You can't replace your face, says face recognition - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kaspersky.com/findface-experiment/11916/ <comment><USER2> Besides this "regular" use-case there was recently a case when some former adult performer was doxxed using face recognition: [http://fusion.net/story/295539/ntechlab-findface-facial- reco...](http://fusion.net/story/295539/ntechlab-findface-facial-recognition- accuracy-doxing/)

Now, most of you probably don't care enough, only some are doing adult stuff. But let's imagine such a complete image/id database comes into hands of a bad regime.

Most countries already collect and save biometric photos not even for general passport and driver's license documents but also for health insurance issues (like in Germany). Do you trust the health insurance company to store the photos in a way, that no employee nor external attacker is able to "collect" them?

CCTV cameras in public and private places are all over the country, placed in public transportation but also in places like gas stations, restaurants, even in the entries of restroom facilities and of course all over in airports. If you connect all those image sources, which is not a technical problem anymore, you can easily track people, like shown in the fictional "person of interest" tv-series.

You can turn of or throw away your mobile phone/SIM card. But you can't change your face.

<comment><USER3> > you can't change your face.

You can obstruct it enough to confuse OpenCV: [https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/)

I wonder if this is the future of fashion?

<comment><USER4> In some (quite a lot of!) jurisdictions there are already laws that prohibit concealing ones' face. While the laws are against masks, it won't be a big stretch (esp. for a rogue regime with a plenty of corrupt judges at hand) to apply or extend such laws for this sort of make-up as well. All in the name of public safety, of course.

<comment><USER5> Japanese style health masks

<comment><USER6> That'll only delay the inevitable. Hair. Height. Walking patterns. Stride Length. Each added Criteria helps improve the odds. Oh this masked person waked out of building but they know of 28 people identified in building. So even without identifing your face they only need to build Confidence among a very small subset. Even if you go from building to city or country. They could likely narrow it to high confidence especially if they can actively ID the locations of all others with similar characteristics as you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A face, or a fingerprint, or a social security number, is like a username, not like a password.

Separately, simple facial recognition cameras can be fooled with printed photographs. Will 3d printing in elastomers let us fool whatever countermeasures are being developed against that?

Separately, we need to get started on building a society where we all are comfortable and safe without privacy, because privacy is dying. Trying to save it is like trying to provide subsidies for horse carriage manufacturers in the age of the car.

<comment><USER8> > ...we need to get started on building a society...

Well the "comfortable" part of that makes it impossible, because of the whole chilling effect thing surround private thoughts and activities necessary for building a basic personality. The "safe" part is certainly doable though, but fans of government prosecution will be disappointed. I don't care if the Girl Scouts of America have a copy of my browser history, because they can't do anything with it - but an agent of the state certainly can. Not because there is anything presently illegal in the browser history, but the simple combination of information + uncertainty + power = bad time for the lesser- thans.

<comment><USER9> But if the Girl Scouts also have a copy, that could help protect you if a state agent accuses you of something. The danger is a state monopoly on information.

<comment><USER8> > The danger is a state monopoly on information.

While the monopoly makes the situation worse, what you are suggesting depends on the state being subject to some form of universal justice - which isn't the case. States pull that sort of crap all the time and rarely are there any consequences for bald-faced lying to the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For someone not really familiar with the FB API, is it possible to get a list of all people in a certain city, or are data mining techniques necessary?

<comment><USER11> It is possible: [https://www.facebook.com/search/114952118516947/residents/pr...](https://www.facebook.com/search/114952118516947/residents/present)

<comment><USER12> Not really. Facebook rate-limits all requests. You would need a huge botnet to collect hundreds of millions of photos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Rorschach.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/)

<comment><USER14> ...and Bob Arctor. [https://filmfork- cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/content/scramble.gif](https://filmfork- cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/content/scramble.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is another reason why biometrics should never be used as a password. UserID, maybe.

<comment><USER16> Yes, authentication != authorization. But it's more convenient to equate them apparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, I can put on sunglasses.</comment>


Arington on Jig asking for employment lawyer rec - <AUTHOR> https://www.jig.com/need/an-exceptional-employment-attorney

<comment><USER2> Look for this story to last at least another six months once he drags another huge personality into it. Bonus: now you've heard of Jig.</comment>


Qatar: FBI says Russian hackers 'planted fake news story' that led to crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/07/qatar-fbi-says-russian-hackers-planted-fake-news-story-that-led-to-crisis-report <comment><USER2> Good thing cool heads always prevail and there's no one reactionary in a position of influence, sending stupid tweets and stirring things up without understanding what's happening.

<comment><USER3> The more disturbing possibility is that he fully understands what's going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The original CNN article here:

* [http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-p...](http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-planted-fake-news-qatar-crisis/index.html)

So it is someone saying that an FBI investigation has revealed something:

>Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.

Other than that it is all unnamed "government sources".

</comment><comment><USER5> Very hard to know what is real on this one. Nevertheless I consider it outrageous that this "country" (more like natural gas indentured servant city state and chief backer of numerous questionable militant causes) was awarded the World Cup and hope that is somehow reversed.

<comment><USER6> It's a match made in heaven frankly. FIFA's corruption mated with a slave state. Cronyism is complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We're getting tired of reacting to unsubstantiated banalities," Andrei > Krutskikh, a Kremlin adviser on cybersecurity, told the Interfax news > agency. "Whatever happens it is hackers. It's a stale claim and as ever, > there is zero evidence, and conclusions are drawn before the incident is > even investigated," he said.

<comment><USER8> The glorious leader of Russia's people himself said that patriotism is a good enough reason for Russian hackers to exist (and I guess Russia does motivate patriotism with money):

[https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/putin-patriotic- rus...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/putin-patriotic-russian- hackers-may-have-interfered-in-us-election/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Russian hacker people can't you guys get people to dig wells, build schools or something?

How does anyone get their kicks doing this stuff? What sort of underdeveloped imagination do these people have? I mean if you have the technical skills and geopolitical sense to do this why can't these people find better quality work?

<comment><USER10> Make Russia Great Again?

I'm guessing that from their point of view it's both patriotic service of the motherland and a low form of entertainment watching people fall for the trolling.

<comment><USER11> Who knows what the consequences are going to be and if the outcomes will actually benefit Russia, to judge if it's patriotic or not? All they are doing is permanently damaging actual Russian talent.</comment></comment></comment>


Reverse engineering my bank's security token - <AUTHOR> http://blog.valverde.me/2014/01/03/reverse-engineering-my-bank%27s-security-token/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion from about a month ago with lots of comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7009368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7009368)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd have to say that TD bank has the worst password reset I've ever seen. You just need the persons access card number, and be able to answer one of 3 question(what's my favorite book ect) and you get to change the password. Doesn't even notify the person.

<comment><USER4> On the polar opposite, my bank couldn't work out CSRF tokens and so just blanket bans any use of the navigation. Use that back button? Logged out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah yes, RuntimeException for random application-level errors. Always a great practice.</comment>


How the Brain Experiences Time - <AUTHOR> https://neurosciencenews.com/time-perception-9771/ <comment><USER2> > _Professor Moser says the study shows that by changing the activities you > engage in, the content of your experience, you can actually change the > course of the time-signal in LEC and thus the way you perceive time._

Huh, After a year driving through West Africa I had come to this same conclusion, and am writing about it now for my next book. I liken it to how video compression works - your brain doesn't bother storing every single event, only those it hasn't seen before.

Bored sitting at your desk at 2pm on Tuesday? Done that before, don't bother remembering.

Stuck in traffic? Done that before, don't both remembering

In those scenarios time tends to "fly" becuase you don't remember much.

\---

Watch a guy catch, skin and eat a money? WOAH! Never had that memory before. Remember.

Get Malaria? Remember

Chat to military with AK47s trying to bribe me in Nigeria? Remember.

Now time goes slower, and that one year in West Africa feels longer than the 4 years of sitting at a desk job that came before it.

<comment><USER3> Curious as to why the Nigerian soldiers would want to bribe you. Do you mean they tried to get you to offer them a bribe?

<comment><USER2> Right, they were trying to get money out of me.

Here's a hidden cam video of it happening: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RTlDa2cg0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RTlDa2cg0o)

In countries like Guinea in happened every single day. I never paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Professor Moser says the study shows that by changing the activities you > engage in, the content of your experience, you can actually change the > course of the time-signal in LEC and thus the way you perceive time.

This correlates with anecdotal experience. A 'routine' day goes by much faster as opposed to a day with new experiences (travel to previously unseen places for instance).

<comment><USER5> I still find odd how sometimes good times can feel dense and long even though you feel time flies.

<comment><USER6> Say my brain is used to processing one emotional state change per hour on a typical, slow day.

Then a gauntlet of events happens that incur several state changes per hour for several hours, whether those emotions are all positive or all negative.

I think I would feel as though more time had passed than the equivalent amount of time on a slow day due to the denser tempo of psychological excitation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm incredibly interested in how the brain experiences time during events of stress or high action. (The skier tripping/falling is used as a visual example in this article.)

On a much smaller scale, I wonder how time experience is changed among individuals who consume media at different speeds? For example, I watch all video media (Youtube, Netflix, various movies) at 2x speed. It could be intriguing to compare my experience of a movie versus someone who watched it regularly. Does the constant 2x-ing affect my evaluation of time in regular life?

I'd be happy to read any and all articles/papers you may have on the topic.

<comment><USER8> Consuming significant amounts of content at enhanced speeds leads me to be impatient with typical human interactions.

That's problematic enough where I've given pause to the practice.

<comment><USER7> That's definitely something I've experienced as well! I've learned to take the time to absorb what people are saying/meaning with a greater degree of detail. (That's at least how I believe I'm behaving, though it's tough to self- analyze.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Psychedelics (e.g. LSD) can also give you a hands-on and interesting view on the subjectivity of time. Probably because you are overclocking/unfiltering your mind and get flooded with inputs and thoughts, confusing this internal timestamping.

<comment><USER10> you are confusing LSd with speed here. A case of beer helps, too. And if that's too fast just wind it down with Marijuana. When your heart stops, that will give you a unique view on time, too.

<comment><USER9> try it, psychedelics will alter your perception of time in a fundamental way. not just in terms of being relaxed or focused.

<comment><USER10> Maybe it alters my perception of time so much I don't know whether I already tried it. So, I'll have to assume I already did. What were you trying to say? I don't think you know what "fundamental" means. Most people get along fundamentally well without having tried ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Technically, humans experience time through recurrence (analogous to recurrent neural nets). A signal is passed through a computation block, including new external signals, then the output is looped back to the input. So it is a structure with internal memory that is changing based on input signals. We use this to process vision in time, speech and movement. The thing is, even cells can experience time, they have internal clocks based on chemical processes.

<comment><USER10> > The thing is, ...

No that's not the thing. Perception of time is tied to external stimuli. Time keeping is a conscious effort.

<comment><USER12> Umm. I hope I'm not misinterpreting your comment, but time keeping is innate to the body. It does not need any "conscious effort". And almost all multicellular life on earth does it. Most unicellular organisms also have (I think) some equivalent of a circadian rhythm. [1] There's a large body of evidence that the circadian rhythm is self generated, starting from this classic self experiment in 1938 [2].

Sure, you need external cues to synchronise / entrain it, but the body does keep its own time. As do animals, plants, insects..

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm)

[2] [https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.the- scientist.com/foundat...](https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.the- scientist.com/foundations/cave-dwellers-1938-33966/amp)

<comment><USER10> Will "the brain", which is in question here, not loose the attained rhythm once the stimuli are removed?

Even if making a stronger claim not focused on the brain specifically, plants especially need light for like everything.

<comment><USER12> That's not really true. Take a look at the experiments performed all the way back in the 18th century [1], where mimosa plants followed a rhythm even when they were kept in an absolutely dark room.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Jacques_d%27Ortous_de_Mai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Jacques_d%27Ortous_de_Mairan)

More work since then extends this idea. Pubmed has a ton of good papers.

<comment><USER10> I think the prime example where uncouncious rhythm is concerned would be _the period_ , the menstruation cycle. The correlation with the moon phase is probably no coincidence I guess, and I somewhat doubt it's magnetic, but suppose it's gravitational - which is an external factor. Anyhow that's not experienced time keeping. Rather it may be used for time keeping, or rather other externals like hair growth for example or feeling tired. " _I 'm tired, it must be late huh_" is what I was talking about more than " _It 's late, I must be tired_" though the later should be imperative for me, right now (here near the Greenwich Line).

And for the 1930s exp you posted, i suppose its just the energy reserves of whichever crucial part for the older were either fine tuned or not extendable, whereas a 20 year old (risk inclined) college student can still pull allnighters twice a weak and other endurance exercises. Physical fitness peaks before the 30s. And a prof is someone working with the mind so the experiment itself without intense physical strain is taxing enough. They self tested, that alone is probably a huge warningsign.

But i was mainly refering to plants that can be brought to flower by light cycle manipulation. Now I kind of wonder how mimosa reacts circadian anyway ... and I guess it's due to relative changes in the air humidity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read in Von Bertalanffy GST book that different species have a different perception frame rate. Some birds or reptiles wouldn't perceive visual change until some specific fps. Very disturbing.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't make sense the way you put it. Movement isn't measured in fps. But yeah, same for flies. Move very slowly and they won't react to an approach. Then, whack!

<comment><USER5> I think he used Hertz in his book, so yeah not fps but still frequency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought it was known to be the superchiasmatic nucleus?

<comment><USER14> The SCN is responsible for the circadian rhythm and thus a component of the neuroendocrine system. The article is about a possible neurological basis for the subjective perception of time.

<comment><USER13> Perception of time and circadian rhythm are very related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> TLDR; Animals would make terrible Drummers.

<comment><USER16> But many drummers are infamous animals.</comment></comment>


Shopify CEO attempts to defend hosting of Breitbart store(Feb 2017) - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/09/shopify-ceo-attempts-to-defend-continued-hosting-of-breitbarts-online-store/ <comment><USER2> Have we fallen so far as an "open society" that the left feels justified in making a company who hosts stores for thousands of other companies "defend" themselves for doing business? I'd rather they have to "defend" themselves for NOT allowing Breitbart a store. What happened to freedom of speech? Is it only supported if they agree with what you are saying? I thought the people who called for all businesses to boycott YC simply because of the political donations by Peter Thiel reminded me of witch trials.... truly sad.</comment>


R-Tree Madness - <AUTHOR> http://stackulator.com/rtree/ <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-tree>

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_file> is an alternate n-dimensional index. Both R-Trees and grid files can help with multi-dimensional point or range queries.</comment></comment>


Microsoft spend $7.5m on IP addresses ($11.25 each) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/24/microsoft_ip_spend/

<comment><USER2> Can someone point to resources that outline what the web developer community can do to speed up the general transition to IPv6? Are there any startups that today make their services available via IPv6?

<comment><USER3> The transition isn't going to happen until the cost of IPv4 addresses is much higher than the cost of switching to IPv6. I would say that the cost definitely has to be higher than $11.25 per host.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not a done deal yet, per CEO of ARIN ([http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/3/23/...](http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/3/23/4778509.html)).

"The parties have requested approval of a sale order from the Bankruptcy judge. There is a timeline for making filings and a hearing date. There is not an approved sale order at this time, contrary to your blog entry title."</comment>


Golang httprouter fork (http.Handler) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shelakel/httprouter

<comment><USER2> Why did you fork? What are the new use cases?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the spirit of OSS I forked httprouter instead of just keeping the changes locally. I hope that the implementation can prove as a reference in improving httprouter or other Golang muxers.

I like httprouter, but dislike how the dependency on httprouter.Params pollutes your packages that need to expose httprouter.Handle.

I also dislike the non-standard handler, even with map[string]string parameters. From what I read the proper way to "scope" things in Go is to pass "it" as a parameter to a method; so the dislike is just personal preference. Currently the only way to retain the standard (http.Handler) interface compatibility is to use a synchronized reference map e.g. map[*http.Request]map[string]string, similar to Gorilla Contexts' implementation with only the parameters associated with the request.

Anyway, after all those changes it was a short jump to implement basic middleware helpers and expose an initializer with a standard implementation to associate the parameters with the request.

I hope that answered your questions and thanks for showing interest :) P.S. Check the updated example usage</comment></comment>


Samsung to Announce Android-Powered Galaxy S Camera This Week  - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/08/28/samsung-galaxy-camera/

<comment><AUTHOR> [Joking] this looks like a copy of this: [Fake Video] LEAKED Official Apple iPhone 5 Promo Video - Keynote 2012 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRBxRlsYR0&sns=em](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRBxRlsYR0&sns=em)</comment>


Why people who don't like receiving advice love entrepreneurship. - <AUTHOR>

Even though you may not like receiving advice from an authority figure or friend, it's not so bad when it comes in the form of traffic statistics from unknown users.  That's my theory anyway. <comment><USER2> Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, said that business is a game, money is the way we keep score.

There is no better validation of your ideas than market validation. Your traffic statistics are a proxy of value but you have to make some final steps.</comment>


Drinkers at wine-tasting contest performed far better than chance - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/05/daily-chart-11 <comment><USER2> Curiously, the tasters were allowed to see the wine, they were not using a black tasting glass or a blindfold.</comment>


Google Tasks API Released - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/apis/tasks/index.html

<comment><USER2> Why are so many people using Google tasks ? Give alternatives like Workflowy a chance? Evernote works much better than GTasks even if it's not designed for it.

<comment><USER3> It is simple and minimalist. Keyboard shortcut in Gmail to create a task out of an email. Tasks with dates show up on Google Calendar.

<comment><USER2> Didn't know about the Calendar. That's pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bummer. I've been enjoying my competition-free life for the last 18 month since I've launched my iPhone app GeeTasks, but this was not meant to last, it seems.

<comment><USER5> Wow, you made GeeTasks? Thanks for the killer app man, better than all the rest in the AppStore by far imo. I love the offline feature and the quick and easy sync.

My only gripe with it is the icon/logo of the app. A little garishly and too- brightly colored. Amazing app otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Yes I did. The sync took _a lot_ of work, and I am glad that people appreciate it (many do). :) The icon needs to change, I agree. I am planning to run a 99-design contest and then have users (such as you) vote on the best option.

The poll will be announced within the app itself, so just keep installing the updates and you will not miss it.

<comment><USER6> Interesting you mentioned that the sync took a lot of work. Would love to know how you did it and some pointers. A writeup or a blog post perhaps?

<comment><USER4> The general problem of sync is just too large for a comment, a blog post, or even a research paper. One who wants to pursue this route should buckle up and start here: <http://www.ysaito.com/survey.pdf>

If you tell me your specific problem I might be able to help. Shoot me an email via support page on geetasks.com

If your problem is specific to Google Tasks API I will not help you. Sorry, business is business. :)

<comment><USER7> Great response, and I think you're right.

But I wonder... lets say you show how to solve some problems with Google Tasks, you get a higher page rank, and people with a problem with Google Tasks arrive at your page... where you incidentally note problems that your solution solves better than Google Tasks (which will be true, since they are mass market and general, and you can be happy with a smaller, more specific niche).

When your competitor has made larger market share than you, this can work. It can be help that is applicable to every product, even advising where your competitor is a better solution.

But I guess this mightn't work for a developer API, if they want the platform with the largest install base.

 _disclaimer: I'm not seriously suggesting this - just thinking aloud._

<comment><USER4> That kind of post can only attract a small number of developers, and developers are not my target users. The only thing I can get from it is SEO juice, but I have better ways of getting that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The APIs are restful, client libraries are provided for .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby and Java.

<https://code.google.com/apis/tasks/libraries.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Took long enough, there are already so many competing task managers with more features on the market. Will we see collaborative task lists? I'd like to see them in the same way that Google Calendars are sharable, that would be the killer feature.

Honestly the GTasks app for Android (which was written before the API) is the only reason I use GTasks.

<comment><USER10> Taskforce does collaborative tasks really well. It's already integrated tightly into gmail. Soon I think they'll have gcal integration and phone apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally, after 2 year: <http://code.google.com/p/gdata- issues/issues/detail?id=987>

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone knows what's the name of the algorithm / strategy that they use to allocate tasks position numbers?

I've created a new list and added 4 tasks a, b, c and d, and later added a2 after a.

Here's what they are doing:

    		Position:
    	a	01111111111111111111111111111111
    	b	10111111111111111111111111111111
    	c	11011111111111111111111111111111
    	d	11100111111111111111111111111111
    	a2	10011111111111111111111111111111

So it seems a clever way of allocating the position numbers without having to change them all everytime a task is moved, but I'd love to read more about it.

<comment><USER7> That is clever, it's like a binary version of the old BASIC convention of numbering lines 10, 20, 30 etc, to leave space in case you want to add lines in between.

But why number them at all - why not just use the order in the list as the ordering? I haven't studied their API, so there may be a good reason.

<comment><USER12> Because the 'order in the list' usually is the creation order of the items. If you want to change the tasks order, you need to save the position numbers in the database.

This is not specific to Google tasks. If you tried to display a list of items that your users could reorder, you'd run into the same problem.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. You could also recreate the list with the new ordering; or record the changes in list order and replay them on server (e.g. insert the 5th one after the 2nd one), perhaps even reducing it to the simplest change if the user played around with the order a lot.

But I guess for RDB (and other DB?), the "physical" order isn't meant to be used as a "logical" order, and it might not even be reliable - so you need some other ordering mechanism, like position numbers. Also, not good if anything in the system depends on that physical ordering.

\not a DB programmer

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What do you think of JSON for documenting data structures in this project? <http://code.google.com/apis/tasks/v1/using.html> (scroll down for the "Protocol" sections; there are about 10)

They're using JSON to describe sets of possible JSON instances, using conventions of "..." to represent other items in a list; and italics to represent variables (though not always: example text such as "My Task" is used for some variables).

Perhaps a shell-style convention, like $taskListID and ${My Task} would be clearer? It's going outside the JSON syntax, but so is "..." - and obviously extra-linguistic constructs help alert the reader that it _isn't_ part of the instance syntax (like italics).

I've looked at some "JSON schema" proposals, but they take the same meta- approach as XML Schema, which somehow seems even worse applied to JSON.

Regarding the actual format, they the _kind_ attribute ( _kind="tasks#taskList"_ ) like a class. Since it defines the type of the message, maybe it would be clearer if it were distinguished in some way (like XML tags: <tasks#taskList> \- invalid, I know).

disclaimer: I don't mean to rag on these guys - their focus is Google Tasks, not a schema for JSON. It's just that it's very well documented, and so it's a clear example of using JSON as a schema. This issue will become more important over time.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the first thing from Google I/O that has me truly excited.

</comment><comment> dorian-graph It being in my GMail account is handy. Like, if I sync my firstname.lastname@example.com depending on the software I'm using all my contacts, calendars, tasks, etc are synced.

I do feel like a whore of the 'tasks' world going from one solution to another. Recently, it was teuxdeux > todoist > thinkery (My current 'lover'). I wish someone could combine them all -- that's actually a 'sometime in the future' personal project of mine.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is so overdue. Good to finally have it.

</comment><comment><USER15> _PLEASE_ someone make a Notational Velocity equivalent for GTasks. I would pay for that.

<comment><USER16> +1 I use NV like a boss every day. Syncing with Dropbox/Simplenote is by far the best note taking workflow I've ever used. Zero barrier to fast fluid input.

Which is probably why I love TaskPaper for GTD. Plain text but with smart data-detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Been looking for something like this. Any way I can store metadata about the tasks. Or rather more data. Say I would like a "budget" field for a task.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mavenlink.com just rolled out task integration using the Google Tasks API and it was pretty straight forward to build.

<comment><USER19> Here is an example of it in action: [http://www.mavenlink.com/community/tutorials/134-google- task...](http://www.mavenlink.com/community/tutorials/134-google-tasks-api- integration)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone working on a command line client? I suppose I should get to it.

<comment><USER4> What's your scenario?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you monetize 360K people? - <AUTHOR>

I have written a couple dozen Firefox add-ons that have a combined userbase of 360,000 active daily users (assuming no overlap, so let's just say it's 300K). Naturally, I'd like to make some money off of these add-ons so I can justify continuing to develop more add-ons, which I greatly enjoy.
How would you monetize this situation?  The problems I've come up against are:
1. People have an expectation that add-ons are (and should be) free.
2. It's hard to find a monetization option that makes sense for add-ons in different spaces. e.g., an RSS-related add-on has different logical monetization opportunities than a productivity-related add-on.
3. The only real opportunities out there right now for add-on developers involve selling premium add-ons (see #1) or adding some sort of advertising to the browser or the users' webpages (which feels scummy, and users typically don't like it).
So what would you do if someone gave you access to the browsers and eyeballs of 300,000 people every day? <comment><USER3> There's no clear way to profit directly from these addons without doing something sort of spammy. The Mozilla platform just really isn't set up for it and it isn't expected by users. I'm not going to make a ton of money developing small open source utilities, either. You either use it to a gateway into something else (paid consulting/contracting jobs, writing a book, landing a regular job, etc) or just keep it as a fun hobby if it is something you like.

If you'd like to make money on the side focus on platforms where people pay for things or that have a clearer path for indirect revenue. (The web, Windows, Apple, Android, Facebook, etc.)

I know it seems like the numbers are there and you're providing value but it would be an uphill battle. When focusing on income, your energies are better spent elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> Next time you update your add-on, perhaps make it redirect once to your homepage, where you invite the user to make a donation for continued support?

You might not get many donations, but I know that adding ads to a Firefox plugin would make me uninstall it right away and find an alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> > invite the user to make a donation

I forgot to mention this in the main text: Mozilla's add-ons site has support for soliciting donations from users during the install/upgrade process, and I've opted in on several of my most popular add-ons, but it still only brings in about $50/month.

> adding ads to a Firefox plugin would make me uninstall > it right away and > find an alternative.

Agreed, I would do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> involve selling premium add-ons (see #1) _

I happen to run a Wordpress plugin that is free for the base installation (awpcp.com), but I sell premium add-ons. Wordpress plugins have a similar "stigma" if you will, but the reality is, if you have something of value that significantly improves the "free add on", people will pay for it if a) you tell them about it effectively and b) ask them to buy it, but in a nice way. (e.g. don't spam them, don't throw it in their face every time they use your software, etc).

But you have to make it visible and you can't be afraid to ask. Other plugins follow similar models (e.g. Yoast's All in One SEO)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried something similar (see [http://www.chrisfinke.com/2010/09/13/my- experience-with-deve...](http://www.chrisfinke.com/2010/09/13/my-experience- with-developing-a-freemium-browser-add-on/)) without much success, but I don't have enough data to determine the exact cause of failure.

<comment><USER5> Given what I see for your add-ons, they are very generic and solve problems that others have solved in other ways. Not trying to sound harsh, but your product probably isn't compelling enough for most folks to pay for because they can get it elsewhere for free, or there are similar things to get (e.g. RSS readers, Twitter posters).

You haven't really cornered your niche, although you probably have some nice functionality for those add-ons. In order to get people to part with their cash you need to:

a) scratch their particular itch and do it well b) not have anyone else scratching it, or scratching it poorly if they do

You've still got 360K eyeballs, maybe you need to find a different itch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First, love this one: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/plain- text-li...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/plain-text-links/)

Second, here are some ideas that may or may not feel scummy:

      1. Advertise in non-intrusive spaces.
      Upon update, some add-ons automatically open a window with the
      changelog. Using this space and the space on the add-on's
      Mozilla page, to advertise.

      2. Get a sponsorship.
      On a related note, pitch to companies that target similar audiences.
      Offer the first few placements for free (or set low enough price that
      there isn't much risk) and track the traffic. Use these numbers to
      set a price.

      3. TwitterBar "via" field.
      Twitter links to the webpage for apps that people use to post messages
      (at least they used to). This should give you leverage to rank any other
      webpage highly from all the pagerank juice.

      4. Opt-in link juice/affiliate links.
      A number of the add-ons could potentially have affiliate ID's appended
      or a link included back to your product page (similar to Twitters "via"
      links). Once, you have high ranking pages, the monetization options are
      unlimited.

      5. [Lastly] Gather email addresses.
      Perhaps there is a reason users would want to provide their email
      address? As you mentioned, combining add-ons with a hosted service
      opens up a lot of opportunities. Email addresses can be used to provide
      value in a number of different ways (e.g. get beta testers, etc.).

Good luck!!

P.S. One more, use your skills to get hired by companies who could benefit from developing Firefox add-ons for their products.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Advertise in non-intrusive spaces.

I've tried this one, and it did ok - $500/month or so at its peak, when I happened to release updates to my most popular extensions all in the same month. Still felt a little spammy, but not too much. The user experience did suffer a little, so I moved to simple firstrun pages that focus more on "How do I use what I just installed?", like this: <http://www.chrisfinke.com/firstrun/twitterbar.php>

> TwitterBar "via" field.

In the "new Twitter," the "via" field is hidden until you click on a specific tweet - the visibility is far too low to be worth it I think.

> [Lastly] Gather email addresses.

I started doing this just last week - <USER2> <http://www.chrisfinke.com/firstrun/twitterbar.php> or <http://www.chrisfinke.com/firstrun/rss-ticker.php>. Opt-in rate so far has been low - about 1.5%, but I'm doing some A/B testing to work on that.

> Get a sponsorship > Opt-in link juice/affiliate links.

I'll look into these two, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does a business come to terms with customers' expectations that everything "web" should be free? Is this why some developers flock to native mobile app production? Maybe 30% costs are reasonable for a payment & distribution service AND the customer psychology that it's OK to purchase useful/entertaining software.?

As your second point suggests, your monetization options will vary based upon the product/service in question. That being said, allow potential customers to try your product (e.g. first 7 RSS transmogrifications are free, then they pay OR first 10 days of service are free, then a one-time charge). OR: Consider the time spent on your initial work as part of your FF-Extension-Corp marketing budget. New products will incur a fee. This will be a lot easier for projects where you predetermine your motivations. To improve your skills & learn something new? Or are you in business to provide a product/service to make a profit? No doubt that if you choose the latter you'll still have to content with competitors who selected the former. Your only hope then is to create more value.

</comment><comment><USER8> As mentioned, ads but I'd view that more as supplemental income. I'd consider making some kind of plugin that integrates with a SaaS you run. The plugin would always remain free but i'd charge for the service once usage reaches a certain threshold. Make the service uber cheap like $1 and people wouldn't think twice about purchasing if it brought value to their daily life workflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've experimented with this route as well via FireFound (<https://www.firefound.com/>) - $20/year for additional capabilities for the basic add-on. It's probably not applicable enough to most people, but subscriptions pay for server and domain costs plus a little more.

<comment><USER8> Cool Service. Have you considered putting it up on something like Appsumo (and lowering price). That has potential to increase volume, exposure and your bottom line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think you have the wrong idea... question i would ask is how can you add MORE value by providing/suggesting an affiliate link to these folks for something they already want or need, or by creating a paid version of these tools that they need. Find a need and fill it:)

</comment><comment><USER10> Data is valuable and if you have legitimate reasons for collecting any (to improve the service of your add ons) there is always a good chance to monetize there. Highly contextual on what your add ons do though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think you have provided enough information to really help. What do your addons do? What are the user's interests?

You could try affiliate sales to some users depending on the function. For instance, if you created an add on the is used be web designers you may try to market stock photos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are my add-ons: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/2519/>

They cover areas like Twitter, feed readers, geolocation, productivity, YouTube, and random browser improvements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Depending on the functionality of your add-ons, you _could_ place a rather tiny ad saying: Sponsored by: <Widgets Co>, obviously with a link to their site.

I guess not a lot of people would mind something like this.

HTH

</comment><comment><USER13> I would re-purpose the apps for other platforms that are easier to monetize. Specifically, I'd make it a monetized app on Conduit.com and I'd make a smart phone version and sell it on GetJar.com.

</comment><comment><USER14> Its a shareware platform, which has a few options, mainly to gain attention and following for a pay for app or service under the same umbrella.

</comment><comment><USER15> Email me....email@example.com (zero zero)

I'll tell you exactly how to profit</comment>


How to kill team motivation in 10 simple steps - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/weekdone/10-team-motivation-killers-and-how-to-fix <comment><USER4> I would love to work somewhere, where there's the 20% time, it makes me so much more productive.

If I leave the office stimulated and excited about what I'm working on, I will work until 2 or 3am in a frenzy, and get a lot of work done.

If I leave the office tired and exhausted from hours and hours of yak shaving, I go home and rest.

Everybody wins on the 20% days, especially if they're friday, because I will likely spend the weekend coding what I didn't finish friday night.

<comment><USER5> Google is always hiring. I'm happy to help with applying.

<comment><USER6> Is 20% time really still alive and well at Google?

<comment><USER7> 20% is still encouraged, but it's hard to fit it in sometimes.

<comment><USER8> Then it's not 20% time, as most engineers external to Google understand it.

<comment><USER5> Nobody will force you to take 20% time. Some managers actively encourage their teams to take it; but more often, it's up to the individual to step up and grab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see a lot of people saying that money isn't an issue they would leave a job for. To me, money is the #1 thing that could make me leave a job. Maybe not 5%, but it realistically wouldn't take more for me to bail. 10% is almost a guarantee that I'll work for you.

I think this shows just how significant the gap is between software engineering and everything else. I went into mechanical engineering; my brother did software engineering. I don't know the specifics, but he makes way more than I do. Not 20% more, but _200%_ more. Some of that is location - <USER2> live in the middle of the country, he lives in California. But even without leaving, I could increase my salary by at least 50% by being able to write software.

Assuming that this is for a generic employee/employer relations advice, then pay is absolutely a huge concern. It's simply one that has been mostly solved in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER10> It isn't even close to being solved in Silicon Valley, for a variety of reasons, mainly due to the culture within the industry. My opinion is that there are two strains of cultural thought in this industry that allow developer wages to be kept relatively low compared with the revenues and margins of the companies they work for: 1) the rather Galt-like (and empirically unjustfiable) thought that development work is a meritocracy; 2) the strong line of thinking that prioritizes "enjoying my work" over "selling my very life in the form of time" coupled with the frequent (mistaken, in my opinion[0]) belief that the work is _important_.

[0] I believe it's mistaken because, frankly, the vast majority of development work is for the very base purpose of commerce. Rarely, in cases where development is related to some scientific or artistic pursuit to advance human knowledge, it's important in any meaningful sense outside of commercial activity. On this basis, the commerce-related importance of a role necessarily implies that compensation ought to be a major factor if considered from a rational perspective.

<comment><USER9> I think that here "solved" is relative. What I meant was that pay is mostly removed from the equation as a requirement, because it is high enough that there is no possibility that base needs aren't covered by it. The motivation behind whether higher pay is effective or not is mostly irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be interested in seeing the source on the first claim "26% would leave for a 5% pay rise". In my experience people will rarely leave a job that they are otherwise happy with unless the pay rise is very significant.

<comment> FLUX-YOU They may be underpaid. 5% looks a lot more appealing on the lower end of things, and if you're underpaid, there are probably other things wrong.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure they'd be the ones on the lower end of things because when you don't earn much, you don't want to risk what you already have for almost no increase (given 5% of little money is very little) whereas 5% of a medium salary is much more of a difference/incentive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought 20% time at Google was all but gone?

<comment><USER14> I came here to ask the same thing - my understanding was that Innovation at Google had shifted from "Internal Curiosity - 20% Time" to "Inspire via Moonshots - Acquire what we need to get there".

But that's my external perspective.

<comment><USER5> I just started a few months ago. 20% time is still alive, and easy to take.

<comment><USER14> Thanks eru! I wonder if there's a difference between Sydney and Mountain View?

I'd heard otherwise, but am glad to be corrected - it's a model many other businesses (NB: Not all) could utilise.

<comment><USER5> Sydney is way more laid back than Mountain View. We also have better offices; not as open-plan-y here, and not crowded like in Mountain View.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "2\. AWFUL OFFICE SPACE Not providing an environment that nurtures productivity Open o ce setups report 62% more sick days Fix: Re-think the open o ce layout"

Or maybe allow partial remote work. I think I have called in sick 1 time in the last 5 years because I couldn't get out of bed. Other than that work from home makes it much easier for employees to not have to take days off for things.

</comment><comment><USER16> Whenever I see advice like this, I remember that it is very specific to the environments the author has seen. All of these items are actually measured across a spectrum where you can be too far to either side. The suggestions might help if your current company is like the ones the author is thinking of. Or it might be exactly the wrong thing to do if your company is on the other side of the spectrum. And worst of all: the answer that seems most natural to you is probably the one that is wrong, because your thinking has been shaped by the very culture you're trying to change.

Some examples:

#1: an open rewards system might help if you have people paid flat salaries that are inadequate. But many companies already base people's compensation too much on individual metrics that don't reflect their real value. In that case, adding a reward system only compounds the problem. In general, the research I have read suggests that for creative jobs like programmers, it's best to pay people a good salary and not have rewards systems that might cause them to value metrics of visibility over doing good work.

#4: inefficient collaboration is obviously a problem. But in my experience it's just as often from too much open discussion (bike-shedding) as too little. In some cultures, asking more questions is helpful. In others, defining decision rights and removing room for outside stakeholders to comment is beneficial.

#5: negative people obviously aren't good. In some environments, caring more about individuals' happiness is helpful. In others, managers are already too cautious about not upsetting any one person's feelings, and that leads to keeping people around or not helping them improve when they are hurting the team as a whole.

#6: not every company is afraid of failure. Some are afraid of success, constantly giving up and trying something new when their current project gets difficult.

#7: clear goals seem like a great idea when you're at a company that doesn't know what it's doing. But some companies think they know what they're doing too well. I often see goals that are clear, focused, and absolutely unrelated to what the company really wants. If you know what you really want, report on that and let people find creative ways to achieve it even if they don't mean the "goals" that are supposed to get them there.

#8: micromanaging is bad, but non-managing is worse. At many tech companies, former programmers promoted to management are so hands-off they prevent their teams from getting better.

#10: don't ever do anything with the goal of making your team 'motivated' to work long hours.

</comment><comment><USER17> Bit of a mixed bag here:

> Inadequate rewards

In my experience it's very rare for someone to leave for a 5% uplift in compensation.

> Awful office space

Bang on the money. What is even worse is when engineers have a great space that gets changed. Always churn after that.

> No self development

Typically the people who say this are the people who are most likely not to get much from free time to learn new stuff. if you are the type of engineer to learn new stuff then formal training and free time is not going to change your ability to pick things up. If you come to me and say I could not learn X because I had no free time, I am generally sceptical.

> Inefficient collaboration

Generally means other teams / people do not recognise what an awesome thing I did. Generally implies your awesome thing was not massively awesome.

> Negative people

Totally true. The most devastating thing that can happen to teams is to have negative personalities.

> Fear of failure

Did not understand this.

> Lack of clear goals

bang on the money.

> Micromanaging bosses

it's different strokes for different folks. Whilst lots of engineers like the freedom to get to the goal by themselves there are some who actually really enjoy the directive style.

> Useless meetings

Is this still an issue in 2014?

> Wasting your team's time

I sort of get this but again it varies per engineer.

<comment><USER18> Fear of failure means whether you work in an environment where it's ok to fail. Environments where it's not ok to fail are normally counterproductive and hinders people sometimes form doing the right things.

<comment><USER8> If failure has no stigma then people won't worry about, especially if it only causes externalities. Failure is not OK when it's due to laziness or apathy, or when it's chronic.

<comment><USER18> And I am pretty sure that is not what the post means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My rules:

1\. Place the interests of the company and team above your own personal interests.

2\. Communicate and keep people informed. (i.e. Don't treat people like mushrooms.)

3\. Listen.

4\. Be open and honest.

5\. Know your shit.

6\. Be prepared to say "I don't know."

7\. Lead by example.

8\. Be reliable.

9\. Be fair.

10\. Be patient.

11\. Be prepared to admit that you were wrong.

12\. Pay attention to detail.

13\. Delegate (i.e. don't micro-manage)

14\. Accept responsibility when things go wrong.

15\. Share the credit when things go well.

<comment><USER8> 16\. Tell people frankly and directly when they are not performing at an acceptable level.

<comment><USER19> Before that, you need to define what level of performance is expected from them - i.e. set clear goals that are achievable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It feels like it was done only for the ad at the end. It is hard to take it seriously considering this.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think there's a catch 22 to actually getting to the bottom of why motivation is poor. When people don't like their job, school or sister-in-law everything she does pisses them off a little. The way she talks. The fact that half the monitors had dead pixels for six months before they were replaced. The fact that everyone stays until 7:30 when something needs doing but you got a dirty look for heading off at 4:45 that one time when that damn sister in law asked you to pick up her brat kids with 20m notice!

Its about how things feel and how things feel depends on how you feel about them already.

If you love the school and the whole experience of it but the gymnastics coach always finds an excuse to peek into the girls showers, you might let it slide.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is advertising for a time management application. Judging by #2, it could all be total bollocks.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a nice list of stuff everyone hates, but I'm not sure that these things are the _cause_ of killing team motivation. Instead I'd call them co- factors, things we can't stand but put up with if the most important stuff is covered (More about that below...).

1\. INADEQUATE REWARDS - Everyone wants to be paid more, but how many of us have tolerated less pay to work on great stuff? I would jump to another job for a 5% pay increase only if I already hated my current job. I would never even think about leaving a job I loved for just a little bit more.

2\. AWFUL OFFICE SPACE - Important, but not that important. Oddly, my most favorite assignments I've ever had were in the worst conditions. My favorite job ever: writing a custom ERP system with 3 great co-workers. We had 4 desks in the basement.

3\. NO SELF-DEVELOPMENT - Not an issue. I take full responsibility for this. That where the "SELF" comes from.

4\. INEFFICIENT COLLABORATION - This is everywhere to one extent or another. If the work is important enough, those of us who really care find a way to remedy this.

5\. NEGATIVE PEOPLE - They are everywhere, too. Some of my best work has been in spite of assholes who I wish I had never met. But I never let them stop me. Sure, there are (sadly) some environments that are too toxic to fix, but these are the exception. Learn to deal with negative people or suffer. Your choice.

6\. FEAR OF FAILURE - Not sure I understand what this means, but it can be a motivator as much as a roadblock. Sometimes we overachievers just have to drag the non-believers along, kicking and screaming the whole way.

7\. LACK OF CLEAR GOALS - I see how this can be demotivating, but again, it can be a challenge. On the other hand, some of the most fun I've ever had was building stuff (without goals) and seeing where it would take us. Great places, quite often.

8\. MICROMANAGING BOSSES - Again, they are everywhere. I have stock answers for every one of them: a) Where exactly on the project plan is your concern? b) Would you rather have me producing or on overhead?

9\. USELESS MEETINGS - They suck, but again, there are many ways to deal with them. Many of my favorite jobs have been full of useless meetings, but I loved the work so much, I just accepted them (telling myself, "They pay me this much to sit through these?!?")

10\. WASTING YOUR TEAM'S TIME - Not sure what this means, but once a developer learns how to handle other people as well as the ones and zeros, this isn't such a big deal. Just another issue to deal with.

To me, what's really most important?

Working on something important enough. Getting stuff done. Having fun. If I have these, not much else really matters. If I don't, I move on.

<comment><USER24> > I would jump to another job for a 5% pay increase only if I already hated my > current job. I would never even think about leaving a job I loved for just a > little bit more.

I'm pretty sure they got at this number by asking people if they would leave their job for ~$200 extra a month. That makes the choice far more immediate than 5% extra a year. Everybody can think of things they could do with a few extra hundred a month, and everybody's got things they don't like about their job enough to _fantasize_ about moving over.

If you look back at what you wrote, there's a false dichotomy there. Very few people either love their job or hate it. Most people just don't have strong feelings one way or another about it. That's why 27% would leave over peanuts. One job's as good as another, so why not take the extra cash?

<comment> at-fates-hands >>> That's why 27% would leave over peanuts. One job's as good as another, so why not take the extra cash?

This also depends on the industry. Being a developer right now is like being in a gold rush. Supply and demand is what's driving salaries and contract rates. Need a Jevascript developer? Good luck finding one under 100K per year. When your industry is ripe for you writing your own ticket, then the leverage is with the employee, not the employer, it makes easy for people to leave one company and join another on a small raise since they know if things don;t work out, there's a dozen other companies in need of their services.

What about being a Carpenter? With the housing crash, and the slow recovery, most carpenters don't have the opportunity to be moving all the time. Considering right now the supply outstrips demand, their salaries are being driven down and the power then rests with the employers. The carpenter in this scenario is more likely to just stay put regardless of how much he hates his job or his boss because there is no certainty he'll find something better and get be paid more than he currently is.

<comment><USER24> > Need a Jevascript developer? Good luck finding one under 100K per year.

This is not true except in Silicon Valley. And that's just simple supply and demand. They need way more devs per-capita so they have to really incentivize people to move.

Everywhere else dev is well-compensated relative to other professions and you get more leverage and autonomy but it's much harder to translate that into an inflated salary. There are paths to get there and it is possible to get $100K+ as a developer but it's really just an open career ladder, whereas most other careers the ladder is closed to all except the ridiculously productive and/or sociopathic. Not a gold rush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Step 1 - <USER3>

<comment> UK-AL Scrum is a relief for me. Set a steady velocity, and keep to it. And a chance revaluate every 2 weeks.

I worked in places without any system, and it was awful, such as half finished issues that was never closed. No one knew the real state of the product. Requests where sent in via email, emails got lost, people backtracked without telling you, 3 different people pushing you on to different tasks to the exclusion of the other 2. Where as scrum sets a single direction for 2 weeks.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like you worked in a place without _management_.

<comment> UK-AL A lot of companies are like that. A lot of developers like it like that as well..

Nice fancy gantt charts stuff, but underneath it was like that. Where as Scrum more accurately described reality. Any late changes, any changes to the sprint, any over commitment, any delays where quite clearly shown on the board. As a result, they were reduced. The boss could not just come down, and ask to work on this task instead.

They had to create a user story, with mock ups etc and then the product owner decided if it should be included, scheduled it in for a sensible time. A lot nicer than before.

<comment><USER8> My point is that what you described is a symptom of a problem, and although Scrum solved it for you, it's not the only solution. The real problem is a lack of effective management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish the statistics had more context. They make me uncomfortable, and I feel that they were haphazardly thrown in there just to bolster the argument. E.g.:

"26% of Engaged Employees would leave their jobs for just a 5% pay increase": 26% of what sample of employees? What industries? What does "Engaged" mean?

"On average, 39% of workers don't feel their input is appreciated": Again, what kind of sampling was used? How were their sentiments ascertained?

"Average professional wastes 3.8 hours per week on unproductive meetings": Mean, median, mode?

:(

</comment><comment><USER27> OKR. Enormous waste of a lot of time and effort, anti agile and demoralising. Proper shared team goals with no individual goals, and frequent non abrasive appraisals are 100x better.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm currently reading "The Joy of Work" by Dennis Bakke, who was the CEO of AES for a number of years... in it he makes the point that compensation is rarely the most important factor for people.

Based on his own survey, he said that the most important factor to people is whether they get to use their skills and talents to make a meaningful impact.

If your people would leave their jobs for a 5% pay increase, you have hired the wrong people, or build the wrong kind of company!

<comment><USER29> I wholeheartedly agree. And there's also a rather well-known book by Daniel Pink "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us". Money isn't the major factor in motivation indeed, but only if there's enough of it (to not think about).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How much traffic did this slideshow generate for weekdone?

<comment><USER31> To much for such a contentless slideshow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's like someone is writing about me and my previous job. Almost makes it kinda funny that someone is so easily able to compile a list like this and yet there are still far too many workplaces who almost seem to _follow_ these rules.

</comment><comment><USER33> How do the sources correspond to the presented points? I see ten points and only 7 sources.

I randomly chose one (2: Center for creative leadership) and it didn't seem to correspond to any particular slide.

</comment><comment><USER34> Useless meetings, Wasting your team-mates time and micromanagement bosses should be put in the presentation in the first place.

<comment><USER35> In those meetings, I sit quietly and work out pseudo-code in my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who needs ten steps? One or two are usually sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is an advert for WeekDone, a piece of status-reporting software. The pithy "fixes" named are rarely going to solve the underlying problem.

For software and product work, the answer is obvious: _open allocation_. For radically different kinds of work (e.g. factory-floor manufacturing) I'm not so confident; it's not my expertise. But I don't think the OP knows either.

"20% Time" policies don't really work, because if your manager is supportive you don't need them, and if your manager's a jerk, they don't offer real protection.

I agree on open-plan offices, because open-back visibility causes useless, counterproductive stress. The noise is a small issue; being visible from behind fucks with people's fight-or-flight systems. But if you can't afford to have everyone in an office (and, in some jobs, you can't; it would be a disaster on a trading floor) you could probably achieve it with booth-style seating.

Also, no boss wakes up and decides to "micromanage" and few people intentionally schedule "useless meetings". Those things happen and they're really unpleasant, but you can't just say "Don't do that" and expect the behavior to stop.

You need _constitutional_ guarantees, like an Employee Bill of Rights that requires an employee majority to amend it and guarantees certain protections (i.e. any criticism of an employee must be delivered to that person with as small an audience as possible, and he has the right to defend himself; any employee can transfer at any time unless there is an immediate business justification for not allowing him). The problem with "20% time" policies and the "No Asshole Rule" (point #5 about "Negative People") is that they rarely have any real teeth; they just become the new language used to justify business-as-usual.</comment>


Gregory Chaitin: To a mathematical theory of evolution and biological creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/darwin.pdf

<comment><USER2> Chaitin continuously impress me. The first thing I read from him was The Limits of Mathematics[1] and since then I must say that I'm a huge fan of his work.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1725936></comment>


Trevor is now open source! Hybrid app that brings Travis CI to your phone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ekonstantinidis/trevor

<comment><USER2> i don't understand the use case for this. could somebody please explain?</comment>


What They Don't Tell You About Being An Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://how2livelife.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-being.html <comment><USER2> The most defining aspect of working on a startup that never strikes success, that you usually don't hear about, is having all but your very closest relationships deteriorate and friends all drift slowly away. This loss you can never really get back, unless you're wildly successful.

That's the highest cost of bootstrapping, if you ask me.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why keeping a reasonable work-life balance is impossible.

      Recruit help if you absolutely need it,

      stop doing the things that don't matter,

      or just slow down.

<comment><USER2> I should check myself into the nearest startup addict recovery center.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> meat-eater Very nice and insightful article. I think it's really the fear of failure that cripples a lot of people rather than any inability itself.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this post is great and concise. I am not an entrepreneur yet but I keep having these battles with myself daily about ideas. There is something about it that is very satisfying, yet sometimes it wont let you sleep at night.

<comment><USER5> I think the emotional rollercoaster applies to anything you do where you have a large personal stake in it and yet it's new, innovative, and unproven. I remember feeling that way with several of my volunteer & employment projects, even though the outcome wouldn't make a financial difference to me either way.

It's exacerbated when you actually start working on your startup, though, because you have so much more invested. If it's just your idea, then it's only your pride at stake. When you start backing it up with your own money and large amounts of your time, it can become overwhelming unless you specifically try not to think about it.

It's gotten to the point where when my friends ask me how the startup's going, I answer "Depends when you ask. Right now, pretty well, but if you asked me this morning, I'd tell you that we're doomed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great Sinatra song, heres "Thats Life" on youtube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqC1I2SxGM>

<comment><USER7> Try this one after that: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=sEbgB6X6S5c>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not really a new insight, but nice Shakespeare quote.</comment>


Sensor tracks who's driving in your neighbourhood - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41008141 <comment><USER2> Another big brother style invention. Wonderful. I'm sure they won't sell this info to the government at any point.

My biggest issue, though, is the inequitable terms of tracking. If you live in a given neighborhood then you can opt out. Great. That gives those people preference. And treats everyone else as lesser citizens because they don't live there. We're talking about public spaces so there really shouldn't be any inequity. I think the company behind this sees the opt out ability for locals as the only way to make this palatable to people on a large scale.

Also, how is "neighborhood" defined? I assume it's by them and has some radius or something like that. And I'm also fairly certain to opt out would require me creating an account and providing my name, address, and car info (at minimum).

You want to record everything in public spaces? Fine, the law says you can do that so I respect that right. But that does not mean I am a fan of this by any stretch of the imagination. I feel like the real reason for this is something more nefarious they have planned later on - it could really be a way to finally track the remaining untrackables in our society who may be older and not have or use all the fancy tech we have today that tracks everything. It could also include people like myself that go to reasonable but not insane methods to circumvent tracking methods simply because I don't like to be tracked. There's really nothing I can do if they see me leave my house and drive to my friend's place and hang out there for 5 hours. Since I don't use social media they can't really connect that he and I are close friends without a tool like this. They can now make that association, which was previously near impossible to achieve.

<comment><USER3> The government already uses these devices. First, there's the ever-increasing use of license plate readers on patrol cars. These have spawned all over the place, not just on the cruisers, but also fixed points. Second, if you've ever driven on the Dulles Access Road from DC to Dulles Airport, sensors pickup the bluetooth ID of your tire pressure monitor, and other SIGINT/MASINT details. More cities are using SIGINT/MASINT technologies to gather all of that data.

I can't tell you how I know this, but drive just about anywhere within 20 miles of DC and everything about you that is possible is processed, cataloged, cross-references, and stored.

<comment><USER2> I had never heard of anything like this! Thank you very much for this information.

Luckily for me I drive an old car (definitely pre-bluetooth for sure) so that part wouldn't apply to me, but the increasing use of plate readers applies to everyone, everywhere.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't matter what you drive.

I cannot tell you where I know this from, but the newest top secret satellites launched recently from Florida will cover the whole US terrain with infrared scanners. Now, given every person has a different size of veins running under their skin in slightly different ways, there are no two people with the same configuration of blood circulation system. So unless you are wearing metal armor 24/7, you are being tracked and cataloged of when and how long you been.

So please - update your tires to let your car know and to notify you when your pressure is low. It might safe your life!

<comment><USER5> There is a physical limit on the possible resolution. From that alone I call bullshit on your claim. Do you have hard evidence?

<comment><USER6> You are correct, as the size of infrared waves is much too big to resolve the same level of detail that the smaller waves of visible light can.

But even beyond that, water vapor is opaque to most IR frequencies. So a cloudy day would be enough to render this system useless.

100% bullshit imho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the false pretense for "neighborhood protection", when really this is a lowering bar for plate collection likely for more intrusive advertising. Even if you were able to pay cash or epay system obfuscate store purchases at a retailer, they could still nab your plates.

Really, if a criminal were to drive in and loot a house in your neighborhood, what self respecting criminal wouldn't use dummy plates or a lifted car to commit robberies and at least some sort of identity obfuscation. Let's not pretend this is a noble invention.

While out in public you may not have a right to privacy, there's certainly a level of general anonymity that most of us assume. While such plate reading technology has existed for some time, now it could be easily deployed by a overbearing ex-lover to know if/when person is home or worse, a hate group outside an abortion clinic.

File this under war on privacy to further usher in a technocratic hellscape future.

<comment><USER8> Won't take long for plate data from this highly ethical YC startup to be used as blackmail/extortion material against someone who gets caught parking in the wrong driveway while their wife/husband is out of town.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anybody have a link to the actual company? I also think they've missed the key use for this. Modelling traffic movements through a space.

Many villages/residential areas suffer from speeding and rat running, but getting a local authority to take you seriously or even get the local police to 'visit' the speeders and have a word is hard to make happen.

Community speed watch using ANPR cameras to create an average speed monitored area is HUGE. Even working out people that are using the one way road systems incorrectly helps.

This has huge application across multiple resident associations. To achieve this you need to be able to time synch, know the location of each camera, the shortest 'route' between each camera, and the ability to 'network' each camera.

Where do I invest? Hell I have 16 residents associations that would bite your hands off to get their hands on a cheap traffic profiling system.

<comment><USER10> First time I've heard of "rat running", but am having a hard time seeing the justification for the negative connotation. I can only see it as a more efficient use of the road system.

Just because at some time in the past there was less traffic in your street doesn't mean it won't (or shouldn't) increase in the future.

It seems to me that these residents associations are trying to push the problem of higher overall road use on to others that don't have such strong residents associations.

<comment><USER11> The idea is that if a main road has consistently high traffic, some road users will take narrower, less well appointed roads (through villages for example) at unreasonable speeds.

This leads to traffic calming measures as a way to counteract over-use of what should be largely residential traffic. This is also why "Bypasses" became very common - to get high volumes of commuting traffic away from residential areas where possible

<comment><USER10> But why should it be for residential traffic, if the through traffic is driving within the speed limit? Again, just because the history of a street made it appropriate for relaxed pedestrian use, should that now be in perpetuity?

Maybe a better solution would be to put in barriers.

<comment> Harvey-Specter > But why should it be for residential traffic, if the through traffic is > driving within the speed limit?

The problem is that through traffic often drives above the speed limit.

<comment><USER10> So, I guess you think that this new driver tracking would be cheaper than traditional obstructions (i.e. speed humps, chicanes, etc...)? I guess it could be, but what are the non obvious secondary and tertiary order costs of tracking all car movement? This seems worrying to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to make this your self:

A cheap hi-res outdoor day/night webcam (~$150) A server running openalpr ([https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr](https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr))

Job done

<comment><USER13> My neighborhood has multiple people that drive through each day, just to steal packages from people's doorsteps.

Sometimes they get photos of the thieves from their security systems, but they NEVER get plate numbers. This could be an awesome solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems rather intrusive to me.

Also unless I'm misunderstanding it doesn't seems to be capturing the speed of vehicles either, although I wonder if doing that accurately would require more precise mounting and calibration.

I was wondering if you could identify these 'sensors' somehow, but it looks like they're using cell networks, which as far as I understand means there is no plaintext unique identifier.

Does this mean something similar could be done with tracking of people via facial recognition? (Or is that different somehow?).

<comment><USER15> It's just a camera in a box, hooked up to some image recognition software. The convicted thief would have been caught just as trivially with a regular security camera.

So, the answer to your last question is "yes", same as with any other camera.

<comment><USER16> In practice, if you request assistance from the owner of a conventional security camera, you will run into one or more of the following issues:

a) Discover the camera was a dummy;

b) It was out of service at the time of the incident;

c) The camera is a live stream only and does not record footage;

c) The owner is unwilling to pore over hours of footage to help you;

d) They find an image but the quality is insufficient to identify a person or a vehicle;

e) They find a satisfactory image but are unable to share it with you for data protection reasons.

<comment><USER15> Don't b, c#2, d, and e apply to this also?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" The data is only made available to 'neighbourhood leaders'"_

This is going to go over big in religious communities. Control-freak religions such as Scientology and Haredi Judaism will go for this. Both already operate sizable camera networks in areas where they have power.

<comment><USER18> Oh goodness, and polygamist groups. TLC has an interesting show called escaping polygamy, where a few people (formerly in groups) help others escape. They're routinely followed when they drive into places like Colorado city.

It would be so easy to track everyone in those cities. And that would really up the level of danger to those residents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there any privacy guards that can be applied to number plates that are effective in protecting you from being tracked?

I'm immediately reminded of Jon Ronson's article 'Who killed Richard Cullen?'[1] where companies such as Experian sell relational geo-data on people to whatever companies want to use that data to target and potentially manipulate people.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jul/16/creditcards.de...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jul/16/creditcards.debt)

<comment><USER20> Bike racks! I thought about doing an ALPR project for a while which got me to start looking at plates. I always laugh when I see a bike rack that totally obscures the view.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I've noted that quite often, similarly on motorbikes I've seen people ride with flip-up number plates operated by a lever or cable on the side of the bike that when actions - flips the plate horizontal so it cannot (easily) be read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of the Burbclaves in the novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. Looking at the exclusive neighborhoods and subdivisions around D.C. I can totally see this becoming a selling point, along with the gates, armed guards, etc. that already exist. Tie these sensors into a network and suddenly a wrong turn can get you put on a neighborhood "watch list" across the city.

</comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't track who is driving in your neighbourhood, it tracks who owns the car driving in your neighbourhood. A not so subtle difference.

I don't want mob delivered justice based on bad data.

<comment><USER22> > It doesn't track who is driving in your neighbourhood, it tracks who owns > the car driving in your neighbourhood. A not so subtle difference.

Actually, it tracks who is the registered owner of the license plate numbers read off the vehicles driving in your area, which is subtly different from even what you describe.

<comment><USER21> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A great addition to this would be radar to track vehicle speeds. In my neighborhood we have an issue with jerks doing 50mph down our street(speed limit is 25mph) to bypass a traffic light on an adjacent street. Kids are often out and we've had a few near misses. Most of the offenders live nearby and I'd love a way to shame them into slowing down. The city is unable and unwilling to do any enforcement or install traffic calming on our street so we don't have any other options except moving.

<comment><USER24> Would you need radar? If you have a camera pointed at the street, couldn't you use the distance traveled in successive frames to calculate a speed? If you already have one camera set up to record the tags, a second one should be easy to capture the speed.

<comment><USER25> 10 year veteran of the ITS industry here. It's not trivial to do camera speed recognition. You need to do ranging in addition to the video detection to know how far the vehicle is from the camera to accurately measure the speeds using movement between frames. These systems cost in the $10,000+ range, while a k-band doppler can be had for around $500. It's a no brainer to stick with the 1940's doppler technology ;)

<comment><USER26> Or could you just post two posts near the road in view of the camera with a known distance between them...

<comment><USER27> I wonder if you could even use road markings or kerb stones as your calibration to save the effort of measuring things out.

I'm admittedly rather unqualified in this area (I don't even know what the ITS industry is!) but I have experience in estimating distances from video and calculating speeds from pixel displacement (particle image velocimetry) and at first pass it seems to me this would be a fairly straightforward problem to solve.

Obviously radar or lidar would be preferable but a quick search for "OpenCV speed estimation" shows people having success with simple single <$50 camera setups.

<comment><USER28> I'd use two infrared laser LEDs on a PCB with a low-res-but-high-speed infrared light detector, and set up a retroreflector across the street.

If the LEDs are 10cm apart, and parallel to the street, and left dot vanishes 7.45645 ms after the right dot, then something was moving through the beams from right to left at 30 miles per hour (13.4112 m/s). If right dot vanishes 4.06716 ms after left dot, something was moving left to right at 55 mph (24.5872 m/s).

You can even get an estimate of vehicle length and acceleration if you watch for the dots to reappear.

The frame rates and resolutions of most cameras aren't great for precisely estimating speed. You would need a high-speed camera, which is wasted on a surveillance application. So you just use two cameras, one that sees 16 infrared pixels with an ultra high frame rate, and one that sees many RGB pixels at 24 fps.

<comment><USER24> > The frame rates and resolutions of most cameras aren't great for precisely > estimating speed.

How good do you think the numbers would be? For example, the speed limit on my road is 25 mph but I know people routinely drive through at 40 mph. Would a camera system be good enough to record, say, 30 mph with error bars equal to +/\- 5 mph?

<comment><USER27> I reckon an RPi type camera would be perfectly sufficient to estimate speeds, probably to a higher accuracy than you ask.

Edit: a quick search led me to this [https://gregtinkers.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/car-speed- detec...](https://gregtinkers.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/car-speed-detector/)

and this [https://github.com/pageauc/speed- camera](https://github.com/pageauc/speed-camera)

<comment><USER24> Wow! That's perfect. Thanks for the links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A bit off-topic, but reminds me of the creative workarounds people tried when automated ticketing via speed cameras were first introduced in Arizona. One loophole was that if they weren't able to reasonably identify you in the traffic photo then the ticket wouldn't stand up in court. Some guy kept deliberately speeding by these cameras wearing a monkey mask:

[http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix- traffic/20...](http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix- traffic/2017/02/03/phoenix-speed-photo-cams-driver-wears-monkey-mask-racks- up-37-tickets/97447212/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a new product. It's called FlockOff. Basically it is a laser connected to a battery connected to a solar panel that shoot a high intensity beam of (UV? IR?) light directly at the Flock 24/7.

Also available is the FlockOff Mini. This attaches to the plate on your car bathing it in IR light 24/7.

Good times.

Note: I don't actually know what I'm talking about here.

</comment><comment><USER31> I could actually consider such system for my neighborhood, but only if it is off-line (i.e. nobody can access the data, unless I decide to deposit some during a crime investigation). A bit like a ATM security camera. I would not mind to have the data being discarded after X days for instance. Since it is supposed to be used to make a case of crime, if no crime was reported there is no need to keep the data. Also, they would have to make sure that the data collected is receivable by the justice system. Otherwise it would be pointless.

<comment><USER32> llsf, great points. we let the neighborhood decide who has access and how access is granted.

some neighborhoods give every resident unlimited access while others require a police report before logging in.

<comment><USER22> > we let the neighborhood decide who has access and how access is granted.

"Neighborhoods" generally aren't legal entities that you can deal with this way. When you say "neighborhood" here, are you talking about an homeowners association (which is a _very_ different thing than a "neighborhood") or...what, exactly?

<comment><USER32> Either Homeowners association or a Civic association. Both are legal entities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As if pockets of sheltered NIMBYs just existing wasn't bad enough, let's now make tools for them to enforce their own mini-police state for their already- gated neighborhoods!

The Big One™ that hits and sends all of Silicon Valley crashing into the Pacific can't come soon enough...

</comment><comment><USER34> Perhaps a different side to the comments already raised:

Why did YC invest in this? Are there published ethical rules YC tries to follow?

<comment><USER32> IanCal, sorry you feel this way. Our goal is simply to help police do their job. Today, only 13% of crime is solved due to lack of evidence. We are trying to help drive that number to 100% and eliminate crime in our neighborhoods.

<comment><USER35> What type of crime is your main target? Do you store video in addition to plate numbers? How accurate are your speed estimates at oblique angles?

I think you are getting some pushback because a lot of neighborhood watch groups have a reputation for looking out for "wrong looking people." The Trayvon Martin case surely didn't help, either.

Also, crime in the US is an all time low, but perception of crime is at an all time high. This is good for your product, but not for our society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As the president of an HOA, let me tell you...the residents here will be begging to get one of these.

<comment><USER32> drop us an email sales [at] flocksafety.com

this is garrett (co-founder of Flock)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It was going to happen regardless, but it makes me deeply cynical to see this infrastructure going up in the folksy tone of "neighborhood safety." I guess to justify erecting yet another component of the massive surveillance apparatus, you have to have a startup-ey landing page and cool logo. I would prefer to see this announced on a dingy government website, or even signs on every corner stating "all movement is tracked" installed by bureaucratic decree. At least then we'd be honest with what we're creating.

<comment><USER38> These types of scanners already exist in your neighborhood, and probably have for a couple of years. The next time you're near a police car, look at the trunk. There will probably be three or four cameras pointing to the adjacent lanes. They look like this: [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_y7NgL5zbq3U/TER5EIjZ20I/AAAAAAAAAt...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_y7NgL5zbq3U/TER5EIjZ20I/AAAAAAAAAtk/8tbGe_LcJU4/s1600/0710_platereader2.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is sketchy. The desire for absolute security can only end in a total surveillance state.

This kind of surveillance makes a mockery of the concept of privacy and anonymity. Nor only is data collected but it is stored enabling profiling.

The whole point of rule of law is to find common ground to temper out of control self interest. This is akin to stalking people going about their daily lives and should be illegal.

Why is YC supporting this. Why is anyone supporting this? Unless you take a stand minute to minute surveillance of everyone's lives will become the new normal.

</comment><comment><USER40> When laws do not give you privacy, paintball guns will (see speed cameras in Chicago for examples of how citizenry will __rightly__ deal with this)

<comment> Harvey-Specter Why do you expect privacy on public roads?

<comment><USER41> Because I contributed for these roads.

<comment><USER3> Since the OP of this thread is new, they're probably trolling us, but giving benefit of the doubt for a moment, you have no right to privacy on public roads. Whether you paid for them or not is irrelevant. You could make that argument for state action, but not private. Just because you paid your taxes for that road doesn't stop me from recording your license plate, description, time and date of every time I've seen your car, the race, gender, etc. of your passengers, and posting that to the internet.

<comment><USER41> In my country it's illegal since communism was overthrown. I'm not discussing the current legal status though. People should not be tracked on public property - property built from their own money.

<comment><USER42> This has nothing to do with who paid for what. Case in point: children, the elderly, or foreigners should enjoy the same right to privacy, even if they aren't (currently) paying taxes. It's not about property rights, it's about a modicum of dignity.

<comment><USER41> I'm talking about contributions because I want to make an easy distinction between public and private property. Everyone should have a right to do whatever they want on their own property as long as they don't break the non- aggression principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Simple question: is this legal?

Shouldn't there be a law against building databases containing other people's data?

<comment><USER3> It's absolutely legal. Anything in public you can photograph, record, monitor, etc. A different question to ask is: Should this be legal when certain data points, such as a license plate number, are required to be public, and the state forces you to disclose these.

<comment><USER43> I'm not so sure. It's legal to walk next to somebody. It's not legal to _stalk_ somebody. The latter is just a more elaborate version of the former.

A similar thing can be said about taking photographs (which is legal) versus recording people's behavior in a database (akin to drag-net surveillance, which we do not trust the government with, let alone companies or individuals).

<comment><USER24> > which we do not trust the government with, let alone companies or > individuals

Actually, I think it's legal for individuals or companies but not for the government. For example, the government can't install surveillance cameras in a shopping mall, but the mall owner can. The government can't watch people shop in stores, but stores are installing cameras to track how people move through the store, what items they smile at, and what they finally buy.

I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about a future where companies will drive around, pick up peoples trash, then process it to build a profile of the household. Because trash is fair game once you drop it off at the curb, they claimed there was nothing stopping anybody from doing this.

<comment><USER3> Which podcast was that? If you happen to remember, please post.

<comment><USER24> It was in this one: [https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in- tech/episodes/628](https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/628)

It was a very brief segment and I couldn't find it, but the idea stood out to me. I could totally see somebody thinking about this - thinking about how much it costs to dispose of a bag of garbage plus the cost to process it compared to the value of the data inside. I could see a company like Amazon figuring out which neighborhoods have their best customers and wanting that data to figure out how to sell them even more stuff.

It's simultaneously fascinating and abhorrent to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> These are great ideas to monetize now. As it grows, it will be the same as its been happening with the big companies, like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc., where law enforcement will force to acquire these data and naturally as its a company which owns it, its going to turn up to be used to scrutinize anyone in the name of security etc., and privacy at all levels will be basically sold for money. These guys start snooping around and project its a great tool for safety. True there could be a fraction of safety around this. But at the end of the day its just about money and becomes another surveillance mechanism to monitor everyone which is bullshit and nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've sometimes pondered what it would be like to have something like Sensor's license plate tracking, but using a car-mounted dashcam. Even with just one in every few thousand cars equipped, you could probably get pretty comprehensive location tracking of where particular cars were at a given time. There would be many uses for such a capability, both positive and negative to society.

</comment><comment><USER46> I tried this with a working prototype and all about 3 years ago...I struggled with the retail bdev side as no one wanted it because of privacy issues and base monthly costs. I went over the use cases and market left and right, up and down, with not much success. I still have a system in operation in front of my business that has been online since June 2014

<comment><USER25> Mind reaching out to me glennb? Curious how you went about it, and I might be able to help with a new market. Thanks! firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> For the US, you can register a "somewhat anonymous" LLC in places like New Mexico, then register your vehicle in the name of the LLC.

Unwinding who really owns the vehicle is still possible for government, though still not quick or automated. It would make it very difficult for private efforts like this one.

Lot of work though.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm interested in who owns the data after it is collected. Is it the company's or does it below to the person who is paying the $50/year? My hunch is that the company will retain rights over the data collected and it can become another source of income for them over time.

<comment><USER32> the neighborhood owns the data. we have zero plans to sell the data.

our goal is to provide police with the evidence they need to solve crime.

today only 13% of non-violent crime is solved. we think it should be 100%.

<comment><USER49> Define "the neighborhood". I personally don't know more than three or four neighbors in my apartment complex. Who specifically is it then? I tend to believe you actually meant to type 'police precinct'.

I applaud your sense of civic duty, but having a complete panopticon of all outside activities for an unobtainable goal of 100% seems absurd.

<comment><USER32> Neighborhood = Homeowners association or civic association.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> ,</comment>