER2> Well, there are gradations to "the wider world". I don't know about you, but I read a lot of stuff that's way outside my area. That's why I hang out here. There's a huge gulf between "suitable for mainstream TV" and the opaque and overly compacted research paper. Places like New Scientist and Ars Technica fill this gap to some extent, but they tend to oversimplify to appeal to a wider audience. I'd rather hear it from the authors in an only slightly dumbed down form.

<comment><USER4> Same feeling here. That's why a friend of mine and I created Abstra. We ask authors to come and do some vulgarization themselves. The summaries are structured exactly like most papers: background, findings, and methods. Quick and to the point. There is an incentive for both as the reader gets quality info from the source and the researcher gains audience and exposure. We're at the prototype stage Check it out abstra.co.uk, would love to have your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The statistical analysis in this paper is really poor. Without the raw data I would say it is impossible to tell anything from this study.

> change in citations at 1 year (Tweeted +3.1±2.4 vs. Non-Tweeted +0.7±1.3, > p<0.001)

I don't know what that p<0.001 means in this context but there is certainly more than a 0.1% chance that the null hypothesis (the two distributions are the same) given those 95% confidence intervals.

The graphs that are used to illustrate the paper have completely different confidence intervals than the numbers in the paper and look too good to be true.

Given the average tweet was engaged with less than 16 times I really doubt that the effect size would be this big. This looks to me to be the case that a couple of good papers happened to be tweeted and that nothing statistically significant can be gleaned from this paper.

Having said that I am not a professional statistician so I would appreciate the input of someone more knowledgeable than myself.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I agree this looks like one of those times where the researches aren't interested in doing the stats at all so just mail it in.

Just ignoring the stats though the results seem pretty solid. 3x the number of citations with ~100 observations. If the tweets were truly randomly assigned and there aren't big outliers driving results (big ifs, not gonna go deep enough to find out), their conclusion should be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is actually very scary to me. This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search but rather the authors recalling papers they might have read or seen on social media. This is dangerous in that if there were papers from before The Tweet era that actually found that part of your research protocol was bad, they would not be found.

An example of this is the rat maze study that Feynman cites.

[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

That last thing we need is clickbait science.

<comment><USER8> Unlike in the past, it's impossible to read every paper in one's field. Since tools like PubMed, ISI, and Scopus all use a proprietary algorithm to rank search results, I appreciate any alternative channels for bringing relevant papers to my attention.

It's also perfectly justified to search for papers solely based on how influential they've been in your field. Papers which trend on Twitter (perhaps long-awaited results) are already having an impact on labs, probably being discussed in journal club and shaping the trajectory of the field.

<comment><USER9> PubMed is an interesting case, I wonder if the algorithm it uses for ranking would be FOIAable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it ironic that this is about citations and it costs $36 just to read. So if you wanted to cite this and somebody wanted to verify they would have to spend another $36.

<comment><USER11> Or they could use sci-hub

<comment><USER12> as an outsider, it's always fun to read the research paper drama.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really frightening for anyone who works in these fields but isn't on any of the main social networks. I left facebook and co years ago and feel much better for it. I get that marketing matters, but marketing on a shitshow like twitter seems sanity challenging.

<comment><USER14> Twitter is what you make it to be. If you follow people that post a lot of (angry) political stuff and you get yourself involved and also tweet about it, then yes, things become quickly a shitshow. If you however look for people that talk about stuff you're interested in or of your own field, then you can get a lot of interesting conversations with people all over the world. Use the unfollow button and/or mute option for people that bring too much negativity to your feed and don't engage in negativity yourself.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that (last time I looked) you can't only look at people's tweets. You have to see people's retweets too. So most attempts to only see certain aspects of twitter are too hard or incredibly limiting.

<comment><USER14> With TweetDeck [1] you can select whether you want to include retweets or not [2], plus a lot of other useful options.

However, I think RTs enhance the experience a lot, as you get to discover other people with similar interest kind of organically. But the same rule applies to people who RT a lot of negativity heavy tweets, just unfollow of mute them.

If you're interested, I recently wrote a bit about how I've been using Twitter quite happily in the past few years [3].

[1] [https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/) [2] [https://i.imgur.com/0GOMZvg.png](https://i.imgur.com/0GOMZvg.png) [3] [https://dev.my-gate.net/2020/05/30/eight-years-on-twitter/](https://dev.my- gate.net/2020/05/30/eight-years-on-twitter/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the pointers. You've convinced me to try to give it another try. Any idea whether there's a way to hide retweets from specific people while allowing retweets from others? Like for people who tweet content on topics I care about and retweet content on topics I want to stay away from? Like, instead of muting someone, just muting their retweets.

<comment><USER14> I've not seen such a feature, but there are also a lot of third-party apps, so maybe one offers such a feature.

<comment><USER13> Cool. Thanks again for the tips :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find this incredibly unsurprising, if you follow journalists on twitter you'll hear the same thing over and over again. They say twitter is a disaster, every time you say anything slightly controversial you'll get dozens of random strangers attack you, and some will even permanently follow you insulting you until you block them. They also say they can't leave because it's one of the primary drivers of traffic to their articles and it would be impossible to achieve the metrics their employer requires without it.

It seems a strange property that twitter has developed of being both a terrible experience but also incredibly effective at organic advertising.

<comment><USER16> Ugh, this is so right. A lot of the trolls are also just new accounts the IRL troll makes to keep harassing. And don't forget the bots and the hordes of paid trolls employed by either companies or foreign governments to foment decisiveness. It reminds me of the Simpson's episode when the teachers go on strike and Bart runs through the angry mob yelling inflammatory and accusatory tripe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2020.04.065](https://sci- hub.se/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2020.04.065)

</comment><comment><USER18> Tweeting improves citations

</comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps a "relevant" paper "The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists" ([https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13...](https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-014-0424-0))

<comment><USER5> This is just a joke paper, there is no statistical analysis in it and the key findings are: some scientists the author knows have more followers than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm currently building an alternative to twitter to publish summaries of papers. It's called Abstra. We're hoping to give researcher a better format to share their stuff, and a quick option for that to avoid wasting time. Would love to have your feedback! Abstra.co.uk

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to see the paper (but don't want to pay $36 for it). Citations are often power-law distributed - I'd suspect one outliers is driving this effect.

</comment><comment><USER21> Tl;Dr : yes. Immensely. Almost 9 times.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great case study!!

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, tweeting _where_?

If it is tweeted on an account with 0 followers, then certainly not, right?

And when tweeted to one millioin scientists in the same field, then certainly yes, right?

<comment><USER5> > 4 articles were prospectively tweeted per day by a designated TSSMN > (Thoracic Surgery Social Media Network) delegate and retweeted by all other > TSSMN delegates (n=11) with a combined followership of 52,893 individuals > and @TSSMN for 14 days</comment></comment>


Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/19/climate-change-sceptics-science <comment><USER2> Sure there are professional skeptics in any camp, but that doesn't make us all fall into the category. I was a climate skeptic long before a market existed for it.

Ah nothing like a breakfast on fallacies :-)

Let's see: Argumentum ad populum Association fallacy Appeal to authority Appeal to consequences

This list was selected from the red herring section of: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies>

I'm sure I missed some, but I'm short on time this morning...</comment>


AT&T to pay $60M over U.S. allegations it lied in 'unlimited data' pledge - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-at-t-settlement/att-will-pay-60-million-over-u-s-allegations-it-lied-in-unlimited-data-pledge-government-idUSKBN1XF26Q <comment><USER2> Pocket change. Cost of doing business.

They made way more money by misleading customers and will continue to do so with penalties that small.

<comment><USER3> Yes. AT&T now offers "AT&T Unlimited Starter", "AT&T Unlimited Extra", and "AT&T Unlimited & More Premium".

 _" Available when Stream Saver is turned off. Learn more at att.com/streamsaver. After 15 GB hotspot speed limited to maximum of 128Kbps. Customers may temporarily experience slower speeds during busy times. On AT&T Unlimited & More Premium, if you exceed 22 GB of data on a line in one billing cycle, your speed may be slowed until the end of that billing cycle when the network is congested. All AT&T Unlimited Starter and AT&T Unlimited Extra customers have a limit of 1.5 Mbps (SD quality) when video streaming, and may experience temporarily reduced speeds when the network is congested."_

The FTC didn't even make them stop using the term "Unlimited".

<comment><USER4> 128Kbps for 1 month is 42GB [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=128Kbps+for+1+month](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=128Kbps+for+1+month)

<comment><USER5> Do they mean kilobits or kilobytes?

<comment><USER6> This has to be bytes, you wouldn't be able to open a website in entire minutes if it were bits.

<comment><USER7> Oh they do mean bits, it is indeed completely unusable after you hit the limit and get throttled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised that the FTC didn't push harder for an admission or some statement by AT&T to make this look like a win for the gov't. AT&T's statement:

> "None of these allegations were ever proved in court. We were fully prepared > to defend ourselves, but decided settling was in the best interests of > consumers," said Jim Greer, a spokesman for AT&T.

<comment><USER9> Are you really surprised with this administration? I'd guess if I were a business with a pending investigation/lawsuit, I'd push really hard to "do business" with this environment, as opposed to what may come in 2021.

<comment><USER10> Some people will make anything an opportunity to say "orange man bad". Here's some other history:

* (2014) Verizon settles an overbilling case for $64MM, of which only $36MM went to payouts. [0]

* (2015) Verizon settles a robocalling class action for only $4MM. [1]

* (2009) Sprint settles an ETF class action for only $17.5MM [2]

* (2015) Sprint pays only $131MM to settle a lawsuit about their bungled $36 BILLION merger with Nextel [3]

This has far less to do with "this administration" and far more to do with how business is run in America. I'm not saying it's right, not at all, but I do want to point out that buying into this partisan nonsense distracts us (voters) from actually changing the system meaningfully (where "meaningful" is creating an environment where this doesn't happen).

[0] [https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/closed- settl...](https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/closed- settlements/47886-verizon-wireless-family-shareplan-class-action-settlement/)

[1] And more... [https://moneyinc.com/10-verizon-lawsuits-you-should-know- abo...](https://moneyinc.com/10-verizon-lawsuits-you-should-know-about/)

[2] [https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-settling- clas...](https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-settling-class-action- etf-lawsuit-for-17-5m)

[3] [https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint- pays-131m-to-...](https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-pays-131m-to- settle-class-action-lawsuit-over-nextel-merger-claims)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you wanna have a good laugh:

Go to an AT&T store and purchase a plan with a phone using installments. Then, wait a day, and try to return it at a different AT&T store.

You will go through the absolutely worst customer experience imaginable; so bad, in fact, it'll make you laugh out loud. Their printers won't work, they'll be too slow, the systems will go down, the batteries will die in their payment devices. At least that's what I experienced on every one of the three times they asked me to come back to the store to return the phone(because each time their systems simply were unable to do it).

So it's no surprise to me that they got caught lying to their customers.

</comment><comment><USER12> There needs to be a minimum acceptable speed threshold. "2G" is meaningless. They do not downgrade the protocol to 2G, hence that term only serves to confuse customers. 2G refers to EDGE that was available at 144kbps, which is faster than a bonded ISDN, which is fast enough to stream a 128kbit mp3.

I would actually be happy with true unlimited 144kbps. It's usable. I can run RDP over that with reasonable refresh rate.

It is also not possible as a customer to voluntarily turn off high speed when you don't need it.

From experience, once my connection gets limited to 2G, my speed is closer to 9600bps, which is absolutely unusable for interactive Internet use.

I have two phones. One has Visible from Verizon with allegedly unlimited but relatively slow data at 2-10mbit with unlimited tethering. The second is my T-mobile phone with an allegedly unlimited but in reality limited to 50GB much faster data with a 7GB hotspot.

I use my Tmobile data when I have to and the rest of the time that phone is tethered to my Visible phone. Visible is $40/mo, T-mobile is $80 and I may downgrade it to a limited plan with zero-rated video.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why can big corps pay and get free? Its often happens, company x made crime y, pays government z and gets free.

<comment><USER14> It is a great quality of the Law that it allows both rich and poor alike to pay a lot of money to avoid jail time when caught committing a crime.

<comment><USER15> Everyone has the freedom to pay.

<comment><USER14> Everyone can pay their freedom, but inexplicably only certain people do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting that "allegations" is in the link and the HN title, but not in the title at the link. I guess if they're paying $60M then something must have happened....

</comment><comment><USER12> Better source: [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2019/11/att-p...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2019/11/att-pay-60-million-resolve-ftc-allegations-it-misled- consumers) direct from FTC links to the court documents regulating disclosure requirements.

</comment><comment><USER17> $60M? So basically no punishment to deter them or competitors from doing it again? What is that, like less than 50 cents/customer?

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm always weary of any telco pushing an "unlimited data" product, the terms and conditions attached to the product definitely makes one think twice and basically end up being "Unlimited data but [a lot of terms and conditions hidden at the very bottom that they know most people won't read and by the time they do it is too late]

</comment><comment><USER19> Please go after T-Mobile next. They throttle their "unlimited" to unusable.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just out of curiosity, where does the money from a fine like this go?

<comment><USER21> Generally speaking, the money goes into the federal treasury where tax revenue and the like goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you are one of these customers (I am) this seems a little unfair. We overpaid way more than we'll ever see back. What kind of refund does this translate to $6?

<comment><USER23> It translates to nothing for the party who was damaged. Literally they will get nothing. And if they don't like that deal the government can make it hurt more. Your life here ruined over an ounce of weed, but rob multiple people access you get a bonus and the company gets a small tax that mostly goes to lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They have about 150M customers, so about $0.38 each.

<comment><USER25> So new "other charges" line on my bill?

<comment><USER26> They should just come out and be honest and call it the 'middle finger fee'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> None of these allegations were ever proved in court. We were fully prepared to defend ourselves, but decided settling was in the best interests of consumers," said Jim Greer, a spokesman for AT&T.

Stay classy Jim.

<comment><USER28> And shareholders

The international ones are the most concerned about a company's domestic relationship with its government because the power imbalance is hard to comprehend and trust

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> They didn't lie. They did give the users unlimited data, but just slowed down the loading of apps and web browsers. That is completely understandable because where are they going to store all of this data.

<comment><USER30> "unlimited" means that there are no limits. Period.

Unlimited means no limits to speed, and no limits to quantity. If there is any type of artificial limit, then the thing ceases to be "unlimited". That is just straight up common sense, based on dictionary definitions.

<comment><USER31> I've long thought this is an issue of changing definitions. To anyone who was buying cell phone data plans when it was charged by the byte (and later in tiers of bytes with insane overage charges), "unlimited data" was easily understood to mean no overage charges, no per byte fees.

But somewhere along the way (or perhaps as an unfortunate consequence of not seeing far enough ahead to always throttle unlimited plans) the definition in consumer minds also seemed to include no speed limits either.

<comment><USER32> Cell phone plans are purchased with the speed of service. Unlimited data at 50 mbps, for example, stops being unlimited when the speed is no longer 50 mbps.

<comment><USER33> Cell phones are never sold with a speed of service. How could they be? Your speed is determined by congestion, the proximity of the tower, etc.

<comment><USER34> Those are natural limits, though. If I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet but just had my wisdom teeth removed, it's not their fault that I'll cry in a corner while delicately nibbling a small bowl of pudding. They were willing to let me eat more, even if I wasn't capable of it.

If the same buffet made you wait 2 hours between plates, then it's no longer realistically an all-you-can-eat buffet.

<comment><USER33> Taking the analogy to an extreme, if you went to an all you can eat buffet, it would only be open 24 hours a day and there is only so many times you could go through the line and the kitchen can only cook so much food.

If the restaurant is crowded, you're going to have to both wait longer to get through the line and the kitchen won't be able to cook enough to satisfy all of the customers.

There is also a known limit of how much data can be transmitted over a certain frequency and only certain frequencies are amenable to data.

For instance, T-mobile was infamous for not working well in buildings because the spectrum they were using couldn't travel through buildings.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


US black-white inequality in 6 stark charts - sahin-boydas https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-financial-inequality/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the entire report:

[https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I access healthcare.gov from outside the US? - <AUTHOR>

Currently living abroad. Need to access the exchange to buy health insurance. Do I really need to access it through a proxy server? <comment><USER2>
      $ dig healthcare.gov +short
      188.8.131.52

      $ dig www.healthcare.gov +short
      www.geodirector.hc.gov.akadns.net.
      bh.georedirector.akadns.net.
      127.0.0.1

      $ wget healthcare.gov -O /dev/null
      --2013-12-11 15:57:05--  http://healthcare.gov/
      Resolving healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)... 126.96.36.199, 2a02:26f0:59:38e::1ce1, 2a02:26f0:59:396::1ce1
      Connecting to healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)|126.96.36.199|:80... connected.
      HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
      Location: https://healthcare.gov/ [following]
      --2013-12-11 15:57:05--  https://healthcare.gov/
      Connecting to healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)|22.214.171.124|:443... connected.
      HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
      Location: https://www.healthcare.gov/ [following]
      --2013-12-11 15:57:06--  https://www.healthcare.gov/
      Resolving www.healthcare.gov (www.healthcare.gov)... 127.0.0.1
      Connecting to www.healthcare.gov (www.healthcare.gov)|127.0.0.1|:443... failed: Connection refused.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the site may be down. Visiting [http://www.healthcare.gov](http://www.healthcare.gov) gives me an upside down IIS7 logo! [http://www.healthcare.gov/welcome.png](http://www.healthcare.gov/welcome.png)

(I'm in the UK)

<comment><USER4> In the US -- getting the main page of the site. So either it's a CDN thing, they brought the site back up since the original post, or it is indeed region locked.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can access via a proxy, but not from a European IP address. Seems strange to not even show an error page and just block entire regions from accessing the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oddly enough, I just wanted to take a look at the site, living in Germany.

downforeveryoneorjustme shows it's online.

Also checked on my NY based vps via Lynx and the site loads. So it must be region locked.

</comment><comment><USER6> I see this:

"It works!"

Wich to me is an insult. You can work on something much better and informative for the people that such message.

<comment><USER7> This is the default index.html for Apache

I think from what others are saying, it's redirected you to localhost:80. You must be running a default Apache config on localhost. I don't think they (healthcare.gov) are.

<comment><USER8> That's funny because I am seeing nginx's default page. They are probably balancing the load across servers with different setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am from India, and I am getting the default nginx page. That does not look good.</comment>


Show HN: Audobox – Android Voice Recorder - <AUTHOR> https://www.audobox.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple of friends and I built a voice recoding app that was actually designed for your smartphone. Instead of just saving an audio file (probably entitled "My Recording #4"), we wanted an app that provides context (think people and places) to the things we record. It automatically saves where and when the moment was recorded, letting you browse and search the context of your recordings.

We've been using it for meetings and standups, and we've found it really useful to be able to go back and reference what we said. We hope you find it useful too.

This is a beta release, so if you run into anything wonky just let us know: email@example.com

And if you just want to tell us what you think, or suggest a feature, we've built in a pretty fun feedback tool — hit "Record audobox feedback" from the menu.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, your app seems great! I am however having trouble understanding how it works - does it upload the recording after an arbitrary period of time or does it stream it from the start of the recording process? Just recently I have had an unfortunate adventure with the police when they were clearly abusing their power, and when I told them I would record it with my phone the cop told me to better not try it or he'd smash my cellphone on the wall and do the same with me. I wish there was an app with constant streaming so this kind of stuff would be less likely to happen in the future.

<comment><USER4> I was actually thinking about this the other day - It'd be awesome to have an app designed specifically for that use case. So it'd stream a version that's as high res as your connection can support to the server, broadcasting it live to anyone on the site/app who could tag it, share etc.

Meanwhile, it's saving the full res to the phone and also trying to backfill with that as the connection allows, you could even have it use wifi direct or bluetooth to stream to other devices in the area. That way someone could have their phone inconspicuously in their pocket, backing up and uploading the content from the people recording. It'd also keep recording with the screen locked, record the location, maybe even integrate remote wiping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the first time, other than for my own app, I am one of the first 50 to try a new app :) We built a voice messaging app called PhonOn (its on play store and iOS appstore). This was one of the pivots we were considering before opting to pursue another idea. Do you stream the content to the server or is it record the whole thing and then upload the file?

<comment><AUTHOR> It records in ten-minute blocks and uploads each of the blocks as it's completed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just some feedback for your website: Maybe show a small video of what it's like to actually use the app, rather than screenshots + descriptions what it does. Doesn't have to be fancy at all, but just a demonstration of the actual user experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> First, it looks great.

When I went to install the app the permissions were kind of onerous: Modify your contacts, Read phone status and identity, reroute outgoing calls, etc. Can you give some color as to why these are necessary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Contacts: so that you can tag people from your phone's contacts instead of having to type them out by hand. We don't actually modify any contacts, so we should probably just be using the "Read contacts" permission only.

Phone status / calls stuff: needed to be able to detect when you receive or make a call so that we can stop recording. I'm not sure why it's called "Reroute outgoing calls" except that it lets you get a callback when a call is placed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought about making an app in the same vein, but for a specific purpose: recording lectures. However, I think it'd be useful in meetings.

The idea was to have the ability to take a photo and associate it with the time you took it. This would come in handy when the audio is referring to a specific powerpoint slide, whiteboard drawing, etc.

I think if you add this in, you could have a killer app for college kids to record lectures for later use.

<comment><USER9> > take a photo and associate it with the time you took it

Otherwise known as a "video". :)

<comment><USER8> It is very different from video, in my mind. Video places emphasis on visuals, where for many lectures or meetings the audio is where most of the content is. By only talking photos or short videos at the points in time where the visuals are important you cut down on a lot of excess information that will need to be searched through later. In a way, the photo are essentially bookmarks into your audio.

If I was looking back on a hour lecture that had 15 slides, it'd be much easier to tap the photo of the relevant slide and listen to surrounding audio rather than scrub through a hour of video to find it.

Additionally, taking video requires being able to position my phone properly for the entire duration of recording. I don't know how my profesor's would respond to me setting up a mini tripod during lecture. I do know they don't care if i snap a picture of a slide or whiteboard every once in a while.

Finally, photos capture the content in higher quality then videos can, which often is very important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I only have a use for a recording app occasionally, but when I needed one they were all awful. This looks great, I've installed it in case I need it - <USER2> for doing a nice design!

It would be cool to show the levels while recording, recorded time etc to give us more confidence that it's actually recording and the levels are good

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! We've thought about showing time before, but levels would definitely help too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks gorgeous, and recording quality has been fantastic on my Nexus 7 (have been testing the alpha).

Makes me significantly less twitchy in meetings - I'm a compulsive note-taker, and it actually has really changed my note-taking behavior towards summarization and takeaways versus "minutes" style.

Nice work, guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not to be a wet blanket, but what are you offering that Soundcloud doesn't?

</comment><comment><USER12> Love it, wanted this for so long. But I want to record everything.

What will happen to the app and to my batter if I just let this record perpetually? Do you upload pieces of the recording throughout the session?

<comment><USER13> Thanks!

The app works for long-form recordings too. We upload in chunks throughout the session, and the battery usage from our all-day tests is currently about 30% on a Nexus 4.

<comment><USER14> That's gonna be expensive on a data plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> so how can i access recordings away from my phone?

and a delete is vital. you should really warn users that they can't delete right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> It looks pretty nice. How is it not compatible with a Nexus 10 (and is compatible with Galaxy Note II and an HP Touchpad running CM 10)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will fix.

<comment><USER17> If it helps, the app currently isn't compatible with the Nexus 7 either. Also, it doesn't seem to support landscape on my Padfone 2 when docked (should act like a tablet). Looks good though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Beautiful, but where does it store the sound files, and will it soon be possible to delete recordings?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just pushed a version with moment deletion to the Play store. Should be live in a couple of hours.

Cheers!

<comment><USER18> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Visually appealing. Unfortunately keeps crashing on the sign up form on Nexus 4.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why does a voice recorder need android > 4.0? Can't use .

<comment><USER4> Because Android 2.3 is pretty badly broken these days, and is a ever shrinking portion of new app installs.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. It's still more than 45% of the new installs of my app though, even today :).

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Launched a new app recently, and it's been 15%. Guess it varies greatly depending on the demographics for your app, this app is mostly targeting US.

<comment><USER20> My bad. You made me recheck, and 45% is actually android <4.0, 3.x being neglictible.

My app is overly simple, and answers a very basic need. It is relevant for only one city in France (public transportation related app). I wanted most people to be able to use the app :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a way to delete a recording on the phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just pushed a version with moment deletion to the Play store. Should be live in a couple of hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> was so pumped to install this then realized my Photon was not compatible with this, mer.

</comment><comment><USER23> Apparently isn't available in my country?! (India)

<comment><USER13> That should not be the case, as we've allowed distribution to everywhere. It could be a device issue- are you on a tablet? We're working to fix that issue at the moment. If you are on a phone, what type is it and which Android version does it run?

Feel free to email me (see profile) and we'll get you set up.</comment></comment>


I just let him have his beer - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n24/christopher-tayler/i-just-let-him-have-his-beer <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/gPtYk](http://archive.is/gPtYk)

</comment><comment><USER3> After WordSkill's comment, I feel sheepish about linking to the Washington Post, but here goes: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/classic-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/classic- stoner-not-so-fast/2015/11/02/9f0ed5aa-7db3-11e5-b575-d8dcfedb4ea1_story.html) . I think the writer got it mostly correct.

<comment><USER4> The idea that a female character with negative traits is evidence of misogyny is silly. Stoner isn't misogynistic and this isn't an appropriate way to read novels.

The writer argues that Stoner's attitude towards Walker, a student, is bullying when, in the novel, that student is presented as lazy and nihilistic. By invoking misogyny, the Post article is doing the same thing as Walker: offering up a facile objection instead of engaging. If literature is worth studying at all then it can't be dismissed by invoking "misogyny" or "questioning the usefulness of grammar".

<comment><USER5> _The idea that a female character with negative traits is evidence of misogyny is silly._

It would be but that's not the idea advanced in the article - the claim is that the wife is represented too absurdly negatively and the author supports this with, among other things, a reference to an exchange between Williams and his agent. The charge of misogyny is aimed at Williams, not Stoner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth it for the block quote and thumbnail description of the theme of _Butcher's Crossing_.

</comment><comment><USER7> Submissions to HN that link to content requiring registration should include, in the title, a warning of that.

<comment><USER8> That's not the rule here. In fact the rule is that you should not complain about pay walls.

<comment><USER9> It should not be against the rules to protest the posting of content which is not freely available on principle. I often speak up on this.

<comment><USER8> But it is. If you don't like this site's rules go somewhere else like Reddit. The rules are what makes this place high quality in my opinion.</comment></comment></comment></comment>