M7.9 Earthquake in Nepal - <AUTHOR> http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20002926 <comment><USER2> This was a huge earthquake. Aftershocks are still continuing and have been said to continue for next 2 to 3 days although they will be in descending order. People are advised to stay alert and be out in open areas. People should also stockpile food, water, batteries. Also, please use your phone less (save charge for emergency), and unclog the network for people trying to reach their loved ones.

I'm from Nepal (not living there anymore but have tons of family and friend back at home). Hoping everyone is safe, and asking people to NOT PANIC in any situation.

Some resources: Google people finder - [https://google.org/personfinder/2015-nepal- earthquake](https://google.org/personfinder/2015-nepal-earthquake)

Helpline numbers in nepal: [http://i.imgur.com/e0mRxgz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/e0mRxgz.jpg)

Helpline number in India:

+91 11 2301 2113

+91 11 2301 4104

+91 11 2301 7905

<comment><USER3> Facebook has a nice feature safety check I just got notified about: [https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/nepalearthquake/](https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/nepalearthquake/)

<comment><USER4> It's a little bit annoying though. Friends and others living in random parts of the world are marking themselves safe. Not all of them are narcissistic, so I wonder if the feature is not very intuitive?

Not taking away how useful it is though. Even with all the noise it was reassuring to know friends in the tremor area (which included a large part of North India) were safe.

<comment><USER3> I haven't noticed much abuse. I lived in Nepal for a couple years and have a lot of friends still there. It was nice to see all of them marking themselves as safe versus the random display of facebook status updates saying they were ok. Dont know whose update I saw or didn't see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For immediate email notifications about earthquakes, here is the USGS link[1]. You can set up customized magnitude ranges for customized parts of the globe, it's a pretty neat little service. Rule of thumb for context is 7.0+ happen about once a month and 8.0+ happen about once a year... I have it email me about every 7+ on the globe, every 6+ in my country (US) and I think every 3+ within a decent range of my city. [1][https://sslearthquake.usgs.gov/ens/](https://sslearthquake.usgs.gov/ens/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is a reliable nonprofit if you want to give to Nepal. [http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/nepal-earthquake- relief...](http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/nepal-earthquake-relief-fund/)

Charity Navigator Rating [http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...](http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11648)

<comment><USER7> I created list of reliable organizations which are working on it and accepting donations [https://github.com/chhantyal/PrayForNepal](https://github.com/chhantyal/PrayForNepal)

<comment><USER8> Appreciated, but just to nitpick, you might want to spell it "pray", not "prey". With "prey" there is the association "a person or thing that is the victim of an enemy, a swindler, a disease, etc.; gull."

Which is a thing that always tends to come up at a time when lots of people are looking for ways to help.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Already fixed it - that was my incorrect spelling rather than not understanding the meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awful for people there.

I don't want to be rude about the 3rd world, but there are techniques for making structures that mitigate the effects of a quake. Of course there are impediments to implementing these things (economic, legal), but every time I hear about collapsed buildings and such I wonder how many people would have been saved. 7.9 is quite a lot though, and you'd expect deaths even in modern countries.

The other sad thing I've noticed is the death toll. No idea if this is actually true, but it feels like with 3rd world disasters, the estimate just keeps climbing every day. In the West it's often the other way (people don't come back to life, it's just that the initial estimates come down, for instance Sep 11 went from 50K to 3K).

<comment><USER10> I hate the body counts in disaster news coverage. Why do we spend so long speculating on whether it is 10,000 dead or 15,000 dead? It doesn't matter to the vast majority of viewers, yet we get constant updates and speculation. It's just morbid. Even to those who have loved ones affected, the count is irrelevant. It's like we feel compelled to measure the awfulness of each disaster in order to rank and compare them. Please stop! (And if you put 'there are fears that the death toll could rise' in a news report, you are both padding out your story and revelling in the death counts. Again, just stop.)

<comment><USER11> The count has some meaning for post disaster preparedness

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, but that count doesn't and won't be sourced from a 24 hour news channel, newspaper or shoddy news website.

Likewise, in the grand scheme of things, it is important to know the magnitude of the human cost of a disaster. But not anywhere near a minute-by-minute basis. ("We're hearing that the death count has risen to 12"... and so on).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> reddit live thread: [https://www.reddit.com/live/usqod2db8ogh](https://www.reddit.com/live/usqod2db8ogh)

<comment><USER13> Just now from the live thread:

> _A C-130 Hercules will be taking 10 NDRF (National Disaster Response force) > from India to Nepal. Each NDRF team consists of 45 personnel including > engineers, technicians, electricians, dog squads and medical /paramedics. > They have a proven track record of working in disaster areas._

Part of me is getting worried. If I'm reading this correctly, they're shipping _450_ people via single C-130. What happens if the plane breaks? India will be out of NDRFs?

<comment><USER14> The C-130 does not have the capacity to transport this many people in one flight, especially including the gear they will most likely be taking with them. There may be several C-130s involved in this operation. It's possible that one C-130 could get all these NRDF personnel there in one day with several flights. I would expect that the C-130(s) will be involved in flight operations over the next several days (or weeks) in support of this operation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to donate, here is list of reliable organizations who are working with victims of Nepal earthquake and accepting donations [https://github.com/chhantyal/PrayForNepal](https://github.com/chhantyal/PrayForNepal)

</comment><comment><USER15> CNN article: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/25/asia/nepal- earthquake-7-5-magn...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/25/asia/nepal- earthquake-7-5-magnitude/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems the quake caused some big earthquakes on Everest, reports are a little unclear now but it seems damage was done.

[https://twitter.com/danielmazur](https://twitter.com/danielmazur)

<comment><USER17> Some casualities have been reported around the Everest Base Camp Area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Please, please, please don't donate to an undirected organization where the money might not even go to Nepal, or the organization takes such large cuts.

<comment><USER19> well, it's not so dangerous, don't stop people to do it. Better to donate with chance 50% that this money will go to Nepal directly, than don't donate at all.

<comment><USER20> You assume that it's not dangerous even if it doesn't go to folks who would be helped. I disagree: the possibility of contributing to frauds is not harmless. There is also opportunity cost: if you've donated to someone who is incompetent, then you no longer have those resources to fund someone who can make better use of those funds.

Ideally, you want to focus on the folks who can make a difference. Just funding folks with good intentions isn't enough. As an example of a group that appears to want to help drug addicts, but is pretty dangerously incompetent at it, listen to the Prologue and Act One of the This American Life story "Not It": [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/554/n...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/554/not-it)

<comment><USER19> I don't assume, it's simply logic. If you donate you do have chance to help, if you don't - you don't. It's easy enough to find well-known foundation and give them money.

I also use Google One and my weekly donation there is around $20. It's really easy, don't invent reasons against doing it.

<comment><USER20> Sure! The point I'm trying to make is: pick good representatives. It's laudable to help the needy. Make sure the representatives you pick have the will and capability to do good with the resources you're sending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 728,000 living in area of 'violent' shaking, 5,368,000 in area of 'very strong' or higher (not 100% sure I'm reading it right).

[http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Nep...](http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Nepal_InitialSA_V1.pdf)

will be a miracle if not many thousands killed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Indian Ministry of External Affairs has opened a 24-hour control room to coordinate rescue operations in Nepal.

[https://twitter.com/meacontrolroom](https://twitter.com/meacontrolroom)

[https://twitter.com/MEAIndia](https://twitter.com/MEAIndia)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nepal Ham Radio Emergency Traffic is on 14.215khz & 14.205khz. You can listen on WebSDR. [http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/](http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/)

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2015-04-25_strong_earth...](http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2015-04-25_strong_earthquake_in_nepal_hot_activates)

</comment><comment><USER25> Terrible news. Kathmandu is only 40 mi away from the epicenter. That city is extremely dense (1mm+ population) with poor infrastructure. Hope the damage isn't too bad.

<comment><USER26> just as an aside, why do i keep seeing people use 'mm' to stand for million? Is it cultural/country based? i don't think it's a western trait to use 'mm' for million (more common is to just use 'm', or 'mil').

<comment><USER27> I do it sometimes (American here). I've always thought of it as M = 1,000 in roman numerals so MM = 1,000 x 1,000. I think I picked it up from a couple years in finance where it's more common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The aftershocks were felt in many parts of India. There have been casualties in Delhi.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's been felt all over India too.

</comment><comment><USER30> School let us off early after the earthquake in Assam. It was felt for a full minute.

</comment><comment><USER31> There's just something grim about that /favourite star/ icon used by USGS to indicate the quake's epicentre on the map.

<comment><USER32> "Favourite star" icon? Sorry but stars have been used as landmarks since forever.

<comment><USER33> To be fair, it's not terribly _common_ , especially to use a gold colored star. Usually a black star or a white star with a black outline is more common.

However you're right, it's not without precedent. Here's a very similar star being used by the US Government in one of their maps: [http://www.usgs.gov/state/images/maps/AK.jpg](http://www.usgs.gov/state/images/maps/AK.jpg)</comment></comment></comment>


16-year-old who solved Dirichlet Problem still active in mathematics at age 23 - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Viscardi

<comment><AUTHOR> Michael Viscardi's paper on the Dirichlet Problem (with his mentor as co- author) can be found here:

<http://www.heldermann-verlag.de/cmf/cmf05/cmf05027.pdf>

Here is some press coverage of Michael Viscardi:

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336018/ns/technology_and_scien...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336018/ns/technology_and_science- science/t/homeschooled-teen-wins-top-science-honor/)

<http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/PersonOfWeek/story?id=1391089>

[http://presskit.ditd.org/2006_Davidson_Fellows_Press_Kit/200...](http://presskit.ditd.org/2006_Davidson_Fellows_Press_Kit/2006_DF_Michael_Viscardi.pdf)

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200603/people.pdf>

(second and third pages of link above)

I had the privilege of meeting Michael Viscardi at a Davidson Institute for Talent Development event in 2007. He has an engaging curiosity. He said that he worked with his mentor by reading undergraduate books about mathematics and working through the problems until he got stuck. Then he would ask his mentor what else he should read to understand the part of the first book that puzzled him. He relentlessly moved forward in his understanding of mathematics, both through this process and through the American Mathematics Competitions

<http://amc.maa.org/>

programs, until he found the Dirichlet Problem and began working on that. Asked at the 2007 event what the applications of solving that problem are, he said that he (then) had no idea what the applications of the solution would be, but that he had heard from other researchers that there are important physics applications for the solution. When Viscardi entered Harvard University, before the usual age of college entrance, he didn't even take Harvard's legendary Math 55 course

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_55>

but went immediately into taking graduate-level courses in Harvard's mathematics department. It will be interesting to see his further development as a mathematician.</comment>


The Physical Web - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/physical-web <comment><USER2> " . . . a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car, and not have to download an app first in order to use it."

I can, and do, do that now. I don't need or use an app to interact with any of those things, and when I have been offered apps, they've been worse than useless. Seriously, worse than nothing, they've been annoying, harassing, clunky junk.

I just want to be able to approach any of these things and pull up all of the documentation regarding it. On my phone, tablet, laptop, etc. No "advertising tracking" nonsense. How to use it or fix it. If the owner wants to turn this feature off, they should be able to, but it should be on by default. If the owner thinks its a security loophole, he is both mistaken and lacking in security.

This includes stores. Why can I find a shelf stocker in Target and he can use his li'l belt computer to tell me where anything is in the store, down to the shelf, and how many they have, but I can't have access to that information before I enter the store? Big box stores were never so annoying until I got used to Amazon.

<comment><USER3> > I don't need or use an app to interact with any of those things, and when I > have been offered apps, they've been worse than useless.

A store clerk recently invited me to download their app, and when I showed her that it requested _every_ _single_ permission, she was still baffled as to why I would want to cancel the download.

> Why can I find a shelf stocker in Target and he can use his li'l belt > computer to tell me where anything is in the store, down to the shelf, and > how many they have, but I can't have access to that information before I > enter the store?

Home Depot's mobile app will tell you exactly where an item is on the shelf, including aisle, section, and level. They even have a map so you can find items that aren't on numbered aisles. It's fantastic.

<comment><USER4> Home Depot is terrible at actually tracking their inventory. There app is useless when it tells you where the item is, only to find out that they actually don't have any in stock despite what their tracking system says.

I order easily 20x as many items from Amazon, and never had an email saying "oops, we actually don't have any in stock".

<comment><USER5> And this is why the stores don't give out their actual inventory numbers to the public: because they can't accurately track those numbers. Things get stolen, lost in storage, and moved off their shelf to promotional displays.

<comment><USER6> And then people complain about how "useless" the app is. This is much less of a problem for Amazon where there aren't any thieving customers in the store.

<comment><USER7> It _is_ useless if the information provided isn't correct. In some cases, it's actually worse than useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Huh, this sounds like it could dovetail beautifully with FirefoxOS's attempt to blur the lines between "native apps" and web content.

It'd probably be pretty easy to have these things show up in an "Ambient" smart collection on the homescreen, or in the universal search pane...

Edit: Looks like you can get this running on an RFDuino ([https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documenta...](https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documentation/getting_started.md)), which are currently $20 at MicroCenter, and a USB shield is $25. Still 2 in stock in the Twin Cities, if anyone else is interested!

Edit 2: ...Though, it looks like FxOS doesn't currently support BLE ([https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Bluetooth#Unsupported_Bluetooth...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Bluetooth#Unsupported_Bluetooth_Profiles)), so this may not be the most useful path at the moment. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is a great interface. This is cast as a discovery system for public devices but I think it is equally well suited for remote control of private devices.

The writeup indicates the beacons run in broadcast mode. I think it would be good if there were also a discovery mode where the client could ping devices and they could respond. This would be good for a few use cases, including "private" devices like things in your home. These devices could be configured to only respond to certain clients.

For home devices, another feature that would be nice is if the device could use http-over-BLE to service the web request itself. The device would run a small web server and the web page on the client would be the user interface for the device. For home automation there are these complicated specifications for different device types, but HTML is the perfect interface to run any device.

</comment><comment><USER10> The company I work for (IoT Design Shop - [http://iotdesignshop.com/](http://iotdesignshop.com/)) is actually releasing beacons and software that does exactly this. We have a BLE beacon called Signul that couples with an app that allows you to do all kinds of hyper-local interactions.

Right now you can support our Indiegogo campaign ([https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/signul-the-world-s- first-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/signul-the-world-s-first- personal-beacon-system/x/4265882)) and get a Signul beacon. I have a prototype version and it's really quite good.

If the Indiegogo campaign hits $50k (it's currently sitting at $31k) we're going to release an SDK for Signul allowing anybody to write an app that interacts with the Signul beacon for either iOS or Android devices.

</comment><comment><USER11> I kinda hoped the devices would actually serve the apps themselves. I guess a URL makes more sense though. But I wonder if it will lead to physical devices that give 404s when they are obsoleted.

Anyway, this seems pretty exciting.

<comment><USER12> There's no reason it couldn't mean that anyway - if a device is open to the Internet then the URL it serves via Physical Web could easily be its own. But it allows for less-smart devices too.

The biggest problem I can see, as with all proximity devices, is spoofing. How do I know the item listed as "Bus Stop" is actually the bus stop, and not someone's malicious Raspberry Pi hidden in the bush next to it?

<comment><USER13> >How do I know the item listed as "Bus Stop" is actually the bus stop, and not someone's malicious Raspberry Pi hidden in the bush next to it?

The same way you know that top search results are accurate for a given word/phrase. As stated multiple times throughout the introduction[1] the solution for filtering out spam will probably have an implementation similar to internet search engines.

[1]: [https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documenta...](https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documentation/introduction.md)

<comment><USER14> How do I know the top 100 items listed as "Bus Stop" aren't someone's malicious raspberry pi hidden in the bushes, spitting out hundreds of URLs and varying the signal strength so they appear to be coming from different locations and...wait a minute. I think my phone just got DOS'ed.

<comment><USER15> The addition/counter to the Physical Web proposal I have been discussing with Google prevents these kinds of security issues in many locations/places: meet Geo-Origins --> [https://github.com/csuwildcat/geo- origins/blob/master/explai...](https://github.com/csuwildcat/geo- origins/blob/master/explainer.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this what QR codes on signs were supposed to do?

You don't need an "app" just to talk to some retail thing. Many retail apps are a dodge to get inside your phone and snoop around, acquire your contacts list, and track where you are.

<comment><USER17> Yep, this is just QR codes made better. It's similar to pet microchip implants too. The only app you need is one that knows how to listen for the signals and point you in the right direction when you choose to visit one.

<comment><USER18> How is this similar to pet microchip implants? If there were a way to robustly put a QR code on my pet instead of using a microchip, I would - you'd be able to identify easily that the pet is tagged, and the readout devices would be more widespread.

I also don't see _at all_ how this is better than a QR code on a physical object, other than that it's invisible - which is itself not great, since unless you allow these things to be intrusive and pop up something on your phone when you get too near to one (no thanks), there's no built-in call to action. You'd basically need a sticker on everything supporting this that says, "I support Physical Web!"... in which case you might as well have a QR code.

<comment><USER17> _How is this similar to pet microchip implants_

In that it's a thing that's hidden in an object that you can scan for that identifies it and gives information about it.

 _there 's no built-in call to action._

It's trivially and plainly better than a QR code on a physical object. Even if you did have to have a sticker on everything saying "I support Physical Web", the fact that I don't have to scan the sticker -- instead I can just click it in my phone -- makes it better. But I don't think you're using your imagination if you think you'd have to have a sticker on every single thing that broadcast itself. Let me use my imagination for a second.

When I enter a garage it would be nice to not have to look around for a QR sticker, reach my hand out of the car with my phone, and scan it. I would just know that when I enter a garage my top hit when I bring up the Physical Web (for lack of a better name) will almost certainly be the garage's interface to allow me to pay.

When I'm walking around a city it might be nice if I, casually browsing the Physical Web, could notice that someone near me is willing to sell bitcoins for cash-in-hand in a virtually untraceable transaction, without having to see and scan a QR code on that person's forehead.

It would be nice if I could set my phone to automatically tell me over headphones that the next bus is expected in N minutes whenever I walked up to a bus stop, all without requiring me to pull my phone out or take my gloves off in the middle of a Chicago winter.

You're just not thinking outside the box.

<comment><USER18> I don't know that it's _plainly_ better than a QR code, but your point is presumably well taken that if a broad area were saturated in ID signals that would be better than a single fixed QR code, _once the user knows that the physical web is supported_. I was thinking mainly of this in the context in which it was presented, which is being embedded in discrete objects like vending machines or the like, in which case the search space for a QR code is fairly small, and advertising that the physical web is supported could be replaced by existing technology.

I also don't see that it's "plainly better" to click on it through a phone. It depends on the different interfaces. How much do each of these things cost? If we're allowed to spend infinite money on any minor improvement, why not give everyone HUDs with high resolution cameras that can scan any QR code within line of sight? How much battery life are these scans taking? How much complexity do they add to the phone UI? What will the security issues be? I'm just not sold on the big benefits here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have been discussing this proposal with the folks at Google, and generated an additional proposal, Geo-Origins, to address some of the issues Physical Web introduces: [https://github.com/csuwildcat/geo- origins/blob/master/explai...](https://github.com/csuwildcat/geo- origins/blob/master/explainer.md)

Geo-Origins brings the trust model of the web to the physical world, and allows for more frictionless interactions in many locations.

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh, now iBeacons([https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/](https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/)) will make more sense. Let's implement iBeacons to vending machines and also to other machines, then use Pushmote([https://pushmote.com](https://pushmote.com)) to manage interactions from cloud and import Pushmote SDK into operating systems or Chrome natively. Sounds great. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I like the idea, but the first version seems quite limited. It is more of a GPS based webapp discovery tool. You click on the button, the app sends your GPS coordinate to the main server, which returns all useful webapps in the neighborhood.

I think that using NFC chips, which are extremely cheap, is very appropriate here. Use case: You point your phone to the vending machine/renting car and the respective webapp is shown automatically on your phone.

<comment><USER21> NFC is tough because you have to be within about an inch of it to get a reliable connection. For the use cases of a parking meter or vending machine it works, but for a bus stop or store it becomes yet another thing to stand in line for.

<comment><USER22> I haven't even had good luck with the parking meters in Seattle :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "The number of smart devices is going to explode (...)"

But why? Why are you/they so sure? Why do we assume that humans will just appropriate any kind of technology thrown at them?

I assume this comes from educated tech guys, who are thorough with their work, tools and respective usage. How can they be so lighthearted with the premises which relate to human usage of technology?

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure what you mean by "appropriating technology". The number of smart devices is going to explode because we want to automate all the things, and collect lots of data. It'd be great if I could ask my stove what food I've eaten this month, how healthy it was, how expensive it was, maybe even tell it to start preparing dinner at a certain time. The way to do that is to put a computer in everything.

<comment><USER23> > I'm not sure what you mean by "appropriating technology".

People accepting, wanting, using and integrating said technology in everyday life.

> The number of smart devices is going to explode because we want to automate > all the things

This is precisely what I'm questioning. "We want"? How can you know that? I believe you want that, I believe that maybe people in your circles do, too. Still, that is no evidence at all to extrapolate that "we want".

<comment><USER25> There's an easy way to check: let's see what sells.

Last time I checked, mildly smart home "robots", like automatic cookers, dishwashers, washing machines, even vacuum cleaners sold rather well, and were widely adopted. The smart devices, paradoxically, liberate you from thinking about dull details: you just put some clothes into a washing machine, press a button explaining approximately what type of clothes are there, and walk away. The machine figures the rest.

This is a type of liberation people seem to actually like.

Also, people usually don't like uncertainty puzzling new experiences. Letting people on a stop see where the bus is does make people happier. (Myself I use a mobile web site that shows real-time position of NYC buses, and can attest to that.) If you walk into an unfamiliar store, especially abroad, it could take some time to find simplest items like a bottle of water. If there was a more-or-less unified 'online' interface for finding things in this particular store on your phone, it would make many tourists happier.

<comment><USER23> > There's an easy way to check: let's see what sells. > > Last time I checked, > mildly smart home "robots", like automatic cookers, dishwashers, washing > machines, even vacuum cleaners sold rather well, and were widely adopted.

Do you have proper data to claim this? Good sales and wide adoption? And how can you be sure that the buyers are "everyday people", not techno-enthusiasts and early adopters?

I mean: it is rather "easy" to see a big increase in sales for a given technology, when it is "young". The big question is how sustained that growth will be, when the early adopters are served and the company needs to target "regular" people.

<comment><USER26> >And how can you be sure that the buyers are "everyday people", not techno- enthusiasts and early adopters?

I don't think it matters. The future of smart-devices is looking good of a number of reasons and this is why more than a few people think that smart- devices are going to see widespread adoption.

"Everyday people" don't need to be the ones adopting this widely just yet. There's a trend in the evolution of technology where people don't know that they want/need a specific technology until they've been shown the power of it. "Everyday people" never asked for Home PCs; they were pushed to them and now it's hard to imagine life without a home computer. "Everyday people" never asked for smartphones; they were pushed by technology companies and now they're almost a mandatory device for navigating modern culture.

I think smart-devices will see the same fate. There is a lot of talk and development into IoT and technologists see the power of such networks even if "everyday people" do not. Smart-devices are a natural progression of IoT and the other devices everyone already has in their pockets. I think it will be adopted in the same way other technologies have: It will see small, and then large-scale adoption in a niche area, people will see the power of IoT and smart-devices, and then people will begin to want it everywhere. This will be driven by technologist support and marketing.

The article may have presented the outcome a little optimistic but I don't then they're far off the mark.

<comment><USER27> This was certainly true for the past, but I'm not sure you can extrapolate for the future. The events of the recent years have given the public not just a sense of the power of technology but also its negative side.

At least here in germany, the Snowden relevations have done a good deal to make people realize just much much data about them is on their net and how hard it is to control access to it.

Revelations like Apple using iPhones for large scale profiling of location histories and (much later) Samsung having its TVs report home with a history of viewed programs didn't put smart devices in a good light either.

In parallel, numerous hacker and data leak scandals taught the public that maybe data entrusted to the cloud isn't as secure as everyone promised.

Finally, many people only now start to realize just how much a paradigm shift the internet really caused and what some of the psychological and sociological implications might be: There is the (still vaguely defined) "internet" or "mobile addiction", there is the growing trend of viewing phone usage (or usage of other devices, i.e. Google Glass) during social gatherings as impolite, there is the whole discussion about what role privacy should play in the future, etc, etc.

All of this doesn't stop people from buying new phones, TVs, fitness bands, etc. But depending on who you ask, they do it with a growing bad conscience. If you try to introduce new technologies that have a higher cost and less obvious benefits (like smart homes), it might have an effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I guess one of the biggest questions here would be authentication and reputation. You want to make sure the device is what you think it is. So they will need to have cryptographically signed messages, ie MAC, and you need to obtain a certificate as well from their server on the web in order to interact with them.

But once you have those, you WON'T need the internet in order to communicate. The vending machine could be in a basement and bluetooth would be enough.

I'm a big proponent of re-decentralizing the internet again, and the web (and physical web) is a big part of that. There's no reason why people in an african village MUST have all their cell signals travel up to a balloon and to Facebook's servers just to communicate with each other. Mesh networking and distributed power generation will bring about a revolution.

</comment><comment><USER29> Most normal people I see carrying a smartphone actually never use the browser. Never. I mean NEVER.

<comment><USER30> People use the browser very regularly and don't realize it because it's an embedded webkit. A classic example is people sharing articles on social networks.

Native apps are a bad experience for this kind of application because they are not ephemeral. If everything in your environment has an app associated with it, then your phone will be clogged with hundreds or thousands of apps, 99% of which you never open. You want a transaction-cost free model for envirnonmental interaction, the same as 'surfing' the web. No persistent cost for experimenting or trying something out.

The whole idea of "installing" stuff has really regressed computing back to the 90s. The web introduced the idea of emphemeral applications which are cached, so that you never need to manage the memory of your device.

I'd like to see mobile native apps adopt Web-style model. You can pin the cache and permanently install apps that are important to you or have giant resources (like huge games), but most of your apps should backup-and-delete themselves on the fly when coming into disuse and space is needed.

I'm sick of being asked to rate apps, and sick of having to delete apps to make space.

Steve Jobs once said "if you see a task manager, they blew it" Because people shouldn't have to manage the kernel resources of their phone. To that I would add, "if you see an install button, they blew it", because people should not have to manage their flash memory.

I thought the nightmare of cleaning up your computing devices went out with utilities to clean Windows drives and registry in the 90s.

<comment><USER31> I agree with you. The problem as I see it is iOS-induced obsession with hardware I accelerated special effects. It's easy to make a web app that's silky smooth and has highly optimized paths for interaction, but iOS worshipping has caused us all (web and native developers both) to abandon interaction design for special effects design.

Sad to think that 2000-2010 was actually the golden age for genuine focus on interaction design. Ironic too that Apple was the company who killed it.

I should add: Apple generally does _great_ interaction design. But they bundle it with expensive special effects and visual design. Everyone else tries to copy all three, but they can't, because it's insanely hard to do all three. Thats Apple's moat. And when mortal dev shops bump up against the "interaction/effects/visual, pick two" bargain, interaction is often the first one to go because it's the one that doesn't come through in a demo. And they're relying on the parallax effects to wow their client/boss. Plus they want to feel like they're going for the moonshot "Apple-quality" bar so their ego can get a boost. And honestly most people stop doing interaction design the moment they get a picture in their head of what their app could be. We become emotionally wedded to interactions the minute we invent them. God forbid we actually pay attention to the friction in our users' lives and put those things at the top of our prioritized lists.

I think we need a return to boring, native-to-the-web software with superb interaction design. And sacrifice pretty fonts and sacrifice 3d parllax effects and sacrifice animation, except where it is truly impacting comprehensibility (and not just feel).

That's the basket my eggs are in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So basically, its QRv2 without cameras and instead nfc/ble or some other physical layer.

</comment><comment><USER33> Meh, we need AI to understand API interfaces automatically and can communicate together seamlessly, without any hard coding. That's when device to device integration gets REALLY interesting. Wait, isn't this just bluetooth + web?

<comment><USER34> We don't necessarily need AI, we just need APIs to be standardized so everything knows how to interface with them. This is IMO the killer app for the Semantic Web (I just wrote an article on this: [https://medium.com/@mcriddy/semantic-web- design-92ef35f66c9f](https://medium.com/@mcriddy/semantic-web- design-92ef35f66c9f)).

<comment><USER35> How does that eliminate the need for AI? Having a "standardized" format doesn't fix much of anything, except a bit of search engine display logic. It does nothing of the sort of eliminating the need for render code per app/site. Maybe some actual, solid, examples of exactly what a "standard API" would accomplish would help explain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The way I see it, this is better implemented with AR and CV using specific items as "markers" than with a "nearby lookup" table. The thing you want may be across a highway and still be near making the listing somewhat imprecise.

The range of interactions is also greater with AR, as it gives the ability to be triggered (eg. highlighted) just by looking at it with the AR camera.

</comment><comment><USER37> Reading the page, the comments here and all... I can't stop thinking _Firefox OS_... just... can't...

<comment><USER29> I really don't understand why people aren't agreeing that "native" apps are a thing of the pre-internet era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The project's ethos is very similar to Rob Pike's 'dream setup' that he describes in his usesthis interview, [http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/](http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Well, as long as I don't have to use HTML and JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks like yet another vector mostly for local advertising.

</comment><comment><USER41> So many typos in the open PRs right now.

</comment><comment><USER42> Obligatory [http://xkcd.com/1367/](http://xkcd.com/1367/) I'm not saying we can't do better than web apps, but even web apps are better at this than native apps.

<comment><USER43> Just put QR codes everywhere.

<comment><USER44> [http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/](http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER45> It is funny, but I would argue that the reason people don't use QR codes is that they haven't yet gotten enough value out of them. When there will be an incentive to scan those codes suddenly everyone will be using them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Shack is closed, as is the shed. (info disclosure) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.radioshack.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of silly to leave this amount of info up - and the breadcrumb to [http://shedcloud.com](http://shedcloud.com) is similarly underwhelming.</comment>


Show HN: 3D Book Image CSS Generator - <AUTHOR> https://3d-book-css.netlify.app/ <comment><USER2> Nicely done! We've been using a very similar setup at the Dutch public library for the last many years - e.g. [https://www.bibliotheek.nl/catalogus/titel.263072924.html/th...](https://www.bibliotheek.nl/catalogus/titel.263072924.html/the- confusion/) \- complete with thickness based on number of pages (though only in three steps) - but it took a lot of tinkering to get the CSS down to something relatively clean. Great job making something like this accessible to everyone with a handy tool like this!

One trick we're using which you might care to copy over (and improve upon) is a linear gradient to fake the pages. I think for thin books, I prefer your white version, but for thick books, it feels pretty sterile.

<comment><USER3> Did you ever make it available as a library?

<comment><USER4> Its available at the library

<comment><USER5> very clever :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work. It looks like the book thickness isn't corrected for rotation angle. If you made the horizontal width of the inside pages = thickness * sin(rotation angle) it'll be zero when laying flat and full thickness when rotated 90 degrees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very nicely done. Consider adding a slider that controls a neural net that generates the content of the book as well. ;)

<comment><USER8> Using GPT-3 API (chuckle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool. The rule for class "book" is missing a border-radius as far as I can tell.

Test: set color to e.g. pink, increase radius to maximum value, see that the front image gets cropped but the pink area behind it is not. The backside of the book has a border-radius by the way.

Edit: might be nice to only apply it to the right-hand side as the side with the spine is unlikely to have rounded corners.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, let me check!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For some reason the Width parameter is working weirdly in Firefox on Android. Dragging the slider halfway resizes the book to become larger than the whole screen. Screenshot: [https://9gag.com/gag/aLwvLY6](https://9gag.com/gag/aLwvLY6) (because I don't have accounts elsewhere)

<comment><USER11> You can use imgur.com without an account - this is often the to-go service to publish images to be shared (stack exchange, ShareX,...)

<comment><USER10> I'll try that the next time I need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool, very nicely done.

Would it be possible to add a different set of parameters that describe the physical book instead? What I mean is specifying the page size in some standard way (e.g. A3 or letter size) and the number of pages and let the algorithm decide the parameters of book thickness (in pixels) automatically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good idea, adding it to my to do list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My current favorite feature: you can manually override the maximum thickness :] 160px thick book ftw

The only comment I have is that the width slider tends to make an aggressively flickery mess of my screen anywhere above 250px.

<comment><USER14> I love increasing size so book overlaps other page elements. It makes it more 3D

<comment><AUTHOR> Increase it again and it grows out of the screen ;)

Seriously, this bug is one of my top priorities :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is nice work and furthermore I would also like to commend the author for the elegant way of integrating marketing of their own book that they are writing into it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Really cool! I can probably add this to my personal book app to make things look a bit nicer: [https://books.j11g.com/](https://books.j11g.com/)

<comment><USER17> It would look very cool in the Book page:

[https://books.j11g.com/search.php?id=484](https://books.j11g.com/search.php?id=484)

<comment><USER18> Agreed - [https://imgur.com/qbVZUk8](https://imgur.com/qbVZUk8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Impressive! I know a number of people who self publish who will love this.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's really nice!

I have no idea how well it works on various browsers (the bugaboo for all CSS), but it's noice!

</comment><comment><USER21> Very cool :) Feature request: can the thickness be a function of the number of pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has been suggested before, it's a very good idea :)

<comment><USER22> Well each page is 100mic roughly for 80gsm paper which is pretty standard. So if you did something like a 200 page book that is 20mm's which at 72 dpi roughly 54px's or roughly 27px's for a 100 page book.

That's excluding any cover page, which heavily depends on binding/hard cover/what ever else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thats pretty cool, things go a bit crazy when you move the width too far right.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, it still needs some adjustments, but thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> radius only apply to the back cover in firfox [https://i.imgur.com/nv6locC.png](https://i.imgur.com/nv6locC.png) (works as expected in chrome)

excellent work otherwise

<comment><USER25> Likewise on Safari. But it's really nice even with that small issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very nice, I shared this with my sister who will love this, is it possible to make the book have a paperback appearance?

</comment><comment><USER27> another in this category for multiple devices: [https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/](https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/)

i love collecting little tools like this, lmk if anyone has one for mocking phones, tablets and desktops.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha believe me if you want, I used this website previously, but it was down yesterday, so I developed my own tool xD

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That looks good. You should combine it with a landing page generator for self published books or docs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll think about it, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love this so hard. Love the ability to adjust width as well. Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just as an idea, adding overlay stamps to it. Something like "Recommended by developers", "Only for limited time", or just a lens flare effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What would really blow me away is if you could set the text on the cover with CSS too, and then just drop in a background image behind it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's totally feasible, but cover generator is a lot of complexity to add: you want to be able to move the text, resize it, change the color, add some other text, etc.

Many websites are doing it a lot better than I can (in a weekend), but it's definitely something that I would do in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That is quite impressive. Setting the perspective to 0 made the cover look like it was a front on shot but I could still see the side of the book which looks strange to me. Still nice though.

edit: please take this as a helpful suggestion and not a criticism. I still really like the work you've done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes in CSS the perspective set to 0 basically removes all perspective (but for the pages it's a different element in perspective, this is why you can still see it ;))

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is awesome, thanks for sharing! Would've been great for my latest release, [https://music101.press/](https://music101.press/), but I'll definitely use it for the next book I release

</comment><comment><USER34> This might just be tangentially related, but I recently built a css booklet that has turnable pages for my personal website [https://andykais.com/moleskine](https://andykais.com/moleskine)

</comment><comment><USER35> Very cool! Would be great as a WooCommerce plugin, I would love to use it for the books on here [https://store.shahinrostami.com/](https://store.shahinrostami.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> What you've called transition delay is actually transition _duration_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woops ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's brilliant! Is there any way of downloading the resultant image?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's on my to do list! For now the best I can suggest is to make a screenshot (not ideal, especially because you don't get a transparent background…).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Gave it a go - looks great [https://codepen.io/StamiLabs/pen/wvMRpwp](https://codepen.io/StamiLabs/pen/wvMRpwp)

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting, thank you so much. I am going to use it for the bilinual book library: [http://www.bilinual.com](http://www.bilinual.com)

</comment><comment><USER39> looks impressive. could be a nice addition on my personal library page - [https://arpit.tk/komura](https://arpit.tk/komura)

</comment><comment><USER40> Had a good time setting thickness to 1000 and width to 500.

</comment><comment><USER41> as the thickness of the book grows the cover doesn't also grow. towards the end of the scale the contents are taller than the cover.

</comment><comment><USER42> My mom runs an e-book company in the health space. She's love this! I have to put it on her website by tonight. Haha Great tool!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can see someone like Amazon or Chapters wanting to use this on their site. You should try contacting them!

</comment><comment><USER44> seems to break when you fiddle with the width slider, but it's a nice work never the less

</comment><comment><USER45> This is pretty cool. I sent the link to a professional author friend with a dated website.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'd like to make the book facing right. In Japan, books are bound right side.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is really impressive

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Would we be able to adjust the drop shadow?

</comment><comment><USER49> Wow, that's really cool, nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> radius on front cover doesn't work in firefox

</comment><comment><USER51> Well done sir

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a WOW thing! Very cool. Easy to use. Success for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> odd, only the last two controls do anything. Firefox, Safari and Chrome on macOS 15.5.5.

<comment><USER54> Some of the other controls have to do with hover effects.</comment></comment>


Using data to find the middle of nowhere - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/20/using-the-best-data-possible-we-set-out-to-find-the-middle-of-nowhere/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_wb-middle-of-nowhere-310pm-winner%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.9c034cb6fdc5 <comment><USER2> I would suggest that the number 75,000 is east coast thinking. Glasgow an wolf point are not really nowhere. And the travel time criteria suggests an attention span deficit common to city life.

I would suggest another metric. That is the percentage of people living in an area who have not seen the Milky Way. There is likely a whole seath of the Sprawl where that metric would be zero.

<comment><USER3> Funny, we had a discussion on Slack at work where numerous folks hadn't ever seen the Milky Way yesterday. I think many on the east coast haven't, especially in NYC, and it's rather sad.

<comment><USER4> > it's rather sad.

Why?

The antipathy city dwellers feel for "flyover country" is silly, but the reverse is pretty silly too.

I might think it's strange that some people have never gone hiking or camping, but they think it's just as strange that I had never seen a symphony performance until recently.

People just lead different lives, I dunno that one's more sad than the other.

<comment><USER3> > Why?

You don't think it's sad that people don't travel more than an hour from a major city and experience the world around them?

> People just lead different lives, I dunno that one's more sad than the > other.

I don't think one needs to be more sad than the other. If people had experiences outside their narrow sliver of their daily lives they might be more tolerant of others who live different lives.

<comment><USER4> > You don't think it's sad that people don't travel more than an hour from a > major city and experience the world around them?

Not to be _too_ much of an armchair psychologist, but I think that says more about you than it does about them.

Again, there are people who think it's sad that I've never been to a professional ballet performance. Or that I've never gone wheelin. Or that I have yet to go to the statue of liberty.

Should we all drop everything we're doing to satisfy someone else's idea of a measured life?

> If people had experiences outside their narrow sliver of their daily lives > they might be more tolerant of others who live different lives.

You can have an incredible wealth of experiences without traveling very far. Especially in a major city. A visit to Lincoln Center is very different from a visit to Flushing, and both are very different from a visit to Staten Island.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny, I live just a couple of miles from where that photo is taken. While it's true that we're a long way from a big city, this place does not feel all that isolated. I've been to towns in Utah and Nevada that are hours of dirt road driving from the nearest grocery store: Jarbidge, NV, Trout Creek, UT. Those are truly in the middle of nowhere. I've asked folks in these towns where they get their food and the answer is the same: occasional drives into town but mostly Amazon Prime.

<comment><USER6> Would love to hear the background of what brought you to these towns. Sounds like an adventure!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect a lot of questions regarding the metrics used can be found in either the WaPo article this references or the Nature piece the WaPo article is based on:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/20/using...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/20/using- the-best-data-possible-we-set-out-to-find-the-middle-of-nowhere/)

[http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25181.epdf?...](http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25181.epdf?referrer_access_token=ymbRxnz9zrlLgXUIZSErjdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Nro_3a2_QnHhoi4tmpV4YMThej2zn3HuD6JN5yUCKyoEn8Hh54UuPRPq31j83atkeBxCzjyGlSHVauT5umbpzjjwPxv8_DF57JNW453vRpaF6geg9BYzab4Y9zEjEsT16chcsqI4VCZk9gIFqK6-mJV7EOGvlR- LeGKSQp5in2YUKRIwjexV8tsh70tlGczDxwGz_oJ6S0R5nu2oANwAwdpCkf2FqC-kdm- JKYuIGE_Yw2otVw_AIRbsvfzqIxKpXCUGJHQ7sgF8vYeH7nfTWHkU6HJwAGyrPt04f1Ioc7DFwyGtap8E7hIPCP6WRE3EaoXSZOaRMDTxjJxEX1333_5dDfp9fRI3_meJr263ljp2O3uuJXthpUkT5v-R3-l6SaMqYEmImS6ww7QXXYGaqz&tracking_referrer=www.washingtonpost.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess they didn't want to include Alaska.

<comment><USER9> or Wyoming

I'm from North Dakota and when the friggin sign in Wyoming says there are no towns for the next 73 miles you believe them and make sure your fuel is good.

<comment><USER10> 73 miles is only about an hour.

<comment><USER11> Very much depends on the season.

Also on services at that town being open.

<comment><USER9> Its always fun to drive up to a gas station that closes early. You'll find that the various maps applications are really low data for rural areas.

When I was young and a bit stupid 73 miles could be done in 45 minutes, but I've also had nights where 73 miles was a 3 hour drive.

<comment><USER10> This is less of a problem now that most places have 24 hour pumps with credit card machines, even in the sticks (really, they need it the most since it's rarely profitable to pay an employee to be at the store).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "ranked by travel time in hours" metric is a little weird. Travel by what? Trains, planes, or automobiles?

There's also a huge chunk of the state of Maine that is more than 3.5 hours from either Boston or Quebec City (there are no cities in Maine larger than 75,000 people[1])

[1] [https://www.maine- demographics.com/cities_by_population](https://www.maine- demographics.com/cities_by_population)

<comment><USER13> Whether there are any cities in Maine larger than 75,000 people is irrelevant. The study is not based on city population. EDIT: The WaPo story is _also_ not based on city population.

<comment><USER14> > The Post used simple criteria: "towns that are farthest from any metro with > more than 75,000 people, ranked by travel time in hours."

This story isn't about the study, which also wasn't to find the towns most in the middle of nowhere, but about a WaPo story, which was.</comment></comment></comment>


Garzik: An Andre To Remember - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/508467/

<comment><USER2> Really touching and a shame this hasn't gotten more attention here. I bet most of us could learn something from those wise and kind words.</comment>


Ask HN: what opensource tools (bin or web) do you use to manage your expenses? - <AUTHOR>

Feature boasting and clever ways you use your solution is encouraged for discussion. <comment><USER2> I don't like programs that automatically pull in transactions from online banking, etc.

I made a spreadsheet (a google doc) with multiple tabs, so that each day I can log what I purchased, as well as track progress toward various financial goals.

This is all well and good, but I think the best solution is probably the simplest. Just figure out your budget and set up your online bill pay to send checks automatically.

Then on the first of the month, withdraw cash for your entire monthly discretionary spending -- food, gadgets, etc. If your ATM won't let you take out enough, have your bank increase the limit.

Then you can ration (or not) with each purchase. You won't need to carry around your atm/check card either, since you are using cash. And if you have any cash left at the end of the month, you have succeeded. If you had to withdraw more cash, you failed.

<comment><USER3> I do the same, but with Excel (desktop and mobile version)

I suppose it doesn't count because the OP asked for open source specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger>

</comment><comment><USER5> OpenOffice.org: Calc (spreadsheet)

I keep a running cashflow listing with a row for each day and columns for each of my major accounts. Plus totals and a moving average.

Along with that I track all of my incomings and outgoings, with monthly totals.

I update all of it about 3-4 times a month. I find it gives me all the information I need to keep on top of things. I can see how various accounts fluctuate over time, where the big expenses are, and it givens me enough info to plan the next few months ahead.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm waiting to get a new job to try this Ruby on Rails apps : <http://wiki.github.com/jamis/bucketwise>

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to have an OO spreadsheet for that, but that quickly became cumbersome to use. Then i switched to a new application called wxbanker. It's quite limited in functionality for now, but that's how i like my application. Easy to use, easy to extend.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://texthog.com>

I send it text messages when I spend money. much easier than writing it down or keeping receipts etc

</comment><comment><USER9> gnucash

<comment><USER10> My vote is also gnucash. Especially if you've had any sort of formal accounting training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Homebank

<http://homebank.free.fr/>

</comment><comment><USER12> From the comments here, it seems there are no clear leaders.</comment>


Daylight Saving Time Year-Round, Abolish Standard Time in US - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/03/08/springing-forward-daylight-saving-time-is-obsolete-confusing-unhealthy-critics-say <comment><USER2> I live in New Mexico near the Arizona border. We have DST; they don't. Arizonans tend to be smug about that; New Mexicans don't. The natural background smugness intensity (smugtensity) between the two states is about the same. So by gross state smug delta I'd say a single year-round timezone is popular here.

I just wish for a little more conformity so that I miss fewer November appointments in Arizona, and to wipe away those smug smiles when I tell them why. Although it's possible that expression is just due to me being an idiot who can't tell time.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those not old enough to remember, the US had year-round DST from 1973-1975. (It was enacted as a limited-time trial measure and it wasn't renewed when it expired.)

Although I have no real problem with the current system, in my current situation I'm not very affected by whether there's DST or not, I'd be at least neutral about a single year-round time so long as it was current DST rather than standard time.

<comment><USER4> Why does it matter which way it goes? It's just a number on a clock, the important thing is that having that change twice a year is silly and annoying.

Personally, I would prefer that we switch to UTC time, which would make it simpler for scheduling meetings.

<comment><USER5> Your comment seems confused. The reference frame for counting time of day is arbitrary but the schedules of all businesses are fixed relative to this arbitrary reference frame as far as DST is concerned. So DST effectively shifts the hours of all businesses. Put another way, if you fix the operational hours, you are delaying sunrises and sunsets relative to business hours. Do you want more light before work or after work? That is the year- round DST question. It's not arbitrary. I want more light after work, all the time. I don't care about mornings. I have very little time to do things in the morning before work.

Suggesting UTC here doesn't make much sense. The time difference is so great that businesses would need to update to new UTC hours. But what hours exactly? More specifically, what hours relative to the position of the sun in the sky? That's the same question as this year-round DST vs non-DST question. A UTC switch doesn't address the topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't declaring DST year-round just redefine "Standard Time"?

<comment><USER7> As one of the people who would be getting phone calls about all the software that breaks when EST gets redefined to be four hours behind UTC rather than five, I'd really not want to go to there. Either of "EDT is now year-round" or "The east coast of the US is now on AST" would lead to a lot fewer problems, as changes of that nature have to be dealt with pretty regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not just leave the time alone altogether. If companies want to start work earlier, let them change their schedule at their own discretion.

<comment><USER9> That's exactly what these proposals would do. No more twice-yearly time changes; if anyone wants to adjust schedules twice a year, based on daylight, they can adjust their operating hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think we need more times zones in the US, which dont change, but the max difference would be -30/+30 minutes from sundial time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see the east coast move to Atlantic Standard Time permanently.

<comment><USER3> In the unlikely event some states shifted from Eastern to Atlantic, it would likely be just MA, NH, VT, ME, and maybe RI. New York would be unlikely to shift and if it were just most of New England, being in a different timezone from NYC would probably be a showstopper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They can't even get rid of the fucking penny and I'm supposed to believe the federal government has the wherewithal to do something as sensible as abolish DST?</comment>


Huawei: NZ bars Chinese firm on national security fears - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46368001 <comment><USER2> The UK government started worrying about the same thing when Huawei won a bunch of BT 21CN contracts for network renewal.

The chosen solution in that case was to set up a dedicated engineering facility onshore, where evaluation of the products could be performed at various levels before deployment.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/huawei-cyber- secu...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/huawei-cyber-security- evaluation-centre-oversight-board-annual-report-2017)

<comment><USER3> > The chosen solution in that case was to set up a dedicated engineering > facility onshore, where evaluation of the products could be performed at > various levels before deployment.

Honestly, that doesn't seem like a good plan. While such a lab is better than nothing, it doesn't protect the UK against attacks it didn't understand or think to look for. I'm reminded of this Soviet bug that was given to the American embassy in Moscow and lay undetected for seven years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_\(listening_device\))

The fact that the lab was _created_ for Huawei tells me they're not trusted enough. The smart thing to do is to pick vendors you already trust not to bug you, and then do the extensive verification as an additional check.

<comment><USER2> My description of what they did was not meant as an endorsement.

That said; in an age where a large percentage of physical devices/device parts are made in China - protecting against attacks you don't understand or think to look for is a non trivial exercise and can't be avoided merely by changing vendor (though doing so may make an attack harder).

<comment><USER4> I think that's actually part of the problem. The choice by BT to go with Huawei for 21CN effectively killed off home grown Marconi products.

BT saved a bit of money short term and Ben Verwaayen got his bonus but long term they are now dependant on products they can't really control where before they could pop down the road to Chelmsford and go and speak to the design team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the public reason to ban them is totally fine but there's a lot of more stuff in play here.

Think about the presence of Android in China, they worry about Android phones having Play services calling home with more data than it's needed to work properly. This is not theory, it was shown in the past and we never know how much data we're sending back to Google or even Facebook just by owning an Android device. So they block Google Play services, in the name of its citizens right to privacy or whatever. Now the same due diligence is not taken into account for the same kind of services provided by local companies. They can operate without a lot of backslash over data collection or backdoors. But for them (Chinese government) this is still a better alternative. Because the data is not siting on a data center in US waiting to be mined by some agency that happen to have three letters and no need for a mandate to look at data from non citizens.

So the reason to ban them is right, but it's not just banning them to spy on us. This is also saying that if somebody is going to spy on our communications it better be on our side of the fence. Maybe Cisco could win without a lot of fuss about "possible threats that we don't understand right now". Maybe Cisco also have code with dubious quality, or even straight malicious, but at least the data exfiltration is not sitting on a data center in China.

<comment><USER6> Is it though? A much simpler explaination is that China - like any nation - can compel it's citizens quite easily to do something (carrot or stick). And tapping into/backdooring infrastructure a very effective approach.

How do the Five Eyes governments know this? Because they were doing the exact same thing, with help from e.g. telcos. But most foreign telcos are somewhat well monitored, so attacking the hardware is the next logical step.

There's no mystery here, it's just they can't come right out and say "this is how we _would have_ done it", because they probably did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nvm (comment removed)

<comment><USER8> Filling our landfills full of disposable products? Copying our IP? I love Aliexpress for some things, however we are subsidizing the shipping for most products on there with our tax dollars (This might change soon). $7 for me to ship a few states away, less that $1 for most Chinese products to US vis USPS. Even the Chinese don't trust most Chinese Products (Chinese Girlfriend).

<comment><USER9> >Filling our landfills full of disposable products?

This is rampant capitalistic consumerism, nothing to do with China.

>Copying our IP?

Doesn't really matter. Who do IP's benefit? Not the consumer, only the already super wealthy. Hint: the very large majority of the world is not wealthy.

Taxes went up on products from Aliexpress. Shipping from China to USA is much more efficient than the other way around.

When I'm subsidizing health insurance, food stamps, and medicare on Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks, etc, to put billions more in Bezos pocket, I could care less about something that actually benefits lower income people with affordable products that would be well out of reach in USA. Raise wages and people who were using Aliexpress will start buying domestic.

<comment><USER6> > Who do IP's benefit? Not the consumer, only the already super wealthy. Hint: > the very large majority of the world is not wealthy.

I'm no fan of copyright or software patents, but that's a bit too simple. Good R&D is complicated and favours highly educated/skilled workers. Even if you don't like companies, it's quite unfair that people who have have spent a long time becoming domain experts should lose their livelihood because of outside forces breaking the law - international law mind (AFAIK).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Secret Subway Tunnels in New York City - <AUTHOR> https://ny.curbed.com/maps/nyc-subway-secret-tunnels <comment><USER2> They aren't even remotely "secret". Just obscure.</comment>


Camera Comparo: iPhone 4S and Canon 5D Mk II - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/17/iphone-4s-video-compared-to-canon-5d-mk-ii/

<comment><USER2> The major advantage the Canon has, is that it is a full frame sensor. So, if you want the shallow depth of field look, then that's the way to go. The iPhone has built in image stabilization (which I think depends on the lens for the Canon) and it does it in a really great way. Rather than cropping the image like the old digital IS methods, it adjusts what part of the sensor it takes the 2megapixel video image from, based on the built in gyroscope and accelerometer.

The 8MP sensor in the iPhone 4S apparently delivers the full 8MP image at 30 frames a second, letting the the CPU or GPU convert it to an HD frame.

In traditional cameras, they have to build into the sensor the ability to take a subset of the sensor data, because they cannot read off the full sensor that fast. In the 5D mk II, they actually just skip lines of resolution to get their HD frames, which results in some bad artifacts for certain scenes.</comment>


Gephi - The CDDL1/GPL3 Photoshop for graphs - <AUTHOR> https://gephi.org/

<comment><USER2> I've used Gephi before and it's awesome. I can highly recommend it if you need to visualize or explore graphs, especially very large graphs which it handles gracefully.

That said, what's with the title for this submission -- how does the license matter much (seeing that most users are unlikely to redistribute it) and why the gratuitous Photoshop reference?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to critique my submission! I was excited to be able to share the project with the community since I had not seen it mentioned here before. I look forward to learning more about Gephi and plan to use it to simplify analysis of website analytics.

I chose 'CDDL1/GPL3' as the most concise way to share the project's reasonable balance between 'free as in beer' and 'free as in freedom' with anyone who would already care enough to recognize the abbreviations. The recent license change is mentioned in the summary of the latest release on the front page and in the blog post: <http://gephi.org/2011/gephi-0-8-beta-released/>

I felt 'The Open Graph Viz Platform' could be easily confused with <http://graphviz.org> and 'makes graphs handy' wasn't enough info, so I used the next prominent short description on the front page ('Like Photoshop for graphs').

Would you mind sharing the title you would recommend?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Gephi's an incredible project for making big node-link diagrams. It has a selection of layout algorithms and statistics you can apply to nodes and edges. I used it at a hackathon to visualize the Marvel Universe social graph:

<http://exposedata.com/marvel/>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://zoom.it/Lxrz> This was a few months ago when I was playing with Gephi and decided to visualize the user interactions on the #startups IRC channel (graph layout in Gephi, rendered in Batik)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled across this project today and was blown away by how highly polished the user experience is compared to the <http://www.graphviz.org/> project.

<comment><USER5> Are they comparable in functions? I'd like to get nicer looking results than graphviz, but it's not clear from the website whether gephi supports layout or even batch/command line input. It does however, have a graphviz plugin! <https://gephi.org/plugins/graphviz-layout/>

Installing now, to poke around.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just getting started with Gephi and look forward to hearing the results of your investigation. My impression was that Gephi has much more polished versions of a couple types of graphs.

<comment><USER5> I did find this, soon after posting.

<https://gephi.org/toolkit/>

"The toolkit is just a single JAR that anyone could reuse in new Java applications and achieve tasks that can be done in Gephi automatically, from a command-line program for instance"

Haven't installed it yet, but a work colleague is investigating this and a bunch of like products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"Update your distribution with the last official JRE packages (update 25+), don't use OpenJDK."_

Doh! Is debian the only distribution that does not ship sun's jre?

<comment><USER7> None of them ship Oracle's JRE, and they haven't for a long time. The usual licensing mess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i love love love what they're doing with Gephi, especially the ability to generate a collaborative, web based graph UI.

HOWEVER, a word to the wise: I've had a LOT of trouble saving and opening saved files. there's a few tickets open, but I haven't seen any progress. that's sortof a dealbreaker when it comes to doing professional work :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the warning! I'm just getting started and hope to use it to help spot patterns in web analytics.</comment></comment>


Story time: the five children's books every adult should read - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/26/story-time-five-children-s-books-everyone-should-read-katherine-rundell <comment><USER2> His Dark Materials trilogy? Definitely yes. Bump it to six and add Pat Frank's _Alas, Babylon_.

</comment><comment><USER3> His dark materials seems like it was supposed to be a sort of atheist narnia, but Philip Pullman is just not as good a writer or storyteller as cs lewis was. The tv show might improve upon the books though.</comment>


Richardson Maturity Model: steps toward the glory of REST - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/articles/richardsonMaturityModel.html <comment><USER2> But what this doesn't say is, how do I get the structure of the data that I should post to a RESTful resource? For example, in level 3, with a starting uri of /doctors/mjones/slots?date=20100104&status=open, I get back two additional uris of the two slots, and if I want to book one, I send a POST to /slots/1234, with an xml structure containing the patient id. So, to be a completely discoverable api, shouldnt the response also tell me what the xml structure should look like?

When you look at a wsdl file, it tells you both where the service is located, as well as the structure of the data that one must send to it. I haven't been able to find an equivalent for the second part in the REST world. Anyone know?

<comment><USER3> The API should take as input the same structure it gives in responses.

Ideally you would get different kinds of responses for the same resource by using the Accept header, so that browsers get text/html but your app gets application/xml or whatever you asked for. Unfortunately everyone seems to be following Rails' lead of just appending extensions onto the end of URLs — if you're lucky they'll use HATEOAS, but they usually just expect you to concatenate strings on your end using foreknowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2008-QCon/></comment>


Ask HN: What is your successful product, and how you launched it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You might want to take a look at Indie Hackers[1]. It's exactly about your question.

[1]: [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)</comment>


Any amount of running linked to significantly lower risk of early death - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/04/any-amount-of-running-reduces-risk-of-early-death-study-finds <comment><AUTHOR> The original research was published here: [https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2019/09/25/bjsports-2018-...](https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2019/09/25/bjsports-2018-100493)</comment>


Sperm Recognize "Brothers," Team Up for Speed - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100421-glowing-sperm-brothers-cooperation-evolution/

<comment><USER2> (supposedly) In humans, the penis is designed to pull out previously ejaculated sperm, so only one's own is left inside.

<comment><USER3> In many animals actually, this is widely believed in ethology

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless these mice participate mating orgies, this seems to me like a rather useless evolutionary trait.

<comment><USER5> On the contrary, sperm competition occurs frequently in many animal species (and more often than you'd think in humans - the stats are quite enlightening). Since this trait increases the chances that your sperm will win and pass on your genes, it is a very useful evolutionary trait.

More information: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_competition>

<comment><USER6> The length of this competitive "window" might be as short as 2 or 3 days (Gomendio & Rolda´n, 1993) or as long as 7 to 9 days (Smith, 1984). Using an intermediate estimate of 5 days, Baker and Bellis (1995) argued that the questionnaire data they collected on female sexual behavior indicated that 17.5% of British women "double mated" at some point during the first 50 copulations in their lifetimes.

[http://www.toddkshackelford.com/downloads/Shackelford- Pound-...](http://www.toddkshackelford.com/downloads/Shackelford-Pound-Goetz- RGP-2005.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Rumors Point to 31.6-inch 6K Display, All-New 16-inch MacBook Pro for 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://hothardware.com/news/2019-mac-display-and-new-macbook-pro-rumor <comment><USER2> I work in the live events industry, and like many of my colleagues I use my old 15" Pro every day, often in some pretty wildly varying conditions. Within the past few months I've used it on beaches, in underground tunnels, and in the roof of dusty old church. I take it to client meetings to talk about graphic design work, it's running presentations when people forget their own, it's with me underneath outdoor festival stages configuring show-control networks. It's simultaneously standardised enough that I never have to worry about device drivers when an artist needs to replace their own on stage at the last minute, but with enough flexibility to make it an enjoyable programming experience in my spare time.

It's over five years old now, and starting to feel the strain, but I'll get a few years out of it yet. Some colleagues deeply regret "upgrading" to the newer MBPs. The keyboard and the constant dongle switching are the main bugbears, but there's other build quality issues as well.

Either Apple gets it right with this revision, or ours is one industry that will inevitably move to other machines. There's not that many of us, but Apples dominance of the creative industries has been a huge part of it's marketing appeal to a more general audience. It'll be interesting to see if they'll regret alienating it down the line.

</comment><comment><USER3> An improved MBP would be great, but they've lost me. Those ridiculous keyboards (butterfly keys, touchbar), the general falloff in quality, and the insane prices sent me searching elsewhere. My main machine is now a System76 Darter. $2100 buys an 8-core i7, 32GB, 1TB SSD, running Pop OS (a very good- looking variant of Ubuntu). The hardware is not quite as stunning as a Mac, but it's nice, and the keyboard is excellent.

<comment><USER4> How's the trackpad compared to the Mac's? I don't need force touch. Just smooth precise scrolling. The trackpad is actually one of my top considerations when buying a laptop because I rarely use a mouse any more.

<comment><USER3> I think it's very good. It feels very slightly less glassy than the MBP.

Actually, I first bought a Galago, just before the Darter came out. They have a 30-day return policy, and the Darter was a better match for what I was looking for, so I traded. In a progression of "glassiness", I would put the Darter between the Galago and the MBP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've yet to find a monitor that "just works" with my MBP. I'll take whatever they release.

My LG is nice, but often gets confused about when my laptop is plugged in. Both of my Dells are ok, but randomly lose signal and can't control the volume from the Apple keyboard or from the OS. It would also be nice to not need a docking station and or adapter anymore.

<comment><USER6> This is something I cannot stand. I have two external monitors, and each time it wakes from display sleep they switch around - so the desktops are reversed. It's _infuriating_. I have tried and tried to find a solution but so far have nothing.

<comment><USER7> IIRC this happens because some monitor companies are cheap/lazy and assign the same EDID to all monitors of a particular model (EDIDs are supposed to be unique), making it difficult for operating systems to distinguish between them.

<comment><USER6> This does not appear to be the case, the serial numbers reported in System Information are different.

<comment><USER8> Are you all using TB3 monitors? My experience with an eGPU using TB3 has been that TB is an awkward technology in any operating system so far, I have to routinely power down in specific order all the way to disconnecting from the wall to ensure the device is detached correctly and will attach correctly next time.

<comment><USER6> Not for the monitor, but for the dock that's connected to all the monitors (belkin thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really don't care about USB-A port. USB-C is the future, and all my cable connect natively to USB-C now. The only thing I have is a 10€ dongle for my screen.

</comment><comment><USER10> The 16.5" screen I would have never seen coming. I wonder what the target is or if they are just going edge to edge on a smilar size to what we have now in the 15

The 6K screen I predicted. It's the most data you can send over ThunderBolt 3. It does however, gimp any dock you could be able to use.

Now, will other manufacturers be quick to copy the 16" laptop?

<comment><USER11> You already have the Asus StudioBook: [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/7/18171395/as...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/7/18171395/asus- studiobook-fits-17-inch-screen-15-inch-macbook-pro-rival-ces-2019) , though it's not a retina screen

Also the LG gram: [https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17Z990-RAAS8U1-ultra- slim-l...](https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17Z990-RAAS8U1-ultra-slim-laptop)

<comment><USER12> Oh wow...and they said 16:10 was dead! What a surprise to behold for all 10 of us that prefer it over 16:9.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Finger's crossed for Magic Keyboard-style keys and no butterfly nonsense.

<comment><USER14> Fingers crossed but don't bet on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our best case scenario is such a laptop came out with an optional touch bar, but really Cook's probably shaking his head laughing while the only thing they're working on is quadrupling their bet on MRR from services people are going to use for decades.

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/03/22/explosive- apple-s...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/03/22/explosive-apple- services-revenue-expected-to-be-main-engine-for-apples-revenue-growth)

</comment><comment><USER15> Excited for the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Hopefully they will bump the pixel density and keep the 15" footprint by just using the black bezels around the screen. It's kind of a shame that's the current 15" doesn't have a pixel density high enought to support 1:4 pixel matching in their default resolution. It results in blurry text.

<comment><USER16> Just need to add a notch for the Webcam

<comment><USER17> Don't give them ideas, please!

<comment><USER18> I think it's a great idea. There's dead space between the menu bar and the icon area. Why not use it for the webcam and shrink that top bezel?

<comment><USER19> Full screen apps?

<comment><USER20> I'm on one of my Macs pretty much every day

Only thing I ever fullscreen is Netflix/Hulu/etc

can't imagine a miniscule dark spot at the top of the image bothering me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Working keyboard would be sweet

</comment><comment><USER22> At CES, "Samsung Unveil[ed a] 15.6-Inch Ultra-HD OLED Display for Laptops," [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13896/samsung- unveils-15-6-in...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13896/samsung- unveils-15-6-inch-ultra-hd-oled-display-for-laptops). I wonder if Apple is going to round 15.6 inches up and call it 16".

<comment><USER23> > I wonder if Apple is going to round 15.6 inches up and call it 16".

The current MacBook Pros are 15.4" and 13.3".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The last two claims of the article are deceptive in my opinion. Starting Apple "could" fix the flex cable, and has "addressed" the keyboard issue. Apple technically "could" , but will they? Also even though they have addressed the keyboard problem, they have not actually fixed it yet.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sweet. Sounds like a $200 monitor cable is in our future.

</comment><comment><USER26> can someone do e-ink 24" monitor

<comment><USER27> Eink looks great, but the refresh rate puts it out of the useful zone for a main display. People want more than 60hz and I don't think Eink can do 6

<comment><USER26> It would be ok for the code editor if you primarily reading

<comment><USER14> Would be a really niche monitor

<comment><USER26> could be priced accordingly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I want my ports back.

I want the same ports on the iphone as on the macbook.

No one cares about the damn touch bar. No one cares to have another few tenths of a mm shaved off the thickness.

<comment><USER29> > _No one cares to have another few tenths of a mm shaved off the thickness_

I do. (To be fair, it's why I use a MacBook Air.)

Apple's R&D department also does. Miniaturization is still a trend. By pushing the envelope on the iPhone they were well positioned for watches.

<comment><USER30> That's a good example though: they should have the Air focus on thinness and portability. But have the Pro focus on a workstation-like setup.

<comment><USER31> What about people who want a workstation-like setup and also portability?

The technology is there to allow us to have both without too much compromise either way. That's great!

Yes, there are a minority of people who want to fully optimise for one at the expense of the other, but Apple are serving the majority of the market, and the majority of market wants both in one machine, compromises included.

<comment><USER32> >The technology is there to allow us to have both without too much compromise either way. That's great!

Except it's not there, there are compromises, mainly around durability and repair costs. In my experience modern macs laptops are more fragile than older ones and cost a lot of money to fix when they break. Sometimes they break due to design compromises and even more design compromises up the repair cost through the roof (see complaints about the display cable for an example).

<comment><USER27> > there are compromises, mainly around durability and repair costs.

Apple has proven that they will trade repair cost & repair-ability away for anything. Even nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> But does it have a USB port?

<comment><USER34> All Apple laptops come with multiple standard USB ports.

<comment><USER4> I think you must mean USB-C ports. There are no standard USB-A ports on the MacBook Pro any longer. [https://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/)

<comment><USER34> But USB C ports are standard USB ports. They're not some proprietary thing. They're standard USB.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does the Highway Patrol Keep Us Safe? - <AUTHOR> http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/28/does-the-highway-patrol-keep-us-safe/

<comment><USER2> Interesting facts. Could replacing the highway patrol by automated radar systems work? I'd like to see a study of that.

Also interesting is the fact that the article title seems to lead to a "no", but the answer ends up being "yes".</comment>


Working on a new trading platform and need your advice - <AUTHOR>

Our team is trying to offer a new and different service for young designers and those smaller businesses who might need their designs. Do you have any advice how to improve it? Would you consider joining it and if so, why? sillytrader.com <comment><USER2> I have worked for several ISPs that sold design services. Something the good ones had that I didn't think was obvious is project management via a dedicated project manager (one manager to many projects). I assume you tap a global market of online designers -- if not you should.

Why was this helpful? A friendly arbiter between the parties is often useful. Good designers are not always good communicators and planners. Many small businesses have very little experience in marketing, and a project manager helps with expectations and requisites for a timely conclusion to the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thanks for your reply. Yes, we're targeting a global audience but it will take time to get there. We're also in the process of changing the name and specifying the serevice description just to make it clearer. We're a team of six but only two of them are in charge of marketing and further development. Thank you again. What about the overall idea of the service - do you find in interesting?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Alzheimer password generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/viralpoetry/alzheimer-password-generator <comment><USER2> Could probably do with renaming, plenty of other memory based words that could be used rather than using Alzheimer's which is a terrible disease to be afflicted with.

<comment><USER3> I second this, and I don't really know if a memory-deficient password manager is a _good_ thing.

> Final password is cryptographically derived from web page URL address, salt > and user provided secret passphrase. The salt should be stored physically, > so you can recover it in the future.

I didn't really know, at first glance, what this project accomplishes besides generating a random password, although looking through some of the screenshots it looks like passwords are _always_ generated on-page instead of storing an encrypted vault. A super cool idea, but I'd be curious what everyday use of it would look like, and since I don't use Chrome I can't really test it myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. You are right, the password is generated on the fly using URL, unique seed and provided passphrase. The extension javascript is sandboxed from the webpage, so it is not possible to obtain the inputs to the PBKDFunction from the context of website.

I have coded this for myself and using it more than 2 years. The only problems are with some dynamically created login forms, like new reddit login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Such a thing is typically called a deterministic password manager. One problem with it is that you can't change the algorithm. If you want to change your PBKDF2 from 1000 to 5000 iterations, then you can't login anymore on any of the services where you used this tool to set the password.

See also this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016132)

</comment><comment><USER5> i love this! does that mean i have alzheimers??</comment>