Covid-19 Isn't as Deadly as We Think - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than-we-think.html <comment><USER2> This article is basically saying: It only affects old people, so we shouldn't care.

Many of us have elderly parents and small children and Covid-19 affects both to a much larger degree than the general public.

It's also concerning that there are videos and reports from China that show apartment doors being welded shut and people dropping dead in the street.

There is still a lot of unknowns about this virus and it could be far deadlier than what's being told to us today. Lack of information is one of the disadvantages of an authoritarian country like China.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't affect small children at all. Only elderly, with pre-conditions. Meanwhile the normal sesonaal flu and measels are ravaging as always and kill 100x more people.</comment></comment>


RED Colourspaces Derivation - <AUTHOR> http://colour-science.org/blog_red_colourspaces_derivation.php

<comment><AUTHOR> The original IPython Notebook is available here if any issues: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour- web...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour- website/blob/master/ipython/red_colourspaces_derivation.ipynb)</comment>


A roadmap for web development: Part 1 - HTML & CSS - <AUTHOR> http://writings.withoutfriction.com/how-to-learn-xhtml-css-more-web-development-s

<comment><USER2> I think when you're starting, learning about HTTP is way, way more important than a particular language or framework to do server side work with.</comment>


Instagram Is Ruining Vacation - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/instagram-is-ruining-vacation-701086a67440#.axm8wkawc <comment><USER2> I went to see sunrise (and spend the day at) Angkor Wat in December, and have a rather different perspective to the OP.

Sure - there were lots of people crowded around a similar spot at sunrise. It's Angkor Wat, and seeing sunrise there is the kind of thing that most people in attendance are going to do once in their lives. It would be in most travellers top ten things to do before you die list. People are going to want to take photographs.

Did the presence of other people there massively ruin the day for me? No. When sunrise is over, you have at least six hours to wander round the temples completely uninterrupted at your leisure.

If you so choose, you can come back in the afternoon when there are far fewer people around. Do I get an awesome amount of pleasure from looking back at my photos of Angkor and sharing them with friends and family? Yes. Do most of my photos even have me in them at all? No.

It's really impossible to hold the details of an experience like wandering round Angkor in your head for years to come. I'm not going to remember the detail on a specific bas-relief, or the view I got from the top of a specific temple in years to come. Having photographs of these things really helps in that regard and enables me to 'revisit' any time I want.

This is yet another judgy, post-intellectualizing Medium piece whose purpose isn't communicating any particular point but garnering clicks and attention for the author. You really think Instagram ruined your trip to Angkor?

Did you really take the decision - faced with an absolutely awe inspiring monument at sunrise - that the best use of your time and resources was to take a judgmental photo of the people around you? Get over yourself.

<comment><USER3> > It would be in most travellers top ten things to do before you die list.

Something that has been bothering me lately. I have no memory of 99% of my life. No I don't have medical condition, I've spoken to lots of people about this, my friends who I've spoken to have forgotten their babies first steps, their baby's first words, first date with their spouse ect which most people would rate as top moments of their lives.

I am not even sure that the stuff I do remember form my life is actually accurate or if I've stored them in an edited/modified form that would please me. I am not even sure if 'me according to me' is a honest representation or if its just bunch of inaccuracies that I've woven into somewhat consistent story about myself.

People used to view material goods as good life now it all about 'experiences' . I just don't understand that constant demand by both society and internally to have experiences at all costs. We think that without experiences our minds will become dull and uninteresting, experiences would wake us up from our dull lives.

<comment><USER4> > I just don't understand that constant demand by both society and internally > to have experiences at all costs. We think that without experiences our > minds will become dull and uninteresting, experiences would wake us up from > our dull lives.

I don't think we're expecting to wake up.

I think many of us feel totally powerless to live the lives we want to live: to get the job we want, to buy our parents a house, to be seen by our peers the way we'd like to be seen. We know we're up against a wall and that to some degree we're settling for uninteresting things.

But then someone says "the Sistine Chapel has the most beautiful frescos in the world" and what we hear is "if you can just get your butt here, you can experience a taste of the best stuff there is". It's a chance to stop thinking about what we can't have and just think about what we are having and how great it is.

In some sense, actually experiencing the place isn't really important. In fact, it's pretty dangerous. If you paid attention you might realize that you actually don't know anything about antiquities, and you don't actually care about Michelangelo. Looking deeply at the attraction can only cheapen it.

But if you just stand there, in the spot experts say to stand, and you pay your money, and the staff do the thing they do when they get the money, then for a few minutes you can really believe that you have it good.

It's self-actualization as a service.

<comment><USER5> I think you have an interesting line of thought here, but don't underestimate the dramatic emotional power that great works of art and architecture can have on us. Such stunning displays of human achievement at once connect us with the present, past, and future (reflecting on what great works you might leave behind) all at once.

I know that when I visited the Louvre, for instance, I was inspired at the sheer grandiosity of the works within. Whether or not experts said it was a great place to go was irrelevant, I was awestruck either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Photography is an incredible way to experience a new location. It isn't ruining vacations, its redefining them.

In Laos, I met a young munk named Khao at the top of Phou si in Luang Prabang. He kindly posed for a photo, and then we had a conversation. He gave me his email, and I sent him the photo later on.

The "perfect photo" isn't the goal. Memories and being able to share our awesome travel experiences with friends and family is.

I find these types of criticisms of photography just part of the hipster "backpacker mentality": I'm better than the mainstream. I don't visit the same tourist destinations like everyone else. I eat the local food and not at touristic restaurants. I see a sunset and I don't upload it to Instagram.

<comment><USER7> _"Instagram," Suler said, "is therefore a tool for validating one's life."_

I think this is the crux of the issue. You are right--photography has been part of vacations since cameras were generally available. But what's different is the real-time nature of sharing those images, and the real time acceptance (or rejection) of those images via likes and comments. If those are more important than the lived experience, then, I think we have a problem.

I'm a friendly critic of Instagram (it is the only social media outlet my wife and I use). It is perfect for sharing images while we travel. It is also easy, however, to get up checking if folks have liked our photos, or commented on them. That's not Instagram's fault, of course, but I wouldn't even worry about such things if we weren't sharing photos almost immediately.

<comment><USER8> > I think this is the crux of the issue. You are right--photography has been > part of vacations since cameras were generally available. But what's > different is the real-time nature of sharing those images, and the real time > acceptance (or rejection) of those images via likes and comments. If those > are more important than the lived experience, then, I think we have a > problem.

Why?

<comment><USER7> I guess it comes down to how you see the world. Personally, I'd rather be fully immersed in whatever I am experiencing in real life, and not weighed down by likes and comments on a social media platform.

Edited to add:

I recently came across this quote from Norman Wirzba, a theologian at Duke University:

 _Media platforms and technological devices are not simply neutral tools that we use to move through life. Their power is much more extensive, because they shape and frame what we perceive and understand the wold to be. When people spend enough time in front of screens, it becomes all but inevitable that the whole world takes on the character of something to be watched. Given the technologies we now have for manipulating screens in whatever fashion we like to suit our own particular tastes, if we find the Mona Lisa boring, no problem. We can run the image through the Fatify app or add the graphics and colors we like to make it amusing or better than the original! Should we be surprised that people often find the world uninteresting and dull?_

<comment><USER9> Reframe it this way. What's more important: the inert and inanimate surroundings of Angkor Wat, or sharing that experience with your friends and family?

When I post a picture on FB or text it, I'm not "looking for social approval." I'm reaching out to friends who aren't there with me and saying "hey man, check this out!"

<comment><USER10> I would say the former. There are so many things about "being there" that even the world's best photographer with the world's best camera equipment would have a hard time capturing. I'm a hobbyist photographer myself, but there are some times I just want to put my camera away and "take a memory".

<comment><USER11> My memories of precious moments (first hours with my son, etc) are fragile and fleeting, and already mostly gone. Most of the time the pictures I take are not very good at capturing the essence of what I want to remember, but other times ... it really does. Seeing video of my kids scampering through a park in Ireland, or photos of them from years ago at the beach capture aspects of them that I had forgotten.

Often the pictures remind me not of what is in the picture, but help me remember what I was doing, where I was, and the things around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Several years back I decided to stop taking photos. I felt I spent too much time looking at the world through my camera screen or viewfinder instead of with my own eyes, and worrying about the right settings instead of simply enjoying myself and letting go. (I'm not an experienced photographer, which probably also makes me slower.)

Turns out it wasn't the best solution either. Memory decays, and a few years later it became difficult to reminisce anything about the places I went to.

The sweet spot for me is to just snap a few pictures, quickly, without worrying about how good it looks. I don't post anything on social media anyway, so I couldn't care less how cool my photo looks. But years later, these photos are invaluable as catalysts to trigger my brain into reminiscing much much more about these moments than if I didn't have any photos.

<comment><USER13> I completely agree with you.

Although I use social media, I tend to only post pictures there that are meaningful to others, like photos with/of other people that dignify them, or pictures about my life that do not serve my ego, but can hopefully enrich the life of my friends.

I am quite sad by the glorification of narcissistic attitudes, posts, photos, etc in most of modern societies. That does not seem not me like the way humans as whole can evolve to be even better beings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I once had a pretty strong stance against photography. I come from a culture where everyone takes photos of everything to the point that events seem to circle around it. It was just boring, and I agreed with a philosopher (sorry can't remember which) that when you take a photo, you miss the authentic moment because you're busy manufacturing one.

Now I wish I wasn't that idealistic/arrogant because now I don't have much photos to look at! When I look at my childhood photos, it makes me realise the extent we can sometimes whitewash our own memories of the past.

<comment><USER15> Though Susan Sontag has already been mentioned, I'll also throw out that Ayn Rand, a female philosopher of arguably lesser validity, was also not very fond of photographs [1]. At least, with respect to its status as works of 'art'.

> A certain type of confusion about the relationship between scientific > discoveries and art, leads to a frequently asked question: Is photography an > art? The answer is: No. It is a technical, not a creative, skill. Art > requires a selective re-creation. A camera cannot perform the basic task of > painting: a visual conceptualization, i.e., the creation of a concrete in > terms of abstract essentials. The selection of camera angles, lighting or > lenses is merely a selection of the means to reproduce various aspects of > the given, i.e., of an existing concrete. There is an artistic element in > some photographs, which is the result of such selectivity as the > photographer can exercise, and some of them can be very beautiful—but the > same artistic element (purposeful selectivity) is present in many > utilitarian products: in the better kinds of furniture, dress design, > automobiles, packaging, etc. The commercial art work in ads (or posters or > postage stamps) is frequently done by real artists and has greater esthetic > value than many paintings, but utilitarian objects cannot be classified as > works of art.

[1] [http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/photography.html](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/photography.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one of those topics that will keep coming up. I first properly noticed this a few years ago whilst strolling around Tate Modern and watching a girl go from exhibit to exhibit just taking a picture without seeming to take in what she was picturing (I might be wrong, how we judge/look at art is different).

Art is maybe different to historical places. Having just come back from Japan, I noticed this whilst walking around shrines and temples, where it felt like conveyor belt tourism. Walk along a path till you hit the "perfect" point for your selfie/shot of said temple, then keep going till you hit the exit. I even came across this sign: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaredce/26366290652/in/album-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaredce/26366290652/in/album-72157667137331876/) a sign of the times?

I struggled in Japan, my knowledge of the language was completely lacking, and it made me wonder, how do we cater to those who don't speak English in the UK, is it a struggle for those too? Is the selfie destroying culture, or have we not done enough to allow people to understand the thing they're looking at?

<comment><USER17> To be fair museums themselves make this worse. I still haven't come across a museum (granted I don't go a lot) that had exhaustive good-quality photographs of all their exhibits available online.

So to give this girl the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is the only time she'll be in London, she only has a few days, and she's genuinely interested in the art, but taking photos of it to inspect it later allows her to enjoy more of it than hanging around carefully looking at individual pieces at the expense of not seeing any of the others at all, ever.

<comment><USER18> > To be fair museums themselves make this worse. I still haven't come across a > museum (granted I don't go a lot) that had exhaustive good-quality > photographs of all their exhibits available online.

Bingo. I do go to a lot of art galleries and museums and this is a huge problem. I get back and want to find that item that was very interesting and study it more, and the best I can find is some grainy picture on wikipedia that someone else took.

<comment><USER16> Well, they have to incentivise you to visit. I can understand why they don't put their pieces online, they want you to come, maybe pay for entrance or donate, buy something from the gift shop. Putting it online is rightly, or wrongly, detracting from that.

<comment><USER18> Maybe, but that does not make sense to me. If anything, pictures online make me want to go see something in person. Also, the popular pieces can usually be found online which does not fit the model of must come to see. My guess is the less popular pieces are so numerous that it is too expensive to properly photograph and host images of everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This hits pretty close to home for me. I'm lucky enough to work remotely, and for the past ~year I've been living abroad. I'm also a huge Instagram user. I have somewhere around 700 photos, most of which are travel-related and have 5-10 hashtags each.

I've felt the same thing as the author, dozens of times. I've gone out of my way multiple times to simply take a cool Instagram photo and wait for the likes to come in.

I've been subconsciously looking for an alternative for awhile now. Sketching [1] may be an option, but my drawing skills are a bit rusty. Maybe I'll just take photos but upload them to my own site, rather than seek the kudos from random Instagrammers.

[1] [http://www.urbansketchers.org/](http://www.urbansketchers.org/)

<comment> k-mcgrady Why upload them anywhere? Take the photos and store them on your computer/phone/backup drive. I mean if the goal is to have some nice photos you can look back on but remove the element of crazing likes etc. why even bother uploading them to your own website?

<comment><USER19> That's an idea. I just don't want them to be tied an immediate dopamine fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would have thought the main issue is the sheer number of people who can now afford to go to these exotic locations, rather than the pictures themselves. On the upside I'm able to enjoy places like Devon much more now that the people who packed out the beaches 30 years ago are all off taking pictures at Angkor Wat

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been a hobby photographer for over 40 years. I've also sold my work.

This past weekend I watched the latest James Bond movie. When I was a kid, I used to love those. Not only was Bond invincible and always cool, but he also traveled to the most exotic places.

Watching the movie yesterday? Meh. Not so much. It occurred to me that with all of the photo sharing going on social media, it takes a lot more than a movie star in a panoramic shot to impress me. In fact, lately when I watch movies, I'm guessing the locations they were shot -- simply because I've seen so many other images of the same place.

I feel that images as a way to say something about yourself, like "Hey, I was here!" probably don't work like they used to. I have some friends that will dump 80 pictures of their day at the beach. Wow. Nobody has a day at the beach that is that memorable.

Images as a way to show your feeling at the time? I don't think they're ever going out of style. I'll take 100-200 shots, then find 1 or 2. Then I'll spend some time in post production making the image match the feeling I had looking at the scene. This may or may not be realistic. I find that I rarely can achieve this effect by pushing pre-canned image processing buttons.

It reminds me of my first trip to the Grand Canyon. My wife and I got out of the car and looked. Wow! Big! Really big! So I took some pictures.

Just then a bus pulls up. Scores of other people get out, all with cameras. Big! It's really big! Many more pictures were taken.

I realized that this was total bullshit. If we go home now, we'll just have yet another picture like 7 million other pictures. It means nothing. So we went hiking down below the rim. (We hiked an hour or two down. It was twice that time coming back up.) It was during this hike that I actually had a personal experience of the Grand Canyon. We met the new superintendent, we chatted with other travelers, we noticed how that once you started interacting with the canyon, it left a completely different experience than just looking at a 2D image.

Technology is giving us a lot of little ways to pretend we're "starring in our own reality show", but most of that is just pretend.

<comment><USER22> >> If we go home now, we'll just have yet another picture like 7 million other pictures. It means nothing.

If I go somewhere like the Grand Canyon, I don't take a single picture. If I want to see pictures of the Grand Canyon I'll go on the internet and find some professionally shot one and remember that way. I'll let the pros take care of the pictures and I'll just enjoy seeing the real thing with my own eyes.

<comment><USER23> The pictures by the pros won't have my daughter in them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wish I had just a couple of photographs of my misspent youth (15 to 20 / 1994 to 1999). I spent a lot of time socialising/drinking/partying with a big social group of friends. Pre-digital era, nobody ever took a picture. With hindsight I should have taken just a few to reminisce with in my old age.

<comment><USER25> Maybe the days of your dumb (possibly illegal) youthful times should disappear and not follow you your entire life?

<comment><USER26> That shift happened so rapidly and so completely that it's not going to wind up being a big issue, I think.

<comment> J-dawg Do you really think so? I wish I had your optimism.

I'm pretty sure that in 5-10 years the tabloid press will do their best to dredge up the old social media photos of anyone in the public eye, and turn it into 'journalism' with their usual tone of faux-outrage. And people will still keep coming back and giving pageviews to the Daily Mail.

I really hope I'm wrong and you're right, and the explosion of online sharing will mean we're all more accepting of the fact that people do silly things when they're young which shouldn't be held against them forever. I just can't see it happening.

<comment><USER26> The response to "celebrity X has a sex tape" is already "meh, so what? I've got a few too". The same thing has happened with drug use - in my lifetime we've gone from Clinton saying "I tried pot, but of course I didn't inhale it" to an understanding that it's unremarkable to have smoked some marijuana in early adulthood.

When the kids today growing up with social media from childhood start applying for jobs and running for office, it'll be hard to find candidates _without_ something you can find... and you'll probably be wondering if they're secretly a serial killer with such a clean record.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> People have been taking photos of their vacations, printing them and then making other people view them, for decades now. Nothing has changed except the amount of photos and instantaneous method of posting. Don't worry, technology is not ruining anything in this case.

<comment><USER28> It's ruining it for _me_ if I have to dodge selfie sticks and migrate my way through a hoard of tourists too busy paying attention to the photos they have just taken on their phones.

<comment><USER23> If you find being around people ruins your vacation, then perhaps you should stop taking vacations to places full of people. The world is full of isolated places where you can be alone.

<comment><USER28> Being around people doesn't ruin my vacation, being around people with their phones and selfie sticks out does.

<comment><USER23> Then I'd avoid places with lots of selfie sticks.

<comment><USER29> Here's a list for starters.

[http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies- so...](http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-social-media- bans-at-landmarks)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been following some friends' travels through southeast Asia over the last six months via Instagram, and it's been great. Seems like they're having a great time, and I like being able to talk to them about what they're seeing, doing, and eating. Bummer this other person felt her vacation was ruined by what she chose to do.

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://xkcd.com/1314/](https://xkcd.com/1314/)

<comment><USER32> Exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > That scene — the fight for the perfect Instagram

Ok so either one of two things has happened here:

a) the author believes every person who takes a photo on a smartphone is using Instagram.

b) the author is part of a group of people who have replaced the word "photo(graph)" with "Instagram" in their vocabulary, similar to how "kleenex" is often used in America instead of "tissue".

I honestly don't know which is more likely, but they're both fucking ridiculous.

</comment><comment> vic-traill I've noticed an increase of what I call people _documenting_ their experience at events, and circulating that documentation.

This predates Instagram - I was at a Dylan concert at Bluesfest in Ottawa circa 2007, and a noticed lot of folks spent significant effort getting audio/video clips (and presumably sharing them using their method of choice based on time spent banging away on their phones after capturing the clip). There were even noticeable numbers of folks calling people and holding their phones up for the other end to hear.

It's a little weird - it has an element of having to prove to people that you're at a some big event and experiencing something that other people aren't.

My own preference is to Be There Now (apologies to Ram Dass) and soak in the experience. Of course spending time noting other people not being in the moment in turn diminishes my own focus.

I am saddened by what I perceive as a lessening of being in an experience with the people around you, and a need to prove to people that you're a part of something exciting, perhaps even some 'I'm Here and You're Not'.

Maybe I should just shutup and watch the show.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think he had a lot of fun making these pictures, sharing it and writing this story about it.

We humans are social animals. Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things.

<comment><USER35> _Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things. reply_

Except Instagram users (and every other social network) is not about "sharing". They're about broadcasting. If it was about sharing then there would regularly be multi-way conversations between users. Instagram is about posting a picture and receiving likes and comments in response, but that's where the conversation ends. That isn't "social" by any definition I understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Instagram and Facebook travel photos are the contemporary equivalent of postcards to friends and family back home. I agree it's important not to make capturing a good photo the most important part of your vacation, but while a few people are going to fall into that trap, for most of us the photos serve as a way to remind us of the experience and share it with our loved ones. The fact that photos are so easy to take these days is a problem, sure, but give it another couple of decades, and our life-capture gear embedded in our clothing will record 360-degree video and audio of our entire lives and we'll have mini-drones that will capture our selfies for us, or maybe we'll just be able to stand in any spot in the world and smile and think "selfie" and the surveillance-industrial complex will take the 3D image of us in our surroundings it constantly keeps built from universal surveillance and mark that moment specifically to share with our list of approved cohorts.

<comment><USER37> >... and our life-capture gear embedded in our clothing will record 360-degree video and audio of our entire lives...

I disagree. This _could_ be happening now. The reason it is not is because the vast majority of our day is boring. And then there's the disgusting biological acts we have to do to stay alive. Nobody wants to record all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> People used to compete socially by having the biggest house, the biggest car.

Millenials do it with instagram pictures instead?

<comment><USER16> _Then I spent 400 bucks on this_

 _Just to be like nigga you ain 't up on this!_

\- [http://genius.com/225037](http://genius.com/225037)

I think it's more a case of Millenials (not even really them) being able to afford to go to Angkor Wat or any other exotic destination.

<comment><USER39> Could possibly be. I didn't get on a plane til I was 17 and that was a domestic flight. And didn't get overseas until I was 19 and my grandparents paid for it, and we had family overseas. It just wasn't financially possible for a (reasonably financially stable) working class family like ours to fly.

Now this kind of travel seems routine?

<comment><USER40> i honestly don't understand how people afford it. i just joined okcupid, and you would think it was a dating site hosted by the travel channel.

<comment><USER18> The biggest boon to my traveling was a) go to cheaper places b) AirBnb c) off season or shoulders. Croatia is amazing and inexpensive, although I would make sure to go in the summer to experience the beaches. Hungary is the same and is nice in the fall/spring. Slovenia is a beautiful country. Even Prague can be affordable on the 'shoulders'. Flights are still pricey, but even they are cheaper if you avoid the 3 months of the summer.

I have even touched on SEA which appears to be the younger persons favorite inexpensive place to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nommm-nommm I don't take more than a few pictures on vacation anymore. Ive learned I can enjoy the experience more if I'm not worried about trying to take pics of everything. Better yet, my memories of the experience are better than the pictures I used to take. Giving up "must capture this moment" mentality allows me to be present in the moment. It is very liberating.

<comment><USER41> I'm actually finding the opposite. I used to take no pictures at all, and now we take a nice big camera when we go on vacation. I'm amazed at how little I remembered about the details, and the photos bring that flooding back.

Of course, this assumes there were memorable things happening in the first place. If you just saw the sites and that was it, then the pictures aren't actually any better than any else's pictures... And to be fair, other pictures are usually just about as good for most memories.

A picture of the Kaminarimon gate in Tokyo isn't actually that different between pictures, after all. A picture of a certain event (parade?) with it in the background would be different. And pictures of an event like a wedding would be very unique.

<comment> nommm-nommm You only need a couple though. Like the old days, do some stuff, snap a couple photos along the way, usually only one person in the group even had a camera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's not just holidays that this is a problem, even just communal domestic activities like concerts are full of people watching the action from behind the glare of their phone screen

</comment><comment><USER43> I mean, smartphone cameras basically ruined everything; I remember grousing over people pulling out their phones at concerts - and at any other momentous event, basically.

My problem with the trend is that there's a growing trend for people to experience things through a medium - or filter - rather than directly, and they miss out on a lot by doing so. With photographs (and Instagram), you can have your cake and eat it too, of course, but I'm bummed about the camera phone as a permament intermediary between us and the real world.

I'm not going to blame Instagram for it, though.

</comment><comment><USER44> One day mid last year I decided to delete all my 10000 photos spanning a decade. The reason built up gradually and it was the emotions these photos evoked that did nothing but get in my way of enjoying/experiencing the _now_.

Whatever's significant enough to be important, I remember. I feel a lot more free and happier by not hanging on details of the past.

In contrast, I think writings, like diary and poetry are much more useful to keep, because they can be interpreted differently over time which means they can be related to at the time of reading, years later.

<comment><USER45> Why can't photos be interpreted differently over time, leading them to be related to at the time of viewing, years later?

<comment><USER44> Photographs are pretty much as detailed as a painting could be. Writing and poetry however is like a 5 minute sketch where you can fill in the details based on your current state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The real problem is exhibited but not addressed: a plague of insipid descriptions next to each photo followed by a string of dumb hashtags.

Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong

</comment><comment><USER47> Photographers know the "photographers look" since a long time. Not taking the camera with you was an easy fix, but you still have the automatic framing of everything you see in your head, just learn not to act on it.

As with many things: If it's important to you, just try to change habits. Learn some impulse-control instead of forcing arbitrary rules or restrictions upon yourself.

(disclaimer: i didn't read the article and suppose it's the usual whining about new tech and addiction to it)

</comment><comment><USER48> I can see both sides of this argument and I'm not sure I fall squarely on one of them. I've been on both ends of this.

While I have been on vacations and taken a lot of photos I enjoy while on them, there is something to be said for being present for the experience. That's why, I typically set aside a certain amount of time to take photos, and then I put the camera away. Now, with smartphone cameras, I feel more inclined to take photos of every experience and post them, and I have had second thoughts when doing so- feeling less than present and more involved in putting it on display for others. I guess it's the social aspect that is causing this- taking photos for photos' sake, just for one's own use, I guess is at least somewhat different? Not sure.

It's the same thing that frustrates me about people that take pictures the _entire time_ during a concert. They're missing the experience so they can capture a fraction of it for later instant-reminiscence. What happened to just actually having the experience instead? Sure, snap a shot or two and then enjoy the show, but why watch an entire _live_ experience through a viewfinder or the back of a camera, when it's right there in front of you?

</comment><comment><USER49> This reminds me of a quote I heard from recent late night channel surfing movie: _" The life of Walter Mitty"_. I probably would have never seen the movie normally but was sort of surprised it wasn't complete crap (FX the channel seems to have penchant at finding movies like that).

There is a line from the sort of venerable Sean Penn:

 _" Beautiful things don't ask for attention."_

</comment><comment><USER50> Yesterday I drove down La Jolla Shores Drive, which is a steep winding road that follows the La Jolla coastline. It was sunset, and the view was magnificent.

Every single person I passed on that road was frozen in place, carefully angling their camera phones to get the perfect sunset picture. It was like an outdoor wax museum.

</comment><comment><USER51> The author's first anecdote reminded me of what happened when I went to see the Kinkaku-Ji temple in Kyoto. It's a very famous buddhist temple that is covered in gold and reflects over a beautiful pond.

The grounds were specatcular and for the most part I could walk around them without being in too much of a crowd. But at the one point where you could get the "famous" picture of the temple reflecting into water there were a few hundred people shoulder to shoulder trying to hold their phones above everyone else.

This was especially heartbreaking to me at a buddhist temple meant to inspire tranquility and a place where I had hoped people would be able to take in the serenity of the scene instead of fighting for the photo.

</comment><comment><USER52> In the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" the author Daniel Kahneman states that we remember our memories and that is one of the main reasons that people take photographs on vacations and such rather than being in the moment and actually experiencing.

</comment><comment><USER53> One research stated that people tend to post the best moments of their life on social media. We want to share our achievements, travels, experiences. It creates a problem for others. They see these pictures and feel that their life is not that awesome and that they should do something wrong. The youth is influenced more than others. From the other hand, Instagram and other social media motivate people to take nice pictures, create interesting descriptions. We get skills that can be used at work if you are on a marketing side :)

</comment><comment><USER54> Recently I was at a pretty cool rooftop bar in downtown Chicago with a great view of the lake with a couple co workers who hadnt been there before. I try to limit my social media services (if I start using a new one I drop one I've been using) but snapchat seems to be ruining moments for people. My co workers all had to snap everything that was happening rather than just enjoying the moment.

Instagram I understand because you can keep the photo but snapchat is gone in an instant. I dont get it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Personally, I think the question is more: when photography change from "Look where I was" or "Look at that", to "Look at me"

</comment><comment><USER56> I think at least half of the comments here are missing the point. This article is not about photography. The title is not "Photography Is Ruining Vacation". Yet, everyone's here defending photography, as if that's what's being criticized. We've had annoying tourist photography since the invention of the handheld camera, but that's not what the article is about.

<comment><USER57> The title is saying exactly that. It doesn't provide any insight what's wrong if there's something wrong at all. How long does it take to take an instagram shot? 2-3 seconds? How many do you take on a journey? 50-100? Do the math and divide that with the length of your journey. Taking pics is a marginal activity.

It's easy to judge a class of people, when you have a special event, like a sunrise. But did the author followed them after it passed? No. She just seen an opportunity to bash "modern instagram culture" because she thinks people are not enjoying themselves anymore thanks to a mobile app. The whole article has an everything was better back then feeling which I've seen millions of times.

<comment><USER56> You, also, seem to be confusing photography with Instagram.

<comment><USER57> Nope, I just use photography and "to instragram" interchangeably as people use to google for search although everybody* knows that there's more search engines out there.

* artistic exaggeration ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This seems like an updated version of what people have been doing for decades: Coach loads of tourists stopping briefly at viewpoints (with the place to stand for the best shot marked by the city on the sidewalk) around beautiful cities, just to take photos, bookended with a cafe and restaurant (writing postcards). If that's how people want to spend their time and relax its fine by me.

</comment><comment><USER59> I feel like some people will find a way to be shallow and performative about how they live their lives no matter what technology exists.

</comment><comment><USER60> I've come to think of medium as _the_ place to find poor arguments made passionately. Articles like this are why.

</comment><comment><USER61> I like how in the closing paragraph the author says he will continue to be the douche with his camera out all the time, which is the real problem he outlines in the article, not the existence of Instagram. But that he sincerely hopes that others will be more responsible. This borders on shoe-gazing hipster parody.

</comment><comment><USER62> It kinda is the same as all those people who feel the need to share their meal, or with whom they are. Imho it means you are not completely there and thinking of other people who you need to impress. I must admit, i have my moments of weakness, but not so much as other people i follow.

</comment><comment><USER63> Similar as "I Forgot My Phone": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8)

</comment><comment><USER64> I think in the case of a bunch of parents taking pictures of their kids it isn't for instagram, it's to give those kids the picture so they will remember that day.

</comment><comment><USER65> My favorite is concerts. People pay a small fortune to see their favorite band live, to watch much of it through a tiny LCD screen.

</comment><comment><USER66> I know this will probably be rather controversial, but it's not just instagram, the whole internet is ruining and poisoning and deconstructing whole segments of human interaction and activity and relationship.

It goes far beyond just people posting the best of the idealized pictures they took of idealized places; it goes well into the perversion that social media in general causes that is eating its way through humanity right now where idealized illusions and perceptions are posted to social media that affect others in ways that has never before been experienced by humans. We are simply not socially or even evolutionary adapted to that massive change in human relations at this point, and I can assure you is having real impacts on lives and will only start spinning out of control even more over time.

It is precisely why I deliberately do not post images on social media, not just because it is a security issue to me, but because I am damn sure I don't want to attract the zombie hordes to the places I've discovered around the world just so they can be trampled by ignorant dolts that just want to post a picture online and attract even more people.

It's really a kind of real world network effect that is gripping humanity. Austin, Texas is a good example of a foreshadowing (or is it maybe just a casualty of a transitory phase) world in which social media draws in throngs of people who then smother the thing they ostensibly like and love (Anyone remember the baby dolphin incident?)

The new social media capacity for posting and distribution of awareness, combined with the natural and social amenities of the city and events (ACL and SXSW) caused a flood of people to start migrating like buffalo to a watering hole and they have, for all intents and purposes, fully smothered what made Austin great in the first place and are well underway of trampling and overrunning the rest. Sure, go visit Austin and you'll love it too because you don't know what it was and therefore have no context or baseline, but reality is that things will be AWESOME until there's a break in the pattern. You don't understand that Austin simply does not have the capacity to support the throngs of people that have moved there, which has caused it to essentially collapse what it was; and also does not have the capacity to support larger populations with anything like the amenities that you see in other real cities. Unfortunately, these kinds of things tend to have a long run-up and build-up and an inversely sharp break-point; but the break will come eventually once the city succumbs to the unsustainable pressures. Texas and Austin actually have a long history of exacerbated booms and busts, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out in today's social media world.

Will social media prevent a bust by feeding the ponzi scheme, or will it trigger or fuel the bust as the next big thing becomes the it place to live and work and it drains the city practically overnight as the locust swarm flocks to it's new grazing grounds.

But to get back on track; there is something rather incompatible with prior assumptions about humanity and even things like overpopulation and whether the planet can support such large populations, which do not take into account or include the real world network effects we are seeing with social media. Social media is causing an intensification of the impact of human activity as people start herding far more than ever before and all flocking to the same places and things; and the second something becomes popular on social media is pretty much the death knell by simply being overrun, overwhelmed, and smothered by throngs of people.

<comment><USER67> > the whole internet is ruining and poisoning and deconstructing whole > segments of human interaction and activity and relationship.

Let me correct it for you: The whole internet is CHANGING whole segments of human interaction and [...]

The one constant of life is change. Change doesn't care if it's good or bad, it just is. If you zoom out to a much large scale spices mutate and go extinct. It just how it is.

Lets take it back to people. When writing came out, people lamented that it was ruining oral traditions. When the printing press came out, people complained that it was running writing. When cheap paper backs came out, people complained that everybody could all of a sudden publish and this it would lower the quality of books. Then my teacher complained that handwriting was becoming lost worse because of using keyboards.

All of a sudden if connect everybody in the world to every other person in the world it will have an impact. It will change and alter human interaction.

Now you're free to lament & you are free to not participate, but it doesn't mean that other people don't derive immense value out of internet / instagram / online communications.

I don't even like instagram, but you know whatevs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> This would be reason enough for me to not take photos on holidays.

Documentting my every-day surroundings sometimes seems more worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER69> Why is this a top thread on HN? We are all aware of the fraud in photos. Next...

</comment><comment><USER70> > narcisstick

perfect

</comment><comment><USER71> speak for yourself!

Some people like to capture moments in intricate details.

</comment><comment><USER8> > It was just boring, and I agreed with a philosopher (sorry can't remember > which) that when you take a photo, you miss the authentic moment because > you're busy manufacturing one.

Susan Sontag. It's a pessimistic sentiment that is borne out of insecurity and self-centeredness ("I know what's best for everyone else"), and has nothing to do with the world outside the ego.

<comment><USER72> > Susan Sontag. It's a pessimistic sentiment that is borne out of insecurity > and self-centeredness ("I know what's best for everyone else"), and has > nothing to do with the world outside the ego.

That's a pretty terrible summary of Sontag's thesis. Maybe that's what you genuinely took away from her essay, but I can assure you there's a lot more of value in _On Photography_ than that.

It's also a rather dismissive way of taking about perhaps the most famous photographers and filmmaker of the early postmodern era, whose partner also was (and still is) an equally famous photographer.

You don't have to like Sontag, or even agree with her, but you can give her a bit more credit than dismissing everything she wrote as having "nothing to do with the world outside of her ego".

<comment><USER8> It's not a summary of her thesis, but where it's coming from. Someone else posted this and it does a better job than I do: [https://xkcd.com/1314/](https://xkcd.com/1314/)

<comment><USER73> Taking a picture of a sunset is very nice, the distraction of 100 lit up screens filming a full gig video from 100 feet back that will never be watched is something else.

<comment><USER23> Then don't stand there. The world is a big place, if you find yourself surrounded by 100 lit up screens and you would rather not, take a few steps to the side.

<comment><USER74> Stepping to the side isn't practical when you've paid money for a seat to see a band, and can't actually see for the sea of cameras and phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Cameras are destroying memory. Stupid tourists just want to take pictures. Everything is canned. And it's a tourist trap. Thanks to capitalism it all looks and feels the same. Thanks Obama. /scene

Want an authentic experience, go where you are not expected to go as a tourist. Everything else is canned and available on Youtube and Flickr and Instagram and has been for over a decade. Just today I rode of gondola in Italy via Youtube and wondered what the fuss was about and why I would ever do that.

<comment><USER76> I think you're right, but I also think a lot of people want something different. Most people see something they admire, want to recreate it for themselves, and then share it with their friends and family to show/record that they've done that. It might be the exact same thing that many other people have done, but a lot of people just want to do the experience that they build up in their head.</comment></comment>


Imminent Death of the Net Predicted due to RCF3484 - <AUTHOR> http://drplokta.livejournal.com/109267.html <comment><USER2> Synopsis: When choosing between multiple A records, RFC3484 changes the old "choose at random" behavior to a deterministic "choose one with longest matching address prefix", given the huge proportion of home machines at 192.168. _._ it will favor some A records over others.

Avoid the issue by not returning multiple A records with different address prefix lengths compared against 192.168 and 10. That will make hosting selection a little trickier.

The internet will be pronounced dead in 60 seconds.

<comment><USER3> Having a synopsis like this in a mouseover on every article on HN would be insanely practical.

@pg: make it possible to vote for a comment to be awarded 'representative for article and comments' and show the 'best' comment as a mouseover!

<comment><USER4> @m_eiman: and/or allow users to subscribe to other HN users' synopses, such that I would only see my favorite commenters synopsis. And why use mouse over? Simply place it to the right of the link, taking up all that space that is not being used yet; put the synopsis in a more transparent color than the other text- like the <0 down-modded comments.

<comment><USER3> Putting on the right would mean it can't be more than one line (give or take), and I think that's too short to be really useful. At least a few paragraphs are needed if the article isn't very short.

A mouseover might not be the best way, maybe a hidden div beneath the current metadata?

<comment><USER4> Ok. So the space is too short ( for a full synopsis ). But we ( as synopsis authors ) would invent shortcuts for rating and summarizing the content that would fit to the right or be truncated. And when a user clicks on comments, the full synopsis is always at the top of the comments.

And maybe the descriptors that different users would implement ( like their own tags/ratings for the content ) would become unique to that user, eventually, and have contextual meaning to that author. Each synopsis author would have their own tags that they could reuse. Only people who subscribed to that author could see their synopsis so their silly or cryptic or worthless synopsis descriptors would not clutter HN readers' experience unless they subscribed to a particular s-author ( synopsis author ).

So each user could have a customized right-hand HN site by subscribing to other synopsis authors and each synopsis author would have their own ways ( tags, most likely to start ) for communicating concise summaries/likes/dislikes of the content posted on HN.

But wouldn't a feature such as this take all the mystery out of HN headlines? Or would it add more mystery :) ?

Or would it add too much sub-culture HN? How much would be just enough? ( I hope I am not too off-topic by now )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the last sentence at all:

 _So we're going to have to take a slight hit to our resilience and reduce the number of A records we return for a DNS lookup to one instead of two._

How does that improve matters? Even if more or less every Vista user used the IP that was closest to 192.x, wouldn't other users still see the benefit of multiple records? In fact, they could make non-vista systems prefer the other addresses if they used effectively duplicates of the other addresses. Costs a few extra IPs, but surely that's not a problem for a site with millions of page views?

In case that wasn't clear, say they have 3 A entries:

      A: 7 shared prefix bits with 192.168.
      B: 6 shared prefix bits
      C: 5 shared prefix bits

Vista will always use A. Other systems will use all with 1/3 probability. If servers B & C were aliased to very similar IPs to the ones they already have, they'll end up with this situation:

      A: 7 shared prefix bits with 192.168.
      B: 6 shared prefix bits
      B: 6 shared prefix bits
      C: 5 shared prefix bits
      C: 5 shared prefix bits

Vista will still prefer A, but other systems will choose B or C twice as often as A, compensating for some of the extra load. You could play this game further if you wanted to.

An orthogonal solution is to get hold of some more servers that have an IP with the same "distance" as A. Vista should distribute traffic evenly across these; combined with the duplication suggested above to draw other OSes to the non-vista servers, it should be possible to make this less of a problem.

Still, if big companies are affected by this, I'm sure they can pressure Microsoft into abandoning this method. Actually, the author mentions that Windows 7 seems to have a more sane policy, so you'd just need such hacks until Vista fades back into insignificance.

</comment><comment><USER6> When you make such dire claims, you kind of owe it to your audience to have a brief summary of what you mean by "death of the net" at the top of the article.

Found it at the end:

"So we're going to have to take a slight hit to our resilience and reduce the number of A records we return for a DNS lookup to one instead of two."

Imminent death of the net indeed.

<comment><USER7> the title is a joke, but the content of the article is good.

<comment><USER8> A dangerous trend. If 100% of provocative linkbait titles lead to crappy articles, then I can safely ignore them, but if , say, 85% of them lead to crappy articles and 15% to good ones, then I have to waste resources derefencing pointers.

Or maybe I could just boycott linkbait titles altogether. If everyone does that the new way to get people to read your article would be... _drumroll_... to write an accurate title! Now that would be scary wouldn't it? The end of an era.

<comment><USER9> Just read the comments before you read the article to crowdsource your dereference.

Choosing to boycott linkbait will hardly make a difference as the linkbait aims to suck in the suckers and there are plenty of them.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't save you the dereferencing, though. It'll actually add another dereferencing for 15% of the articles, although by scanning the comments instead of the article you don't give the writer the satisfaction of a higher page view count (and possibly related ad income). Which in turn, in an ideal world, would make linkbait titles less popular (in favor of some other scheme, of course).

So, sounds like a good idea to me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also, it is important to mention that RCF3484 was drafted by MS Research.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would argue that this is still an implementation issue w/Vista's networking stack. The RFC assumes that the DNS resolver (the client) has a public IP. This is usually not the case with most clients, and Microsoft (etc) knows this. It's just an edge case that is now brought to light.

The solution to this is pretty simple (at least in the case of IPv4): identify and use the public IP of a session instead of the private one. I know that public IP identification behind a NAT is problematic, and certainly not that robust (SOAP-based UPnP IG is pretty ooky), but if it doesn't work, fall back to round robin. Not too hard.

Of course, while the solution is not too hard, it's up to a handful of large enterprises to deal with (people who make operating systems). And the rest of us are the ones having to hack around the problem in the meantime, which kinda sucks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Showing that even international standards can be poorly thought out, and fail in real-world application. And when they do, they are hard to go back and fix.

<comment><USER13> Its the waterfall approach in action.

<comment><USER14> Respectfully speaking, I might have a different take on waterfall. It reminds me of what Churchill said about democracy, that "it is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". Sure, waterfall is not perfect, and bad design, like in the case here with IP address routing, leads to bad results. But its competitors like agile and so on really have not sold me. It leads to a perpetual mentality of being in beta mode, code does not get frozen when it should, and customers don't have a clear idea of what goes into what release. It is murky, and that means more work ends up being done for less money. Not to mention from a QA point of view that QA is an equal part of the process in waterfall, where it tends to be a red-headed stepchild in agile environments. In waterfall, at least you have a clear idea of what is going to the customer, and what the bugs are, and the customer knows it too. And of course sometimes poor requirements end up going out and that is just life, but rigor is the key. Rigorous marketing requirements lead to rigorous technical specifications which lead to rigorous architectures, unit tests, and actual code. Likewise, rigorous requirements and technical specifications lead to properly designed test cases which reduces bugs. Perfection does not exist of course. But clearly defined goals in a rigorous process helps towards that end. But this case is really not so much a failure of waterfall but it more brings up the issue of what technical standards to adhere to. Companies as big as Microsoft should be able to afford an R&D type department filled with PhD types to figure these things out, so when the time comes to turn marketing requirements into technical requirements the people doing that will have a clear idea of which standards to use for what tasks. Ad hoc choosing of standards is what created this debacle. The answer in my opinion is not switching from waterfall to agile. The answer is to ear mark a team who is tasked solely with the purpose of researching, experimenting, and so forth with industry standards, like in this case routing standards, and have that team interface with the design team. Which again big companies that make operating systems ought to be able to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> sure stuff :P</comment>


Twitter's Golden Ratio (That No One Likes To Talk About) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/26/twitters-golden-ratio-that-no-one-likes-to-talk-about/

<comment><USER2> My biggest pet peeve about twitter right now is how little useful information they provide when you get a new follower via the notification emails.

How about "people you follow in common" or people "who follow both of you"? How about a digest of their last 10 tweets?. Some of this data you can't even get on the site.

They barely hit the minimum bar for a social network.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've only used twitter for a few weeks, but I very quickly got to the point that I just delete the notification emails without reading them. They don't have any content at all beyond the notification that there's a new follower, about half a bit of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Twitter actually does have limits on the number of people you can follow. You can follow up to 2000 people penalty free, but above that, you need to have enough followers to justify following any more. From my tests, it seems like the ratio is around 1.1 follows allowed for each follower that you have.

I agree with the article that even 2000 follows is an absurdly high number. One person can't keep up with all the chatter. But for many business accounts it makes sense to be able to keep track of what your fans are saying (and I mean legitimate companies, not the SEO experts and marketing gurus that are taking over twitter).

</comment><comment><USER4> The main reason I look at ratios is to try to quickly identify a spammy follow versus somebody generally interested in my tweets (perhaps they're a friend of a friend, or were searching a keyword I recently tweeted about).

If twitter had a better way of preventing spam follows, then I think this would be much less of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> Almost everybody I know has approximately equal followers and followees. I block or don't follow anybody whose ratio is not ~= 1.

EDIT: "know" should read "follow"

<comment><USER6> why wouldn't you follow someone who has more followers than followees? i follow about 20 folks and am followed by 400. those 20 already tweet so much i am not sure i want more traffic than that. what does that say about the quality of my output?

<comment><USER5> You're making the mistake of assuming a universal "quality of output" function. I have no problem with people following many less or more people than follow them, in my experience they're just not the type of person I like to interact with on twitter.

I'm just sharing the way I use twitter, not making a claim about how anybody/everybody should use it.

<comment><USER6> We hear that's not what you want. What we are asking is _why_?

<comment><USER6> Perhaps what you are really saying is you don't follow people who don't also know you, ie with whom you have a two-way relationship?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Even Faster WebAssembly: Cheerp 2.0 Surpasses Emscripten for Speed and Size - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/leaningtech/cheerp-2-0-release-880f249a5677 <comment><USER2> Great to see alternatives to emscripten. I'm definitely going to try this one out, I'm especially interested in the smaller size ( compared to emscripten) promised by this tool. And for the people want to do swift to webassembly check out air by remobjects.</comment>


Ask HN: Please Review My Landing Page - <AUTHOR> I would appreciate feedback on the overall design, messaging and even the product itself. I am a solopreneur so hearing other points of view would be great.
Here's the link: https://www.cast.watch
Also, what would you do for targeting potential users? <comment><USER2> Ok here's the feedback:

1: Really huge font of the punchline. I will make it little smaller as my focus is not going to the scrolling text below it. 2: Message is somewhat clear. I am confused whether it is a sales product or a CRM product. 3: It says that convert subscribers into revenue. But doesn't mention "How" anywhere. You need a section of "How it works" somewhere. 4: Can I see a demo implementation somewhere?</comment>


Melown – 3D Map Developer Library - <AUTHOR> https://www.melown.com/ <comment><USER2> Incredible. This is the first 3D mapping implementation in JS that doesn't make my MBP switch to leaf-blower mode. It runs smooth and silent. Well done.

It would be nice to get a ballpark indication of the pricing if anyone from this company cares to share.

<comment><USER3> My guess is they are not trying to do quad tree tiling. The demos are very nice, but it might have trouble scaling to larger maps.

<comment><USER4> Hello, this is Ondrej from Melown.com.

Actually, Melown is all about scalability. There is no limit to the size of True3D data we can integrate, appart from the disk space available.

To get an idea of what I am talking about, please check out the simple demo at [https://melown.com/intergeo2016](https://melown.com/intergeo2016)

Yes, we're talking planetary scale. If somebody had the resources to model the entire planet in 10cm True3D, Melown can carry it, with no changes to the existing architecture.

And unlike Google, Melown can do polar caps too, the same quality as any other place on Earth. And with Melown, you can do Mars, Mercury, Titan, Europa, or any other celestial object, without the limitation of Web Mercator, WGS84 or other simplistic approaches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since the software is OSS, what is it that they're selling? Looking at the (impressive) demos, they surely did not create the raw data (3d models, textures), or did they?

I'm wondering because it'd make a nice addition to a commercial website I run, but the 3000 views/month is pretty much exactly what I would expect in a normal month, but it's not important enough to "contact sales" to accommodate peak months or growth.

Also, when using it, I activated the coordinates-finding mode (crosshair cursor) and couldn't get out of it again (Safari). And keyboard navigation didn't work.

<comment><USER6> Hello, this is Ladislav from Melown.com

Actually, all 3D models you can see were created by our photogrammetric software, mostly from aerial and drone imagery. However, we are able to incorporate data even from third-party sources - including 3D models, textures, DEMs, vector data, you name it.

Resulting maps can be easily easily embedded into your site or used in your web app so if you are interested, feel free to try it.

To get back from coordinates-finding mode, just click the 'eye' icon to the left from crosshair.

<comment><USER5> I can't click the eye. The crosshair remains a crosshair and is actually under the toolbar. If I click "on" (under) the eye, it marks whatever location happens to be there.

This is on Safari and the Jerusalem demo.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I see, I was able to reproduce it in chrome - it is definitely a bug. I'll get it fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks a lot for pointing this out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent! What photogrammetry algorithms are you using? Can we talk about it in detail when I'll be visiting MFF UK? ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> These demos are quite impressive.

3D in browser used to be real pain, but these guys have managed it really well.

I hope it takes off, and people could build some cool stuff around it. Definitely great open-source project to follow and watch for the future.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a small typo on the site. "Preview maps we have build" should be "Preview maps we have built"

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the software itself is actually really well done, however I hate the fact that the pricing always HAS to be 'Contact sales'.

Why is it so hard to have transparent pricing? Just say what you offer and tell us how much you want to be paid, as easy as that. 'Contact sales' makes pricing REALLY intransparent and ultimately leads to lower sales.

<comment><USER10> It's a new service, so the pricing structure also needs to be developed. Business processes are hard to develop!

How much would you be willing to offer for this service?

<comment><USER9> Sorry for the late reply. Shure, it is hard to develop a good pricing model, but if your approach is serious you try to figure it out pre-launch, so that a potential customer does NOT have to think about how much he would like to pay for the service. He either accepts the offer or he doesn't, and a tiered model (dependant on your use) should offer a good deal for everyone. I personally would argue that twice the free tier would be worth 10 bucks a month, double that 15, and double that again 25. This way would reward bigger users with a volume discount, but still make the service accessible for more serious hobbyists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lovely, what kind of photo resolution does it require?

</comment><comment><USER12> It's... not working

<comment><USER6> Hi, this is Ladislav from Melown.com

The 3D presentation needs WebGL to run. Are you using a WebGL enabled browser like Chrome or Safari?

<comment><USER13> While it is incredible to see it almost run, on my iPhone it keeps crashing Safari until it stops reloading the page for 'causing a problem repeatedly'.

IOS 10.1.1 on an iPhone 6s.</comment></comment></comment>


Airbus plans to test an "electronic nose" device that uses biological cells - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/f699050f-80cc-4efc-924d-82acc1572a08 <comment><AUTHOR> Non-paywalled summary article: [https://www.engadget.com/airbus-bomb-sniffing- konku-biologic...](https://www.engadget.com/airbus-bomb-sniffing-konku- biological-cells-090530551.html)</comment>


France's Combustible Climate Politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/france-yellow-vests-climate-change.html <comment><AUTHOR> Great opinion piece that deftly demonstrates government action for climate change in the EU and US contains a large aspect of political maneuvering and virtue signaling, with sometimes large unintended consequences.

The uproar in France clearly demonstrates the downside of "just tax or fine it" approach to government control, be it gas consumption or sugary drinks. These tend to disproportionately hurt people who don't have the power to make any change.

<comment><USER2> I am not really convinced by the piece. According to the article the fix should be :

> None of this is to say that the world should give up. Beyond nuclear power, > we need to be placing medium-sized bets on potentially transformative > technologies not funded by regressive taxes or industrial subsidies, and not > dependent on future breakthroughs that might still be decades off, if they > happen at all. Let thousands of climate-startups bloom — and let markets, > not governments, figure out which ones work.

I don't see any supporting arguments why it should work better.

Also nuclear power was never the result of the effort of medium sized start up, but the effort of (apparently evil) governments and their military complex. You cannot have your cake and eat it too... The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.</comment></comment>


Why ad-free and Web 2.0 don't mix - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/why_ad_free_and_web_2_0_don_t_mix

<comment><USER2> Bjorn Tipling's comment (6th one down) is spot on. You can't assume that someone who doesn't pay to remove ads is too poor to afford anything advertised. They may simply not care enough to pay the asking price to remove them.

It's called a demand curve. Did this person who dares to give business advice even bother to take Intro to Economics?

</comment><comment><USER3> One point this article misses entirely: the paid side of the freemium model is about including extra features useful enough to power/pro users that they'd be willing to pay for them.

Lack of ads is just a bonus.

<comment><USER4> In a freemium model there don't have to be any ads at all!

Your basic service can be totally free, provided you can justify it as marketing expenditure with the conversion rate to paid services.

The biggest problem I can see with running ads on the free tier of on a two tier service is that the people most interested in buying advertising will be your direct competitors. It might not be too smart to give them easy access to your user base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People with money can already opt out of ads. Tivo is the quintessential example of this. Even before Tivo, pay-per-view was popular amongst those who had money.

</comment><comment><USER6> >"But, this revenue model seems silly to me. Advertisers pay a premium in order to reach people in their specific demographic with disposable income. This idea of people paying to remove ads ensures that the audience for your ads are actually CHEAPER than the average internet audience."

If you want to analyze it like that, it's far more accurate to say allowing users to remove ads by paying for the option negates the necessity for advertisers to be on your site in the first place. Invariably, it's more money for the middleman (in this case: the site offering a service), but if advertisers pay for ads, and users pay to remove those ads it's a figurative stalemate for the entire purpose of having a revenue service.

Financially, it's win-win for the service provider, and that doesn't sit well with me.

</comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the main point of this article. It always feels wrong to me when you see an app that offers an upgrade to get rid of ads. It seems to say we're gonna piss you off with minor irritations to make you upgrade, or at least that we know you don't want these but it pays the rent. Neither of those are offering users what they want.

</comment><comment><USER8> Those who choose not to pay away ads might not be cheap; they might be too busy to deal with paying. If you're advertising a time-saving product or service you'll score.

I recently got rid of google ads on OurDoings:

<http://ourdoings.com/2008-04-24>

</comment><comment><USER9> Already posted the source: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=188617></comment>


BoA Purchase Agreement from Berkshire Hathaway - <AUTHOR> http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000119312511232422/dex11.htm

<comment><USER2> Wow, I was only slightly aware of the problems at BoA, but this deal must mean that they were having a big problem raising money. You would think they could of had a fire-sale of some assets like their china holdings to better protect shareholders. That being said having Buffet show confidence in your firm is valuable and it paid off well in the past for GE, Goldman and before that Salomon Brothers.

<comment><USER3> If they were having real problems, Buffett wouldn't invest. He likes to buy stock in solid companies that are going through temporary rough times and are thus unloved by the market (selling at bargain prices, like American Express after the salad oils scandal).

They were certainly having a problem of confidence, which can be very bad for highly leveraged financials, and Buffett's reputation helped restore some confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought BoA said they didn't need capital...

<comment><USER5> BoA stocks have been taking what some economists have said to be an undeserved hit in the market. Buffet probably thinks this as well, and decided stock was cheap and the deal would be mutually beneficial.

<comment><USER6> Yes. Many investors think BoA stock price is below book value. Meaning that if they sold off all of their assets, that amount would be more the the number of shares * stock price. It would look like Buffett agrees.

<comment><USER7> From this it looks like he bought a series of Preferred stock created especially for this deal. This is not what you or I could buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe Warren thought BOA was a good investment now that Wikileak's BOA "hard drive of secrets" has been "disappeared".

<comment><USER9> Not sure what you're referring to. Could you elaborate, please?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A $5B investment, not an outright purchase.

<comment><AUTHOR> your right it's not an 'outright purchase' but it is a 'purchase agreement'

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given the amount of capital that B&H needs to invest yearly, this is a natural choice.

Buffet likes banks, he said so in the book The Snowball (a must read). Banks have float, which is interest free money "floating around" waiting to be invested by the bank, but not owned by the bank.

BOA also sells insurance, which has more float than a bank. B&H has a pretty effective group of insurance business people. A lot of the B&H wealth comes from the insurance industry.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's one hell of a bet. I'm actually surprised that Buffet didn't want to buy the bank's debt offerings (if there are any).

I haven't read past the first couple paragraphs (too much legalese) but is there an out clause? If BoA tanks in the stock market, Berkshire could stand to lose a lot of money on the common stock.

<comment><USER3> Buffett didn't buy the common, he only has warrants with 10 year expiration. He bought preferreds at 6%, afaik.

<comment><USER7> I liked this bit from a FT Alphaville post on the topic:

"Warren's warrant exercise price — a Fibonacci-esque $7.14285"

(which is 5B divided by 700M,but it's a fun number anyway)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> First Goldman Sachs, now BoA. Stay classy, Warren.</comment>


The Parachute Generation - <AUTHOR> https://nytimes.com/2017/02/02/magazine/the-parachute-generation.html <comment><USER2> My Masters program was about 80% Chinese nationals. I became friends with a few of them despite the language barrier. I like hanging out with people from other countries because it's a very cheap way to vacation at home.

'A' was a guy, about 23 years old, not very talented as a programmer, though there were some great ones in the group. He did not understand that plagarism was wrong. He would copy paste wikipedia and I'd point out that that was not allowed and he handed it in anyway and the teacher would read him the riot act. I think he got a C anyway. He had an idealistic worship of American culture and really wanted to be friends, but his personality was as bland as can be. Guy went to an all boys school in China and so he said one of the main reason he picked school X was that there were a lot of women there and his TOEFL scores were good enough for them to let him in.

'B' was a very upbeat and enthusiastic young lady who would always wear hats that said "Genius" is Chinese. Lots of energy, always got projects done on time. Told me she took a semester off to have a baby. I was thinking, "wow, that's odd, a very career focused ambitious woman having a baby in her early 20s". Then I thought the politically incorrect thought (downvotes!) that this was an anchor baby, except not the penniless economic refugee type. Ahh good for her, I think she'll be a great addition to our country.

<comment><USER3> Early babies are also a culture thing. In China as soon as you get married you are expected to have a kid, and that you will go back to work soon and that your grandparents will help a lot.

<comment><USER4> did you mean your grandparents or your child's grandparents? i'm just imagining my grandpa helping out with my first born, (my grandma was dead at that point, my grandpa wasn't far behind), and it seems like maybe a bit much.

<comment><USER5> Remember that if everyone has children in their early 20s, the kid's greatgrandparents will only be in their late 60s/early 70s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      Korbin's Chinese housemate, Oscar, spent several thousand dollars
      on a laptop so powerful that it blew out the fuses in their host
      family's house.

I was fairly engrossed in the story, until that sentence. The jarring hyperbole of _" a laptop so powerful that it blew the fuses"_ \- it makes me question how much of the rest of the story is poetic licence.

<comment><USER7> You can certainly do that with a PC, especially on a circuit with already a lot of load on it. one of those 10-20lb laptops with docking station + multiple monitors?

seems possible to me

<comment><USER6>
      "especially on a circuit with already a lot of load on it"

That's basically my point: sure, plugging something in can blow a fuse, but either the device is faulty, the circuit itself is faulty, or the circuit is already near capacity.

If it's a laptop, a docking station, speakers, multiple monitors, all plugged into a socket extension, plugged into a single outlet - even then, I wouldn't expect it to trip the fuse unless the circuit was already well on the way to overload.

If a circuit is so close to overload, it could be tripped simply by plugging in a phone charger, so the super-expensive mega-powerful laptop isn't really relevant.

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, I had to draw two dedicated electrical circuits up to my home office because my custom PC was simply too much load _on its own_ , let alone the four monitors and assorted other equipment I have.

Granted, my computer is about $10,000 of hardware with four GPUs; my point is that I'm not sure it's poetic license. You can definitely build a computer, even a custom laptop, that would at least strain typical circuits and maybe trip them with other peripherals attached.

<comment><USER9> I dunno, a standard residential US circuit is max 15A at 120V, or 1800W. A GTX980 is 165W and the highest powered Xeon I could find was 165W. A Xeon + 4 GPUs + power supply loss comes to around 1050W and between the motherboard, RAM, SSDs, HDDs, monitors, speakers, cooling and such I'm sure you can push it high enough that it causes issues but I really can't see that coming from a laptop, even with peripherals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is gold in being a host family. $1800 a month. Or more. Paid by the School.

Little old ladies with an extra bedroom hosting a young Chinese boy. Often when they turn driving age I see them in a new car.

Over 200 are enrolled at the regional college prep Catholic school

Host families are a secret way to make good money.

EDIT: its not airbnb-esque. You don't hand over a key. They are children. Hosts can't go away for the weekend. They provide / cook meals or shop or take student to the store for their own food.

<comment><USER11> $1800/month to host a foreign kid while they're in school? That sounds unlikely and dubious, maybe 1/3 of that amount is more realistic.

But if it were true, poorer families who are struggling financially should be made aware of this, you'd have millions sign up to host. It'd likely be a good cultural experience for both sides too.

<comment><USER10> I talked to the lady. It's true. Her property taxes are $18k and could not afford to live in her house. When she bought it decades ago taxes were <$900

The Chinese spend the money and the Catholic school churns out ivy and first flight college acceptance letters.

The school packages everything for the Chinese families. My $1800 is a 2-3 year old number and low if I had to guess.

Tuition for a primary grade is over $10k. So it's private money and lots of it. What a better way to spend your fortune on educating your offspring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Watching my own children go through the education system here in the UK I have noticed how much more of a qualification system it is compared to when I was at school/college in the 1970's & 1980's. Education seems to be something you try to get along the way to qualifications.

<comment><USER13> I may be lucky. My daughter is in a bog "bog standard" comprehensive in East London and loving it. The school really seems to like kids and has this nice balance between pushing for attainment and growing the whole person. So yes, she's doing well in classes but has also discovered a passion for playing drums, astronomy, Duke of Edinburgh Awards etc.

The head teacher says very plainly "I don't want to be the CEO of an Academy, I want to be a headteacher". I hope he, and the people like him manage to survive the changing system.

<comment><USER14> > _The head teacher says very plainly "I don't want to be the CEO of an > Academy, I want to be a headteacher"._

When you say you hope he survives the changing system, I hope he realises he can do so by being the headmaster of an academy.

I mean, smart CEOs worry about making enough money to invest in developing the product right? The 'product' of an academy is educated children (or adults, I suppose, if they stay through the sixth form) - so what's the problem?

The academy system just gives the head/governors more control to do what's right for that particular school.

Sure, some schools are so templated that there's little benefit to be had, but many are unique in a way in which those familiar with the school can manage better without having to abide by national or regional policies that aren't the best fit.

<comment><USER13> You do realise that 'regional authority' in this case is the local council? Being An academy doesn't remove most curriculum requirements.

What it does do is allow fiscal autonomy and freedom from a bad local authority.

However where the school is working with a good local authority, there are very few advantages. Indeed staying in LA control provides tremendous advantages in terms of pooling of resources - IT support, curriculum support, HR and finance for example.

In this case the LA is well managed and supportive. Splitting away offers few benefits.

You say the 'product' is smart kids. The product of many academies is actually kids who score highly in metrics that can be measured, but don't have a great all-round education. Oh, and a big shiny car for the CEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like what these parents really want for their kids is enculturation, but they don't realise it. A western education on its own is still rather limiting when it comes to career and life success.

<comment><USER16> > _but they don 't realise it._

it's hilarious you think that people who send their teenage kids to live overseas indefinitely and pay $40k/year for a basic high school education "don't realize" what they're doing.

<comment><USER17> Did you read the article? It opens with a story is about a guy sending his 16-year-old son to Oxford because he likes the sound of a degree from there. Not Oxford in the UK. Oxford MI, which is a village in a rural area north of Detroit.

I'm from Michigan and I have a hard time believing that this guy knows what he's doing. Oxford HS isn't even in the top 100 high schools in Michigan:

[http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high- schools/michigan/r...](http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high- schools/michigan/rankings)

Even were the school excellent, I don't think a village of 3,500 people is the best place for a foreign student to get American acculturation. In the 10k town I lived in for a while, the exchange students really struggled compared with the ones where I lived later, in a near-city suburban area. There was a lot more for them to do, the average resident was more broad-minded, and there was a greater variety of people for them to meet.

<comment><USER18> True, but about that same guy, the author later says:

"His father insisted that this wasn't just about family prestige or future job prospects. "I also want my son to understand, in a way that I never could," he said, "that the world is bigger than Shenyang, bigger than China."

<comment><USER19> There are lot of Chinese kids in my UK town local public schools (ie private schools one of which Obahmas roomies at Harvard attended ) for this very reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Non-mobile link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/magazine/the-parachute- ge...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/magazine/the-parachute- generation.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know examples of major companies providing these services with URLs to their websites?

It's fine if there in English, Chinese, etc.

<comment><USER18> I work for a related company in the industry, based in Shanghai. Would be happy to chat/answer any questions about the work.

<comment><USER21> Mainly just interested in seeing a few notable companies real online marketing materials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> this has been happening since the 90s. there were at least 2 or 3 of these kids at my high school in california.

<comment><USER22> Although not in as organized of a way

<comment><USER23> People tend to organize over time. Moreover, this is a strong side of capitalism - where there's lots of demand for something, eventually someone will start offering it as a service, in exchange for money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> looks like Trump university might get a second wind.

</comment><comment><USER25> Western countries are the best on earth</comment>