Google Cultural Institute: A sneak peek at the future of search? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/#!home

<comment><USER2> Future of search? Hrm...

I just tried searching for Mesopotamia and the only results was LIFE photo collections. This feels more like the way research USED to be. Back when you would find keyword matches in magazines/books/periodicals and have to pull out the microfilm.

It was more fun than doing a google search and reading the wikipedia article. I don't know if I'd ever use this for hardcore research.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another interesting demo.

However, I don't think it's feasible to turn the "scraping" model search runs on now into this.

</comment><comment><USER4> It reminds me a lot of the app "Circa" on iOS. IT the same sort of snippets for news. An interesting way to display research. Also, really nice looking.</comment>


3D Gun Schematic Website Banned in PA - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/07/30/data-allowing-people-to-print-out-their-own-guns-temporarily-blocked-from-internet-in-pa-after-legal-pressure/ <comment><USER2> So what happens if a Pennsylvanian uses a VPN or TOR? Also DD has a good case. it is a Texan organization getting sued by Pennsylvania it would be hard to argue this isn't intrastate trade.</comment>


How Your Camera Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.objc.io/issue-21/how-your-camera-works.html

<comment><USER2> How your _phone_ camera works. It's a well written article but it seems odd to cover how a camera works and leave out Aperture because of the edge case of having a fixed aperture as in a smartphone. With a longer description of aperture and some picture examples of aperture controlling DoF and exposure this would have been a complete introduction to digital photography, now it's a complete introduction to fixed-aperture digital photography...

<comment><USER3> > because of the edge case

Edge case? Phone cameras are very common and more common than DSLRs and probably more common than digital point and shoot.

<comment> saiya-jin True, but title is really misleading, and from true photography point of view, smart phone cameras are edge case, on low quality end of spectrum.

Also, most people with smartphone will never care for more than point & click, so suggested slight enhancement of coverage would make much more sense (although it doesn't put in anything that isn't already written out there 1000x times).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback. The reason I picked this title is simply because "your camera" for most people will be their smartphone. A bit too catchy for people with a DSLR.

But as other people have noted: Most photos today are taken with smartphones. I touch upon aperture, and linked to Wikipedia for those interested in in- depth information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently started looking into computational photography. I didn't realize how much of the imaging acquisition process I was ignorant of: color theory, exposure, shutter speeds ... It's all pretty intuitive, but I feel like need to learn optics to really get it all!

<comment><AUTHOR> There's this Stanford projects called Frankencamera [1] which is pretty jaw- dropping. They do a bunch of cool stuff but the one feature that really stood out was that you can take a photo and then focus it in post-production.

[1] [https://frankencamera.wordpress.com](https://frankencamera.wordpress.com)

<comment><USER6> Post-production focus? That sounds like Lytro, another Stanford spin-off (but based on a grid of lens): [https://www.lytro.com/](https://www.lytro.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting, thanks for the link

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I highly recommend a read through of Barbara London's Photography book [1]. Apparently this book is still commonly used for photography classes even these days.

I have the 3rd edition which is pretty old, but all of the information is still applicable - film and digital cameras share the same basic principles.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Photography-11th-Edition-Barbara- Londo...](http://www.amazon.com/Photography-11th-Edition-Barbara- London/dp/0205933807)

</comment><comment> semi-extrinsic Here's a great article giving an even more indepth look at camera sensor technology: [http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/digitalimaging/cmosimages...](http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/digitalimaging/cmosimagesensors.html)

<comment><USER8> Though that only describes the Bayer array (which is used by most cameras except for Fujifilm and Sigma).

Fujifilm's mirrorless cameras use what they call X-Trans CMOS sensor tech - [http://www.fujifilm.eu/uk/products/digital- cameras/interchan...](http://www.fujifilm.eu/uk/products/digital- cameras/interchangeable-lens-cameras/model/x-pro1/features/fujifilm-x-trans- sensor-technology/)

And Sigma uses the Foveon X3 CMOS sensor - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been trying for years to make sense of how to use my digital camera. I usually just fumble around good article getting me going the right direction.

<comment><USER10> you should check out Tony Northrup on youtube. he does awesome guides to using certain model cameras (rather than just a review, an actual 'how to use your camera' guide)

Even if you dont have the camera in the video you learn so much about how they work

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great explaining, very neat, thanks! I'll definitely link to it from time to time when friends or colleagues don't grasp the basics of capturing images and colour processing.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. Glad you liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain to me how ISO on a digital camera works? Are several pixels combined (the resolution lowered)?

I always think it's odd to have ISO settings on a digital camera.

<comment><USER13> No, the ISO setting adjusts the analog gain before conversion to digital. As you would expect, this raises the noise floor. It is natural and expected to be able to adjust speed on a digital camera, because the dynamic range of a ADC is limited, and you want to be able to use that range optimally.

For example, suppose your camera has a dynamic range of 10 stops. If you are shooting a scene with a dynamic range of 8 stops, then you get +/-1 stop of latitude where mistakes in exposure can be corrected digitally. Overexpose, and the signal will sometimes be above the range of the ADC. Underexpose, and the signal will sometimes be below the range of the ADC. You can adjust either the exposure (aperture, shutter speed) or the signal gain (ISO) to get the signal into the right range.

You do the same exact thing when you're recording digital audio: you adjust the gain so that you use most of the range of the DAC. As in photography, you can try increasing the gain afterwards, but you might get problems with noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Before going on a long vacation of sight-seeing I thought, I should buy a nice camera to memorialize the trip, but I don't know what to buy. Three days of research later and I figured out how the sensor type & size, shutter speed, aperture size, ISO level, and magic proprietary software combine to create a good picture in different environments. I couldn't explain it to you, but I can now find the best point-and-shoot camera for the lowest price.

I never did end up buying a camera, though.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't downvote, but this seems a bit thin for HN.

<comment><USER3> Noone can down vote submissions.

As far as I know most people can flag submissions so if you think it really doesn't belong here you could flag it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is this page so wide?

</comment><comment><USER17> > Click! Your camera just turned photons into bits.

Click! Your camera just made a skeuomorphic sound.

<comment><USER18> My camera has a reflex mirror and a mechanical shutter.

<comment><USER19> Reflex mirror??!? Get out. Rangefinders forever, baby! [http://instagram.com/p/i35NJLQAeM/](http://instagram.com/p/i35NJLQAeM/)</comment></comment></comment>


Investors pull billions from US stocks in longest outflow streak since 2004 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/25/investors-pull-billions-from-us-stocks-in-longest-streak-since-2004.html <comment><USER2> I feel like I'm missing something. (Or this article is just FUD.) $30B over ten weeks? That's no money. Total AUM in the US is over $50T.</comment>


Encouraged Commentary (cool use of jQuery to enhance blog commenting) - <AUTHOR> http://donttrustthisguy.com/2009/01/04/encouraged-commentary/

<comment><USER2> This is very neat. Makes a lot of sense to me.

However, I think better commenting systems are the real problem here, instead of hacking current ones. The "threaded" conversations in this post are very cool, but disqus threaded comments are much more intuitive.

And instead of making just a blockquote, and referring back, github-type line commenting would be awesome.

The model of post then comments is kind of counter intuitive in terms of real discussion.

<comment><USER3> The problem with threaded threads is that there's less of a feel of permanence. When everything is linear, then you've got a very real spatial sense of where, say, the second comment is on a page. Depending on how important the blog community is to the blog, linear comments may hurt more than they help.

Actually, the better model comes from forums, where conversations were threaded early on and then switched to linear as forums evolved. Linear threads let you follow the progress of a conversation. Threaded ones lose that same sense of time.

<comment><USER4> Threaded ones let you follow a main conversation, ignoring digressions and side arguments; you can see the shape of the overall discussion, tracked by evolving subtopic. I have found that I approve of it; "derails" are rarer.

<comment><USER3> The idea of a linear conversation, though, is that once the topic is set that's what people talk about. If the conversation branches, somebody starts a new thread. That's one of the neat things about forum development: you get to watch what conversations begin, and sometimes your forum becomes something entirely different from what you thought it would be.

You lose some of that with threaded conversations. I've seen a few threaded forums, and on the whole you lose a lot of the people. In a linear thread you're forced to read everybody, which means the community evolves around its specific members. In a threaded one things are less focused. Conversations become more private, in a way, as small little conversations form from the big one, and while that works well on a site like this, there's something lost in the process.

Look at Reddit versus Hacker News as an example of what's lost. On Reddit, the most-known people are mainly the trolls. You get 911was_an_inside_job and Captain_Obvious. Other people don't stay memorable within the community, unless it's within a particular subreddit. When you look at conversations, very often a very bad thread (conspiracy theory or pun thread) will be voted up to the top, which makes community seem either immature or difficult or worthless. It's got some good communities, but they're the close-to-inactive ones, almost always. More people means the community breaks apart.

Hacker News _does_ work, but that's because it's got a built-in audience of people who want to apply to YCombinator - from there it's attracted a like- minded audience. Here, there's no personality among people, or there's very little. I remember whether or not I respect a name, and I often disagree with the same people, but there's still very little personality here. Partly that's because here, as Reddit, discussion revolves mainly around news stories, but partly it's because when you're not linear there's no _reason_ to get to know other people, because you can just skip over their strand of conversation.

So threaded conversations help with some things a lot, not so much with others. Cirqueti is being designed with a linear user forum in mind, because we want a very personal forum to go alongside the polished mainpage. I'm guessing we'll get users on the forum that aren't big on the main site and vice-versa, and I think that's extremely healthy for a site's community. (As the SomethingAwful forum credo goes, "There's a _main_ site?")

-

Okay, too much reply there. I'll end by saying that I've never seen a blog that needs threaded conversation: not enough useful talk goes on in blogs for it to be worth it. A blog is a single-user-centric community: it's not _healthy_ for it to have a cloud of responses like threaded offers. It fractures what minimal community ought to be there. The only blog I've seen with above-decent comments is Ebert's, and it keeps a linear thread, and commenters (and Ebert) get to know each other. That's what's missing out with methods like Disqus's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool but I don't know if it's a net positive.

I'd be concerned that by making it so easy for users to respond that actual discussion will be stifled because you won't be forced to actually scroll past all the comments to post something.

Read Joel Spolsky's essay on community software design ([http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html))

<comment><USER6> I'd quite like a comment system that requires users to solve a series of logic and verbal reasoning problems before being able to submit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a really slick setup from the highlighting to the interacting with previous comments. Ideas like this really can enhance the effectiveness and/or frequency of commenting.

It reminds me a Jack Slocum's old blog where comments were tagged onto a line of the article. I think combining these two designs would be great.

<comment><USER8> I like the inline footnoting type approach for some cases. It gets a little unwieldy at times if there are too many, but you just hide it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating! This is a modified version of the idea that I'm using for my own start-up! Glad to see that the highlighting idea is spreading: I've seen similar ideas used elsewhere before.

The modification that our system uses rather than this one is that it creates the comment box on the left-hand side, rather than scrolling all the way down. The idea is that you then make multiple posts as you read down, rather than one single one that disrupts the reading process, and that they all bundle together again at the end. (Of course, blog commenting is a little different than content critiquing, so perhaps merely quoting once is sufficient here.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a reason the title of the post is in Flash?

<comment><USER10> _Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) is an open source JavaScript and Adobe Flash based technology that enables the replacement of text elements on HTML web pages with Flash equivalents. It was initially developed by Shaun Inman and improved by Mike Davidson and Mark Wubben._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Inman_Flash_Replacemen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Inman_Flash_Replacement)

<http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr>

<http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/>

<comment><USER9> So let me get this straight. In order to make sure everyone sees titles in the same font, they're rendered using flash. So I have to load the buggy flash plugin for a page with all text. I can't select the title. I can't resize the title (nor does it resize with the page zoom). Adblock displays a distracting "Block" above the title (and I'm assuming a large number of people have similar flash-blocking/warning plugins).

So why is this better than an image version of the title with alt text? That seems to be much easier, takes almost no resources, requires neither flash nor javascript, resizes automatically in Firefox (albeit using nearest neighbor, which is still better than not resizing at all).

Finally, is the font used for the title _that_ important?

<comment><USER11> sIFR degrades gracefully and is accessible. I recommend that you read up on sIFR before recoiling in "no, it's FLASH!" horror. And yes, typography is important in design.

<comment><USER9> I never said it wasn't accessible or that it doesn't degrade gracefully. I _did_ read the links provided on sIFR.

My points remain. An image would degrade just as gracefully and be just as accessible. And graceful degradation/accessibility seem to be answering the UI question for older browsers. What about current browsers? Since I have flash installed, the title is rendered using flash and now I can't resize/select the title. In this case, the "degraded" version seems like a step up.

Finally, yes, I know that typography is important in design. I was just wondering at what cost.

<comment><USER11> Yes, the image would work just as well. Now try generating that image on the fly for 1000 product pages, for instance. sIFR draws content from HTML, making it far more flexible. I very easily implemented Trajan Pro product titles for an artist's website for around 400 products, and this would have been prohibitively tedious if I were using images.

As for your resizing concern, sIFR should only be used for headlines. Typically, everyone can read text in that size (body copy may require resizing, but only a fool would run blocks of text through sIFR).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't imagine regular people using this.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of all of those services for annotating the web, but as far as I know none of those have gotten significant traction. Perhaps everyone just prefers referring to things by using just normal language, instead of a special tool to select something explicitly. If StumbleUpon included an annotation feature, maybe it could catch on.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very nice! Now we just need a plugin that automatically silences troll commenters.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is it flickering on my display?</comment>


LinkedIn Resume Builder - <AUTHOR> http://resume.linkedinlabs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the new MS Word resume template.</comment>


Microsoft Flight Simulator – E3 2019 – Announce Trailer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReDDgFfWlS4 <comment><USER2> That looks _incredible_ , and makes me upset I'm not a pilot and don't have the time to learn!

Genuine question: is there any way to explore the world with visualizations as beautiful as those, but without the plane mechanics?

I have so much fun with Google Earth, but it doesn't have anything like the level of "realism" shown here -- the water, the clouds, the sunset, the shadows. While a game like GTA V can be gorgeous visually and you can fly a helicopter in it intuitively... but it's not a real place.

Is there any way to enjoy that realism without learning to fly a plane realistically?

<comment><USER3> Historically, MS Flight Simulator has always had the option of a "slew" mode that basically turns off physics and lets you directly manipulate your plane's position with the controller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When they disbanded the team in 2009 I thought we'd never see a proper replacement for Flight Sim X. The visuals look gorgeous but the real test is whether the airplane models have realistic physics - otherwise this is just a toy like Microsoft Flight.

<comment><USER5> Has there been anything to indicate that Microsoft reconstituted the ACES Studio team? If not, there isn't much reason for hope.

<comment><USER6> Some of the ACES team members now work for Lockheed Martin, in the team that develops Prepar3d (another flight simulator), but not all of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Absolutely stunning scenery. I'll speculate that they'll offer some sort of subscription service which allows you to stream high quality textures beyond what the standard install provides. It would also be incredible to see AI powered ATC. Something that is a little more adaptive and real would be amazing. For instance I'd love to be able to declare an emergency and have the ATC actually understand that. ATC seems very plausible for AI as there's a somewhat limited set of instructions that need to be understood, and basically anything beyond that would be icing on the cake compared to what's available in FSX/X-Plane (aside from the real ATC plugins.)

<comment><USER8> Implementing AI in a large flight simulator would make an interesting platform to do trials. Of course you can setup large scale simulations of known inputs and expected outputs, but you'd also get a variety of skill levels and you'd see how the AI responds to some idiot taking off from the taxiway (e.g. Would it successfully redirect landing aircraft).

If someone could implement an AI that worked in flight simulator, it could help serve as evidence supporting a real world implementation.

<comment><USER7> It will be a long time before I trust AI to do anything of the sort. For me, I just want a simulation ATC that I can talk to with my mic that will more or less understand what I'm saying. Something to practice on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how they will do the photorealistic terrain, if you can have an offline copy of the entire world or just NA I wouldn't be surprised if its 300gb+, unless they are continually streaming the terrain/textures and models.

Currently I've been flying in X-plane 11 with Ortho4xp and downloaded data can easily run into the hundreds of GBs and even multi terabytes.

<comment><USER10> The satellite imagery around the world is getting pretty good these days. Look at what's available in Bing Maps. City models can be bought fairly cheaply, or it is possible they just used city data and had artists do corrections.

We took some open city point-cloud data last week and created 3d tiles from that using Cesium, and I was amazed at the result. Nothing like what you're seeing here, but I imagine an artist or possibly AI could do enough correction to make the cities look amazing and realistic enough.

Because you aren't looking at the city like a map, they don't need Google Earth level of accuracy.

Though another possibility is that Google Earth is licensing their data for games, so possibly Microsoft has licensed that?

<comment><USER11> Microsoft probably doesn't need to license Google Earth data because Bing data has been competing pretty well in that space, reports to the contrary aside.

One of Bing's particular focuses contrasting them to Google Earth/Maps photography has been a particular interest in "Birds Eye" isometric-feeling photography taken from helicopters at particular altitudes and compass angles, I would imagine is particularly applicable to trying to generate rich models for Flight Simulator use at similar altitudes, more so than a lot of traditional "flat" overhead aerial photography used by map providers.

(It's gotten harder to find Bird's Eye in Bing Maps redesigns sadly. It's "hidden" in the right-click menu now. Still, it is a useful and interesting type of aerial photographer that should be celebrated as useful and interesting.)

<comment><USER10> I didn't realize Birds Eye had moved into the right click. I was looking for it a while ago.

However, when I now see Birds Eye, it isn't available in Sydney, and many other locations in the world. Where I did see it (San Francisco & Paris) it is just the photographs, no photogrametry, no rotation, very little zoom, etc. etc.

Am I missing something? Can you let me know what you're seeing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm interested in which way is Azure AI integrated in this. Maybe some physics offloading? Bird flocking? :)

I wounder will there be some other kind of cloud integration like dynamically streaming models from Azure, pay-per-flight models or such.

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing it is used for generating 3D buildings from map data and for the AI planes. They could also use it for voice communication with the in-game ATC but we'll have to wait for the release to know for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope it has VR support; sims without VR are dead to me.

<comment><USER15> First of all, you're an outlier. Most people don't want a box on their head, especially for any length of time.

Second of all, I don't know of any GA or airline simulators that use VR.

Source: commercial pilot.

<comment><USER16> An FAA Qualified Level simulator can easily cost six figures, no one is suggesting a VR simulator is going to replace it - however once you've tried a sim in VR you'd likely never want anything else again.

<comment><USER17> An FAA certified tampon will set you back $10 each if you want to use the tampex tampon with the appropriate tracking number for a Piper. :P I'd expect uncertified to surpass it for far less.

(I've tried VR flight sims.. my god, having the view track with your head is amazing. One of a handful of killer VR apps)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is it that the commercial flight simulators never compete with MS in this space?

<comment><USER13> Because they're based on the same tech.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Loc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Lockheed_Martin_Prepar3D)

I know Airbus also uses ESP as the base, but not sure about Boeing sims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember seeing and playing the flight sims of the 80s as a kid and being so bored by basically staring at a line on the screen (horizon), nothing happening for what felt like hours and then 'crashing' which just said 'game over', young me having no clue what happened. I can reason the difference between old and modern games, but for me gameplay has not been 'more fun'; I find 80s Gradius the same pleasure to play as the latest Doom (and Crash 2+3 or Monkey Island 1+2 better than anything I can find now, but taste, you know). With simulators (cars, planes, ...) however I see how far we came; those I simply did not find playable until far into the 2000s and this really looks amazing.

I consider Alien Isolation a sort of simulator of the original Alien movie (the feel is the same for me); this was attempted in the 80s as well and failed as well. Now it works perfectly.

<comment><USER20> The technology wasn't as good in the early 80's. But by the late 80's we had greats such as F15 Strike Eagle II, and by 1992 we had Comanche Maximum Overkill. Both of those had great gameplay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it pretty well established at this point that XPlane is superior to Microsoft? My understanding is that Microsoft has previously used hard-coded flight characteristics to determine how a plane should handle, whereas XPlane will actually model the physics of flight. Is that correct/generally accepted? Is there a plan to change that with this new version?

</comment><comment><USER22> Just wanted to say, this makes me really happy!

I spent atlot of time on MS Flight Simulator, from ver 5.1 for DOS all the way up to FSX.

It was a sad day when MS discontinued the product as it is the oldest product offered by the company.

This really feels like a renaissance at Microsoft as the hardcore audience (simmers) for this is small and presumably lead to the earlier cancellation.

Looking forward to the release!

</comment><comment><USER23> Which platform is this for? Windows/PC? or XBox? or cross platform? (MacOS, GNU/Linux, etc)

<comment><USER24> It will be on Game Pass which is for Windows and Xbox. Possibly xCloud too enabling it to potentially run on mobile platforms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I learned to fly with MS Flight Sim so I hope Rod Machado is still there with his lessons!

<comment><USER26> I think Netflix Fyre festival documentary had a section about you

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I first got into Flight Simulator starting with Flight Simulator for Windows 95. The game even motivated me to take a few flight lessons and log a handful of flight hours.

Wow, this new FS trailer is mind blowing. The graphics look unreal, can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER28> This looks great, but I had to look up the "XBox Game Pass": it's a subscription service for XBox games.

I have enough subscriptions already, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to add another one for a flight sim, however pretty it may be.

<comment><USER29> > I have enough subscriptions already, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to add > another one for a flight sim, however pretty it may be.

Every other game on the service has been available for purchase otherwise, I doubt that will change here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did I miss something: is this not being released for PC?

<comment><USER31> According to their Twitter post, it will be: [https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1137821843031592960?s=09](https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1137821843031592960?s=09)

<comment><USER32> Thank goodness for that. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a game that needs a PC rather than any other type of computer or an X-Box. The two go together, a fine combination like how some beverages go with certain meals.

A PC confers that it is not a game but something more like work. It gives the game seriousness as it becomes a simulation and not a game. Plus there is the legacy going back to the DOS versions, which will always have some magic to them that the new shiny graphics versions will not have. Maybe the blocky pixel versions were better for the imagination, the controls were pretty good you just had to imagine the scenery.

<comment><USER13> The current and next gen consoles are PCs in disguise, especially the xbox since it shares a large portion of codebase with Windows (OneCore).

<comment><USER31> You can even plug in a keyboard and mouse: [https://support.xbox.com/en- US/xbox-one/ease-of-access/mouse...](https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox- one/ease-of-access/mouse-keyboard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Who is the target audience for flight simulator? Is it like a regular video game, or used by pilots who actually undergo training?

<comment><USER34> It's a genuine flight simulator, not a video game - although there's differing levels of realism you can usually set.

You can take it all the way to having Virtual Air Traffic Control systems, staffed by other players - eg the VATSIM[1] community.

[1] [https://www.vatsim.net/](https://www.vatsim.net/)

<comment><USER11> That said, people can also presumably play it is a videogame, too. Nothing wrong with people having fun simulating something they'd probably never get to do in real life. At the very least for all the kids whose parents want games to be at least semi-educational, Flight Simulators will always have a niche in videogaming.

<comment><USER35> I hope it's not too "video-gamey". That was the downfall of "MS Flight". It was highly disappointing to hard-core simmers who had come to expect realistic flight conditions, routes, ATC, physics and a world-wide map.

I was part of a survey from MS about what I'd like to see in the next version of the simulator (this was after FSX went away but before "Flight). The survey asked a lot of questions about my thoughts on making the sim more goal/mission oriented (essentially, more of a game).

I made it really clear that I thought that was fine as an _addition_ but should not replace the current real-world functionality. Give people the option.

I can't imagine my answers were that different from most long-time users - basically it needed to have all the features I mentioned above, plus an open SDK for 3rd party developers.

MS didn't listen and "Flight" was a huge disappointment - at which point I moved to X-Plane.

Hopefully, they've gone back to their roots with this new version because it looks absolutely amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Glad to see flight simulators making a resurgence again in 2019. Hopefully the physics will be able to be just as good as X-Plane.

</comment><comment><USER37> This will make my pilot license obsolete...

</comment><comment><USER38> So excited for this. I've been waiting for a sim like this for 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER39> Best announcement on e3. I was waiting for this type of game so much.</comment>


The Republic of the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2009/05/the-republic-of-internet/

<comment><AUTHOR> HN peeps are just the right people to tear this idea apart - go for it, will be interesting to see the thoughts.</comment>


Time-Lapse Robot Arm Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/travelhead/posts/10153741451140888 <comment><AUTHOR> $41 OWI Robotic Arm Edge on Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0017OFRCY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_5bRv...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0017OFRCY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_5bRvxbDFRQR84) \- Took us about 4.5 to 5 hours to assemble. Pretty complicated.. You put everything together including all gears, motors and screws. Can be programmed with $31 OWI USB attachment and CD-ROM.</comment>


Building a JavaScript Framework [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s3.amazonaws.com/dailyjs/files/build-a-javascript-framework.pdf <comment><USER2> The paper covers a range of topics - OOP, DOM operations and events, AJAX, animation, touch - much of it modelled on jQuery.

There is no copyright or author attribution, which is surprising, since the material is well-organized and presented as a book. It feels a bit dated, and does not cover some of the "new" ideas arising from recent developments in JavaScript frameworks.

It explains the fundamentals well, and would make good study material for learning the language, working with the DOM, and getting familiar with common idioms/patterns.</comment>


I'll save you the time of getting an MBA.. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/94hab/is_mba_important_for_a_programmer_to_start_a_tech/c0be4h0 <comment><USER2> what many people don't realize about an MBA is the fact that it's a gateway into certain big-company jobs (e.g., those in select Wall Street firms) ... the degree and school name are what people pay for. obviously, they can always learn the technical material from books or even online.

this post is basically like one that's claiming "I'll save you the time of getting a driver's license" and simply telling you the local driving rules ... the LICENSE itself is what people need to get if they want to legally drive. an MBA is a 'license' to work in certain types of firms (probably those that HNers probably don't want to work at)

<comment><USER3> Why is it that school is so important for an MBA? School is certainly important regardless of career but there seems to be a strong emphasis when it comes to MBA degrees. In Engineering or Computer Science, if you go to MIT that is going to be awesome. But if you go to a state college you will still be able to get almost any job that an MIT guy can get. Besides, skill is far more important in these fields, as per my experience. Any comments?

<comment><USER4> Because what matters is not what you learn there, but your rolodex. As they say, it's not what you know, but who you know.

If you go to one of the top MBA programs then you'll meet some of the people that will be hired by other big corporations and you will be either competing against them or negotiating with them.

<comment><USER5> Or cooperating with them. You will pull them, they will pull you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh my. There's so much more to learn:

Finance, accounting, strategy, legal, HR, time management, sales, marketing, management...

The list is endless. I don't have an MBA. I have many friends who do and are spectacular entrepreneurs. I've acquired most of what they know over a decade of being an entrepreneur but another way to do it would have been to drop everything and dedicate 2 years to learning.

Here's an example of what you don't know because you don't have an MBA: Out of all of your sales prospects, the customers most likely to buy from you are those who just bought something from you.

Perhaps that comment on Reddit invalidates many viable businesses that could have sold an $100 loss leader to those prospects and then up-sold them on a $10,000 product a few months later.

Never underestimate how little you know.

<comment><USER7> Reddit comes up as a topic in MBA courses ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's weird reading a post, going to comment, and then finding out that you already made the comment you were about to write a year ago. Deja vu...

<comment><USER9> Just read the comment you made re: RescueTime. I guess that's the MVP/dry testing tactic. I recently learned about it and am fascinated as well. Getting customers before writing code - a simple, yet brilliant idea that a lot of hackers aren't used to, myself included. The dry testing approach can even be applied to free consumer apps. "Launch" with mockups and screenshots and invite users to sign up for a beta test.

The biggest question I'm struggling with these days is how to even drive users to your barebones landing page in the first place. For pay-to-use consumer apps or B2B apps, you can often seek out direct leads or use advertisments. For general consumer apps, it's much harder to generate a buzz. How do you even get started on driving traffic to something like that?

<comment><USER10> I talk to friends and folks I know online and ask for feedback.

Once I come up with a compelling offer in the consumer space they'll jump all over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll save you the time of reading that comment: due-diligence.

But seriously, an MBA is a little different from those couple paragraphs (though they do contain valuable advice). An MBA is often a way to get your foot in the door for Fortune 500 companies, or, in my case, as sweet way to get a cushy, low-involvement TA/GA/RA position while I work on my own startups and build a resume. That comment does not accomplish the same thing (clearly).

</comment><comment><USER12> Worth reading because of this phrase: _This is a bit like writing some code, and then not testing it because you really don't want to discover that its buggy._

<comment><USER13> Ah, the times I've done that (or not done market research because I wanted to write the tool)...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Getting an MBA is not getting a degree in entrepreneurship, although there are schools who have tracks for entrepreneurship. Often times, you are learning other things that are not terribly related to a pre-revenue software startup.

In my opinion, it is much like law school. You should have a pretty good idea of what you want to get out of it before you go, otherwise, when you finish you still won't know what you want to do with the degree.

If you want to jump from your current engineering job to a different field, getting an MBA can be a good transitioning point. If you want to go into quantitative finance, getting an MBA can also be very useful.

Just don't confuse getting and MBA with figuring out how to get your startup off the ground.

* I recently finished a "mini-MBA" at Kellogg. While I very much enjoyed the experience, and I do say that certain things we learned added some foundational theory to things such as pricing and strategy (ever wonder where tiered pricing comes from?), the experience has not given me some "magic key" to turning any idea into startup gold. Everyone here should already know that there is no silver bullet for that. If you don't know that, I don't think an MBA will help you.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's sad is that the longest comment thread in that post was about Java vs other languages. Not getting into analysis paralysis about technology is probably another lesson to insert into that post.

<comment><USER16> That particular poster basically searches Reddit for any mention of "Ruby," and then posts something that says "lololol Ruby sucks."

I'd like to say that such things just get ignored, but it's hard not to get trolled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This post does not discuss the fact that, any idea, with a bit of adaptation, could be attractive to other types of customers.

Sometimes, simply throwing it out there for people to try, will raise interest. Many great company started with people inventing things they had no plan to sell.

The statement made in this post is naive at best. The strategy consisting of aiming at a potential customer, loading and shooting has created many monster failures too. Things are not that systematic.

It is obvious the writer does not know much about strategy courses delivered in MBA's...

</comment><comment><USER18> That's basically "customer development in 5 paragraphs" :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Ian is awesome. Glad his reddit comments are finally getting popular. Last I heard he is a mentor for Capital Factory (YC-like seed stage in Austin)

</comment><comment><USER20> Fantastic advice, that reflects a lot on what I'm going through right now.

Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER21> I _nearly_ didn't give the guy the upvote he deserves when I saw the comment sitting at 666 karma. Sad to be #667. :-(

I've heard LOIs discussed before, but primarily in the context of building & selling big-ticket systems. Do investors care at all about that kind of thing for smaller systems (say along the lines of GitHub/BaseCamp/Freckle/etc)?

</comment><comment><USER22> The market probing should be done wisely. If the business idea strikes gold, pitching about it may blow the advantage to be first on it. The probing should than be done in a way that does not disclose the business idea. Probing is definitely required.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds a lot like [http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/0976470705), or am I wrong?

<comment><USER24> Sure, but it's _much_ more succinct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Read some useful business book and that is it. The Success Manual - <http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com>

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm

 _figure out what your product is, then figure out who will buy it_

Oh that's easy! Or perhaps an MBA teaches _how_ to do that...?</comment>


You Can't Do Both: You can't fix weaknesses _and_ build on strengths - <AUTHOR> http://daverendall.typepad.com/dave_rendall/2008/05/you-cant-do-bot.html

<comment><USER2> "Most people want to be well-rounded and flexible. They want to keep their options open. They want to be balanced and not too extreme. Unfortunately, this doesn't work."

Well, if you say so, that's good enough for me. Oh look, you've even included someone else's graph, now that's scientific proof.</comment>


HN Meet-up Netherlands (wed-27-jan) - <AUTHOR>

Date confirmed: Wednesday 27 january 2010 Still looking for a projector. See: http://bluwiki.com/go/Hackersnl <comment><USER2> Good luck man, so sorry I can't make it, I'll be back in London by then.</comment>


Why do we eat grains? Thermodynamics - <AUTHOR> http://supplementsos.com/blog/why-do-we-eat-grains/

<comment><USER2> > Eating fewer grain products is not synonymous with popular diets like low- > carb or gluten-free. It needn't be borne by commitment to a food movement > like paleo.

Sure, it doesn't _need_ to be related to the Paleo diet, but that's still where it all stems from. It's the same as any other fad diet or pseudoscience: Come up with some reasonable-sounding claims that take advantage of poor scientific awareness (e.g. _10,000 years isn't enough time for humans to adapt to eating grains, so we should eat like cave men instead_ ), then make millions of dollars promoting your diet and selling books to your unquestioning followers.

There's a common sentiment among Paleo zealots that they finally need to distance themselves from the irrational underpinnings that started the whole fad (see here[1] for a FAQ by the 'Paleo diet' inventor). The problem arises when they go searching for scientific evidence to support their grain bashing, and then we end up with statements like this:

> It can stem from the simple proposition that fruits and vegetables are > generally healthier to eat than grains. That's an argument I'll cover more > deeply in later posts.

Oh, how convenient. Save the crux of the argument for another time. We'll all be patiently holding our breath.

[1] <http://thepaleodiet.com/paleo-diet-faq/>

<comment><USER3> > 10,000 years isn't enough time for humans to adapt to eating grains, so we > should eat like cave men instead

One of the details of that argument is that grains contain phytic acid[1], which humans can't digest. Phytic acid binds with important minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc, making them unavailable when digested. Cows, sheep, goats, and other non-humans produce various phytases, enzymes that digest phytic acid, but humans don't. Some people (such as Marlene Zuk, author of Paleofantasy, recently linked on HN) say that 10,000 years is enough to adapt to a new food, and cite lactose tolerance as an example. But lactose tolerance is the result of a single SNP, which can occur in at least two places. To digest phytic acid, humans would need to evolve a whole new enzyme. You need more than 10,000 years for that.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid>

<comment><USER4> Two things:

10,000 years is totally enough time for evolution to work on humans. See: lactose tolerance.

Just as importantly, we've been evolving the living daylights out of every domestic plant via selective breeding for just as long. Wild potatoes are poisonous, as are almonds. Maize started out with tiny grain. Apples have been bred into a bazillion varieties, with different sizes, tastes, and textures.

It's silly to say that it's more natural to eat cauliflower than corn, when neither properly existed 10,000 years ago.

<comment><USER5> _See: lactose tolerance_

GP specifically mentioned that and dismissed it with a seemingly reasonable argument; care to respond to that? Besides, _most_ humans are not lactose tolerant as adults. Has there been any research concerning a putative phytic acid tolerance? If so, have we identified a particular set of relevant genes? Have we studied the incidence of these genes in various populations?

I sort of assume that humans can handle most compounds they eat on a regular basis, but it seems that many compounds are harmful when consumed in excessive amounts.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that was a product of my poor reading; mea culpa and my apologies.

But I do think it is wrong to dismiss lactose tolerance as an example of recent adaption: most adaptations start as a single mutation with a selective advantage. It is disingenuous to claim phytic acid would require "a whole new enzyme", because if an enzyme were evolved specifically to break it down, the way it'd happen is that an existing enzyme would be duplicated (and there's a healthy amount of duplication in the typical genome to start with) and a small number of mutations would specialize this copy for phytic acid. It could be a single mutation on an already duplicated gene; it could be a series of one or more random mutations followed by the final mutation which begins to exert a selective pressure.

But all this is predicated on there being a selective pressure to digest phytic acid. For lactose, there is a strong selective pressure. For diet- related prion disorders (kuru), there is a strong selective pressure. Is there a strong selective pressure to digest phytic acid? Maybe there is, and the adaptation requires too many mutations to reach. Maybe there isn't, and so there is no selective pressure to drive an adaptation.

If I am taking the position that grains aren't that bad, then I am also taking the position that phytic acid -- as it is found in our diets -- isn't particularly bad. Hence, my position must be that there is no strong selective pressure to begin digesting phytic acid, anymore than there is to begin producing our own vitamin C.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that the evolution for lactose digestion involves turning off an already existing gene. Digesting phytic acid involves evolving a new gene - a new enzyme maker. So you are talking about one random mutation vs. XXXX mutations.

A genetic study has found that humans did evolve rapidly in the last 10,000 years, but most of the changes were one-off mutations such as these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> " _Scholars continue to argue over whether an increase in population made the shift towards agriculture necessary, or a shift towards agriculture caused an increase in population that made a return to a hunter-gatherer society impossible5. In either case, once the neolithic revolution had begun there was no turning back._ "

This is an entirely different discussion than what the article is about, but why are "scholars" assuming those two factors are the only ones to consider? (assuming they actually are, and this assumption isn't years behind the real debate going on among the scientists)

There's evidence suggesting that the first time humans cooperated in groups larger than the default tribe size, it was caused by something completely different: religion[1]. Göbekli Tepe - the oldest known temple in the world - predates agriculture[2]. It wouldn't surprise me at all if religion was the main (if indirect) social driving force behind a lot of these prehistoric changes in lifestyles that resulted in modern human society.

[1] [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328562.100-the- god-i...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328562.100-the-god-issue- religion-is-the-key-to-civilisation.html?full=true)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe>

<comment><USER8> I've been thinking a lot about this and I believe you're correct. Agriculture appeared in the Near East around 12k years ago, and civilization only around 6k years ago (if we date it by the Uruk period). If agriculture made cities possible, why did people live in tiny villages for another 6k years after discovering it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting article. Allow me to add a few fun details...

Early agriculturalists actually had it much rougher than this article implies for a real kicker of a reason:

Wild plants _suck_ as crop plants.

Maize was domesticated from a bushy grass called teosinte (Agriculture arose independently in the Americas a little later than in the Middle East). Google that and see how closely it resembles the big juicy corn-cobs you're used to. Where corn has giant cobs crammed with hundreds upon hundreds of big juicy kernals, teosinte has a miserly amount of sad, pathetic, and tiny little kernals. You'd have to grow an entire field full of teosinte to equal the output of a small patch of corn. If a modern farmer saw one of his fields being overgrown with teosinte he'd probably spray it with herbicide. If some contagion wiped out all of our crop plants and we had to go back to wild crops we would be absolutely _humped_ as a species. Now, imagine how difficult it must have been to come up with the idea of settling down and growing crops to live on when the crops you could grow were basically weeds!

In fact, teosinte was so far from being a viable crop that some have proposed theories about intermediate steps. For example, consider the Beer (or chicha) theory of civilization! Somehow, somebody discovered that you can ferment teosinte into something that tastes weird and makes you act even weirder. Fun stuff! While teosinte was not a crop you could build a viable farm on, maybe some hunter-gatherers stumbled upon the process of making chicha. At first, collecting wild teosinte would have taken a lot of work. Far too much for the calories yielded. However, they probably had the time for the occasional novelty! Being lazy, these hunter-gatherers probably realized they could scatter some of the seeds they collected in a specific spot, continue their wanderings, and find a much denser patch of wild teosinte in the same spot a year later. They might even have started selecting which seeds to scatter, either fortuitously preferring the smaller ones for flavor or being smart enough to deliberately select the mutants with higher yields to sow for next year. Perhaps the first steps towards agriculture (in the new world at least) were taken by the paleolithic equivalent of frat-boys! Actually, no archaeologist would ever say that. They would instead say, "priests and shamans" used the beer for religious ceremonies. (Hot tip: If archaeologists have no clue what something they find is for, they usually say it has "possible religious significance".) It makes no real difference what their reasons were. In this theory, the selective breeding of teosinte to produce maize can start long before people actually have to rely on maize to supply much in the way of calories. Humankind's urge to get plastered may have ultimately led to civilization!

Wait! There's more! Proponents of this theory have also pointed out that beer solves a lot of problems early civilizations probably had. Take water quality for example. If a lot of hunter-gatherer's with no concept of germs or hygiene were to settle next to a river, you can bet that the river would be pretty deadly to drink out of before too long. Fortunately, if you take some water, combine it with grain and ferment it, the result is a tasty fermented beverage that is safe to drink thanks to the wonders of alcohol! (Early fermented beverages probably had a pretty low alchohol content and packed a healthy dose of calories. Perfect for quenching the thirst and nourishing hard working agriculturalists from dawn till dusk!) I could go on for a while...

TL;DR - Beer, rather than being an evil byproduct of civilization, may be what gave us both agriculture _and_ civilization! Beer is _good_.

Ham-fisted attempt to tie this back into all-things entrepreneurial: The development of agriculture was a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem. You can't have agriculture without crop-plants, but how could we have developed crop plants without agriculture? _Beer_. Sometimes, something that looks like a total waste of time becomes the foundation of very serious things (TM), such as the whole of human civilization. Thanks to the adderall-fuelled march of progress we now get to see this process play out in a matter of years or even months! Keep your eye on frivolous crap!

<comment><USER7> " _TL;DR - Beer, rather than being an evil byproduct of civilization, may be what gave us both agriculture and civilization! Beer is good._ "

Similarly, cheese is probably what allowed the lactose-intolerant humans to transition into lactose tolerance:

[http://www.nature.com/news/art-of-cheese-making- is-7-500-yea...](http://www.nature.com/news/art-of-cheese-making- is-7-500-years-old-1.12020)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Grains are not special because they started being cultivated more intensively 12,000 years ago. They were eaten long before that [1] and intensive cultivation also applied to veggies [2] and fruits [3] on roughly the same historical time frame.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohalo_II>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_founder_crops>

[3] <http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch39.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> It's unfortunate that a lot of people are so quick to write off a low-carb, grain-free, or Paleo approach to eating as just another fad. There is actually an extensive amount of science and research behind the principles.

Yes, some folks are riding the "fad train" and profiting handsomely from the current popularity. That is true no matter whether it is a diet, a sports team, or a TV show that is currently en vogue. However, there are quite a few people who are actually focused on the science and evidence behind human nutrition and health.

The best book I've come across that dives into the research and nearly every important epidemiological study in the last 200-300 years is Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes (<http://amzn.to/149HYzi>). It's not exactly an airplane read and certainly not a "diet" book; however, it completely changed the way I think about nutrition, exercise, disease, and overall health.

I would also recommend anything by Loren Cordain or Robb Wolf.

Before you make any judgments, do the research.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Grains produce more calories per acre than almost all other foodstuffs." - While this may be true, there are are a couple caveats.

First, the per-acre yields for heritage varietals are much lower than those cited in the article, and I suspect that some crops have improved quite a bit more than others.

Second, I would speculate that grains' biggest advantage in neolithic times was storage duration, not mass or volume. Today if we have a crop-killing drought we can transport crops from other regions. It's expensive and inconvenient but not often life threatening. Even as little as a couple hundred years ago, any society dependent on agriculture would need a crop that could be stored for multiple years to protect against drought.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm confused about the table in the middle of the article. If rice and corn have the same amount of kcal per 100g (365), and rice has a higher yield per acre than corn (7700lbs vs. 6900lbs), how does rice have a lower Calories per acre number? Is there another conversion I'm not seeing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, fixed. I made an error in unit conversion. Yield figures for corn are published in bushels/acre, which I had to convert into pounds and then divide by calories per gram. I'll double check all the other results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Food production has been optimized throughout the entirety of human > existence. But it has been optimized to solve a problem most people reading > this article no longer experience. Society no longer needs more food; it > needs healthier food.

There is an argument that "most people reading this article" shouldn't be taken in isolation from the rest of the world. The market for food is global. And there is (according to the UN) a worldwide food shortage[1]. Certainly, (inflation-adjusted) food prices now way higher than at any point between 1990 and 2007 (though down from peaks in 2008 & 2011)[2].

If demand from first world countries shifts to lower-calorie-per-unit-area foodstuffs, eventually the global cost of a calorie's worth of food will increase, exacerbating any food shortage. (Whether that is a good reason not to move away from grains is a matter for debate -- see the endlessly rehashed arguments whenever someone brings up food shortages as a reason to be a vegetarian).

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/global- development/2012/oct/14/un-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/global- development/2012/oct/14/un-global-food-crisis-warning)

[2] [http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs- home/foodpricesind...](http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs- home/foodpricesindex/en/)

<comment><USER14> You're looking at small, recent trends. Food prices adjusted for inflation in the US are the lowest they've ever been, and Americans spend very little (10%) of their budgets on food.

[http://familyfarmalliance.clubwizard.com/IMupload/SalemRepor...](http://familyfarmalliance.clubwizard.com/IMupload/SalemReport.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >There is nothing intrinsic to lunch that demands bread.

Lunch demands bread, because trying to get 500 calories without a starch is hard and imbalanced. For example, eating 500 calories of meat is about 50 grams of fat (your done for the day). Eating 500 calories is 10 oranges and a stomach ache. For the modern day, its not thermodynamics, its because grains balance our diets.

<comment><USER16> You seem to associate eating fat with BECOME fat. The two are very different, and the saturated fat that can be consumed to reach the 500 calories (~70g of butter vs ~150g of bread) should not be feared.

This too is very much a corner stone of Paleo and the proof is in a lot of ancient cultures, especially cultures that had to survive through all four seasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't wait for the followup where the author suggests we all switch to eating crops that cannot possibly be produced in volume for the world's population, then that is handwaved away under the implicit assumption that those people are poor and will probably die of being poor soon anyways.

Because that's ALWAYS where food articles lead when the hosting domain contains the word "supplements." It's like a 100% probability.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would like to see calories/acre of nuts and olives too - cashew and peanuts and hazelnuts pack quite the energy punch too. They may be comparable. So maybe there were other factors at play why grain was chosen as the primary food source.

<comment><USER19> Not a food historian but at a guess: grain can produce a crop from seed in one season. Fruits/nuts can take years before they produce good yields.

<comment><USER20> You can pack grain away for a typical military campaign pretty well. Nuts go rancid too fast and fruit rots and is kinda delicate. You can haul wheat from the north african provinces to london in the roman era pretty well, not so good for the alternatives.

Its fundamentally a warrior food. You can't conqueror the known world feeding your legions apples. Wheat, yes, but not pine nuts or oranges.

Sometimes you see this in opposition to non-grain diets, its part of our long warrior/military tradition, etc etc. You can't have a long term ancient empire without some kind of grain, otherwise you end up something like Ghengis Kahn starving horde has to go home. No not the guy Kirk yelled Kahhnn! about, the much earlier one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Never really thought about food in this way before - great article.

Which reminds me. Don't you find it funny how some the most important things to have occurred in history came from the most random places, times and humble beginnings? I find the fact that such little, seemingly innocuous, random events go on to have such an enormous impact upon billions of people centuries into the future absolutely fascinating.

For example have you ever wondered what effectively helped end the need for slavery and in turn paved the way for women's rights? The steam engine. Weren't expecting that now then were you?

History is random like that.

<comment><USER22> On the other hand, you should consider how steam engine development was prevented in Ancient Greece because of the abundance of slaves. Imagine the world we'd be living in if that didn't happen.

<comment><USER23> The Industrial Revolution didn't happen in China in the 19th century because of the abundance of cheap labor...

[http://www.voxeu.org/article/why-china-missed-industrial- rev...](http://www.voxeu.org/article/why-china-missed-industrial-revolution)

"Whereas entrepreneurs in Europe were very eager to develop new technologies that increased labour productivity via the capital-labour ratio, Chinese businesses barely had any incentive to do so. "</comment></comment></comment>


A Docker Abstraction That Handles Container Security - <AUTHOR> https://docs.nanobox.io/security/ <comment><USER2> I decided to try nanobox last Friday, after some troubles with firing up a Vagrant box on my laptop. One instance worked, another one didn't, nothing new...

Unfortunately I realized that to download nanobox I have to register and login and I really don't understand why. I expected to be able to download a binary, write a configuration file and build my service which I'll never run on somebody's else cloud.

So this is not equivalent to Vagrant or docker, which are unregistered downloads or even apt-gets. It's more like running a part of AWS locally in development, but I don't want any lockin for this project.

I went back to Vagrant. It turned out that a halt of the failed box followed by an up fixed the problem. I still don't feel Vagrant to be completely reliable or reproducible but I'll write my docker-compose and Dockerfiles if I want to use something else.

I'd love to hear from nanobox about the reasons for the required registration. Not having to support people like me that won't buy their service would be perfectly fine. I wonder if there is some technical reason that applies also to the basic scenario of firing up a service locally.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be worth investigating Kubernetes network policies [0] and the CIS benchmark [1] for a similar solution.

0 - [https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services- networking/netw...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services- networking/network-policies/)

1 - [https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/kubernetes/](https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/kubernetes/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those solutions work well if you have solid devops skills. Nanobox is built more to empower developers who want to focus on just coding and not deal with infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From watching the videos on their homepage, it looks to me like the nanobox CLI is a bunch of wrappers around Docker.

The cloud product sounds like a custom Docker container orchestrator. Worker nodes run on your cloud provider but management is tied to a control panel on their website. They recommend using nanobox over a PaaS in their video, but I fail to see how this is anything other than a PaaS.

</comment><comment><USER5> Brings to mind Joyent Triton (OSS) which takes the Docker API abstraction at the availability zone (DC) built on (Solaris) Zones which also benefit by Linux Kernel API (SmartOS LX Brand).

</comment><comment><USER6> It feels like the de-facto network policy design methodology, which I am yet to see implemented in open source, is one in which CI/CD test processes observe network utilization in test environments and automatically implement restrictions for deployed instances.

For example, and ingress-only static content webserver would not require any outbound internet access.

The same approach could and should be used for other observable and manageable layers (filesystem access, syscalls, language interpreter-specific function call whitelisting, etc.).

I am waiting for a security-focused CI/CD tool to own this space. Even a light touch implementation would surely improve greatly on the status quo.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like this kind of setup would autogenerate subtle firewall misconfigurations that result in mysterious failure modes. Like blocking ICMP which breaks TCP path MTU discovery. Or blocking outbound 53/tcp.

<comment><USER6> Blocking outbound 53/* is often great. Many services don't need DNS (which is usually UDP not TCP) and it is known to be a very frequent covert channel for infiltrators. AFAIK tcp/53 is most frequently used for zone transfers... not something you'd want to encourage on most production servers!

Restricted ICMP (certain message types only) could be a default permit. If you have an internal service running over known virtual infrastructure to an external-facing proxy, MTU path discovery may be unnecessary anyway.

It doesn't have to be nazi, just better than nothing.

<comment><USER7> Those were just some examples - I was trying to point out that this method will generally give you subtly broken firewall rules.

(re DNS: the DNS protocol uses both TCP and UDP interchangeably, it switches to TCP when the message size crosses a threshold. Many kinds of DNS messages can be over the limit. See eg [https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/24344](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/24344))

<comment><USER6> You don't need to rigidly and purely enforce rules only from test results but rather also embedded wisdom, defaults and recommendations.

ICMP is a well known gotcha and the only such protocol in its class.

I've personally never seen a fallback to TCP requirement in the wild but you could easily say "if DNS then enable both protocols" as a general rule, and add _< received wisdom>_.

These are easy to add as policies and will result in better rules than manually configured systems in many cases, if documented. Everyone's happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has there been a security audit yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> There hasn't been a security audit yet. Nanobox is still pretty new. We released publicly in February.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this different from heroku?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main difference is that the Nanobox PaaS is portable, making it what's been termed a "micro-PaaS". You can host with whatever cloud provider (AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud) you want or set it up on-premise.

Businesses who want to (or have to for compliance reasons) use a different host (e.g. Vultr in Europe or Alibaba Cloud in Asia) can simply create their own adapters and deploy away: [https://docs.nanobox.io/providers/create/](https://docs.nanobox.io/providers/create/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does Nanobox need root privileges on the host? If not, how does it provide networking?</comment>


UK Considering Requiring a License to View Porn - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/02272218799/uk-govt-considering-requiring-porn-license-if-you-want-to-look-porn-online.shtml <comment><USER2> The Guardian sums up the problems, and the correct approach to porn/kids quite well:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/07/online-p...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/07/online- porn-regulate-kids-not-net)

The problem here is that parents are unable or unwilling to regulate their children's access to the internet.

Like most of the UK Government's attempts to regulate the internet, this 'porn licensing' idea is ill-informed, expensive and ineffective.

<comment><USER3> Exactly.

Is there anything more likely to make a kid want to browse porn that finding out not only is it taboo, it's a technical challenge too.

<comment><USER4> The pirate bay is banned by my ISP.

Now I don't actually use it, but I am still pissed of by the censorship. Fortunately getting around the filter is extremely simple -- but there is a part of me that almost wish it was more of a challenge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly misleading headline. The UK government is considering all residential internet connections to, by default, have an porn filter, and people can opt out of it. They have been talking about this for months. Remember there was some recent local elections in the UK which the current party didn't do well in, so this is realpolitik.

Saying "licence" implies that a cop can come along and demand to see your "porn licence", or that there'll be tests to get your "porn licence", or that there'll be a governmental "porn licencing authority". All of these things are ridiculous and not what anyone is considering.

<comment><USER6> It has the same basic mechanism as a license: you need to apply to have it and it could be denied. Of course, technically, it could also be revoked too.

<comment><USER5> It lakes numerous important differences from (for example) a driving licence. You do not have to do a test for your 'porn licence'. You do not have to pay for a 'porn licence'. Your 'porn licence' cannot be taken away. No-one can ever ask for to see your 'porn licence'. Porn website will not and cannot check your 'porn licence'. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <meta age-restiction="18+" region="uk">

I think introducing something like the optional meta tag above would be a more productive measure. I don't believe that porn-creators want to peddle their material to kids. Or at the very least, it's be easy to criticise them if they failed to implement the meta tag.

It's worth a shot, before we start introducing the sort of bat shit crazy stuff this article talks about.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I'm sure those upstanding pornographers always have the kids at heart first.

<comment><USER9> What they usually have is a business model that includes reduction of legal risk. If a minor change such as including specific tags or keywords can keep them out of court, that change will be made.

<comment><USER8> How many times have pornographers been brought to court for distributing to minors? Getting minors addicted at a young age would be very important strategically for the porn industry, ensuring both future customers and cultural mainstreaming. Compare with the tobacco industry.

<comment><USER10> Substance addiction and physical attraction to other members of your species are _wildly_ different topics. _(With rare exception,)_ physical attraction is something you acquire during maturation through natural brain chemistry changes induced internally.

Even if we reject that, you are still failing to take into account a very important difference between tobacco distribution and online pornography distribution: accurate age verification is _far_ easier in meatspace where lies about your age have to have some semblance to reality.

In fact, the meatspace sale of pornography provides a nifty little counterexample to your thesis: guess how fast a minor would get kicked out of a sex shop. (answer: faster than you could possibly believe.)

<comment><USER8> Pornography is a (digital) substance that induces comparable if not identical neurological changes as traditional addictive substances such as nicotine. It has already been established the internet generally is sufficient to induce addiction-related neurological changes.

I don't disagree that it is easier to implement age-based restrictions in real life versus online, but the fact remains that every single porn site distributes to minors, with obvious benefits to the industry.

<comment><USER10> > _Pornography is a (digital) substance_

What a silly thing to say.

> _induces comparable if not identical neurological changes as traditional > addictive substances such as nicotine_

Show me the peer reviewed studies. Nicotine is a drug which _alters_ brain chemistry, pornography merely facilitates naturally occurring brain chemistry phenomenons. It absolutely defies reason that these could be identical.

> _but the fact remains that every single porn site distributes to minors_

Already refuted bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alex-g I'm sure MPs will be happy to let us know whether they themselves have obtained a porn license.

</comment><comment><USER11> So this is a way of re-introducing the UK National Identity Card?

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell My understanding is that this is already the case for mobile phone networks here in the UK. I remember having to phone up my mobile phone provider (T-Mobile, or maybe it was O2 at the time?) to ask them to remove the adult content lock because it was incorrectly blocking access to some tech news site I was trying to read. POS.

I don't know if this is government mandated or just interfering mobile networks.

<comment><USER12> I'm with o2, never been blocked viewing anything.

Is there a possibility you're talking about the open wifi spots? The ones near me are invariably slower than 3G so I've turned BTOpenZone off. Not that I regularly view porn out and about, but I'd assume that I'd hit the block at some point.

EDIT: There is one, bizarre, never knew that:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134659/Phone- firms-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134659/Phone-firms-block- porn-web-giants-Internet-providers-technology-install-opt-filters.html)

I obviously need to start viewing more porn sites out and about or something to express my freedoms!

<comment><USER13> O2 certainly had an adult filter on their 3G data by default in 2011[1]. It was very annoying because it was so indiscriminate - anything that could be used as a proxy was blocked (like Google Translate) for instance. Turning it off required giving them your drivers licence number as I recall.

[1][http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/04/o2-mobile- web...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/04/o2-mobile-web- filtering)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> so unless there has been a giant leap in a.i. we'll need a licence to access a site about scunthorpe?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem>

<comment><USER7> Buttbuttinate the french ambbuttador!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Widespread internet porn I think is an understudied sociological phenomenon. In the West, it is easily available to both minors and adults alike. Questions:

1\. Is porn addictive? There have been various recent studies pointing out similarities in the brains of internet addicts with drug addicts, but little focus specifically on porn to my knowledge. 2\. What are the sociological effects of widespread regular porn use? I'm thinking in terms of motivation levels, risk-taking behavior, and any other psychological effects (for example as a positive effect some argue mass porn use explains the recent drop in rate of sex offenses).

If porn is potentially the neurological equivalent of digital heroin, I think it definitely deserves more discussion than it currently receives.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it works this way.

The neurological equivalent of digital heroin is not free access to YouPorn. The reward happens offline. And the lab rats you're looking at are enjoying this 'give me pleasure' button forever, with society swinging like a pendulum between (correct) ignorance and (crazy) ideas of imposed restrictions.

Seriously - when I was a teen I had no internet porn. But certainly equal substitutes, ~just as readily available~. Maybe I couldn't really focus on specifics like 'give me a threesome of the following composition of sex, race and sexual preference, speaking in language x' - but that's a different kind of problem I guess. More like 'I had plenty of heroin, but nowadays I can order it online specifically from Redmond and add the fantasy that I shoot the same stuff Bill buys' [1].

1: I've nothing against him and I highly doubt he has any experience with (these sorts of) drugs.

<comment><USER16> You have a valid point. Pornography is merely an aid in, er... sexually fantasising. Without it you still have the same problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> dont tell me I need to pay entertainment tax for porn and sex

</comment><comment><USER18> Considering you don't need a license to be in porn, does this mean that people will be banned from viewing online footage that they star in unless they get permission?

</comment><comment><USER19> The bureaucracy required to actually enforce that license will be draconian at the very least, and extremely costly.

</comment><comment><USER20> What to expect from a country that charges a TV license for blind people...

Edit: do you think I'm kidding? <http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/easy-read/EA15/>

"If you are registered blind or severely sight impaired you can get a TV Licence for half of the usual cost."

<comment><USER21> For people outside the UK: a TV license is an opt-in for people who chose to watch TV. Blind people aren't required to pay for a service they don't use, they can chose to pay (at a discounted rate) if they wish to consume (listening rather than watching) live television.

If blind people don't want to have TV on, they don't have to pay anything. If they do then clearly they feel they are getting something out of it, so why should they get it free unlike everybody else?

<comment><USER20> "If they do then clearly they feel they are getting something out of it, so why should they get it free unlike everybody else?"

The TV is a communications device.

Sure, they can listen to the radio, but some things you get through tv that you don't get on the radio.

This sounds like extreme pettiness by 'tv regulators' towards people with a severe handicap.

<comment><USER21> Sorry I don't follow - why is it petty to charge people for listening to TV content?

<comment><USER20> I don't know, I think it's absurd to charge for an unencrypted, public Over The Air TV signal. Sure, it's an opt-in system, and it finances the BBC, etc.

I'm sure the concept of not paying is as strange as the concept of paying for those who aren't accustomed to it.

But the incremental cost of each receptor is insignificant, so IMHO there should be an incentive for blind people to have a television.

"TV is opt in" sure, so is the radio, so is internet. But realistically, very few people don't have it.

Today, with internet, the importance of the television is significantly diminished, but its communication power was important.

<comment><USER21> Oh I totally get the arguments against TV licensing, but that's a different topic to whether, assuming it exists, blind people should have to pay for it.

On the overall topic, I'm very much in favour of it, but go find a speech Stephen Fry gave about it (search "Briefings - Stephen Fry", sorry I'm not at my PC) as he makes every argument I'd make, but better. Why did you compare it to the internet which, while there is no license fee, is definitely not a free-to-use service.

<comment><USER20> Great! I think this is the video you mentioned: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8evnEqOVEns>

Comparison with the internet was only because the internet is a communication medium</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Senate votes to let ISPs sell your Web browsing history to advertisers - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/senate-votes-to-let-isps-sell-your-web-browsing-history-to-advertisers/ <comment><USER2> > _The Senate today used its power under the Congressional Review Act to > ensure that the FCC rulemaking "shall have no force or effect" and to > prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future._

This is honestly the most frightening thing to me. Even if prevailing opinions change, they can't bring these regulations back in the future? This seems...majorly problematic.</comment>


Ask HN: Where you get new business idea? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My thoughts.</comment>


Ask HN: Dev tools for Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR>

What tools are you using to debug UI issues in Internet Explorer - the IE toolbar sort of sucks, and Firebug Lite does not perform very well. Any other technique/tools to make changes and see them live? <comment><USER2> Which IE? The F12 dev tools aren't as nice as Chrome's or Firefox', but they get the job done. It's IE6 and IE7 (before the dev tools arrived in IE8) that make me want to put kittens in the juicer. For IE<8 there's a JavaScript (oops, sorry, "J-Script") debugger in Office 2003 that seems to be a passive- aggressive way of encouraging Office sales to engineers.

I still can't believe how often I find myself debugging something in IE[67], but it's nowhere near as often as I used to. Maybe in 2023 I'll be done with it. ;D</comment>


Google is hiring a head of Republican political advertising - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2017/3/6/14832058/google-hiring-head-republican-political-advertising <comment><USER2> So? Does the word "Republican" not fit in your world view?</comment>


Ask HN: Have you tried Etacts? Is it worthwhile? - <AUTHOR>

I was very excited when I heard about Etacts -
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144560
I didn't want to share my Gmail password for obvious reasons, so I created a new Google Apps email account just to try out Etacts. It seems a little glitchy/slow/unresponsive to me, but I like the concept. Has anyone else used it and do you think it's worth putting in the time to tool around and get to work? I like being able to send an email from inside of Etacts to do a quick catchup, but then Etacts didn't register in my contact history that I sent from them! So Etacts users, feedback and thoughts so far? Worth delving it as it is now? <comment><USER2> I have gist and etacts accounts, neither have worked their way into my regular workflow yet. Both have seemed quite buggy every time I try to use them. And I am not going to spend the time integrating them to truly see their worth until they can solve that.

I do love the Rapportive Gmail extension though, quite different purpose, but awesome.</comment>


Hot Tech Startups May Have Higher Funding Hurdles - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/technology/hot-tech-start-ups-may-have-higher-funding-hurdles.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of high valued piles of crap in the tech space at the moment. Flushing the toilet a few times to rid the system of such junk is ultimately a needed cleansing.

Tech startups that can show viable business models with actual profits will weather the storm. However for those that are living on 'user growth' and hype, well it's going to be a bumpy ride.

<comment><USER2> Problem is, it makes things tough for everybody, not just crap hucksters. If the bad companies were financially banished that would be one thing, but after a crash _everybody_ will be tarred with a "startup" brush.

<comment><USER3> Well if you are a startup that makes profit or has a long runway that is well managed, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about you.

In boom times it can be a challenge to control burn for even well-run companies because the markets for things like employees or office space become distorted due to high demand. In bust times these expenses naturally go down, which helps well-run companies.

<comment><USER4> What is a "long runway" for a startup? We are super transparent at my current startup and have what I'd say is "solid" runway but I'd love some perspective.

<comment><USER3> A long runway would be long enough to meet a huge milestone with your current funding. Given a standard milestone (reaching profitability, reach profitability in some markets, user growth to XYZ threshold), 1.5 years is probably solid and 2.5-3 years is "long".

Practically speaking, there is little difference between 3 years and 10 years of runway, because a company that stagnates for 3 years is likely to lose key employees and momentum whether or not there is money left in the bank. The goal of a startup isn't necessarily to survive at all costs, it is to make sure to survive long enough to see if the concept works.

That is where there is no exact answer, because it depends. If you are a startup where increasing revenue isn't on the near-term road map, you might want to be more conservative because you will eventually be depending on investors in the future. If you are a startup with really strong unit economics and a path to profitability, you can be more aggressive because in the worst case scenario you can probably reach profitability via the backdoor (layoffs, cutting expenses, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this proves to be a correction that eliminates some startups that don't have a business model then so be it. Startups shouldn't be owned as some sort of novelty items by investors or acquirers, they should be revenue producing. VC money won't go away for good businesses, and you shouldn't be scared if you are producing value for the economy. And you know what, in the end, it might even stabilize the Bay Area real estate market, which isn't all that bad in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER6> Key quote: _"Lots of founders today weren't around in 1999 and they don't know a thing about financial markets beyond what's happened in the last 24 months," Mr. Gurley said in an interview. "To them that's how this game is played, money is cheap and everything goes up. That's why we have cycles."_

If it takes a dot-com 2.0 crash to weed out all the frothy optimistic-but- useless startups and drop housing prices back to normal instead of $4,500 per month in SF/NYC, it's probably worth the economic hit.

<comment><USER7> I don't think NYC or SF home prices will be changing much anytime soon. As far as the rest of the country is concerned, there are signs pointing to the US housing industry being more resilient: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/housing- stocks-offer-a-ray-of-ho...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/housing-stocks-offer- a-ray-of-hope-1440370792)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Learn anything by creating something everyday - <AUTHOR> https://internetvin.com/futureland-alpha/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some background on how and why I started this.

I was going through a very difficult time in my life. My father in law passed away suddenly two days before my son and first child were born. Things were very emotional and stressful. I couldn't find any clarity. I didn't have any time for myself to figure it all out.

One day, while sitting alone in my friends startup office I heard the song Naked Life by Oko Ebombo. I am not sure why it was this song or if it could have been another song. Maybe I was depressed enough. But this song made me want to make music. I messaged some friends with a link to the track and asked, "how do you make this?" Most of them responded with things like, take singing lessons, get guitar lessons and so on. None of this was an option for me. I had to be back in my apartment to help my wife in an hour.

So I downloaded GarageBand for iOS, made a track and uploaded it to SoundCloud. Once that happened, I started to feel better. Prior to that moment I had never made any music in my life. The next day I did the same thing and I just didn't stop.

I wrote about this process on Twitter in a thread titled, "What I learned making some kind of music for 365 consecutive days:"

[https://twitter.com/internetVin/status/1019033516028280832](https://twitter.com/internetVin/status/1019033516028280832)

I am following the same process now to teach myself how to code. I never want to stop doing this.

<comment><USER2> I too did this except 1 month at a time.

I use to produce music or 'jams' once a day for a month or so. I also did 3D quite a bit and produced 1 spaceship concept a day as part of "#shiptember"

It's a really fun way to learn to do something and inevitably become REALLY fast at it and produce incredible work that you'd never thought possible to start with. You know the software/hardware so good that by the end of it, it's effortless.

The king of this is of course `beeple`.

The point is: create, every day. It's under many forms and disciplines but usually it's under the umbrella of "progress before perfection" and "#everyday".

<comment><USER3> This sounds a lot like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which focuses on writing (regardless of quality) a certain number of words each day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We took "Show HN" off the title because requiring an invite makes it more like a sign-up page than something people are able to try out.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also here are links to profiles if that helps retain the "Show HN" status so people here can play with elements of this. I've worked really hard to get to a point where I have a working tool that people can use. It required teaching myself how to code to realize it. On Jan 01 2019, I had never written a line of code. I'm a huge fan of Hacker News and would appreciate the Show HN categorization.

[https://hfo.futureland.tv/internetvin](https://hfo.futureland.tv/internetvin)

[https://hfo.futureland.tv/saph](https://hfo.futureland.tv/saph)

[https://hfo.futureland.tv/ruaa](https://hfo.futureland.tv/ruaa)

[https://hfo.futureland.tv/gabrieloc](https://hfo.futureland.tv/gabrieloc)

[https://hfo.futureland.tv/katherine](https://hfo.futureland.tv/katherine)

<comment><USER4> Ok, we'll make an exception for you.

Please don't ask friends to upvote your HN posts, though. It's against the rules ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)), HN users tend to see through it, and we ban accounts and sites that do it. Also, it's mostly pointless, because most such votes are rejected by the software.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK - this kind of approach is what makes HN so cool. It's something I really appreciate as a reader. It's great that you have software that can do that.

fwiw the premise of asking any friends to support this was essentially, "hey I finally had the courage to post that thing we've been iMessaging about everyday and that you are a user of and finding value in on Hacker News."

I basically use my Mac to make things and visit this website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like this. I feel like I would want to participate in the community, but not necessarily as an everyday creator.

While I do enjoy creating things myself, I also like providing support and mentoring where I can. Are there ways for creators to easily share their work from the Futureland system with the wider internet community? Are you considering "mentor" or "support" participants who do not create, but provide knowledge and encouragement to creators?

Not that you need to support such things. These are just a couple thoughts I had while browsing the link and the other comments here.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are very interesting perspectives and notes.

1\. "Are there ways for creators to easily share their work from the Futureland system with the wider Internet community?"

This is something I have been thinking about a lot. I wonder about the role of seeking attention while learning something new. I wonder a lot about how seeking attention affects what we end up making. Or what we end up not trying. I want to do whatever is best for users. I could be wrong but I'm not sure if it is as straight forward as adding the ability to publish to Twitter, Instagram and so on.

A long way of saying: I don't have clear answers on this yet and I think it requires deeper thinking and experimentation.

2\. "Are you considering "mentor" or "support" participants who do not create, but provide knowledge and encouragement to creators?"

This is a powerful question. Some form of mentorship might be incredibly important. In my own life, there have been many times when someone I met on the Internet has said something to me that really transformed how I see the world or my work.

A question that comes to mind is, "how do you enable true and capable mentors to have more impact?" and "how do you avoid being lead by pretend ones?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like the idea and the execution. The only thing I am against is Slack. I don't wish to Slack.

Can you add additional channels like Telegram maybe? WIP[1] uses telegram bot to do something similar to what you are aiming at.

[1]: [https://wip.chat/](https://wip.chat/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your thoughts on Slack completely. Building on Slack was a decision I needed to make to realize the Alpha of this concept. I selected Slack because of the wide ranging types of people that already use it. I'm hoping Futureland can be a collision of many different creative disciplines. I live in Toronto and the density of telegram users here is low. At least in my life experience.

Over time if Futureland continues to be useful to others, I hope it can exist and provide value entirely on its own.

In this case I should also give credit and thanks to Slack. If it wasn't for their existing software I wouldn't have been able to get to this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of Jennifer Dewalt and her "180 webpages in 180 days" project she did to learn programming.

[https://jenniferdewalt.com/](https://jenniferdewalt.com/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155)

(I'm usually bad with names, but I remember her name to this day. It was a really good way to make an impression!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have come across her project and her story - it's amazing. Thank you for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _It is OK to share "mediocre work", actually this is encouraged as it begins to change your psychological relationship with your work. Making mediocre things is a very important part of learning anything new._

Wow that's pretty good advice actually...

</comment><comment><USER9> To give some insight as a user, It's a solid resource / program. Being centralized through slack is a great use for a community driven network. Just eliminates the feeling like you're going it alone. Speaking personally, the HFO program is helping get out of a creative drought. There's definitely something to this

</comment><comment><USER10> This is dope. Its like healthier instagram!

I would totally use it. (I'm such an instagram haters)

I have 1 suggestion, If you're planning to rework the UI/UX, don't go way off than current theme too much. I love the older webs vibe. As bonus point it could keep idiots away and maintain quality content.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am very open to whatever will make this useful to others. I would love to hear your suggestions. Feel free to share them here if it makes sense or if you want to message me directly, @internetVin on Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good idea. I can see the potential this can have for motivation... often enough you (I) just need a tiny nudge to push you over the edge and just do it. This sounds like it could do just that.

Tiny offtopic nitpick: In the title and on the page you write "everyday". Written as one word, it means "ordniary". What you probably want is "every day", which means "each day".

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate you taking the time to write about this. Noted your feedback. It's great thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting.

Request access page needs UX work.

It leaves the prompt text in the field when you click on it. No indication of issue / feedback at all when you click submit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ty. Added feedback on submission.

I'll improve the rest of the UX now as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <rant> Kind of tough learning new things in blue collar software shops. Not impossible but really, really tough.

</comment><comment><USER14> Dope idea using Slack as the central UI!</comment>