I Am Stunningly Uninterested In Diller And Malone's Opinion Of Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/09/i-am-stunningly-uninterested-in-diller-and-malones-opinion-of-twitter/

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but what I got from this was: "I like Twitter. I think all these guys are dinosaurs because they don't like Twitter. Old stuff is boring and worthless because it's not new."

How about some facts? Some quotes? Some references?

At least it's funny, albeit unintentionally: I find it ironic that he complained about how Diller and Malone "have no clue what Twitter is even about", virtually on the heels of saying "music he listened to growing up (probably played on a banjo or something)".

</comment><comment><USER3> I have yet to find "normal" people exchanging non-worthless information on Twitter.

As near as I can tell, the situation can be summed up thusly: People that publish or broadcast are rightly smitten with Twitter since it fits well with the model of one-to-many information exchange.

What that results in, however, is an inaccurate representation of the usefulness of it by the media. I get to hear all day from bloggers and broadcasters how miraculous Twitter is (and for them it is), yet every time I attempt to avail myself of it I'm utterly disappointed with the signal to noise ratio.

At best, Twitter is a mechanism for press releases with a 140 character limit. At worst, it's a stuck open valve from which people dribble their mental diarrhea.</comment>


The sneaker phone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2010/08/026592.htm

<comment><USER2> It only looks like a sneaker. Darn. Still can't call Agent 99 on a shoe phone.</comment>


Zero-Shot Translation with Multilingual Neural Machine Translation System - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2016/11/zero-shot-translation-with-googles.html <comment><USER2> If people are interested in the underlying architecture of Google's Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) system, I wrote an article that builds it up piece by piece. While it's intended for people who are likely to implement GNMT or similar architectures, the article is descriptive enough that it should be possible to follow along even if you're not well versed in deep learning.

[http://smerity.com/articles/2016/google_nmt_arch.html](http://smerity.com/articles/2016/google_nmt_arch.html)

The GNMT architecture is used almost as is for the zero-shot MT experiments. We're likely to see the GNMT architecture used extensively by Google for a variety of projects as they spent a deal of time and effort ensuring it is scalable to quite large datasets. Training a neural machine translation system with a single language pair is difficult - training it with multiple, especially all using the same set of weights, is insanely challenging!

As an example, the GNMT architecture was used as the basis of "Generating Long and Diverse Responses with Neural Conversation Models", which trains on the entirety of Reddit (1.7 billion messages) as well as other various datasets.

[https://openreview.net/forum?id=HJDdiT9gl](https://openreview.net/forum?id=HJDdiT9gl)

<comment><USER3> Can you explain the odd looking connections to the decoder that appear in V2 and onwards? It's not entirely obvious to me from the description how the attention is applied.

In the first part of the decoder rollout, the diagram connects the (concatenated?) output of the encoder into the middle(?) of the first output of the decoder rollout. In what sense?

For the second rollout of the decoder the diagram shows 3 arrows going into the LSTM cell, what is that (left-facing) arrow on the right side doing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of Searle's Chinese Room Argument[0]: imagine you have a particularly dreary job where you sit in a room filled with boxes of symbols written on paper. Every now and again someone comes in and hands you some new symbols. You look through your rulebook and, depending on what it says, hand them some symbols back. It turns out that these rules actually implement a conversational program in Chinese. And if you can implement those rules and not understand Chinese, why would you think a computer program, implementing its own rules, could understand anything?

The common "Systems Reply" response to this is that you're looking at the wrong layer of abstraction. The computer hardware (or the person in the room) doesn't understand Chinese, the computer plus the rules plus the data _forms a system that understands Chinese_. Searle's answer to this is that, well, what if you memorised the rules and the database? You might know all the rules, you might be able to follow them, but you wouldn't understand Chinese.

What I think is fascinating about this is that it's vulnerable to Bayesian Judo[1]: if you have a strong belief that computers aren't capable of true understanding because of the Chinese Room Argument, then building an actual Chinese Room-style computer and having it show understanding should be a fairly strong blow to that belief.

Now, it's easy to quibble about what true understanding actually means, but one version (used by Searle's answer) is this: "[..] he would not know the meaning of the Chinese word for hamburger. He still cannot get semantics from syntax." But this news is exactly that! A computer translation of the same semantic concept from one syntax to another _without ever having been taught the rules connecting them_. In other words, this is semantics from syntax implemented by nothing but a computer, a database, and a set of rules.

So, by the reverse Chinese Room Argument, I would say this system exhibits a kind of understanding. Not a very sophisticated kind, mind you, but something that should still spook you if you believe computers are categorically incapable of thinking like us.

[0] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese- room/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/) [1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/i5/bayesian_judo/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/i5/bayesian_judo/)

<comment><USER5> _" But this news is exactly that! A computer translation of the same semantic concept from one syntax to another without ever having been taught the rules connecting them."_

By that standard, statistical translation approaches were "understanding" a long time ago. The new thing here isn't that systems aren't being taught "the rules" (that wasn't happening in statistical MT either), the new thing is that there's a different kind of classifier in the "middle" now, which is representing a hidden state. This classifier is more flexible in a lot of ways, but also more of a black box, and takes a _lot_ more effort to train without overfitting. It's cool that you can translate between language pairs that have never been explicitly trained, but let's not overstate the meaning of it.

The blog post makes this rather breathless speculation:

 _" Within a single group, we see a sentence with the same meaning but from three different languages. This means the network must be encoding something about the semantics of the sentence rather than simply memorizing phrase-to- phrase translations. We interpret this as a sign of existence of an interlingua in the network."_

This is...a fun story, but not much else. First off, you can make dimensionality reduction plots that "show" a lot of things. Even ignoring that issue, in translations of short sentences involving specific concepts (i.e. the example about the stratosphere), is it really surprising that you'd find clusters? The words in that sentence are probably unique enough that they'd form a distinct cluster in mappings from _any_ translation system.

Folks get caught up in the "neural" part of neural networks, and assume that some magical quasi-human thought is happening. If the tech were called "highly parameterized reconfigurable weighted networks of logistic classifiers", there'd be less loopy speculation.

<comment><USER4> Don't worry, I'm not being bamboozled by the word "neural". My argument that there is a definition of understanding that you can derive from a well-known thought experiment that looks like it is met by this implementation of "highly parameterized reconfigurable weighted networks of logistic classifiers".

I don't see any particular difference between training a classifier and teaching rules; the rules are just encoded in the parameters of the classifier. If it helps, you can just replace "taught" with "trained on" and "rules" with "data", but there's no version of the Chinese Room Argument where you're sitting in a room with boxes full of unsupervised learning datasets and a book of sigmoid functions.

Perhaps this system works similarly to previous ones, but not having been taught (trained on) any rules (data) about the specific language pairs in question seems to be a strong argument for some kind of semantic representation of language. You might have seen that before, but I haven't and the article seems to imply that it's new. Again, I'm talking specifically about the similarity between this result and an example of something "machines can't do".

The point is that the non-magical argument goes both ways. If a brain is just a complicated and meaty computer, then we should expect sophisticated enough programs on powerful enough hardware to start displaying things we might recognise as intelligent. That's not going to look particularly impressive – our machine translator isn't going to develop a conscience or try to unionise – but it might do something that qualifies for some definition of understanding.

<comment><USER5> But you _are_ getting into magical thinking, in that there is no reasonable definition of "understanding" that this system meets. It cannot reason or make deductions. It can't re-write sentences to use completely different words/structures but imply the same meaning. In fact, there is literally no "conceptual" representation here -- there is a vector of numbers that gets passed between encoder and decoder, but it is no more a form of intelligence than the "hidden" state that is maintained by an HMM.

 _" not having been taught (trained on) any rules (data) about the specific language pairs in question seems to be a strong argument for some kind of semantic representation of language."_

Well, yeah, there's a representation of language. But it isn't "semantic" \-- it's vector of language-independent parameters for a decoder, which can then output symbols in a second language. Could you theoretically imagine some huge magical network of logistic classifiers that uses this as the first of a (far larger) processing machine that enables something like human intelligence? Maybe. But this is not it. This is bigger, far more complicated/flexible version of a machine that is purpose-built to map between sequences of text.

(That said, I really don't want to go down the rabbit hole of "what is AGI, anyway?", which is about as productive/interesting as hitting the bong and wondering if maybe _we all live in a computer simulation after all_. I'm merely observing that this is _not_ an intelligent machine.)

<comment><USER4> > It cannot reason or make deductions. It can't re-write sentences to use > completely different words/structures but imply the same meaning.

I agree that it doesn't meet these definitions of understanding. I'm arguing that it meets the definition of "semantics from syntax".

> Well, yeah, there's a representation of language. But it isn't "semantic" > \-- it's vector of parameters for a decoder, which then output symbols in a > second language.

What is it that makes a vector of parameters not semantic? Would it be semantic if they were stored in a different format? If I tell you I have a system in which the concept of being hungry is stored as the number 5, would you say "that's not a concept, that's a number"? If that vector of parameters represents being hungry in any language, what is it if not a semantic representation of hunger?

There's no need to imagine a huge magical network that implements a grandiose vision of intelligence. We're talking about a small, non-magical network that implements a very modest vision of intelligence. Bacteria are still alive even though they're a lot less complex than we are. What would you expect the single-celled equivalent of intelligence to look like? Something with a very minor capacity for inference? Something with rudimentary abstraction across different representations of the same underlying idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating. Maybe the next step will be to extract the tokenized interlingua language that's emerged in the neural network and map it to real words, and blam, we reinvent Esperanto!

<comment><USER7> It would probably not look anything like Esperanto, which is a charliefoxtrot of pidgin Spanish with some Turkish orthography thrown in.

In all seriousness, however, different languages often have radically different concepts encoded into them. For example, in English sentences you might be forced to explicitly give subjects to the actors in your sentences, assign genders to your pronouns, and choose whether actions take place in the present or future, whether they are ongoing in general or happening at this moment, etc. In Japanese you might be forced to choose how to express your relationship with the person you are speaking to, the person you are speaking about, and decide whether a causal relationship is "if and only if" or just plain "if then".

There's long been a hypothesis about whether there is some kind of "universal grammar" (Chomsky) but modern linguists do not really entertain that idea.

<comment><USER8> I think that's the fundamental problem with translating; different languages have different information encoded in a sentence.

For instance, as you've said, Japanese encodes the relation to whom you're speaking. Even French does this (to a lesser extent), with "tu"/"vous" depending on how familiar the person you're speaking to is.

<comment><USER9> And as the parent commenter points out, not only do they have different information encoded, but they may _require_ different information to be expressed so that it's not permissible to simply omit information that the source language omitted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro- drop_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language)

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

<comment><USER10> But there absolutely must be a common denominator. A Japanese sentence might encode the metric "relationship to subject" which an English sentence will encode as "NULL".

<comment><USER11> The issue is if you're translating from a language that doesn't explicitly encode that information into a language that requires it; you need some way of filling in the blanks. This is all well and great when that information can be inferred from the explicit context provided; the real problem is that with translation there are a non-trivial number of cases that require the translator to consider the pragmatic context of what's being translated to figure out a correct/good translation (e.g. who's speaking/writing, who are they addressing, what is the overall societal context of content, what might be the purpose of the content, etc.). For a lot of these problems it's entirely reasonable to get a computer to fill in the blanks for 90%+ of cases, but the last few percent of cases require AI that is equivalent to that of a human.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice piece of work and counts as "implementing Star Trek in the present". Now I just need a nice pair of noise cancelling over the ear headphones that let me hear english spoken no matter where I am :-)

<comment><USER13> Stick a fish in your ear. Might get lucky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty impressive, but even more amazingly their paper is in a single-column format that I can actually read on my computer, instead of pretending that I am reading printed and bound conference proceedings. Truly a giant leap for the field.

</comment><comment><USER15> >> We call this "zero-shot" translation, shown by the yellow dotted lines in the animation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this type of transfer learning has worked in Machine Translation.

I think it was last year when a friend was telling me how Google translates the Greek word for "swallow" (the bird) to French. Back then, the translation was the French word for "to swallow" (the verb). The bird and the action don't even sound remotely alike in Greek and neither are they spelled alike (the bird is "χελιδόνι" the action is "καταπίνω"; google trans. will at least give their correct pronounciation). My friend figured Google can't find enough examples between the two languages, so it goes via English ... were the two words are homonyms.

I think that was last year, and certainly before September.

So I gave it a try again today, and this is still what I get:

      Greek                 French
      χελιδόνι		avaler
      chelidóni

If you omit the accent on the "o" you don't even get the mistranslation- you get only the phonetic transcription of the Greek word in latin characters.

Obviously the important thing here is not the one word that google translate gets wrong, but the fact that it doesn't really look like this "new" system is all that new, or that it does anything all that different from the previous one, or indeed that it improves things at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> Google, and also Microsoft btw, absolutely need to be called out on this. They keep claiming that their translation systems work well, because they have reasonably good results between some language pairs, like English/French or English/Spanish, that are a) close linguistically b) have a lot of examples of translated documents and, more importantly, c) have many speakers who might use Google translate.

For languages where none of the above holds, however, the results continue to be completely ridiculous, no matter what "new" technique Google (or MS) advertises. Since those languages are not spoken by as many people as English or Spanish etc, however, it's very hard for the user to figure out how attrociously bad their automatic translations are.

Here's an example from my native Greek; this is a bit of news text from yesterday [1]:

 _Λανθασμένη χαρακτηρίζει ο Κύπριος κυβερνητικός εκπρόσωπος, Νίκος Χριστοδουλίδης, την προσέγγιση, να μπαίνουν στο «ίδιο καλάθι» η Ελλάδα με την Τουρκία σε σχέση με το κυπριακό._

And here's Google's translation:

 _Incorrect characterizes Cypriot government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides, the approach to be put in "one basket" by Greece and Turkey in relation to Cyprus._

So, the Cypriot government spokesman (well done) is put in a basket by Greece and Turkey (wait wut). Hey, maybe the guy wanted to be put in _two_ baskets? [2]

That's very typical of the way Google translates between Greek and English. For Google, it's Neural Networks leading us to a bright future where language barriers are eliminated thanks to Scienz! For Greeks, it's comedy gold.

And it's the same for Russians, Polish, Finns, Swedes, Indians, Chinese, Hungarians...

Still, Google keeps including those languages in the count of languages it "covers", because it's good advertisement and who can really dispute them anyway?

_____________________

[1] [http://www.kathimerini.gr/884845/article/epikairothta/politi...](http://www.kathimerini.gr/884845/article/epikairothta/politikh/xristodoylidhs- gia-kypriako-den-yphr3e-akraia-8esh-apo-thn-a8hna)

[2] What's being said is more like: "The Cypriot government spokesman said that it's a mistake to treat Greece and Turkey in the same manner with regards to Cyprus".

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how much memory this translation via an intermediate representation of a sentence takes. It seems like representing the semantic meaning of a sentence in a language-independent way would take a huge amount of data.

<comment><USER17> E.g. Japanese is 50MB to download for offline usage in Google Translate's iPhone app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The mentioned Japanese->English->Korean combination is one of the worst possible things to do. Both Korean and Japanese are very different from English, while similar to each other to some extent. Direct translation from one to the other would actually have much better results than translating back to Korean the (likely broken) English you get from Japanese.

Edit: I do realize they're not talking about successive translations, but that's essentially how the training ends up happening, isn't it?

A better example, IMHO, would have been three very different languages, like English, Japanese and Russian.

<comment><USER19> It is not translating from Japanese>English>korean it learned how to translate Japanese<>English Korean<>English now it knows how to translate Japanese<>Korean. In laymen terms it understands Korean and Japanese so can translate between them without needing examples of Japanese<>Korean translations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This post seems to over-exaggerate a commonly known mathematical property.

Suppose I have languages X, Y, and Z. My machine currently knows how to translate between X->Y and X->Z. The goal is to turn Y into Z without direct training. The process would be to translate Y into X and X into Z.. effectively Y->Z.

This isn't really transfer learning as much as it is logical induction...Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER21> Presumably what you're missing is the fact that this is translating from Y->Z in a single step, rather than doing two separate translations.

<comment><USER22> They're certainly not doing English to Portuguese by way of Spanish or anything like that.

However, you could almost read the paper as "We can translate something from a natural language into a high-dimensional representation, then turn that high- dimensional representation back into (another, possibly different) natural language. "

<comment><USER23> It seems similar to automatically captioning images.

<comment><USER22> Very much so!

The two tasks are surprisingly interchangable. I once worked on a project where we used a statistical MT approach to "translate" between image features and captions--and I don't think we were the only ones trying such things.

In a pleasing bit of symmetry, the attentional network used here looks like it was initially developed for image captioning.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


George Lucas Can't Give a $1.5B Museum Away - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-03/george-lucas-can-t-give-his-1-5-billion-museum-away <comment><USER2> Even a really rich dude can't expect to get the single best public site in a large metropolitan area to build a monument to himself. I don't think the goofy tasteless art collection referenced in TFA is even a consideration; Lucas will die eventually and then they can start hanging decent art. If he had picked a smaller city, or a major university, or a less valuable site in the cities he's targeted, the project would have been started already. Instead, he has chosen rare open coastal land in the busiest most valuable neighborhoods of top-tier cities. If he had gotten either of the first two sites, the nation would soon have been covered with similarly pointless museums bearing the names of our silliest billionaires. Thank goodness, those who made these decisions have both taste and integrity.

<comment><USER3> > Even a really rich dude can't expect to get the single best public site in a > large metropolitan area to build a monument to himself.

If he is willing to pay an extremely high annual property tax on the unimproved value of the land he would be excluding others from using, and let the city seize and auction off the land in the event of non-payment, then I don't see why not.

The issue is that he is probably not willing to do that, and is probably trying to get the land without paying property tax. From the article:

> On October 2015 the city and the Lucas museum signed a 99-year lease in > exchange for $10.

<comment><USER2> Good for you, for proposing a compromise, but even that seems open to abuse. After all the government could just _sell_ the land. If it's too sensitively located to sell, any lease, even an initially expensive one like that you propose, should come with strict requirements for land use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like part of the problem is that he insists that the museum be located some of most highly prized real estate in the entire world. Of course it would be hard to get it built on Crissy Field! Duh. Why not Columbus Circle NYC or Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysee? Kind of stupid to even ask.

I think it would be a great museum for undeveloped land in Tacoma or Oakland, though.

<comment><USER5> It wasn't going to take over any new space in Crissy Field, it was proposed to take the spot of Sports Basement in the Presidio. I'd much rather have a museum than a discount sports store in that location. Instead, in true NIMBY fashion, we discuss how ugly the planned architecture was.

<comment><USER6> As a former SF resident who could never afford to live there now, in no small part due to the onerous constraints the city puts on housing development, and who generally believes that you should be able to build anything you want with minimal red tape as long as it falls within reasonable zoning restrictions, I don't think the opposition to the Lucas Museum is a good example of NIMBYism.

We aren't talking about any old plot of land here. This is land that is held in trust for the public. It certainly didn't help that the proposed design for the museum was steeped in the kind of faux nostalgia one would expect of Lucas. The first time I saw the design I thought I was looking at a new Westfield mall development in San Jose.

In HS I ran cross country and we would sometimes meet up at that location for our Presidio runs. You can count me among those that would rather have a discount sports store at that location rather than a permanent monument to an out of touch billionaire's ego.

<comment><USER5> Biases based on personal experiences are one of the core tenets of NIBMYism. It's not about what's better for you, it's what's better for the community at large. I could care less about George Lucas and his art. With that said, culturally and economically a Star Wars Museum will have undeniable wide- reaching impacts on this city. Sports Basement will never have that impact. Nor will a museum change the fact that the Presidio and Crissy Field will remain a hub for fitness activities.

<comment><USER6> I completely agree and I included the comment about preferring a discount sports store over this particular museum as a personal anecdote, not as a reason to oppose development. The city certainly shouldn't base its decision on the proposal to suit my particular desires, particularly as I no longer live there. And to clarify, I would actually love to visit a museum devoted to American Illustrators.

Again, I'm also very much against much of the building review process I see on display in SF, especially as it relates to things like architectural review. Even historic preservation, while well meaning, is often misused in SF to block development. Part of the reason that SF is so expensive to build in is a result of the permitting process where neighbors can lodge complaints to hold up development even in cases were the proposed building falls completely within the normal zoning guidelines. With very few exceptions I completely disagree with architectural/design based aesthetic building reviews and generally view most zoning rules as a way to exclude poor people from certain neighborhoods, or increasingly, entire cities.

However, in the case of a museum being situated on exceedingly rare open public space, I can make an exception to my dislike of architectural review. This is public land being gifted here, I think the citizens of the city have a right to have their opinion heard on whether or not the proposed building's design conforms to their desire for the site. SF has no shortage of good examples of crazy NIMBYs but I still don't feel like this is a good example of NIMBYism when the development is situated on public lands that are specifically held in trust for the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did I misunderstand, or was the argument in Chicago about _replacing a parking lot_? I mean, I see how it would change the lake's shoreline to have a big building there, but it would be replacing a _parking lot_ —pretty much the least valuable use of prime real estate short of warehouses or an industrial park. A bleak expanse full of cars is at least as much an eyesore as a blob of modern architecture. (And the renderings of the museum in the article actually look quite elegant in my eyes, but I'm not hostile to modern architecture in the first place...)

More generally, we really waste _a ton_ of great real estate on open-air parking lots, even in really expensive markets like SF. Multistory car parks are one thing, but there are single-story lots all over the place, like within a block of SF's piers. The fact that that's economical is either an indictment of local zoning ordinances or our unhealthy overdependence on cars. Or both!

Anyhow, Treasure Island actually sounds like a wonderful location for the museum—and the neighborhood itself would benefit too. I rather hope that works out, and I'll probably visit it if it does, even though I'm not a particular fan of that strain of artwork.

<comment><USER8> It's the opportunity cost. That parking lot is going to go--the question is what's the best use of that (now) prime land? An ewok museum is not it.

Far be it for me to tell someone what to do with his money, but I was just in Pittsburgh visiting the city's fantastic museums bankrolled by Carnegie money. Carnegie didn't build a museum in service of his own ego, he left something that could become a central part of the city's experience.

<comment><USER9> It's not an "ewok museum." I'll refrain from what I would normally append to that sentence given HN guidelines. You may not care much for American Illustrators but many do.

<comment><USER10> 500K items from the Prequels? With that many Jar Jar mannequins, there won't be any room for ewoks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny, Denver recently created a whole museum for the Clyfford Still collection. The work was given to any city who would put up the funds for the museum itself. This seems like a better deal (I'm not a fan of Clyfford Still, so I'm less than enthusiastic over the museum)

You could start it off as a touring exhibit, like they're doing for the Star Wars costumes (currently at the Denver Art Museum). This also worked for the controversial Bible Museum, which is is now (privately) in D.C.

One of the problems of this idea may be, what do you do about new exhibits?

Maybe all those comic books are just... junk and don't need a permanent place to be displayed in an expensive city. Maybe things like the Rockwell paintings can go to the Rockwell Museum that already exists. Or at least the majority of the collection can be easily digitized, and available to all via The Internet Archive. How about $1.5 billion to TIA, as well as all these "artifacts"

How about, sell off all the originals, and give the money to charity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why can't he just buy some land and put it there?? Why does it _have_ to be some public open space, of which we have little left in SF anyways??

Edited: For example, why not buy one (or two) of these piers, and put a giant Enterprise-shaped museum there? [https://goo.gl/maps/FVWFuPvgi292](https://goo.gl/maps/FVWFuPvgi292)

<comment><USER13> It's not the land, it's the planning permission. It's not like you can do anything you want on your own piece of land in a city. Cities also want amenities that bring tourism and set aside lands for projects like this.

<comment><USER12> The holdup here (as well in Chicago and LA, from what I've read) has always been his desire to get free land. If he had the land, I don't think it'd be difficult for him to get permission to put up his mausoleum, I mean, museum.

<comment><USER13> Maybe, but have you ever sat in on contentious planning meetings? IT's a great way to undermine any lingering faith in democracy you had :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish we legally purchase a copy of the original theatrical release of episodes 4-6.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Trilogy-VHS-1992-3-Tape- Se...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Trilogy-VHS-1992-3-Tape-Set- Unaltered-Original-Theatrical- Trilogy-/222367520350?hash=item33c623165e:g:r88AAOSw44BYbTf6)

<comment><USER16> Ahh, the glorious FOX SET.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> «"It's an epic act of generosity and altruism," says Don Bacigalupi, the museum effort's president. "George Lucas, as with any person of great resources and great success, could choose to do whatever he wants to do with his resources, and he has chosen to give an extraordinary gift to the people of a city and the world."»

There's an attitude here that's a bit... off-putting.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hear a lot of people claiming this is the "best public site in a large metro area," "highly prized real estate in the entire world."

This is what the museum would replace: [https://email@example.com,-122.4592349,3a,75y,...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.4592349,3a,75y,180.86h,80.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sOloEZqIfkByrN_- zrtJriw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DOloEZqIfkByrN_- zrtJriw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D100.82111%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)

The view that might be obscured: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.4587395,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-122.4587395,3a,75y,329.06h,83.35t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1s0-_RgHQOMV9ewn2KFui2NQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i46)

<comment><USER19> This slide show has its proposed design and the other ones

[http://sf.curbed.com/2013/9/18/10196782/final-design- proposa...](http://sf.curbed.com/2013/9/18/10196782/final-design-proposals- revealed-for-presidio-commissary-site)

Lucas' building was trading a generic store for a generic building that looked more at home housing sleezy mortgage brokers than to be a world-class museum.

<comment><USER18> That's really your personal opinion. I'm honestly not going to solicit artistic opinion on Hacker News. He hired a world class architect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those in the London area, there is a Star Wars exhibition which features 200 original costumes, props, models, and pieces of artwork from Lucasfilm Archives.

[http://www.starwarsidentities.com/](http://www.starwarsidentities.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> One of the big pieces missing here is a picture of what the original design for the Lucas Museum was. Articles elsewhere [1] show just how generic the original plan was. His half-assed mission revival idea snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by being strikingly bland.

[1] [http://sf.curbed.com/2016/10/27/13440012/lucas-museum- render...](http://sf.curbed.com/2016/10/27/13440012/lucas-museum-renderings- la-treasure-island)

<comment><USER21> The original building looks by far the best to me. The others look silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is so annoying to me. I love Maxfield Parrish's work, as well as other American illustrators, and this would be a great addition to any city. Perhaps I'm biased but I just have a lot of trouble understanding the objections that have derailed a couple of the past proposals.

<comment><USER22> From the outside it looks like a superb deal, but issues are in the details. Most notably, the Museum is being proposed on PUBLIC land and thus the conflict in meeting the requirements.

As quoted in the article from Presidio Trust board member:

"If it's your land, you can do pretty much what you want," Bechtle says. "But with public land, there is just a higher level of scrutiny."

The trust developed design guidelines for the site. The building could be no higher than 45 feet; as for looks, the trust didn't want a building that replicated an old-fashioned architectural style...

...in short Lucas proposal didn't meet the guidelines and he didn't want to compromise.

Personally, I think the museum is a fantastic deal and any city would be blessed with the gift -- still hoping SF & Lucas find a mutual agreement (one of which not be exclusive to Lucas items/curation).

<comment><USER9> That's fair enough. On the other hand, I never really understood the objections in Chicago.

Yes, Lucas wants to create a monument. Building it in the middle of nowhere where no one will visit doesn't serve that purpose, but then it doesn't really serve the public interest either. I do hope that some reasonable accommodation can be arrived at in a location that will give many people access to the art.

<comment><USER23> If it's worth visiting, people will go even if it is in the middle of nowhere. Lots of places in the middle of nowhere off highways get visitors--think of outlet malls and theme parks. If it's filled with Star Wars stuff, those fans will trek out to see it. Lucas's issue is that he wants to build a monument to himself in a prominent place. This isn't about making his art available. It's about him building an edifice to glorify himself.

Some folks have to do great things to get monuments built (Lincoln). Others donate money and let others have a say in what edifice gets built (Smithson, Carnegie, Mellon). Still others build their own edifices but buy the land on the open market (Trump, the Sears Tower). Lucas wants to build his own edifice on prominent public land, all while retaining complete control for himself. That's his problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If I had billions and wanted to leave a legacy, I'd establish a nature preserve or fund a space telescope. Making a building for my comic book collection seems pretty low on the list.

<comment><USER2> Good ideas! Still, they're sort of medium-term, aren't they? Thing big! It seems like Elon Musk is making the smartest long-term investments in eternal monuments to himself.

<comment><USER24> Elon Musk has a shot at being one of the greatest men in history.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you, although I guess I'm just asking to get whacked by the jealous haters' downvote brigade too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "As a popular artist, I hit the same chord with people that Rockwell hit, > that Michelangelo hit, that the people who painted on caves in France hit,"

That would be a more compelling argument if he could hit that chord reliably. Instead the original Star Wars trilogy looks like a fluke of good luck when put in the context of his other work. Others are much more successful carrying on his universe than he is.

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong Why not break it into parts and build them in thematically appropriate locations? You could have a little one in Nevada (Tattooine) and another in Antarctica (Hoth) and Florida (Dagobah). I think this would be more appropriate and more well received.

</comment><comment><USER26> The problem starts and ends with Lucas's attitude. Until that changes, nothing is going to happen.

<comment><USER27> There's attitude enough on all sides here, that's pretty clear to me as a disinterested outsider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can we please cancel the plans for the new stadium (in SF) and just build the museum there?

</comment><comment><USER29> Why doesn't he just build it at his ranch?

</comment><comment><USER30> Star Wars lost Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay to Annie Hall by Woody Allen. Given how significant Star Wars was to our culture, I think it was a mistake on the part of the Academy.

<comment><USER4> In retrospect, sure, but Annie Hall is a really really important movie as well.

<comment><USER31> Also a _better_ movie. The Academy Awards aren't a measure of cultural impact.

<comment><USER30> The basis of this opinion is ... italics?

<comment><USER31> Which opinion are you challenging, that the Oscars should be a metric of cultural impact, or that Annie Hall is better than Star Wars?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My other favorite George Lucas property development anecdote is that when Marin County refused to allow him to expand the Skywalker Ranch, he threatened to deploy weaponized "low-income" (80% of median) housing against his uber progressive neighbors.

Truly, real estate brings out the worst in man.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/04/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/04/17/george-lucas-wants-to-build-affordable-housing-on-his-land- because-weve-got-enough-millionaires/?utm_term=.8557ea4c7894)

<comment><USER33> > Income requirements could be set so eligible residents had to make less than > 80 percent of the area's median income, the paper reported. The median > household income for Marin County is $90,839

> "We got letters saying, 'You guys are going to get what you deserve. You're > going to bring drug dealers, all this crime and lowlife in here,'"

This, along with the labeling of people living in a household making [$90k*80% = $72k] as "low income," makes it incredibly difficult for me to read this with a straight face.

<comment><USER34> > [$90k _80% = $72k] as "low income," makes it incredibly difficult for me to > read this with a straight face.

A _household* making $72k in Marin County could very easily spend half their income or more on rent (depending on the size of the household and the dwelling they need) and likely would be living paycheck to paycheck. That's life for many in the Bay Area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Here's a free dinner! It consists of deep fried beef, topped with fresh crab, and nuts.

That is certainly quite unique, but can we have some substitutions? Quite a few people are vegetarian, and have nut or seafood allergies.

Ingrates!</comment>


2016 United States of Technology Map - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rezscore.com/2016-us-of-tech-90265ca62af0 <comment><USER2> Did not know anybody uses Lotus notes in 2016</comment>


Silicon Valley executives hire philosophers to teach them to question everything - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/956682/philosopher-andrew-taggart-is-helping-silicon-valley-executives-define-success/ <comment><USER2> You can't outsource the silencing of inner dialouge. This is a case study in missing the point. But good on them for trying, and good on anyone for hiring a philosopher.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You can't outsource the silencing of inner dialouge.

You may be right. I linked it because the status of philosophy is quite different here than in [http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html) .</comment></comment>


Create your own mobile app - <AUTHOR> http://yapp.us

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch! You've got a decent website but I didn't have a very good first impression. Allow me to share what I went through to see if you can make some improvements? After finally getting a chance to figure out just what the heck this is, I can say I had a terribly frustrating experience.

1) Cool, a mobile app creator. Let's take a look and see what this one has to offer.

2) Interesting, let's look at the tour. Oh, it's Vimeo. Crap, the video won't load. Any other way to see? Nope, guess not. Oh well, lets refresh a few times. Nope, still can't load. Silly Vimeo. Oh well, I'll ctrl+click and load it in another tab while I click around.

3) Get started. Hrmm, these themes seem to all be pretty similar. Oh well, let's see. Wait, what? Oh, I can just add invitations and event information? Wait, I thought this was a mobile app creator? Let's go back to the homepage and see what I missed. Oh wait: there is no link back to the homepage from the creator. Not a single one. Help? Nope, goes to Zendesk. About? Nope, goes to blog. How about the top left? That always goes to the home page, right? Nope.

4) Guess I'll see if the video will load. Oh, the video finally decided to start. OHHHH, it's made for events. "Introducing Yapp Events" and it's completely clear from the video that it's totally about events. Surely the homepage said this and I just missed it? Nope, the word "event" appears in a not so legible image (not actual text) along with "And many other events, gatherings, and groups..."

So, allow me to comment on my problems.

1) This creates event apps for mobile devices. It is a far cry from a generalized "mobile app creator." In my opinion, "Mobile App Creator for Events" is not only more accurate but more interesting as it's solving a particular problem and not just claiming to be another "app creator."

2) Provide some kind of tour that isn't video, please. I want to be able to go through a tour without having to rely on Vimeo (which works sometimes, but often doesn't). Can't I just read through a simple set of images and instructions to browse how this thing works?

3) Providing a dead end for me to be able to get back to the homepage is pretty bad. I got into it and because it wasn't clear this wasn't an event app creator, I got lost and couldn't find my way back home.

4) Why does your introduction video so clearly say that this is to help make apps _for events_ but your homepage appears to advertise it as a generalized app creation tool? If you are relying on the gist or the important part of your application to be described in a video that may or may not be loaded, then you're not conveying your intentions clearly enough.

I hope I didn't come across as too negative. I like the idea and the service, but just wanted to share what I went through in case others may have gotten lost along the way as well.

<comment><USER3> Good information and generally an awesome review ha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a developer on Yapp.

Thought some might be interested in the tech stack:

The Editor and Dashboard are built with Ember.js, which we love.

Rails on the backend, with Postgres and Redis.

We get a little help from Pusher, Transloadit and URL2PNG. The Android and iOS apps are PhoneGap with an Ember app inside.

Feel free to ask questions about our experience with any of the above.

Happy to share.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for offering.

If you're building an app maker and not just an event app creator, I might assume you're shipping JS code and storing in the db or something along those lines. My question is, how much of your code is bundled with the app in the store and how much of it is fetched and eval'd at install/run time?

<comment><USER4> Currently all our executable code is bundled. We only transmit meta-data, content data and media.

<comment><USER5> Does it make sense, given your architecture and business plans, to move in the direction of shipping/eval'ing the js for each type of app? I ask because we have considered doing this and would like to know any pros/cons that you're aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- <http://mashable.com/2012/11/13/yapp-public-launch/>

\- [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/video/yapp-app-making- app-1...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/video/yapp-app-making-app-17701520)

\- [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/let-the-app-creation-era- be...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/let-the-app-creation-era-begin-yapp- events-app-builder-launches-out-of-beta/)

\- [http://allthingsd.com/20121113/yapp-launches-roll-your- own-m...](http://allthingsd.com/20121113/yapp-launches-roll-your-own-mobile- app-maker/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems fairly limited in what you can add. I personally like Andromo since it offers so many 'activities' but I guess this one could be fine for simple event apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> wouldn't have this been better if it was a web app? Then you could service most smartphones, and not require people to get a host app from the store.

<comment><USER4> Although this may change in the future, our current goal is a uniform experience for our users, this includes some features not available to many or all mobile browsers, such as push notifications, photo upload, and an all around quality experience.</comment></comment>


The Curious Complexity of Being Turned On - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=111 <comment><USER2> The title made me think that this was going to be an article about human attraction. I was disappointed.

<comment><USER3> It wasn't???

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm confused. Really confused.

This is why you design the thing, _before_ internal operation. He's working in the wrong mental design language, thinking in terms of how the thing works, rather than how the user interacts.

Is this why so many enterprise apps are f'ed up?

<comment><USER3> Yes.

 _That_ is the difference between e.g. Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft keeps adding features so that it _can do_ what a user wants. Apple designs the unit so that it _does what the user wants._

<comment><USER5> _Apple designs the unit so that it does what the user wants._

At least most of them, and the rest should go meditate on how to become better users ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> s/mood ring/Comcast DVR/g; The UI when interactive viewing overlaps with scheduled recording has always seemed very bad to me...

</comment><comment><USER7> Sadly his server seems to be turned off.</comment>


iOS first and username claiming - <AUTHOR> http://dangoldin.com/2015/03/29/ios-first-and-username-claiming/

<comment><USER2> This is what a I commented here on the subject 3 days ago [0]:

 _Looks like a lovely app, but I wonder why did they attempt to pollute the identity space with yet another username?! Let me give you an example of how this can work against them, which is applicable to other startups. Let 's say, you're an early adopter and you got a nice Twitter username. Unfortunately, you're in the Android camp (me!). So, a new service comes up and some guy gets lucky enough to "steal" your username. You will then feel alienated from that service, because it doesn't solidify your identity. Same happened with Vine in the past. What's weird as these come out of a company that has invested so much into building a new identity as @username and now they are undermining their investment! Same happened with Facebook. They launched Slingshot, which invented yet another identity nomenclature. Not that I care about Slingshot, but if I did, it would unconsciously boycott it. I'm not talking about me personally (yeah, right!), but I'm just trying to think about possible scenarios. A smart and not so hard to accomplish thing even for the mobile first crowd would be to at least allow account creation on the web. How hard could that be? This way early adopters will blame themselves, not the service, for not being so "early" in the game. These are just some psychological aspects I wanted to share._

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9273261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9273261)</comment>


3D printer for $5000 shipping in 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.desktopfactory.com/our_product/

<comment><USER2> 5K is a bit much for an individual.

But a great business idea would a small shop, that owns one of these and sells its use. You send them your plans, come in the next day and pick up the part.

It would be like a neighborhood factory, that manufactures anything you want.

<comment><USER3> It can build a 5x5x5 inch cube, but at 1$/cubic inch it would cost you ~125$ to do so. Depending on size and tolerances I think it would be an excellent way to prototype things like mice, but it's still far from cheep to use.

<comment><USER4> Of course, most designs are smaller than a cube and hollow objects are much cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its not quite "The Diamond Age", but I still think it is really cool, especially from a hobbyist perspective. Just think about all the stuff you've wanted to build, but could not because it would have required both access to a a workshop and the skills to use the machines there properly.

<comment><USER5> Well for someone wanting to prototype something, it might be a lot cheaper to buy one of these than buy the equipment needed to create a prototype out of wood.

I mean the fact that it can make a cylinder is great. I mean the only good thing about prototyping with wood is that a wood lathe is relatively cheap due to them existing for centuries.

Buying a small wood lathe and chisels would be relatively cheaper than this 3D printer, but it would take a lot more skill and talent to create some of the models you can see on the shapeways site.

I would like to know what temperature some of the 3D modelling materials melt at as it would make it easy to use for casting of metal models. I mean if the stuff melts at 100 degrees, you could just build the cast and melt the plastic out just like using wax. If this was possible, it's just easy to imagine the uses for turning a good prototype into a final product. It's like if you design a good model, just build the cast pour in the metal and there's something to sell. Like if you get this on a large scale imagine what could be done for a cast-iron furniture business. Instead of hours spent sculpting a model and then building a cast off it, you make a design and reuse it repeatedly. For the convenience of printing out the model it would save a lot of time and to say I saw a simple (very simple) cast-iron gate selling for around $1500, you'd be able to absorb the $200 for making a new model every time.

<comment><USER6> The Selective Laser Sintering "rapid" prototyping process can be used with casting wax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love the idea the CEO said about manufacturers allowing people to download files to print out objects to repair broken ones. No more waiting for a part to ship!

</comment><comment><USER8> This completely shifts the way 3d printers and the industry works. The price for most of these START at 18k, but really cost 50k. There's been a lot of advancements in this area, including the open sourcing of schematics and software for the technology.

Problem with this company... its vaporware. They've been talking things up and "launching" for quite a while. I hope they do launch though, and soon, because it will be a winner.

<comment><USER9> Now that you mention it, the picture of the printer looks like a rendered mockup.

Still, choosing to reveal a product only when it's finished can be a really good idea, depending on company and product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I saw one of thee in action. They material is, I think, a metallic powder and a plastic powder. It produces a somewhat gritty model, using a vastly different process than either the inkjet/glue/powder models, the extruded type, or the laser sintering.

The more the merrier, I think.

</comment><comment><USER11> Think $5K is too much? Just wait until you get a dozen services to print what you want for cheap. Fab is overrated and underrated at the same time. We're not going to make our own robots anytime soon, but we are going to get a meteoric rise in expressiveness of physical identity.

<comment><USER12> A good comparison is photo printing. Even Walmart now carries the expensive Fuji machines that only the top online printers were using.

We'll see the same with Fab -- there will be personal models that work ok. Things will take off though when you can run to Walmart and get things done on a better 3D printer they can afford.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oooooooh.

This is about as useful to me as a second nose, but for some reason I really would like to have one. I guess because it represents the next huge step in computers -- home manufacturing. Once that takes off in 30-40 years life will never be the same.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of our new iOS app? Promo codes inside - <AUTHOR>

We've made a new app called Reminders with Friends that uses Gamecenter multiplayer instead of our server to send and receive time and GPS triggered reminders.  I really like this community and wanted to get some feedback. We do recognize there are some UI changes we can do to streamline the app, but any feedback would be great.
App Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reminders-with-friends/id486230629?mt=8
Website Link: www.slyceapps.com/reminders
Promo Codes (If you take a promo code, please leave a comment):
MPNE93EYN9T4
3WEALE4HR7H9
FK7WXRT74JLW
N37WJFPE46EY
FXYXJERAM6TE
99WXPKPRRRW7
XKFJA939MY4X <comment><USER2> I used the second code. Its a great idea. Wonder why you use GameCenter for a productivity app?

1\. The subject and content input fields is wide apart 2\. Status bar can change to suit the dark theme of app 3\. No edit option for reminder 4\. The big arrow on main list is redundant, should just allow enter reminder detail with any tap on the reminder

<comment><AUTHOR> We used Gamecenter because me and my partner didn't really have the expertise of setting up the server side that would be required for an app like this, so we decided to let Apple take care of that for us. We also didn't want people to have to make new usernames and passwords and have to find their friends again in a new service.

Thanks for those, I will keep all of this advice when we are ready to submit the next update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used the first code.

I agree that the UI needs to be more streamlined. The "Add Reminder" screen is iffy to use. Other than that, great idea for an app!

</comment><comment><USER4> How does one use the promo codes?

<comment><USER2> On iTunes, look for Redeem under your account.</comment></comment>


PhotoMath available in Android - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/27/photomath-brings-its-awesome-math-equation-solving-app-to-android/

<comment><USER2> What took so long? Rajesh, Leonard and Howard had it done in 2011 already :-)</comment>


AlchemyVision API: Automatically extract and tag images - <AUTHOR> http://www.alchemyapi.com/products/demo/alchemyvision/

<comment><USER2> This works pretty well. Tagasauris has been around for a while and do something similar (but a bit more).

Great work though. I threw a bunch of my photos and it did a good job tagging with people, bike, beach, etc.

I've been wanting to integrate an automatic tagging system into Trovebox. That's how I know the Tagasauris team. One day....</comment>


The Tamagotchi Effect - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi_effect <comment><USER2> To me there is a big difference to feel emotions for a Tamagotchi which is a toy designed to seem like it has emotions itself (just as fiction characters, dolls) and stuff like roombas, car keys (?), dishwashers...</comment>


Why WhatsApp is not secure – while Textsecure may be - <AUTHOR> http://pep-project.org/2014-11/s1416375314 <comment><USER2> > This is just plain wrong. I'm questioning that, because WhatsApp has to add > a back-door for sure. And Doctorow knows that. This is because of Section > 215 US Patriot Act – at least there is a legal back door, which can be > (ab)used by US governmental agencies at any time.

Care to elaborate on that? Because I don't think there's any law right now, not even CALEA, that _demands_ a backdoor in a chat application. That's not to say Whatasapp won't _willingly_ add such a backdoor, but I don't think anything legal forces them to do it. FBI has been lobbying for the past few years to pass such as a law, though, which is for now unsuccessful, fortunately.

I'd say wait a year or so after Whatsapp enables this and for iOS, too. If we won't hear anything from the US, Saudi, Indian or Chinese governments about how angry they are at Whatsapp's new encryption, then we should start to become very suspicious about that encryption. Because this should make them _at least_ as angry as full disk encryption made FBI. Heck, the Saudi gov was even pissed off at Whatsapp's HTTPS encryption.

</comment><comment><USER3> "After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund"

</comment><comment><USER4> From Wikipedia:

 _" FISA was modified by section 215 (Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to allow the Director of the FBI (or an official designated by the Director, so long as that official's rank is no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) to apply for an order to produce materials that assist in an investigation undertaken to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. The act specifically gives an example to clarify what it means by "tangible things": it includes "books, records, papers, documents, and other items"._

So yes, they have to provide access to the records they have, which is a big reason why end-to-end crypto is rolled out in the first place. If the records don't contain any decryption keys, the _content_ of messages is safe. All other metadata (sender, receiver, timestamp, message size) is not, since it's needed for delivery.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unless they open-source it, I do not consider WhatsApp secure. However, I still applaud them for integrating encryption. It is one step further in transforming our society such that everybody expects encryption to be easily available and on by default. It raises the standard in the eyes of the people even if this particular app is not really secure.

</comment><comment><USER6> This does nothing to prove WhatsApp is insecure, in as much as I could write the same rambling article citing sources claiming WhatsApp IS secure.

I'm not sure if this article was posted for us to have a chuckle at, or as a serious thing.

<comment><USER7> I think what he is saying is that if Whatsapp wants us to truly believe it is secure then it needs to publish it's source code.

Nothing proprietary can be considered truly secure because the government can just force its way into it.

At least that's what I think he's saying.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects? - <AUTHOR> A continuation of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13660086 which has been incredibly useful in learning a new language or technology.
I recently finished a book called Progressive Web Apps with React which took the reader through building a PWA chat application using firebase with push notifications and such.
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/progressive-web-apps-react
Also, this one for Vue:
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/vuejs-2-web-development-projects
I just finished the first chapter which has you build a markdown editor with Vue. <comment><USER2> Retro Game Dev: C64 Edition[1] build two games (shooter/platformer) in 6502 Assembly Language for a Commodore 64 emulator. Some other similar books are Making 8-bit Arcade Games in C[2] and Making Games for the Atari 2600[3].

\- [1] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692980652/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692980652/)

\- [2] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545484759/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545484759/)

\- [3] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541021304/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541021304/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In this book, The Road to learn React [0], you will learn the fundamentals of React while building a larger application with sorting, caching and searching an API.

\- [0] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn- react](https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn-react)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're interested in learning Vue I can offer both my own course and book as recommendations.

The course demos three substantial Vue.js projects:

[https://www.udemy.com/vuejs-2-essentials/](https://www.udemy.com/vuejs-2-essentials/)

The book is about full-stack Vue & Laravel and includes one large project, an Airbnb clone:

[https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/full- stack-...](https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/full-stack- vuejs-2-and-laravel-5)

</comment><comment><USER5> Big Nerd Ranch for iOS app development. [https://www.bignerdranch.com/books/ios- programming/?gclid](https://www.bignerdranch.com/books/ios-programming/?gclid)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.amazon.com/Black-Video-Game-Console- Design/dp/06...](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Video-Game-Console- Design/dp/0672328208)</comment>


Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you - <AUTHOR> https://firedrop.ai/ <comment><USER2> This is exactly like The Grid, even down to their landing page marketing. The grid was such an obvious fuck-up I wrote an article about it several months ago [0]. I have never seen such a difference between hype ("AI Will design your web page - Never hire an engineer again!") and reality ("Everything looks like shit and takes forever, get your refund fast before we go broke").

[0] [https://medium.com/@seibelj/the-grid-over-promise-under- deli...](https://medium.com/@seibelj/the-grid-over-promise-under-deliver-and- the-lies-told-by-ai-startups-40aa98415d8e#.4p5ehfv5d)

<comment><USER3> I thought it _was_ The Grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey guys, Marc from Firedrop here. I completely understand the negative comments here about The Grid. I was super excited when The Grid came out and paid up the $90 like a lot of people, only to be hugely disappointed when I actually used it. They're pioneers in this space and they've done a lot of really interesting and cool work... but they've misunderstood their users hugely and made too many assumptions about them regarding design decisions. We're taking a different approach where our platform listens and learns more closely from the users rather than whatever broad abstract data set they're using. It'll lead to less "out there" designs that people will be happy with.

<comment><USER5> Kudos for going for it!

What, in particular, would you say you're doing better than The Grid? Which design assumptions are you not doing, and how is your approach different in terms of learning and listening to the users?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the kudos! Hopefully we can deliver where The Grid couldn't. We actually paid close attention to what they did and think we've learned a few things.

The main difference is that we are spending more time learning what the user likes first before offering design options. Options being a key word here, because The Grid doesn't really have much of a feedback system and even their latest V2 alpha resorts largely to guesswork, whereas our system will give you choices and ask questions like "Do you like this?" at the appropriate points.

The experience we're going for is the one you get from working with a human web designer: at first it's a two-way discovery process and then, over time, the web designer gets to know and understand you and therefore becomes better at nailing what you want straight away. Simultaneously, the platform will learn from anonymised behaviours from its other users, mixed with analytics monitoring, to discover recommendations that it can pass on to you as a user. For example, imagine you're a restaurant owner and you have a button that links to your booking engine which is labelled "Reserve a table". Our platform learns, from other restaurant sites on the network, that "Book a table" has a higher conversion rate, so it can pass that recommendation automatically on to your site. That kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Designing websites with the help of AI methods is hard. thegrid.io is competing in this space, and I'm not impressed with what they have achieved so far. Initially they stated that they would launch some time in the spring last year. It's been over a year now, and they still haven't given all the beta users access. Yesterday, The Grid featured a website [0] created with their tool. That website takes around 25 seconds to load, even with my speedy internet connection. Also, I wasn't impressed by the menu, which was merely a hamburger button. I think they need to focus more on UX and faster loading times and less on fancy image processing and color matching algorithms. I wish Firedrop luck going forward, and hope that they learn from The Grid's mistakes.

[0] [http://curlqueen.salon/](http://curlqueen.salon/)

<comment><USER7> Wow. That page loads 41 MB.

<comment><USER8> Including one 18.9Mb gif and no less than 6 jpgs clocking between 1.9 and 5.9 Mb. Looks like counter-optimization at this stage.

<comment><USER9> At least you can assume that all of your images will always be full- resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So [https://thegrid.io/](https://thegrid.io/) ? Without the big names behind it?

I gave "The Grid" a spin myself but haven't really used or updated my site due to lack of time. I browsed the directories of other peoples' sites [0] manually and only 1-2 were "alright" with most of them being rather bad. I'd be disappointed if my expectations for it weren't near rock bottom to begin with.

Due to it being A.I-based the only thing I can really say is "It's been tried before. Best of luck on doing it better."

[0] [https://github.com/the-domains](https://github.com/the-domains)

<comment><USER11> I don't see any reason to believe that just because the idea failed in implementation once that it will forever. In all likelihood, if we try at the problem long enough someone will eventually figure out algorithms that work fairly well.

Perhaps "AI design" competitions or benchmarks would help this line of work. But people trying multiple times can only be a good thing, even if the early attempts are not great.

<comment><USER10> _> Due to it being A.I-based the only thing I can really say is "It's been tried before. Best of luck on doing it better."_

I'm sincere in saying that. But unless you somehow draw up some marketing hype - it becomes increasingly unlikely to receive funding for an idea that's failed in the past unless you have some tangible evidence about how you're avoiding running into the same problems.

If (/when) they have an actual product we'll see if they managed to do it better. But there have already been enough failed attempts (TheGrid wasn't the first or only one since) to not be hyped because "AI codes my site".

So with nothing else to go off of other than "This is attempt #x by some new people (or person)" I can't say I'm excited or have high expectations. I'd be lying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The logo is really, really close to that of Lightspeed, [https://www.lightspeedhq.com/](https://www.lightspeedhq.com/)

<comment><USER13> Lightspeed was probably in the training set ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really not seeing how you can just take content from a client and algorithmically design a website that will make them happy. It's hard enough doing it manually with lots of feedback and iterations. This sounds well beyond what current AI can deal with from first impressions but I'm willing to be convinced.

<comment><USER4> It's a case of sensible compromise and balance between offering suggestions, taking feedback in frictionless ways, and learning. I've learned from running digital agencies over the years that a lot of the processes that you go through in a web project can be distilled down to heuristic choices and that's what we started with. The rest us refinement through machine learning techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this works, I think the technology is exactly what's needed for the tool to become incredibly popular... but the marketing is slightly off.

The message is that the AI will do _all_ the work for you, make _all_ of the choices for you. But people like to design things! Not the precise work of arranging layouts, colors palettes, images, etc., probably, maybe not building things from scratch when they don't know the tricks needed to achieve that intangible feeling of professionalism - and certainly not the coding that most people have no idea how to do. But being involved at the last step, things like being given a choice of layouts and asked to render an aesthetic judgement on which is best, which needs no training* - in my experience, most people love that. It gives a sense of control, personalization, accomplishment. And on the flipside, the feeling that one has _no_ control can be quite negative and frustrating.

But in many cases, choice is something an AI designer can offer as an _advantage_ over traditional methods. After all, if you don't want to shell out the money for a professional custom design, you're typically stuck copying other people's templates with at most minor changes. In theory, an AI can let you make more meaningful permutations to the design to make it feel more personalized. Heck, I think even just the perception that a design is "from scratch" rather than "copied from someone else" would be valuable, even if your "AI" is dumb enough that in reality it amounts to the same thing.

If you do want to shell out the money, well, I don't expect a site builder to be able to compete with the results of that - but it's worth noting that you can spend as much time as you want nitpicking an AI design without worrying about wasting the designer's time.

I can't really tell from the video how many actual customization options the tool will have, but I think it should have as many as possible - all optional, of course, and probably most trivial - and be marketed like "anyone can design a website in a few clicks", _not_ "we'll do it all for you".

*well, experience is probably required to actually pick the best one, but if all the choices are good then it doesn't matter much :)

<comment><USER4> That's actually spot on. I ran digital agencies for the past few years and it was always important that the client had some kind of input to the process, regardless of how good the design concept was. It's a simple pyschological need for a person to feel some kind of ownership and connection with their site, which is where I really feel The Grid has gone wrong because their designs are so far off what people want or are used to.

We're updating the site in the coming days to demonstrate better how we involve the user, and presenting different layouts is actually one of the ways in which we do it. Firedrop is more of an A.I. web designer than a tool: you interact with it in a much more engaging and human way.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I think "collaborating with an AI designer" would be a compelling way to explain it! It's helping you design your site the way you want, not doing it for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Same idea as the horrific trainwreck known as The Grid.

<comment><USER18> I've heard about The Grid and paid attention for a little while with some excitement, however lost track of them.

What do you mean by a "horrific trainwreck"? What happened... nothing?

<comment><USER17> See (the links in) this thread: [https://www.designernews.co/stories/65265-the-first- gridio-s...](https://www.designernews.co/stories/65265-the-first-gridio-sites- have-surfaced-and-theyre-kinda-terrible)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The grid" all over again? I still feel robbed of my $90...

<comment><USER20> Explain

<comment><USER21> The grid.io was an AI version of something like squarespace. The premise was you wrote the content and uploaded the images, and it would select the best design for you.

Unfortunately, it didn't work well in practice. This was only discovered a year after tens of thousands of people signed up, when it was finally released.

Big impact for the announcement video. Small impact for the release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks Without seeing any example work on the page it's difficult to tell what's going on, but maybe they're going to

(1) Raise a bunch of VC money

(2) Farm out website design to Fiverr/Bangladesh at cost

(3) Raise some more VC money

...

(?) Maybe plop some stuff into a RNN model and see what comes out

</comment><comment><USER22> It's Unbounce with a gimmick. Is the gimmick a 10x innovation? Unlikely, since it seems likely the designer would have to go in and do their own edits anyway.

</comment><comment><USER23> The GIF on their site makes it seem barely more impressive than using a basic 'make this in half an hour in a hackathon' template. But the bit about continuous improvement is interesting:

"Our learning algorithms monitor your visitors' behaviour, perform automatic A/B testing and make continuous incremental improvements to your site in order to improve conversion rates and help your website to grow."

Consider me skeptical.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Continuous improvement through machine learning seems like fodder for a really fun 4/8chan thread

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious about the relevant economics here.

A fully automated system for designing websites could make it easier to design good-looking websites without hiring a designer.

If your system works perfectly, that allows someone who wants a website to save: (1) the transaction cost of hiring a designer, and (2) the cost of the designer's labor (wages). Additionally this person has to "pay" the cost of learning to use the automated system.

Which of factors (1) or (2) is larger? I imagine it's probably (1) -- the hassle of hiring and managing a designer is large relative to the actual cost of labor. Does that sound right?

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish there was something less fancy, less automated, less AI, but that just displayed content we dumped into it in a more-or-less sane way.

Write anything, upload files, anything, and all will be there in the website somewhere.

<comment><USER26> Probably not quite what you have in mind, but I use Camlistore like that ... though not for a public site.

<comment><USER25> I've tried Camlistore in the past, just because of that ideal I have in mind (if I remember well).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> TheGrid's cool contribution has been GSS - "grid CSS" \- where the style sheet is resolved using a constraint solver.

From there to claiming "AI" is probably the mistaken view of the original AI wave.

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh god. Not again.

</comment><comment><USER28> It almost feels like this piece would be a far more compelling product by itself:

 _" Our learning algorithms monitor your visitors' behaviour, perform automatic A/B testing and make continuous incremental improvements to your site in order to improve conversion rates and help your website to grow."_

I'm fairly "meh" on the main concept of an AI-designed website (though good luck!), but the piece I highlighted above? I'd be way more interested in that, personally.

</comment><comment><USER29> So much negativity in here. I personally think that A.I. website builders are the future. I haven't used Firedrop, and can't tell too much from the landing page, but anyone exploring the space is worth following I think.

</comment><comment><USER30> @marc_firedrop Mind if you can share what your training set is?

<comment><USER4> I can't share the set itself but can tell you a portion of it was made up of scans of open-source website template that we've hand picked based on popularity and quality and then labelled using Crowd Flower. The minimum we are looking to achieve is websites that can compete with anything you might find on Themeforest or Wordpress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Is it just me, or do all websites look the same?" This site looks so different that it must have been built by an AI:)

</comment><comment><USER32> a while back, I interviewed at a company that wanted to use ML (tesorflow was mentioned in passing) to create something similar (they were trying to create Shopify + this).

I was extremely interested in the project, but sadly I was told that my skills didn't align to their new pivoting vision.

</comment><comment><USER33> Meh

<comment><USER34> Yup

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yay

(Wait, is enthusiasm for people trying something new bad here? If so, "Meh".)

<comment><USER21> Don't try to copy whatever you think the accepted response on HN is. Make your own opinions and stick with them.

<comment><USER35> It was a (failed) joke in reference to a flurry of initial negative/content- free responses. I was trying to be gentle about it, but I'd have done better by being as straightforward as your response. As an HN n00b, I appreciate the feedback.

From a designoper POV, the idea is sound (visual and information design isn't magick) and I wish them all the luck in the world. A good solution will fill a real need.

The comments about "The Grid" are irrelevant, except as (surely known) lessons to the Firedrop creators. Anyone with industry experience understands that attempts will fail, until they don't.</comment></comment></comment>


Exposing the BART crime reports they have chosen to stop publishing - <AUTHOR> https://www.bartcrimes.com <comment><AUTHOR> Source: [https://github.com/ben174/bart-crime](https://github.com/ben174/bart- crime)

BART has their crime reports in an email list which you must be approved for. I started this project to automatically scrape, normalize, and publish those emails to a public location.</comment>


5 Reasons Your Awesome Content Isn't Going Viral  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.limk.com/2014/06/17/5-reasons-awesome-content-isnt-going-viral/

<comment><USER2> The post is a good example for itself :)</comment>


U.S. eases restrictions on cyber-security sales to Russian spy agency - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/02/us-eases-some-economic-sanctions-against-russia/97399136/ <comment><USER2> I feel like CNBC did it particularly well [1].

> "Our understanding is that this is not the start of sanctions easing," said > Ian Bremmer, a widely respected political scientist and president of > consulting firm Eurasia Group.

> "It's a rule change clearing up a problem with the sanctions regime that > prevented U.S. exporters of non-sanctioned electronic devices from complying > with both U.S. and Russian law. The problem was identified by the Obama > administration, and this appears to be the response to address it."

> Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Russia hawk who has called for more sanctions > on Moscow, told NBC News that Thursday's move looks like "largely a > technical fix."

The sanctions brought against Russia for the proxy war in Ukraine and secondarily the sanctions for information war between the two countries specifically target particular people (individual officials enumerated by the Department of Treasury, under so called "smart sanctions") and particular sectors of the Russian economy (military moderization and acquisition sectors as well as parts of Russia's Defense Industrial Base).

The restrictions eased on software transfers were not a lifting of sanctions in any meaningful way. Unfortunately the way these headlines are being written is causing a public panic.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/us-treasury-eases-some- sancti...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/us-treasury-eases-some-sanctions- against-russian-intelligence-service.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite how crazy it sounds, KGB is now effectivly in control of the executive branch of the US government.

<comment><USER4> Please, refrain from trolling/speculating on HN to keep it useful. There are dedicated websites and communities for political discussions and related stuff.

It is sad how people have no respect for others when they preach their political emotions all over the Internet.

<comment><USER3> thank you for this comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a trial balloon. Like the silence regarding shelling of a town in Ukraine. Belligerence re China is the other side of this coin. A betrayal of Europe.</comment>


Lies, Damn Lies and Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://blog.timparkinson.net/2011/09/30/lies-damn-lies-and-photoshop/

<comment><USER2> _I do however find it supremely ironic that a group who is supposedly protesting about corruption and lies would produce such a blatant piece of propaganda. Especially one so readily falsifiable._

The first comment is pointing out that he doesn't actually know if it's from the organizers. The author concedes that, but it doesn't seem to have stopped him from associating it with them.

Do we now hold groups responsible for images that 50 of their supporters have shared on Facebook?

<comment><USER3> well, the organizers didn't come out and say it was false, now did they.

<comment><USER3> It's a valid thought. it's popular enough so you know they've seen it, yet they haven't denied it or stopped spreading the propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I live a few blocks away. I just walked past the park where the protesters are camped out. There are (and have been over the past few days) a small group of activists there. A lot of them seem to be playing "reporter" in front of their friends' very expensive video setups. I've seen more cops than protesters over the past week, to be honest. Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but this movement just turns me off. I wish it were otherwise, but the impotence of that crowd is depressing. Also, they were packed into the local McDonalds, presumably for the WiFi and corporate cow meat. Ugh.

<comment><USER5> Impotence? What do you want? _Thousands_ of people to occupy wall street for weeks? Violence? Business like advertising?

It's a real bummer that you can be so demoralized by what people 'seem' to be doing.

I'm glad you can vent on the internet though.

<comment><USER4> Well, since you asked: I want fewer people sleeping in parks and playing in drum circles and pretending to be reporters, and more people working inside the system to right its course.

<comment><USER6> there are plenty of people "working inside the system". that has proven ineffective.

<comment><USER4> At one time we had a government that set limits on bank consolidation, cared about capitalization, kept investment banking apart from retail, etc.

All of that broke down when the banks/insurance companies preemptively broke Glass-Steagall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At the least, the people out there trying to #occupywallstreet are doing something to try to limit the power of the unelected, unaccountable, unchecked financial elites whose wealth puts them above the law and whose infinite appetite ensures they will never be satisfied until they have sold the last bit of land, eaten the last wild animal and hold the rest of humanity on a short leash of material necessity.

To make things, products and services that people want and choose to buy of their own free will is an honorable path. The people out there on the street are not against those who choose that path; they are against those who want to set up one set of laws for the rich and powerful and another far harsher one for the rest of us.

Whether this picture is a product of regrettable enthusiasm, or is a deliberate fraud aimed to discredit is beside the point. The fact that the space has been opened to have a conversation about the nature of power in our society at this time is the important fact worthy of note.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Website is getting overloaded from look of it. Here is the google cache link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fIfQpD6...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fIfQpD62vz8J:blog.timparkinson.net/2011/09/30/lies- damn-lies-and-photoshop/+timparkinson.net&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER8> Huh. A cynical protester, or a cynical person wanting to undermine the credibility of the protesters? Either way, sad that someone put so much effort into a fabrication.

Edit: I guess Hacker News says "no".

<comment><USER9> reminds me of the BS chain emails my mum and her friends are constantly forwarding each other.

i would personally put it down to a primitive form of karma whoring.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems odd that this story would get flagged or moderated off the homepage so quickly. The technology issues it raises about manipulation of social media are more interesting than the politics of OWS itself.

</comment><comment><USER10> That pic may be ridiculous but so is the claim that there are only 100 protesters. The police have _arrested_ eight times that alone.

And since when is some guy's blog "The Media"?

</comment><comment><USER11> Was walking by there this weekend, only a couple hundred protesters occupying the area? A lot of tourists taking pictures, checking it out. Also a lot of police standing by.

</comment><comment><USER12> According to some sources, NYPD estimated the protestors in around 5,000:

[http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/09/30/huge- crowd-5000-...](http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/09/30/huge- crowd-5000-occupywallstreet-protests-wave-union-support-arrives-73461/)

<comment><USER13> Do you not see the irony of linking to some blog with the same Photoshopped image that this post is talking about?

<comment><USER12> Does the irony invalidate the estimate of 5.000 protesters?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does the original photo from Google Maps show the actual protesting crowd? Google Maps says the photo is copyright 2011.

How often does Google Maps refresh its satellite photos? Someday they will be live, which is both cool and scary..

</comment><comment><USER15> BLOOMBERG: The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. really? There's more than one bubble.

</comment><comment><USER16> I work in Wall Street, and funny thing is I haven't seen a sign of 1 protestor. Maybe I'm in a very small radius, but still, it's very overwhelming. They need someone like Lady Gaga if they want more traction. They should probably consult with one of the guys from Mint.com for marketing ideas

<comment><USER17> I bet if Rage Against The Machine turned up for an impromptu show the protest would explode in size.

<comment><USER14> Rage Against The Machine (and Michael Moore) stormed the NYSE to film a music video on Wall Street in 2000:

[http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1433553/rage-shoots- video-w...](http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1433553/rage-shoots-video-with- moore.jhtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Usually a protest is an organized group of people opposing something for the purpose of a resolution.

These people have not outlined nor have a resolution. They are just against capitalism (?). Though as noted in a comment above, they all pack into their local McDonalds for free wifi and pay to eat there, yet in doing so they are further fueling what they oppose. Seems odd to me!

Can anyone here make sense of this movement?

<comment><USER6> ah, the "let them eat cake" argument.

throughout history, there have been far less purposeful protests whose outcome has been far less "silly".</comment></comment>


Show HN: SureDone - <AUTHOR>

Three years ago I started building something because there wasn't a product on the market that did what I wanted it to do. And what was on the market that may have kept a frown off my face was so expensive or complicated that only computer savvy people would comprehend what it even does.
Today I give you SureDone - a free website builder available at www.suredone.com - it syncs with eBay, allows you to upload hundreds of images in bulk, and lets you ship multiple orders with Fedex, UPS, and more. It does products, pages, categories, and then some.
And this is just the beginning...
Tell me what you think!
I may not be able to respond right away as I packed my things, hit the road and left from a desolate  startup desert to move to a startup mecca.
See you in New York, Thanks! <comment><USER2> I don't know if your product is viable or not but your landing page will turn people off. Sorry.

It's hard to be a developer and then do design, I get that. However there are resources to help us with layout, fonts and all that stuff. Have a search for twitter bootstrap, that will help.

Then remember you're selling a web app (even if it's free, you still have to sell it).

So you'll need at least.

1\. A great headline.

2\. Screenshots.

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> > it syncs with eBay, allows you to upload hundreds of images in bulk, and > lets you ship multiple orders with Fedex, UPS, and more.

It should say this on your website?</comment>


Russian hackers were caught in the act – and the results are devastating - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russian-hackers-were-caught-in-the-act--and-the-results-are-devastating/2018/10/05/5e72495a-c8b5-11e8-b1ed-1d2d65b86d0c_story.html <comment><USER2> After looking at this columnist's previous articles in starting to think she is trying to further a specific opinion rather than providing news.

<comment><USER3> Here is a related piece directly from the UK's National Cyber Security Centre:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157411)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't read washington post. Here's a different source:

[https://www.government.nl/government/members-of- cabinet/ank-...](https://www.government.nl/government/members-of-cabinet/ank- bijleveld/news/2018/10/04/netherlands-defence-intelligence-and-security- service-disrupts-russian-cyber-operation-targeting-opcw)

</comment><comment><USER5> The amount of ridiculous Russia menace posts in HN is just to much</comment>