Waymo Via - <AUTHOR> https://waymo.com/waymo-via/ <comment><USER2> I competed in the DARPA Urban Challenge, back in 2007. While we were watching the finalists trying to sort out the world's first fully-automated traffic jam, the conversation turned to how easy it is to manipulate these vehicles.

Imagine a remote stretch of highway frequented by automated 18-wheelers. All that's required to bring the truck to a screeching halt is a bedsheet and some decent timing, at which point the vehicle has no way to prevent a robbery. The truck could put in a remote distress call, but it will still be some time before a human can get there. It's a new era for railroad heists!

We're no closer to solving this problem than in 2007; everybody is still trying to manage the long tail of merely safe driving. Handling humans in adversarial situations like the above is still completely off the map.

<comment><USER3> You can already do this to humans pretty much just as easily, I just need some orange cones

Then what? You have 20 palettes of dog chew toys or asian pears....? Some of the goods have serial/tracking numbers.

The reason people don't rob 18 wheelers or trains is because it's not a good criminal enterprise

<comment><USER4> > Then what? You have 20 palettes of dog chew toys or asian pears....? Some of > the goods have serial/tracking numbers.

Your comment made me laugh. Very true. Besides the fact that there is no black market for 20 palettes of dog chew and asian pears, the other problem is that unless you successfully steal a few highly valuable items, you would need one or multiple trucks to carry what you've stolen from that semi. You probably don't want to use the semi you just stopped, because it could have multiple GPS trackers onboard.

If you knew that you were stopping a truck full of laptops, then maybe it would be worth it somehow, but as you pointed out, laptops have serial numbers... And then what, you load a few hundred laptops into a van, but your van is now "burned". It's been photographed and you need to dump it somewhere, further complicating your operation.

Then, I don't know, it seems to me like people just love to come up with imaginary reasons why self-driving cars/trucks can't work. They seem to fail to realize that, well, we can come up with even better safety measures. You could make your automated truck very hard to open. It doesn't need to have a lock that can be opened by a human with a physical key. It can have an electronic lock inside the door, shielded behind a 5mm thick steel plate, that's completely invisible from the outside.

You could also install a remote-controlled drone on top of the truck (value < $1000). The truck has cameras all around that record continuously, and as soon as the truck gets stopped (or even slightly before), it phones home. A remote operator sees everything the cameras saw. The thieves waste precious time opening and unloading the truck, and just when they're about to take off, the remote controlled drone starts up and follows them around for as long as its batteries will allow (~10-20 minutes), informing the authorities as to their position.

If robberies of automated trucks became rampant, I'm pretty sure we could come up with many ways to mitigate the problem. I mean, heck, we could even install pepper sprayers around the truck. But the robbers can just wear full-face masks, you say. Sure they can, but those masks aren't foolproof, and it's an additional piece of logistics they need to deal with.

<comment><USER5> > Then, I don't know, it seems to me like people just love to come up with > imaginary reasons why self-driving cars/trucks can't work.

The way I like to put it ([https://www.gwern.net/Complexity-vs-AI#technology- forecastin...](https://www.gwern.net/Complexity-vs-AI#technology-forecasting- errors-functional-fixedness-in-assuming-dependencies)) is: 'The critic asks "can I think of any reason this system might not work?" and stops as soon as they find one excuse, but the forecaster needs to ask, "can I think of any system like this which could ever work?" and keep going.'

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is a fair characterization of adversarial attacks on AI. People on _hacker news_ are simply forecasting the future of hacking. People aren't really saying 'it won't work, forget about it!' they are simply pointing out that historically technology and criminal enterprise have followed a similar pattern to the garter snake and the rough skinned newt[1]. The more sophisticated deterrents evolve, the more clever adversarial strategies become.

[1] [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-deadly- camping-t...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-deadly-camping-trip- revealed-an-arms-race-between-snakes-and-newts)

<comment><USER5> > The more sophisticated deterrents evolve, the more clever adversarial > strategies become.

And yet, not clever enough to be so successful as to stop automation, or economic development, or increasing global wealth, or...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Waymo is successful, there are potentially massive impacts to the population of the US. Trucking is a major industry.

The Luddites weren't mad about the advancement of technology, they didn't destroy looms out of religious or anti-technological ideals. Many of them were skilled loom operators. They were squeezed out of their jobs by the race to the bottom, and they were angry that there wasn't any consideration for the paradigm shift they were experiencing.

If Waymo turns trucking into an automated business (or even just reduces the number of humans needed to haul cargo), we could be in for a similar situation. I wonder what Waymo is doing to help support the existing drivers, regulating how we should care for the many millions of humans this could impact, etc.

I believe automated vehicles will someday be safer and more desirable, but we need to ensure that they aren't also the villains in the disenfranchisement of millions of people.

<comment><USER8> These concerns are always overblown. The switch to autonomous vehicles isn't happening overnight. It'll be a generational change, and the current drivers will simply retire. If there's a young kid today who is dreaming of growing up and becoming a truck driver - yeah he's in trouble.

<comment><USER9> Depends on how fast it happens. Long-haul trucking is the most easily automated driving, and it has the strongest financial incentive. The lifespan of a semi truck is ~15 years, while the career of a trucker will be 40 years. Even if 2/3rds of truckers retire before automation hurts them, that still would leave us with more than a million long-term unemployed.

<comment><USER10> I imagine last-mile driving on regular roads might be as big a hurdle here as it is for parcel delivery.

<comment><USER9> Only if they automate it. But they don't have to. They could have local drivers rendezvous with long-haul trucks as they get close to destination cities. That would still let them cut their labor costs by 90%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a bike/ped advocate, I believe self-driving cars will ultimately be safer than humans. Yesterday I was nearly hit crossing street twice: once by an inattentive driver and once by an intentionally reckless speeder.

Oh the other hand, my brother has done a fair amount of truck driving and I'm aware it's a common job in the US.

Maybe now that Bloomberg has dropped out he get together with Yang and use his billions to start providing a basic income to displaced truck drivers?

<comment><USER12> > use his billions to start providing a basic income to displaced truck > drivers?

Are there no other viable options to "truck drivers being replaced by automation" than basic income? I've read a lot of pushback about basic income online.

<comment><USER13> I don't know the answer, but one problem is that truck driving is already often a plan "B" (or "C", or ...), in that it provided a practical home for workers displaced from other industries. Often one they didn't have to move to get.

This has difficult implications if you are looking for things these folks can do instead of trucking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With how much money everyone is spending, wouldn't it just be cheaper to build a private cross-country interstate where only AI drivers are allowed. Let humans drive the trucks to this interstate then let the AI take over. It seems like almost all the edge cases would be solved if you just got rid of other human drivers and let the vehicles network with one another.

<comment><USER15> When first reading this question I thought it was an obvious "no", but I looked into it's surprisingly close.

Total cost of interstate highway system: $128.9 billion [1].

Total invested in self driving technology as of 2017: $80 billion [2].

[1] [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.cfm#question6](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.cfm#question6)

[2] [https://www.brookings.edu/research/gauging-investment-in- sel...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/gauging-investment-in-self-driving- cars/)

<comment><USER16> > Total cost of interstate highway system: $128.9 billion [1].

That's in 1991. So with inflation, it would be $244 billion today. Also, I suspect the $128.9 billion figure itself was not inflation adjusted.

> Total invested in self driving technology as of 2017: $80 billion [2].

Wow, that's a lot more than I expected. But you have to keep in mind that once self driving is "solved", it will work on all highways around the world. If you think about how much it cost to build all the highways around the world, it's way past the trillion dollar mark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a rideshare company called Via. Is this intentionally designed to take away their SEO?? I'd be surprised if there isn't a trademark challenge for this, they're a competitor with Waymo.

<comment><USER18> It is the two-thousand-year old word for "road", and an English _preposition_.

Anyone who picked it as a trademark for anything knew what they were getting themselves into.

<comment><USER19> That's not how trademark law works though. Just because apples are a common, 20 million year old fruit doesn't mean Apple can't trademark the brand Apple in relation to computers and personal electronics.

<comment><USER20> Trademarks matter in context a lot. An Apple branded computer is a lot stronger than an Apple branded apple.

They choose a brand name bordering on descriptive. If it's descriptive, ie "Great Computer Co.", it's pretty weak. It'll be tough to own "Via" for anything in transportation.

<comment><USER21> That would be like owning the trademark "General Electric" and selling electrical equipment...

<comment><USER20> Well, General Electric predates many of the Supreme Court rulings that establish American trademark law.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > No matter what you're transporting or where it's headed, Waymo Via will have > you covered.

Lumber haulage, on forest tracks, in winter?

Snark aside, I'll be really impressed when they manage to get any service going. But that page doesn't offer anything to convince me.

<comment><USER23> Lumber hauling off road may actually be one of the easier applications because the road is usually dedicated to trucking. Logging trucks already assume they can blast along at full speed because if you use a logging road, you're supposed to radio your position via CB to ensure the trucks know where you are and don't hit you.

<comment><USER24> Sigh. Forest roads are absolutely not dedicated to logging, they are frequently used by hikers, backpackers, cyclists, and equestrians, and just people driving to a picnic spot. At least in America working forests are also public lands.

<comment><USER23> This is true, but nonetheless you're supposed to carry a CB. On Canadian logging roads, this is not something they take lightly - at least on the signage!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does a self-driving truck need a sleeper cab? Is the sleeper compartment filled with equipment?

<comment><USER26> For long haul you'd still want someone riding in the cab who can do basic maint I think, plus off loading the truck a lot of the times is the duty of the driver. Some companies advertise 'never tarp again!' because tarping your load on flatbeds is the driver's responsibility. Also for in-transit maint airlines need repair, trailer power needs to be checked especially for reefers. I'm not sure about otr truckers but for ltl the driver is offloading trailer.

I can see the training and responsibilities shift as things become more automated, but for what a driver costs, I can't see them getting rid of an incab person for otr trips which leave the city. The response time and costs for fixing minor maint like a broken air line would be crazy. Also someone gotta fill those tanks up.

<comment><USER27> Why would you have the driver ride along for the long-haul, rather than have the truck drive autonomously between cities and then pick up a driver once it gets to the destination metro area for last-mile/unloading/maintenance?

The bulk of the time (= labor costs) from trucking is on the interstates, and as an added perk, this would allow truckers to work 9-5 and stay close to their families rather than being on the road all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From the placement of the LIDARs, I wonder how they solved the problem of being able to look in the truck's blind spot. Or do they just attach a camera on the back of the container every time they switch containers??

</comment><comment> coral-snake Copy nit:

> We're currently testing our fleet of trucks in California and Arizona, and > we'll soon expand to Texas and New Mexico in the near future.

"soon <thing> in the near future" is a weird structure. It's repeating itself, which either comes across as poorly constructed or _really_ emphasizing. I doubt it is the latter....but if it were, I'd expect waymo to announce Texas/NM support within a few weeks. (Which begs the question of "why publish this blog now, instead of in 1-3 weeks when Texas/NM support launches?")

</comment><comment><USER29> Would be awesome if they could make these electric.

</comment><comment><USER30> Are these semis truly driverless or does the testing that Waymo is conducting still require staff to monitor the drive? I want to parse through the hype here.

Fully automated, point-to-point, driverless semis seem far off, as Hotz of Comma.ai was pointing out. Am I wrong on this assumption?

<comment><USER31> > Are these semis truly driverless or does the testing that Waymo is > conducting still require staff to monitor the drive?

I would assume they're planning to follow a similar trajectory to their passenger vehicles.

There are almost certainly human monitors on the trucks that are running right now, but the long term goal is to be driverless.

> Fully automated, point-to-point, driverless semis seem far off, as Hotz of > Comma.ai was pointing out. Am I wrong on this assumption?

I think fully automated ___arbitrary_ __point-to-point anything is a long way off at best and potentially impossible. Being able to handle any situation, including those that often give human drivers trouble, seems like it very likely could be a "hard AI" problem to me

I think that shrinking the problem space to a fixed route makes things a lot simpler, especially for deliveries that aren't extremely time critical where the vehicle could safely pull off if things got questionable. Think about something like a load of cars being shipped from Detroit to Denver.

Even if the autonomous trucks are limited to interstate-class highways, it could work like Turnpike Triples do here in Ohio where the autonomous truck could handle the interstate part and then drop the trailer(s) in a transfer lot located right at the exit. Human drivers could then pick them up from there for the local portion of the haul. That seems like it'd be a win-win, the companies get their loads able to drive any distance with no time limits while the drivers get a nice local loop where they're home every night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> anybody knows - is that new slim sensor package a major upgrade to the set/quality of sensors or just a re-packaging? They've only recently appeared in MV, so i haven't been able to get a good look yet :) It is interesting that it appeared on the wave of doubling of the Waymo staff in 1 year plus major outside investment and all those new announcements. It makes one wonder whether they've got major improvements or are only gearing toward it and/or just preparing to expand the operations for one final push across the finish line.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how well it navigates weight stations.

What happens if it fails compliance? How will they tell the truck to park?

</comment><comment><USER26> Does Phoenix have laws that make them more attractive for testing or just location preference?

<comment><USER34> Arizona basically threw their citizens to the wolves with a 2015 self-driving car law that allowed anything and everything to go (you wouldn't even have to register your cars as self-driving for a period). This attracted tons of firms to test their cars in a lax regulatory environment but since the famous Uber death and a number of self-driving accidents, they have tightened the rules somewhat. I suspect they're still looser than average and there's some inertia from everyone setting up shop there originally.

From the original press release:

> _" Part of what makes Arizona an ideal place for Uber and other companies to > test autonomous vehicle technology is that there are no special permits or > licensing required," the ADOT release said. "In Arizona, autonomous vehicles > have the same registration requirements as any other vehicle, and nothing in > state law prevents testing autonomous vehicles."_

Article with latest updates: [https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/maricopa- county-sheriff...](https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/maricopa-county- sheriff-election-arpaio-penzone-sheridan-2020-11446082)

<comment><USER35> Thrown their citizens to the wolves and caused all of one death, and no other problems to speak of? Seems like they made a great call to me.

<comment><USER36> Yeah cause screw that person who died.

<comment><USER37> Arizona allows drivers over 80, and I'd trust Waymo over the average octogenarian driving.

<comment><USER24> Arizona also allows people under 30 to drive, and every age group under 30 has a much higher accident rate than 80+. People under the age of 18 have quadruple the accident rate of people aged 80. The reason people incorrectly believe that octogenarians are bad drivers is they have a tendency to die in even minor accidents.

<comment><USER38> I think folks think 80+ drivers are bad, is they drive conservatively and carefully. Its annoying to 20-something drivers who want to race around and take chances.

{not an 80+ driver}

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are these pictures just renderings or actual things that exist?

<comment><USER40> They're real. I've seen them around the Bay Area.

<comment><USER41> I'm surprised that I hadn't seen leaks about this, if they were visible in public.

<comment><USER24> I've been wondering for years why nobody mentions this. I saw them on the road in Sunnyvale in 2018. Maybe people assume they are just regular trucks used to transport Waymo cars or something.

<comment><USER8> Maybe it was actually a self driving truck transporting a self driving car.

<comment><USER24> Well I did find this 2017 article so I guess they have been covered a bit.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/these-are-the- autonomous-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/these-are-the-autonomous- trucks-that-googles-waymo-is-testing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Just from looking at it there seem to be obvious sensor dead zones, particularly behind it.

<comment><USER43> Less than with a human driver, who can't see anything immediately in front and partially to the sides of the cab as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Andrew Yang was right.

</comment><comment><USER45> >and we'll soon expand to Texas and New Mexico in the near future

pedantic but, as opposed to soon expanding in the far future? A little redundant.

<comment><USER46> I think they mean Texas soon, and New Mexico in the near future. Maybe better to have written:

and we'll soon expand to Texas, and New Mexico in the near future

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Edit: wrong story!

<comment><USER48> You're commenting on the wrong story. You meant to click on the Uber story but this one is about waymo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Are they selling this? If not, why waste effort making a page for it?

<comment><USER50> You see HN comments all the time telling startups to put up a page before their product is ready. It's super common advice. Here are a few offhand reasons I can suggest it's not a waste even if the product is not for sale.

Marketing. Lead times for delivery contracts are probably long. Expanding your marketing, making your target audience aware of the product ahead of time, is useful. It makes future sales cycles easier, as your potential customers may already know about your new product.

Hype. Self-driving cars and trucks already have lots of hype, but not usually for the big 18wheeler delivery style. Waymo may need to increase not just awareness but also excitement.

Testing for product-market fit. While a purchaser won't make a decision based on this page alone, Waymo can make some decisions and learn some things based on people's reactions to this.

I could keep going, there are thousands of reasons that making a page for a product or service not yet for sale can be a good idea and not a waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Everyone (Pony.ai started trucking as well) is converging to trucking as the canonical use cases. Let's see how this affect the existing self-driving firms.

<comment><USER52> In hindsight, trucking seems on the more obvious usecase for autonomous vehicles rather than daily commutes or ridesharing.

1\. Most time spent and miles driven are on freeways rather than city streets. Last mile can still be done via human drivers meeting at an off-freeway ramp hub.

2\. The cost and availability of labor is a significant damper on trucking. Remember during the oil boom in Alberta, Canada, how truckers were making six- figures and higher due to the high demand.

3\. Humans get tired, can't drive for more than 8 hours due to legal restrictions and safety concerns. These are problem that machines can solve.

4\. (Mostly) don't have to deal with pedestrians, bicycles, bad weather and other complexities. If there's a snowstorm, trucks can just do what they do now, wait it out at a truck stop.

<comment><USER13> > In hindsight

In foresight too. This has been part of the conversation since the very beginning; pointing out that the most likely initial targets for "real" commercial use at scale was long haul trucking, with people for either end. Usually predicated by heavy machinery in places like mines, where variants are already done.</comment></comment></comment>


Stable boring job or risky more exciting one? - <AUTHOR>

I've been doing web work for the better part of 12 years, mostly all client work. You know, find a business who needs a web site, you build it, sometimes it has webapp components to it, sometimes it's brochure-ware.
In the past few years I've worked on projects for major companies and brands, and I thought I had 'arrived'. But once the glimmer was gone, I'vestarted to wonder, what's beyond this? I've been feeling like I've hit the glass ceiling. As an outlet, in my off-time I've worked on my own sites and projects, have contributed to open source, etc. It's been a lot of fun and has gotten notice in my local tech community. But I still have to come to work everyday and work on stuff I'm not really into.
Basically where I'm at now, I don't see them doing anything but client work in the foreseeable future. Granted it's for 'cool' companies and brands, but in the end it ends up being the same old stuff.
What I'd like to do is work on a product, building something innovative and expand my skills. The company I work for now tried to position itself to allow me to work on a product full time, but after 2 years it hasn't gone anywhere past a useful tool for the company itself. Recently it's basically been put on hiatus because I was needed to work on some important client projects. I was pretty disappointed.
In the past week I've been approached by a local startup, funded, working on a really cool product. They are offering me a full time job. Pay/benefits are on par with where I am now. However there's obviously risk involved going into a startup, as I'm sure you all know. I have a mortgage to pay, and family to support (I ain't 20 anymore). I am an integral part of my current company, and my leaving would have a huge impact. I would also give up any seniority I have, and a pretty stable good income (they aren't going anywhere soon).
So I guess it all comes down really to me just saying what's on my mind here and hoping for some random insights from HN. I'm not looking for definitive answers. Has anyone been through (or currently going through) similar experiences? <comment><USER2> 1\. Well before joining a startup you should be sure of two things, you believe in the product, and you believe in the founders. 2\. If you plan joining a startup , plan on being there for at least two years, before you decide if it will pan out or not. 3\. Expect to work a lot more than you probably are. 4\. You're current job won't be as hurt as you think, believe me life goes on at every company, and you're leaving won't hurt as much as you think and should not be part of your consideration. 5\. If you really want to work on something innovative to expand your skills work on your own product that interests you on your free time. good luck

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have the opportunity to work with the startup on the side? (I realize this might be hard with family and other commitments)

Maybe you can take on a reduced capacity role at your current place of employment in order to make time for the 'new' something?

I'd say you have a few options, but they all require some level of sacrifice - but you'll probably enjoy the startup life! ;)</comment>


How Popular Is "Sign in with Apple"? - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/28/sign-in-with-apple-popularity <comment><USER2> I tried to do a Sign in with Apple integration on Android (wanted the app to have the same options across platforms).

Testing on Android was next to impossible. To test I needed an Apple ID with 2FA. But SMS 2FA was not good enough, you need the hardware-based 2FA. To get that you need a recent macOS or iOS device. As an Android developer I have no reason to own either of those.

Eventually I just had a friend who owns an iPhone try my app a few times.

Besides that, the Apple interface guidelines are nearly impossible to follow on Android because Apple doesn't provide the logo or font assets you need to comply. There is no SDK whatsoever, just a spec.

Seems like a nice sign-in option for iPhone owners but it's a portability disaster.

<comment><USER3> Apple continues to not give any care whatsoever to anything outside their walled garden. For the longest time you couldn't even preview songs on iTunes store without having iTunes. Want to watch their biggest WWDC live? Had to use Safari until last year. Obviously iMessage and FaceTime are complete no-gos outside their walled garden too.

This is how they keep people in. They have to close down their walls as tightly as possible, to force people in. And once you're in, they make it as hard as possible to leave.

<comment><USER4> > _This is how they keep people in. They have to close down their walls as > tightly as possible, to force people in. And once you 're in, they make it > as hard as possible to leave._

I call old wives tales. I'm a close-to-20-years Apple user. The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc).

Especially today where everything is a subscription, there has never been LESS of a walled garden in that regard. I can move anytime (and I do use also Windows and Linux) and I wont have any issue with OS X/iOS.

I just wont have my apps -- which has been the case for every OS ever.

My music is in Spotify and Apple Music, my video is Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple+, my email is Gmail, my eBooks in Kindle for Mac and iOS, I talk with friends with Skype, Facetime, Messenger and Whatsup. Even my iCloud apps (Calendar, email, etc) are available from any browser.

Some "walled garden".

The reason I don't want to move from OS X/iOS is cohesion and usability. Despite BS like the 3+ years MBP keyboard fiasco or the not-really-useful BS touch strip, it's still the best HW/SW combo for my kind of computing (programming, lots of UNIXy stuff, lots of video and music as well).

<comment><USER5> > My music is in Spotify and Apple Music, my video is Netflix and Amazon Prime > and Apple+

Does Spotify somehow integrate with Apple Music and Netflix with Apple+? Because, if not, your counterargument is just "there's no walled garden because I'm outside it".

Spotify, Netflix, Google, Kindle, etc work on both platforms. Apple stuff doesn't. That's the definition of "walled garden", that you can't use Android and still use any Apple stuff.

<comment><USER6> FWIW Apple Music does work on android, reasonably well too. I switched to that when it became apparent that Google Play Music is a dead product, soon to be sent to the glue factory.

<comment><USER7> Why do people use Apple Music over Spotify?

<comment><USER8> One reason I use Apple Music over Spotify is that Apple Music is entirely supported by paying customers rather than by ads. This aligns thier incentives more closely to mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Developer of a recently launched app with Sign in with Apple here.

I watched the keynote where they launched Sign in with Apple and was honestly surprised at how easy the implementation was. I thought it was a no-brainer to add it to my app. So, I follow their (severely lacking) docs and the keynote and get a solution working. Once the user logs in, their APIs hand you a token that you can then send to the server.

Then, I thought, how do I verify this token on the server? While they do have docs on it [1], they simply omitted it from the keynote to make their example "just work". I would be very surprised if everyone was verifying the token on their servers. Not doing so seems like a loophole for many apps.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/signinwithappleres...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/signinwithapplerestapi/verifying_a_user)

<comment><USER10> What are the security implications of this?

<comment><USER9> The biggest one is that you're essentially trusting data that the client is providing (Apple gives user id to the client and the client sends it to the server). Unless you can verify the token and exchange it for your own session id, you're opening up your users to be easily impersonated (if they get a hold of the user id).

Other than that, Apple also provides server-side verification for the validity of the token. Without that, the client could send a random string and the server wouldn't know the difference.

<comment><USER11> Why would someone be more likely to get a user id compared to your session id?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen "Sign in with Apple" exactly once since iOS 13 launched. I am kind of surprised it's not being rolled out more widely. The first app I've seen and used it with was Byte (the Vine successor) over this past weekend.

<comment><USER13> Is there any good reason to do the Sign In With <giant data aggregator>?

I never take that option if there is anything else available. They don't need to see my signins on other sites, why should I just give it to them? For a few sites where it is utterly unavoidable I make one-off twitter accounts instead, because Twitter doesn't require your phone number to make an account and doesn't have a "only one account per person" policy I think.

<comment><USER14> Well, Sign In with Apple is different because:

1\. It's fast

2\. It gives you a pseudonym

3\. It doesn't leak all your other social graph data

4\. Doesn't require a new password

The rest are:

1\. Faster than creating an email, but will require redirects, and possibly logging into fb/google

2\. May give you a pseudonym but often reveals your real name

3\. Are used typically to build profiles of you and create stats on app popularity across demographics

4\. Don't require a new password.

<comment><USER15> Maybe it's just me, but one bummer about this kind of system is that's is A+ top security for a lot of stuff I don't care about. To create some account on a random forum to give feedback about how I got a stuck oil filter off of my '03 Civic, for example. With email+password I can just use a low security password because I'm typing on a phone. With these all-in systems my device isn't recognized so I'll need to type in some code from 2FA and type my long, unique password.

I know they're very popular, but there's so much long-term unintended baggage with using these singe signon systems...even assuming Apple's doesn't have the nefarious parts most others have.

<comment><USER16> Even setting aside Sign In With Apple, why are you consuming mental space and energy with a reused password and whether they should be throwaways or not in 2020, when all mobile OSes and desktop browsers integrate seamlessly with password managers?

Over here, I just use Face ID and 1Password does the tedious filing-and- remembering part that computers are good at.

<comment><USER15> I use 1Password on both my phone and desktop for logging in. Saving a new password on the desktop is easy. For the phone it seems rather tedious. Especially when, even on the desktop, many sign up pages have me submit 2 or 3 times because the username is taken, password too complex, or I didn't give them my phone number. I find it way less mental space and energy to reuse a weak password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The rollout for Sign in with Apple was a disaster when it came to email deliverability. They seem to have given zero thought to people who used third party email services like CustomerIO or Sendgrid, indicating that they "weren't supported," leaving those providers to scramble to meet the strict DKIM / SPF / Return-Path requirements. Not only that, but if you were sending from an appropriately aligned and verified domain, in the first couple of weeks, deliverability might take in upwards of 12 hours for receipt. I believe they've since improved on the deliverability and the third-party email providers have accommodated appropriately, with Apple even providing brief integration tips for the most popular ones, but it left a pretty horrible taste in our mouths as we were jumping through all the integration hoops.

EDIT: This is referring to email deliverability when attempting to contact private Apple relay addresses.

</comment><comment><USER18> > It's utterly private, where signing in with Google or Facebook is not at > all, yet far more convenient than signing up with your email address.

What is different in the privacy design of 'sign in with apple'?

<comment><USER19> As a application owner, I won't see the users email, instead Apple generates a unique address for each signup. That email also redirects any emails to the users email.

For someone who doesn't like a lot of what Apple does, this is a really nifty feature.

We just started integrating "Sign in with Apple" last week and are about to deploy it. Discovering the shielding of email addresses was a happy discovery, which I haven't seen before.

<comment><USER20> What happens when the customer contacts you for support and is using the shielded email service. You don't know the "real" email for the account, and the customer can't email you from the "shield" email. So you have limited means of verifying they are who they say they are. So how do you for disclose account information to them if you can't be sure they are the account owner?

<comment><USER21> I assume what Apple would like you to do is to build an "open a support ticket" flow into the app itself, which either asks for the customer's "contact email", or allows correspondence directly through the app. Such in- app support flows are already pretty standard for e.g. mobile carriers' apps, I've noticed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I feel like it isn't all that meaningful to compare Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook auth if the data is coming from a community that already has a favorable view of the Apple ecosystem, eg. the crowd that reads Daring Fireball. The majority of the global market at large is not using Apple devices and Apple sign-in is not going to resonate so strongly or even be a possibility.

If you are developing an iOS or Mac app, sure, that's a meaningful data point and feature suggestion. It won't be equally important for everyone.

<comment><USER23> 1.5 billion active devices with all of them tied to an easy payment method is very meaningful. Also, the wealthiest 1.5 billion and the most willing to spend money on tech/app purchases.

This is a big deal. If you're trying to sell an app instead of trying to sell ads, Apple users is your target market, even if your app is web, native Windows, or Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a similar setup for signing up for services. I set up a custom domain with Fastmail with a wildcard alias that forwards all emails to my inbox. I can then sign up for services with a custom email like "hn- email@example.com". If a service leaks my email, I'll know immediately and I'll be able to blacklist that address.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I have the same setup for my self-hosted server. It's only a pain when I don't save the login info and need to go dig it up (or if I'm on mobile). If only I could make a custom "Sign in with" button on every site that tracked all that for me, while remaining self hosted, I'd be in heaven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a user, won't i

a) share my data with Apple (i.e. they get to know every time i sign in) and

b) makes me dependent on Apple (what happens to my account when i sell all my Apple devices?) ?

<comment><USER9> As a developer, it's our responsibility to provide users with at least 2 options. While Sign in with Apple is convenient and seems to be fairly popular, users should be in control of their data.

Some stats from my app where users have the option to either Sign in with Apple or use their phone number:

73% use Sign in with Apple and the rest using their phone number.

If it was a privacy issue, wouldn't people rather trust Apple than an indie developer?

<comment><USER27> I wish I could signup with just username and password (no email)... because gmail knows everything now (I don't mind having no password recovery option in many cases)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've only looked at the docs and not implemented it, but my impression was that if they leave the Apple ecosystem they lose access to your app.

I suppose this is similar to any other "Sign in with" option, but it just seems more likely people will ditch Apple before they ditch gmail or Facebook, since they can keep those around pretty easily without using them or paying for them.

For Apple you need to pay money and actively use it to stay in the ecosystem.

<comment><USER29> I mean if you sign into something with Google and then delete your google account you end up with the same result no?

<comment><USER30> Yes, but deletion of a Google account (for a lot of people, the core of their whole internet experience) has way different probability than getting a new, non-apple phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone have any thoughts on the security (or other) implications of all your email for services in which you sign up using Apple SignIn now being relayed through Apple's mail servers?

It seems like a great way for Apple to hoover up a heap information they probably don't need.

I also wonder how they are going to combat bounces and send back a usable error message. While they can perhaps do useful things with say a mailbox full bounce they are probably going to have to hide or at least obfuscate some other kinds of bounces.

<comment><USER32> > It seems like a great way for Apple to hoover up a heap information they > probably don't need.

This is not intended as a Platonic ideal of what authentication should be. Rather, it's intended as a better alternative to being forced to log in with Google/FB/Twitter, since those companies _for sure_ aggregate and monetize your private information, whereas Apple _probably does not_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> App Devs probably want to soak up as much user info while they can. I don't think I would ever use it, seeing as I'm trying to slowly migrate out of the Apple ecosystem.

<comment><USER34> Not sure I follow your point. The whole point of "sign in with Apple" is to fight app devs getting more user info then they need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How does sign in with apple work when switching to android? or using a windows PC?

<comment><USER36> Similar to other 3rd party signins, you get redirected to an apple signin form, and then redirected back.

Disclaimer: opinion/ venting my personal frustration ahead

Apple's implementation of the OAuth flow is incomplete (even compared to what their documentation says is possible) and buggy. We've found it very frustrating to work with. This may be one reason that widespread adoption of apple signin is taking a while.

Of course I expect the issues will be resolved with time

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've spent the last +18 months building a product that does this with even more privacy than Apple. It's called idvpn.ca and we assign a virtual ID (pseudonym) to you for each app/vendor you connect to.

This way if they're breached, you don't care and they don't care, yet we can meet any compliance requirements the app/vendor has such as age checking, sanction list checking, anti-money laundering, counter terrorist financing etc.

We're eagerly looking for vendors interested in beta testing our service, as we have a working product (using OIDC, and/or we easily integrate with Wordpress) and are looking for the MVP/business model now.

<comment><USER38> Sounds like you should have started your last step 18 months ago.

Getting it integrated on a scale large enough to warrant regular people using it and having it in more than one app they use will be the biggest challenge you'll face. Focus as much percentage of your resources as possible there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've noticed it makes sign ups super easy which is great if you're building a new service and want to get users fast.

But what I wrestled with is the verification of the user on the server side after they've signed up (Apple suggests doing a daily verification of each user that uses Sign in with Apple) and also the annoyance of setting up trusted domains to be able to email your users.

Overall, it's great for users and for privacy but gosh it's a nightmare to setup for developers. Hopefully, Apple can somehow make it more seamless for developers in the future.

</comment><comment><USER40> While I always prefer email/password sign-in when available, I've used Sign in with Apple exactly once. It's on a website that only offers "Sign in with <Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple>". Given that you don't need to log in to use 99% of this site's functionality, and this site serves a niche market with a small development team, I respect their decision to not try to roll their own authentication.

I'd rather they use oAuth than blunder their own implementation and risk a breach.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sign in w/ Apple has been a great user experience. Something that always stuck in the back of my head when downloading and signing up for a new app was the stupid email confirmation.

</comment><comment><USER42> Implementing this was a huge pain, had to turn off DKIM to get it to work. Almost no documentation and when your mails bounce there is no information whatsoever what went wrong.

</comment><comment><USER43> From a user's perspective, I tried "Sign in with Apple" for the first time the other day on Dom Hoffman's new app Byte, and I'm really happy with it. Some benefits:

1\. I don't need to remember a password to sign in

2\. My real email is never shared with the service I'm signing up for

3\. I had a new account in like 3 seconds without providing any personal information

If any Apple employees are reading this, you guys did a great job!

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder if this is due to brand/trust, that they only request an email, or the sign in flow is a popover as opposed to going to another app.

<comment><USER45> Social Sign-On has a low barrier to entry, you click a button and the necessary Authentication Context is transmitted by your Identity Provider (IdP) to the Service Provider (SP). An SP can't implicitly trust an email address and must ask for a corresponding password and also verify you control the email. In this case Social wins out for a lower barrier to entry.

Unfortunately the downside of Social is that the SP can request additional information about you from the IdP. And when the IdP is a SP, ask for permissions to interact on the IdP's platform on your behalf. Sometimes these requests are transparent to the user, often the user does not understand what's being asked and permits requests for access.

Social Login also allows the IdP to track your interactions across sites, and enables the SP to uniquely identify you across their own properties. An SP can also do the later via Email Authentication.

Sign in with Apple prevents both IdP and SP tracking across properties. It also completely cuts out the IdP.

I think a lot of people are more privacy conscious today and/or have been burned by Social Sign-On. Sign in with Apple addresses those concerns and others that come with sharing your email address with an SP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Apple forced some of the companies that rely on Apple's platform iOS or MacOS to implement this feature, how is that not anti-trust?

<comment><USER32> Because A) this is good for consumers, and B) Apple doesn't have the market position to force consumers or other vendors to do anything. There is plenty of choice and competition in the smartphone market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I use it absolutely in every app I can find. Plus the email obfuscation option of course.

No clue how popular it is but I quite like the idea.

<comment><USER48> It's nice until you need to contact support when your apple account gets hacked and tell me your email is pdimitar at example dot com and I can't verify that you're a customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> out of the 3 (google, fb , and apple) , having a fake FB profile is probably the best for my privacy. While FB may have tracked me they probably dont know my real name, while for apple it's mandatory, and most people probably have used their CC details with google at some point, plus these companies have my realtime location data as well. None of these systems are really private and it is a lie to tell our users that it is.

That said, SSO logins are replacements for passwords, not usernames. You should always ask users for their email afterwards if you don't want to be bound to the service's whims who may decide to block you from their service or impose weird terms in the future, like how FB requires various forms of verification / interrogation to continue using their platform.

<comment><USER50> > While FB may have tracked me they probably dont know my real name

It is highly likely they know exactly who you are via the huge amount of metadata you and those around you leak. I would be impressed if your "opsec" was good enough to evade Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Personally prefer it when I see it, but have only seen it twice so far. Much faster too since it's native.

</comment><comment> simple-login Disclaimer: I'm the founder of this service.

I wouldn't trust a closed-source solution to be the privacy-focused identity provider. And with "Apple Search Ads", Apple could also be considered as an advertising company.

I have actually started out to create a privacy-focused SSO solution named "Sign In with SimpleLogin" [1] before "Sign in with Apple" was announced. The solution is from the beginning meant to be open source and even self-hostable. It's superior than "Sign in with Apple" in several ways:

\- The dev experiences is far better

\- The random email part is customized

\- Name, avatar could also be customized

If you visit the home page, you would notice that it's talking mainly about the email alias part as the SimpleLogin button is not implemented on popular websites yet, which hopefully will come soon.

[1]: [https://simplelogin.io/developer](https://simplelogin.io/developer)

</comment><comment><USER45> We have an on-going issue with Apple's protections going back almost a decade to when they started mucking about with 3rd Party Cookies. This isn't entirely their fault, blame also lies with the vendor we've chosen and our architecture for SSO.

That being said, there are valid use cases for tracking users across websites. I work for a nonprofit that does fundraising using every imaginable PaaS or SaaS platform as well as quite a few in-house developed tools. We offer an SSO experience across all of these various platforms and integration is a nightmare. OpenIDC, OAuth, SAML, ADFS, and lots of custom APIs.

It works for the most part everywhere except Safari where a few of our integrations just cannot and will not work due to their use of 3rd Party Cookies. Fortunately the way we've had to structure our solution, Sign in with Apple won't be much if any disruption to the status quo. It won't however help matters either.

<comment><USER52> > That being said, there are valid use cases for tracking users across > websites. I work for a nonprofit ...

Could you explain "valid use" more? I hope that you're not implying that we should allow all non-profits to track people across websites so they can do fundraising.

<comment><USER48> At WordPress.com, we have millions of sites. Having users be logged in so they can 'like' a post or comment or write new content is kinda important. That uses APIs and third party cookies (first party, but the API is a third-party from the perspective of the site they're on). We are constantly dealing with Safari thinking it's "tracking". Disclaimer, we do track things, but only on admin pages, not users' sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> unfortunately there are very few apps so far that allow signing in with apple even though i see them offer email, google and facebook options. i think out of all of the apps that i use only adobe lightroom allowed me to sign up with apple.

<comment><USER54> My understanding is that "Sign in With Apple" is still officially in beta; once it launches in full, all iOS apps that offer third-party sign ins (like the Google & Facebook options) will be mandated to also offer Apple's OAuth sign-in -- and must give it more prominent placement than third-party services.

<comment><USER55> Is Sign in with Apple compliant with OAuth2 / OpenID Conenct? If it's not I don't see how Apple can justify mandating the inclusion of something that isn't standards-based?

<comment><USER56> It's mostly compliant as of a few months ago [0]. That document is actually out of date, because Apple added a discovery endpoint since then [1]. They also haven't implemented the userinfo endpoint, but the only claims they expose are openid, name, and email, so it's not that big of a deal to just ask for those in the id_token. And the client_secret_post thing isn't much of a problem either, since their custom JWT is a perfectly valid client secret that's compliant with the underlying OAuth 2.0 standard and it's explained in their discovery document.

[0] [https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign- in...](https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign-in-with- Apple-differs-from-OpenID-Connect.md)

[1] [https://appleid.apple.com/.well-known/openid- configuration](https://appleid.apple.com/.well-known/openid-configuration)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sure, it helps with privacy with regards to the services that you login. But all the emails are forwarded by Apple. So if you don't trust the big player (i.e. Apple) this is not privacy-friendly at all.

</comment><comment><USER58> After the bad reputation from the "security" story recently now 3 Apple ads on front page. Back in business on HN! Good job.

</comment><comment><USER59> it appears that Craigslist has implemented some version of this 'psuedo-random email in the middle' setup ?

<comment><USER60> Craigslist has used their psuedo-random email relay since at least early 2013.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20121215193303/https://www.craig...](https://web.archive.org/web/20121215193303/https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/email- relay)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I just tried to register a new account at Wordpress but it's not working. Any other sites that you know?

<comment><USER48> I work at WordPress, what wasn't working?

<comment><USER61> I click the "Use Apple" button and it takes me back at the same page with "you need a valid email account". This is on the ro.wordpress.com. Maybe it matters.

<comment><USER48> That doesn't sound right :( Did you use an "anonymous" email through Apple or your real email address?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> "I kept waiting for the "confirm your email address" email to arrive but it never did"

really John? you expected a confirmation email to arrive? also, Google and Facebook don't require a confirmation email either</comment>


HN Replies – Get notified of replies to your comments - <AUTHOR> http://hnreplies.com <comment><AUTHOR> I know this has been posted six months ago, but it's so great that I thought it deserved more exposure. Seriously, until HN has something like this built in, dang & co should consider putting a link to it in the footer.

Enter your username and email to get up and running, that's it. (No password.)

Built by dangrossman.

</comment><comment><USER2> This should really be a default feature.</comment>


Show HN: Search Twitch – Search Live Twitch Streams - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchtwitch.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys! I'd love some feedback on this.

1) It needs some serious design work as it stands right now.

2) I'll probably open source it in the future.

3) I'm planning on making the UI more intuitive, and more clear as to what everything does.

4) I'd love to hear what you guys think :)</comment>


Readable Feeds - <AUTHOR> http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/ <comment><AUTHOR> A few people have emailed me about parameterizing the hack for the HN RSS feed that I created ( <http://nirmalpatel.com/hacks/hnrss.html> ).

Unfortunately, I have been a little too busy with full-time work.

Fortunately, Andrew Trusty decided to do just that. Thanks Andrew.

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome. I started using it with the Facebook developer forums feed, which has only the titles of each post, and it's a great improvement. The one thing it can't do well, though, is following the thread messages. Basically, a thread shows up in the feed several times, once for each message, and your feed is showing only the first message again and again.

Parsing forum feeds is probably what you designed it for, but if you can support that, it would definitely be a great improvement. Here is the feed I'm talking about:

<http://forum.developers.facebook.com/rss.php>

</comment><comment><USER2> what library are you using to parse feeds?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've requested to Andrew to make it open source. My hack used feedparser <http://www.feedparser.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> just curious, do you intend to make the application a independent product or an addon feature ?</comment>


Pay It Forward Design Bundle – 100% to Watsi - <AUTHOR> https://payitforwardbundle.com/ <comment> squeaky-clean I love the idea of a Humble Bundle, but for other interests, like this. But this bundle is a little confusing to me. I suppose selling things that may be used professionally is much different than selling video games or eBooks.

The Creative Market Charity Design Bundle looks good, but the other items are just limited time subscriptions, or even worse, discounts on purchases/subscriptions. It's like paying for a coupon book. It might be nice if you're planning on purchasing some of these, but I doubt I'll use any of these services knowing that in a year (or less), my access is gone unless I pay full price.

Also, where is the licensing? For the Creative Market items, it seems like each one has it's own license? Most of them seem to use this Simple License[1], but I don't know if they all do. The text for the Simple License is way too vague for me to use this on any commercial project. As far as what you cannot do with the license. For example:

> Cannot be used in a product offered for sale where the item contributes to > the core value of the product being sold.

How do you even decide this? The first example listed is:

>You Can: Use a purchased icon set as functional icons in your app, such as button icons.

>You Cannot: Use a purchased icon set as artwork that enhances actual gameplay in your app, such as the birds in Angry Birds.

That's so arbitrary. The artwork of the birds is somehow different than the artwork of the menu icons in the game? What if you make an Angry Birds clone, except where buttons are used to aim and fire the birds, instead of touch/dragging? Let's say I make a messaging app where the "core value" is just a simple, clean interface. Do I lose the ability to use these icons?

[1] [https://creativemarket.com/licenses/simple](https://creativemarket.com/licenses/simple)

<comment><USER2> Probably from a technical lawyery standpoint that's not enforceably clear, but from the standpoint of someone who uses paid creative assets as part of my regular work, it's certainly clear enough that I could feel fine using them and moving on with my life, and knowing if I was stepping over the line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Question to anyone in the media industry:

Why aren't there a lot of open source media assets (that actually are as high quality as paid assets)? I remember trying to make games and such, and people required me to pay $1000's of dollars, seems relevant here as well, such as "10 movie clips" for $1500.

It puts up a barrier for individuals to use assets they haven't made, does it not? I think that was one of the main reasons FOSS was started; so a homebrew hacker doesn't require shelling out $2k for a text editor!

<comment><USER4> The benefit of open source software is clear: If I open source my text editor it can be made better by other people contributing to it.

I don't see the benefit of "open sourcing" high quality media assets. The expectation of a media asset is for it to be completed and then used as is, not continuously improved like a software product.

<comment><USER5> The Free Software/Culture stuff is also about DRY, in a sense. Say I need a picture of a stream for a project. I get my camera and drive a couple hours to the woods. Batch process the set and finally decide on one picture to use. At the end of this, fairly expensive process, I actually have 10-15 pretty good, usable pictures that I no longer am going to use (at least not in the near future). The (modern) traditional ideology is to lock those away just in case I may need a picture like that in the future.

Makeing them free to others means they don't have to repeat the same process for basically the exact same thing. Now multiply this by the 100's or thousand's of other assets that could be used in a small project.

<comment> Arcanum-XIII Picture doesn't work repeatedly. Same for design and other graphical element. It gets boring after the second use, annoying as hell the third and there's no fourth time. We want to experience "new" stuff. We can already seen those kind of complain with the light reuse of some stuff in video game and movies...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So if I sign up to get this.. how many of the services require credit information?

I'm a bit worried that I'll sign up for a bunch of services to receive the offer, and then 12 months from now when all of them expire I'll suddenly have autorenewals all over my credit card statement.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm guessing this is for a good cause but I don't know that a bundle works in this particular case.

Also, I disabled my ad block software a few weeks ago for unrelated reasons and when I visited another (news) page a few minutes later what do you know? There are now ads for "creative market" (fonts icons graphics etc) along the side of the news article... So it appears someone got a few cents worth of information by me clicking on this link as well. Oh well, I don't care but I might consider re-enabling the ad blocker.

</comment><comment><USER8> On the off chance the creator is here, explaining what Watsi is, even if only in a few words, would be very helpful. I'd never heard of Watsi before. I had to click on the 'stories' link and then click on the Watsi homepage to find out.

Additionally, finding out what's in the bundle is similarly counter-intuitive. The 'Explore All Assets' link showed two separate popups that seemed like it was required to pay or at least register just to see a list of what I'd actually get.

<comment><USER9> Watsi's doing really good work. Here's some more information from the front of the Pay It Forward Bundle homepage (no need to click through anywhere). Please consider donating. Even $2 makes a real impact.

"Watsi enables anyone to fund life-changing healthcare for people around the world. 100% of every donation to Watsi funds healthcare, and the organization is dedicated to complete transparency. Since launching, Watsi has funded healthcare for 2,631 people in 19 countries."

<comment><USER8> Ah. It was below the fold. And the link near Watsi I figured was a learn more link but it wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a pretty great bundle, even if you only redeem a couple of the offers like myself.

Wunderlist and Scribd alone make this an easy purchase for me; I was going to buy Wunderlist Pro yesterday, so this is perfect.

<comment><USER9> Wunderlist is really nice and Scribd too! Totally agree. Given that you can donate anything you want (minimum $2), it's hard to say this isn't a great value. :-)

But much more importantly, it goes to a really great organization. I've been a supporter of Watsi for quite a while. It's really powerful to get that email update some time later and learn, more often than not, that a patient's surgery went well or need was fulfilled. Watsi is super transparent and upfront about where money is flowing, how successful it is, and you get direct knowledge of exactly the patient you're helping. Great stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No bitcoin payment?</comment>


D3-Cloud: Create Word Clouds in JavaScript and D3.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jasondavies/d3-cloud <comment><USER2> I used this plugin for one of my dashboard after some customization and I really satisfied with it.

Actually it's old (about 3 years) but it's fun

</comment><comment><USER3> The word cloud is a disastrous mockery of data visualization, and is a terrible cliche. It needs an extinction level event.</comment>


Mystery of the Somerton Man - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case <comment><USER2> Wow, that's pretty interesting and still unsolved.</comment>


Popuri: Lots of Stats For Any Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/26/lots-of-stats-for-any-site/ <comment><USER2> Something went wrong, the URL is now:

<http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/25/lots-of-stats-for-any-site/>

I'm thinking Arrington back-dated that post for some reason?

</comment><comment><USER3> As an alternative, I humbly submit:

<http://www.websitegrader.com>

Provides more useful information and the server is still running.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's also something wrong with the actual site, popuri.us. It's dying from the TechCrunch effect.</comment>


The day I did something - <AUTHOR> http://www.frankwiles.com/posts/2015/day-i-did-something/ <comment><USER3> Yeah, this is refreshing to read. One of my favorite scenes in movies is the Wolf in Pulp Fiction, because the comedy of it is how there's no magic to the Wolf. My own entry into consulting was similar to this guy's story - it felt huge and mysterious and forbidding beforehand, but in hindsight it was just a bunch of breaking problems down to stuff that felt boring and mundane in hindsight, even if the solutions were stylized to my own needs.

One thing that was important to me was to be able to max out retirement contributions even while being self-employed. (I think a lot of folks that go into business for themselves will too easily convince themselves to sacrifice that early on.) So I had a spreadsheet that basically factored in my needed take-home income after taxes and retirement contributions, and added in those taxes and contributions, and I turned it into a daily (weekday) dollar amount that I needed to earn, complete with 7-day and 30-day moving averages. Being able to check that daily helped me to know whether I was on the right track. For the first few years, I think that was around $300-$400 per day - later on, I was able to stop paying attention to it since I was exceeding it so much.

<comment><USER4> The first time I hired a really well-known, expensive attorney, I felt the same way you do about the Wolf. I thought "There's no magic to what he is doing, he is having the same conversations and doing the same things that I would". It was the same when I took on a very wealthy business partner - <USER2> did many of the same things that I would do.

In most cases, the work these kinds of people perform is neither magical nor brilliant. It's that because of their reputation, resources, and influence, when they do the same things that you would do, it has an entirely different result. This is just one of the many unfair aspects of life - knowing exactly what to do and working hard on it isn't even close to enough to make you successful. If no one listens to you, it doesn't matter what you say or how brilliant it is.

<comment><USER5> A similar situation is discussed in Godin's _Linchpin_ : you could do most of that attorney's job, perhaps even better than he does, except for what he does for five minutes a day. Of course, all the value is created in those five minutes.

<comment><USER6> I think also, a really top notch expert makes what they're doing seem so effortless that you do think "yeah, that's just what I would have done".

And probably you would have, at least eventually, although maybe with a couple of false starts and by that point perhaps some misfeatures have already been locked in and now your simple, elegant solution (the one you came up with all on your own without some fancy consultant) isn't quite going to work the way you'd like it to, but it's still 90% of the way there and you're only a little bit over budget -- so long as you cut a couple of the less useful features you should hopefully get the whole thing done before you lose the support of management -- but then they change CTO and the whole thing gets put on hold indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems a lot of consultancies follow this pattern:

        1. Hate permanent job.
        2. Start consultancy.
        3. Spend half the day finding work/collecting bills; other half programming.
        4. Eventually find reliable client with long-term project always pays on time.
        5. Cancels all other contracts to focus on reliable client.
        6. Go to step 1.

The way to break free from this is to scale the consultancy by hiring developers and profiting on overhead. This was not mentioned in the post, but if you neglect the scale factor, it will be very difficult to break past a typical employee salary. There are only so many hours in the day. The alternative is to sell a product.

<comment><USER8> I think your post is a little misleading in that #1 implies working for BigCo on the first read-through, but then working for yourself on your own business stuck with a single major client on the second read-through.

Perhaps some people will find this equivalent, should both stakeholders (BigCo/single demanding client) be equally unpleasant, but I for one still see a lot of value in having full control over my life and my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought this post was full of actionable advice for starting off on a consulting adventure (product companies are a whole different animal, in my opinion, definitely in terms of marketing research).

I did much the same. Having the savings are key, as are knowing your burn rate and having a plan B.

At the start of my most recent consulting stint, I watched cash in the bank and was prepared to be an employee if the balance fell below two months of expenses.

<comment><USER10> Agreed! I call it my "get a job" date and I still calculate it about monthly.

<comment><USER11> I started consulting without this safety net due to...circumstances and with the holiday seasons coming up (and my anniversary) I am really regretting it to be completely honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had the pleasure to work with Mr. Wiles. He's a wonderful person with refreshing perspective. If you're working on a serious django project and you want a little direction or advice on scalability or other technical decisions, his consultancy is great to go to.

</comment><comment><USER13> Side note: RevSys put out a Django cheat sheet a while back, which was given out at PyCon. Whenever I step away from Django for a bit and start to get rusty, I pull out the cheat sheet as I'm getting back up to speed. It's helped me work more efficiently on numerous occasions.

Download (pdf): [http://media.revsys.com/images/django-1.5-cheatsheet.pdf](http://media.revsys.com/images/django-1.5-cheatsheet.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I really liked the post.

I'd be curious to hear more about the process of finding work from people who have made the leap into consulting. The post mentions networking and just doing everything you can to increase your chances of meeting clients. That makes perfect sense, but are there any other insights or good practices?

For example, is it good to be a little bit forward and make sure people know you're a consultant looking for projects? Are certain kinds of networking better than others? Have you ever done any kind of out-bound marketing, or even cold-called potential clients? What about rules of thumb for whether or not to take on a project (e.g. better to turn down small things and wait for something big, or better to just take anything and everything, or certain kinds of clients you avoid)?

I would imagine that with all of this stuff you kind of just have to use your judgement. I also would suspect that everything gets much easier once you've been doing been doing it for longer and have a proven track record and even start to get referrals from previous clients. That said, it seems like getting the ball rolling with finding work must be one of the hardest aspects of starting out as a consultant.

</comment><comment><USER15> How does this translate to SaaS where you might have paying customers on the line if you fail? Is runway supposed to be longer, or does it just not matter to them if it goes belly up?

<comment><USER16> This should probably be covered in your terms of service? Along with what happens if your SaaS is sold to another owner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article has the start of his journey... and he's 8 year into it now.

But it gives no sense as to whether he's just breaking even, is killing it, or what?

It wouldn't be that encouraging if after 8 years he's still struggling to make ends meet, whereas if he's killing things (in the positive sense), that's more inspiring. To me anyway. ;)

<comment><USER18> He runs REVSYS. I'd say he's doing OK. :-)

<comment><USER19> I'm not familiar with REVSYS. I don't know if this is a one man shop making $80k gross or a 100 person consulting company throwing off $5M/year profit.

<comment><USER20> Six staff total.

(I followed the REVSYS link and then went to their About page.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love this page, very straight to the point and some great advise. No fancy styling, just the facts. And no ad trackers!

</comment><comment><USER21> This was a great read. Starting a company is more than anything else a matter of getting off your duff and doing it. Then keeping at it through thick and thin.

I particularly liked the point about raising your skills in non-core areas but wanted to add a caveat: it is really important to find good partners. For example, when selling technical products or services things tend to go better if one person sells the technology (aka the good cop) and another handles the money (aka the bad cop). Even if you are good at both it is hard to maintain both personalities simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the reluctance to rent an office, new desk etc extended when the author started hiring?

I personally think its very important to ensure your employees know you spent a bit of money making them comfortable and you value their work! I have worked in a number of startups with a kind of shitty office, shitty equipment etc and imo it always contributes to some kind of morale/impression problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> No such thing as "fraternal grandparents"

<comment><USER10> Hahaha apparently I needed more coffee. Fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's no 'actonable advice' in this post as far as I can see, except perhaps 'pay off debt'.

<comment><USER25> That, and the other financial strategies, are some pretty darn good actionable advice for a lot of people starting out.</comment></comment>


Worth of Programming Challenges and event ? - <AUTHOR>

What do HN guys think about Topcoder ( http://www.topcoder.com/tc )? Is it a dependable platform to learn and master C++, C#, java and algorithmic techniques.
Is it better or worse than other Online judges ( ACM UVA, SPOJ etc ) ? What is the worth of Google Codejam ? Should a computer science undergrad afford to spend their major chunk of time on these online judges practising programming or it's more worth to develop a software or contribute to open-source ? What are their respective values on job-scenario ? <comment><USER2> Practicing in online competitions does help . At least to master the different problem solving techniques , but doing it full time would be a mere waste of time . As pointed out the way we need to code in the industry and the thought process that has to go through is way different . Yes we do face challenging problems and knowledge of different techniques / approaches will surely come handy, but i am sure it will be more worth to develop a software or contribute to open source . By this way you give yourself a chance to learn the entire SDLC and hence u will be more valued in the Industry .Ofcourse the complexity of the problems you have solved while building the software will be the criteria based on which ur skills will be judged

Google code jam is just a competition where u can tell Google you are there and you can do good programming and yes probably get hired by them !!

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend Project Euler as a complement (or replacement) to the competitions. PE is not timed, therefore you can concurrently solve the elegant challenges while working on other projects. Furthermore, there are no "levels of access": all problems are available at the start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I had tried PE some time ago as a time-pass activity. Loved it. Also loved pythonchallenges. currently I was doing SPOJ (python and C) and it seriously needs lot of time and focus. I was wondering whether it's worth it. It do improve timed programming though, as you can code faster. Plus it never gives a sense of fulfillment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is an interesting view on the non significance of programming contests [http://web.archive.org/web/20071121053436/http://www.cs.calt...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071121053436/http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~mvanier/hacking/rants/programming_competitions.html)

And after leaving college and coming to the Industry, the first thing I learnt is that the kind of programming you are expected to do in an organisation is so different than the style we follow in the colleges or promoted by the coding competitions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those problems are certainly interesting to learn a language and to learn algorithms, but almost all contests I tried have one MAJOR MAJOR problem, which is why I stopped solving those interesting problems: It is like trying to fix a complicated robot which should work perfectly by my confidence in total darkness, wearing oven mitts without tools.

Yes, once you submit, you get back WRONG. You question your algorithm, you question your understanding of the problem, you question yourself, you question the forum, but there is no error. Great. So you can just stop trying to solve the problem and do something else and probably assume that either the problem description is wrong or the input/output is wrong. This is certainly not fun at all.

</comment><comment> a-priori I used to do competitive programming in high school and early university, but I stopped doing it mainly for lack of time.

Most of what you learn from programming competitions is not transferrable to business programming, but possibly some is. Maybe you'll see a case at work where dynamic programming might be super-awesome. Maybe you won't, but either way it's not going to hurt. There are be opportunity costs of course (i.e, because you're not spending your time elsewhere), but only you can judge that.

My motto, if I had one, would be that learning is not a zero-sum game. Programming competitions are a form of deliberate practice not unlike cross- training for athletes.

<comment><AUTHOR> To practise and participate in programming competition needs loads of time. Somehow I felt, giving that much time would not be worth it. However it do improves speed and accuracy and helps getting campus-recruitment. This was the dilemma here. Go for it ( yes/no ) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Topcoder is modern electronic Sweat Shop

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not sure about bussiness but you can find many "competition programmers" among outstanding young algorithmists (researchers), so possibly it help this direction.

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

Not that frequently updated, but some really cool stuff there</comment>


Show HN: Neo.mjs v1.2.5 → Support for SharedWorkers including Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tobiasuhlig/neo-mjs-v1-2-5-support-for-sharedworkers-including-firefox-b31f144cea3f <comment><AUTHOR> SharedWorkers in Chrome using Javascript Modules, live demos (online examples), background infos & thoughts about a new era of UI architectures. Fully MIT licensed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scaling your "backends" inside the cloud, but ignoring

SCALABLE frontend architectures running directly inside your browser using javascript modules?!

Wake up!</comment>


Show HN: PubUp, "Hacker News" for researchers & scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.pubup.org/page.php?page=about

<comment><USER2> A better tagline than "Hacker News for researchers" might be "Crowdsourced Faculty 1000". Either way, I wish you luck, as getting a critical mass of engaged users in this area is a very difficult task.

So many people do read and review papers, but then those reviews are just kept in a private file somewhere (or just in their brains) and hardly anyone sees them. So much great insight into published science is lost to the public this way. Lately I've been trying to blog about papers I read and then share my blog posts with <http://www.researchblogging.org/>, but even that isn't a very common thing to do.

If your site could become a hub for this type of discussion, it would be wonderful. Do you support (or plan on supporting) a researchblogging-like trackback system, in addition to comments? That might help you gain publicity too, if popular science bloggers link to your website when they discuss a paper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input, yes, it is hard to attract users in this field, reaching a critical mass is even harder, and feel free to share the papers your read with PubUp. We just launched 3 days ago, and welcome all kinds of ideas. Can you explain a bit "a researchblogging-like trackback system"? PubUp.org does have a trackback when users link to the URLs of other sources. I took a look at your site, seems a very nice blog!

<comment><USER2> I just mean that you should make it easy for bloggers to work with your website, to leverage the science blogging community. Research Blogging isn't my website, BTW, I just submit articles there sometimes. But it's something you should look at. All these independent blogs write about papers, submit their blog posts to Research Blogging (baasically like a trackback) and then they are indexed and publicized by Research Blogging. You could maybe do something similar... say, add upvote/downvote buttons people could use that would link to an article on your site, and then have a trackback on that article linking to the blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's a good point. I think in addition to sharing research articles and reviews, the PubUp system can also be used to post or link to scientific news, blog posts, or anything related to the community, that's why we have a "News" category in addition to the "Bio, Chem, CS, Math, Physics, etc" categories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope it takes off! The front page seems pretty crowded though, have you guys thought about having it take more of a focus on the content instead of recent comments, login, etc. in the center?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we built the site using an open source CMS, did very little customization, will definitely have to re-design the whole front page and everything.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A bit "About us": PubUp is an open access online platform for researchers to discover & share journal articles that are worth reading, to discuss scientific ideas that are worth spreading, and to connect with people who share similar interests. We'd appreciate it if you provide any feedback, comments or suggestions.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't really see what's the point here. my experience in academia (anecdotal) suggests that Mendeley already has a pretty substantial lead

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi mende, thanks for your comments, a few things I can think of right now:

1\. we want to change the current peer review system, instead of letting 2 or 3 reviewers deciding your paper's fate, why not take advantage of ALL peers in your field? We're not quite there yet as it is a big goal, and we believe this is the right direction to head to.

2\. academic journal publications are growing exponentially, how to select good papers from noise? PubUp provides peer curated selection of papers that are worth reading.

<comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, I like the idea a lot, and I firmly believe web technology should be introduced to academia. It is just I don't see how you differentiate yourself from other service. For instance, the frontpage of PubUp seems strikingly similar to the "papers" page at Mendeley.

I'm completely open to an alternative service (or even a complementary one). So... I guess what I'm trying to say: Give me, one of your intended customers, a compelling use scenario or value-add proposition that might compel me to switch.

<comment><USER5> I think you've gotten the wrong end of the stick with Mendeley. It's a reference manager with social features, some of which could be used (with work on the part of the user) for discovery / post-publication review.

PubUp, in contrast, looks like it is designed specifically for those two things.

Presumably to use PubUp I don't need to store my PDFs in Mendeley, to have signed up to their web component, to have found a group of people whose opinions I trust, yadda yadda.

On a tangent Mendeley also certainly hasn't sewn up the market: the majority of researchers still use one of a couple of older, more established desktop apps for their reference management. That's certainly not to say that it's not a good product, it is, or that they won't become an incumbent eventually, I reckon they probably will. It's just that scientists are a notoriously hard bunch of people to reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not qualifying as a "Hacker News" for Research / Sci

1) Specific topics -- HN is a general " what matters to startup kids " ( yes hard science is thicker )

2) You're wanting a better way to publish papers? Are you trying to get additional funding for this research?

3) HN has become a default bc its a sorting method for VC to dole out cash. Is the NSF reading?

I think you're in the right mindset but tell me what you're trying to do here.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are trying to build a system where users can share papers (both published and preprint) they deem important, write a short review/commentary on the paper: why it is good or not good, what else can be done, whether the experiment can be reproduced, is the conclusion solid or not, etc, then people can comment on the paper, comment on the reviews, upvote/downvote, any everything.

This is our fun side project, and we just launched 3 days ago, so badly need feedback from the community. Thanks for your comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A piece of design advice, until you get enough content collapse the different areas into one feed. That way you are more likely to get people to stay on board.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a valid point, we definitely need to improve that, right now we don't have much content, it looks like an empty shelf, lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The website looks terrible on Dolphin (Android) (on the What's hot page, the up/down buttons take up the whole width of the page).

Nice project anyway, best of luck to you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the catch, we changed the up/down buttons, can you check it again and let us know. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love seeing new vertical social news sites. Are there open source social news servers that anyone can recommend? It seems like it's becoming a trend to pop these sites up.

<comment><AUTHOR> social news, yes, but the larger part of the Pubup.org site is for research papers and scientific journal articles, I believe this is the first of its kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good Idea and very useful for scientists. Btw, Is it based on Pligg CMS? what marketing techniques you planned to improve registrations?</comment>


Django Sprint to 1.0 release - Come to Sausalito 7/18 - <AUTHOR> http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/SprintSausalitoJuly2008 <comment><USER2> Anybody here participating in this or contributing to Django in general?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm probably going to attend. Tipjoy is built in Django: <http://tipjoy.com></comment></comment>


World's oldest snowshoe found on a glacier in Italy's Dolomites - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/12/worlds-oldest-snowshoe-found-on-a-glacier-in-italys-dolomites/ <comment><AUTHOR> _The discovery was made close to where the frozen, mummified remains of a Neolithic hunter were found by two German hikers 25 years ago._

It's not clear exactly how near the snowshoe site was to Oetzi's site, but a little bit of googling suggests it might have been quite close indeed -- maybe within a couple of miles. Of course the chance that the artifact is directly related to Oetzi is quite slim indeed, since geographical proximity doesn't particularly indicate chronological proximity. Still pretty interesting, though.

<comment><USER2> >Of course the chance that the artifact is directly related to Oetzi is quite slim indeed, since geographical proximity doesn't particularly indicate chronological proximity.

How about the geographic proximity combined with the remoteness of the location? Is it one of those places that very few people have ever set foot on?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article says the snowshoes were discovered on Gurgler Eisjoch glacier. There's no entry in Wikipedia (en.wikipedia, anyway) for the glacier, but there is a mention of a "Gurgler Eisjoch" mountain _pass_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tztal_Alps#Passes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tztal_Alps#Passes)). If both Oetzi and the snowshoes were discovered near a pass, then perhaps it's not so surprising after all. Quite a lot of traffic would be funneled through a narrow geographic area, especially when considered over hundreds or thousands of years.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Oetzi was discovered in a mountain pass, that is why he was found so close to the Austrian-Italian border. Also, analysis of his bones and microscopic quartz crystals in his gut showed that he made the journey between the Italian and Austrian valleys of the region often during his life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paywall

<comment><USER5> A wall easily scaled by clicking "web" under the link, and clicking the first search engine result.

<comment><USER6> I do feel that there should be some kind of FAQ about that somewhere on HN. Something like "The Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph paywalls can be avoided by Googling the article name or clicking 'web'" would be useful for getting rid of the people commenting about the paywall.

<comment><USER7> This. I never even realized the web link was there. Always wondered myself why people would keep posting WSJ links to HN without complaints since it was always behind a paywall.

TIL.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any way to curate YouTube videos for children? - <AUTHOR> What I mean by this, are there any apps where I can either whitelist creators / channels or individual videos? Is that possible? <comment><USER2> At least on iOS the only option is "YouTube kids" application which allow you to restrict content to pre-approved by YouTube as kids-friendly.

I believe YouTube Terms of Use prevent anyone from making third-party youtube app on iOS. Android is maybe another story because you can sideload.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I wanted to develop my own app for android (personal use) what would I need to learn? Java? HTML5?

<comment><USER2> HTML5 via PhoneGap should be enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to update this to say that YouTube for kids has the functionality that I desired. I can only show approved content only when I want to! Thanks everyone.</comment>


Abseil – core C++ libraries from Google - <AUTHOR> http://abseil.io/ <comment><USER2> Users need to be cautious about this:

> Although Google is part of the minority of the C++ community that doesn't > use exceptions, we recognize that it is a minority and believe that code is > often better when it's exception-safe. We've done our best to make things > exception-safe. However, we won't contort things to support all possible > exceptions — if you have a hash functor or operator== that throws, we may > just mark it noexcept instead.

<comment><USER3> I'm as gung-ho as it gets on C++ exceptions and even I think it's reasonable for a library to require that operator== and hash functors not throw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Documentation isn't very clear about what's actually _provided_ by the libraries (if you dig you can eventually find it).

Looks at first glance more comprehensive than the Intel TBB.

<comment><AUTHOR> The README in the Github provides a pretty good overview of the major sections. The site itself could be better about this, I agree.

[https://github.com/abseil/abseil- cpp/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/abseil/abseil- cpp/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15341493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15341493)</comment>


How do I make a contribution to the U.S. government? - <AUTHOR> https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html <comment> blaser-waffle Taxes and military service aren't enough?

</comment><comment><USER2> good god why would you do that?</comment>


Great Debate: Why Arguing Is The Best Way To Learn - <AUTHOR> http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/01/great-debate-why-arguing-is-the-best-way-to-learn/

<comment><AUTHOR> This article may do the most to help our learning if we read it along with Hacker News site founder Paul Graham's essay "How to Disagree."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

But feel free to disagree with me and suggest a different idea you have read the article, based on your life experience in learning.</comment>


Ask HN - How do I get started with big data? - <AUTHOR>

What specific skillsets are needed? Any pointers on courses, books and tools? <comment><USER2> This was on HN about a month ago and might be a great starting point: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3953886></comment>


Ask HN: What is minimum viable product? - <AUTHOR> Share your thoughts on finding and executing viable ideas. <comment><USER2> It's the minimum set of requirements to have a fully functional, usable product.

The MVP has to be customer-ready, so it has to be as minimally feature- complete as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's the minimal setup that allows you to test a hypothesis about a proposed product or an existing product's next iteration.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whatever works that demonstrates an idea of something that can be achieved.

<comment><USER5> I would argue the MVP is what you can sell to customers. And if your business is going to succeed, your MVP arguably needs to be something that is not just good enough to sell to customers, but which customers will come back for more when you're ready to launch the next thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's usually the product with the smallest set of features that can show whether there is going to be traction with the offering.</comment>


Collecting and the age of memeing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecns.cn/news/culture/2018-09-19/detail-ifyyehna1446070.shtml <comment><USER2> > _Chen Mei, 25, from Jiangsu province, trawls Taobao, an online shopping > site, for antique memes. She explains that the selling price of memes is > really cheap, less than 4 yuan ($0.6) for over 500 images, or around 9 yuan > for 4 gigabytes of memes._

Most of the article sounds like someone took [https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/) seriously. Someone's getting trolled here, I'm just not sure if it's the author or us.

</comment><comment><USER3> 10/10 would trade my rare Pepe and subtle merchants for some dank Chinese memes.

<comment><USER4> It's a tough market, with strong evidence that it is being manipulated: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rdhNkv4ryuM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rdhNkv4ryuM)

<comment><USER5> That's a joke right? Those subtitles are fake.

<comment><USER4> Yes, as is the original article. "Valuable collecible memes" is a (long-) running internet joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This entire article is deadpan troll. A mildly amusing one in fairness.

<comment><USER7> But apparently people really did need moar jpeg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a little tangental, but I was surprised to see Hearthstone rendered as "Hearth Stone: Heroes of Warcraft". Does anybody know if Hearthstone is localized phonetically or semantically in Chinese markets? Was this a round- trip translation quirk, or did they re-localize the game name and not check it against the English name, or what?

<comment><USER9> Hearth(炉)stone(石) is localized semantically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems strange to me. In Western culture, I've always seen the higher quality copies valued more. Value of cultural artifacts like this usually depends on rarity, and the degraded copies are more common, so why would they be more valuable?

<comment><USER11> Look up "Deep Frying" - this is totally a thing in Western net culture, too.

<comment><USER12> Deep frying is satirical, as far as I'm aware.

<comment><USER13> Deep fried memes are satirical ("ironic") but they were created as a response to memes that were getting fried naturally through screenshotting and transcoding/compression

<comment><USER14> Nitpicking here but I think the "deep fried meme" phenomenon (as opposed to just images naturally becoming lower quality) is a result of the screenshot -> instagram filter pipeline.

<comment><USER15> theres bots/sites that df memes most people arent adding filters to memes to post on ig/twitter/sc

<comment><USER14> I agree that thats how they're made now but the phenomenon started as people parodying memes that were screenshotted and instagram filtered with structure -> 100 and sepia -> 100 etc

<comment><USER15> oh yeah I remember when ig first came out and people were cross posting to twitter and Facebook/reposting/compressing the memes even more

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a silly article.

<comment><USER17> The article contains a surprisingly small amount of images for an article about images.</comment></comment>