Our lander's asleep - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/15/our-landers-asleep/ <comment><USER2> It appears to be largely political issues that prevented this mission from using a Radioisotope thermoelectric generator , which would have eliminated this particular problem since solar panels would not be required. [1] This is how the Curiosity rover is powered.

If that is the case it's a massive shame - irrational fear of nuclear technology does a lot of damage.

1 - [http://www.space4peace.org/ianus/npsm2.htm#2_3](http://www.space4peace.org/ianus/npsm2.htm#2_3)

<comment><USER3> The first (failed) mission to Mars was attempted as early as 1960 by the USSR, continuing with 1964, 1965 Mariner by the US. Rovers came after a lot of previous work done, including a lot of unsuccessful attempts. And the rover weights 900 kg, probably 40 kg of it is the nuclear power generator. Philae is only 100 kg and the first on the comet.

It's certainly not "fear" of the nuclear technology in Europe that prevented something. See for example:

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France)

It's that the engineering tradeoffs have to be considered.

<comment><USER4> While it seems perhaps uncharacteristic of a space agency to make engineering decisions based on politics, if I had to guess I'd imagine that the team was well aware of the PR effect of the power supply chosen for their lander. I would also guess that the same issue was considered at NASA while planning the Mars Exploration Rover (solar) and Curiosity (RTG) missions. Are you claiming that this did not factor into their decision at all?

<comment><USER5> It seems highly unlikely that any scientists would make subpar choices that may compromise a long-term project on the off chance that it might cause some political discomfort. The latter isn't even particularly likely since there is a large difference between nuclear power as an energy source on Earth and nuclear technology for scientific use in space. In addition most of the public doesn't even know or is interested in the technical details of a mission like this. Therefore it is extremely unlikely that using RTG technology would have caused any kind of political problems which makes avoiding said technology on political grounds simply nonsensical when it has the potential to compromise the overall mission.

<comment><USER4> I think you are 1) overestimating the amount of independence that a typical space agency project actually enjoys and 2) underestimating both the amount and variety of PR that a high-profile space mission like this one generates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn." - Mahatma Gandhi

Let's hope it will wake up and be reborn.

The chances for this seem not that bad, since the comet will heat up considerably as it approaches the sun, which will make it unnecessary to preheat the interior of Philae before starting to charge the batteries, while at the same time increasing the solar power reaching the panels (due to the sun being closer), so the lander might actually generate enough power to recharge the batteries and come alive again. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

<comment><USER7> That's one of the most scary quotes ever. Way to write a horror story in 2 sentences.

<comment><USER8> If you've never thought about sleep that way, you should be scared! How do you know the person who woke up this morning is the same person who went to sleep last night?

<comment><USER9> How do you know the person who clicked the "Reply" button is the same person who wrote those words?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anthropomorphizing machines somehow always manages to twang my emotional snares. [http://xkcd.com/695/](http://xkcd.com/695/)

Good night, little lander. Hope you dream of electric sheep.

<comment><USER11> When did machines begin tweeting as themselves? I find it odd as there are usually lots of tweets that no person would make such as "scientists are sending commands to repair my body." or "soon technicians will install new parts into me."

<comment><USER12> This is one way you take science to the masses. I think giving each Philae instrument its own Twitter account is a great idea.

<comment><USER13> I find it pretty deep in the uncanny valley.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if you are not the target audience?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really curious about the results. This is the first time something like this has happened, but with the results, actually knowing a lot of variables, not even from the lander itself other missions will have something to base their work upon.

The first programming languages (static, duck typed, ...), database systems, web frameworks, anonymization frameworks, ... all had a lot of things that were either far from perfect or are now considered stupidity. But when nobody did what you did, when you are a pioneer everyone following would be a fool not to look at your work.

Also a nice example: Operating Systems. In the early days they were considered a waste of energy, time, resources. Why would you want to emulate computers on other computers (no, not visualization, but running multiple programs) or why would you use that valuable memory/storage space to have multiple programs on a machine at once? Those used to be actual questions. But that's a bit far fetched.

The project was/is a real pioneering project and I have lots of respect for people investing all their lives (more than two decades in this case!) so passionately into landing on a comet. Not too long ago that was science fiction.

The first message on the internet (arpanet) was meant to be "login", but it crashed after the o. I think those people got further, even though without doubt it didn't run as hoped for.

</comment><comment><USER15> Everytime I read about tech like this I cant help but wonder What kind of mainboard does this run? What CPU? What temp spec? what OS does it run? What is the main laguage? Would it use open source code?

Anyone has a clue or educated guess?

 _edit_ thanks to all answers provided, exactly the info I was looking for! And very interesting as well.

<comment><USER16> I don't know about Philae/Rosetta's hardware in particular, but there are very specific requirements to hardware that's sent into space.

I'm using the Mars Science Laboratory as an example here:

The MSL uses twin PowerPC RAD750 boards. If one of them fails, the rover could use the other as a backup. After all, you can't go out to Mars to fix a firmware update gone wrong. :) The RAD750's are hardened against radiation in space, and can withstand extreme temperatures. They run at about 200Mhz, and cost around $200.000 a piece. [1] [2]

It runs the realtime operating system VxWorks, which also happens to be what Apple uses for their Airport routers. :) [3]

NASA uses C as their main language, with specific coding standards. [4]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Rover](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Rover) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750) [3] [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134041-inside-nasas- curio...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134041-inside-nasas-curiosity- its-an-apple-airport-extreme-with-wheels) [4] [http://lars- lab.jpl.nasa.gov/JPL_Coding_Standard_C.pdf](http://lars- lab.jpl.nasa.gov/JPL_Coding_Standard_C.pdf)

<comment><USER15> _If one of them fails, the rover could use the other as a backup_

Any idea how that works practically? I mean, there are two boards and one set of peripherals. Is there like an external controller which constantly checks if board A is doing fine, and if not, somehow reroutes all peripheral communication to board B?

<comment><USER17> The NASA website seems to imply that it's done manually: [http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/rover/brains/](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/rover/brains/)

Presumably there's some basic functions in the radio stack they use where they can trigger operations like shutdown, startup, reboot, switch boards etc.

<comment><USER18> NASA normally has pretty low-level stuff. To the point of being able to do full firmware updates — though obviously that's something they don't want to risk ordinarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish there were a lot more of missions like these. We should accept some failures as well. If the cost can be lowered, the increased risk can be offset by more tries. It's better for the science as well if the missions are more diverse and the lead times are shorter.

I hope humanity grew up, so that failures would not produce so much backlash. Seems everybody feels so entitled in this age.

<comment><USER20> I'm sure they figured this out and decided against it, but I never understood why they often only send 1 device on missions like these. I understand launching things is very expensive, but you'd figure the R&D and risk associated with failure would cost much more.

<comment><USER21> It's hard to wow the governments with "we are going to do the same thing again, much cheaper." Even though it's the good way to get the most science bang for buck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do not go gentle into that good night, Philae. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

<comment><USER23> You made me look up that poem. I hold you responsible for the tears it brought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What kind of data did the lander gather, and will it be open to the public?

<comment><USER25> It had better be given that the public paid for it at a minimum cost of 1.4 billion Euros for the strictly European input.

<comment><USER26> It will be given to the public -- in contrast to 99% of scientific research results published by private companies like Elsevier making you pay $30 per article (or less, doesn't matter: you must pay to get the results of a research funded by you).

Edit: most of it will be, not everything, as I've just found out.

<comment><USER25> Completely agree. It is outrageous. I am researching a topic at the moment and expected to pay £20 for the privilege of viewing a paper (with work funded as you say, by the taxpayer) published in 1960.

As to the project, the cost (open to correction by all means) was 1.4 billion. Downvote if you like; evidently this is my big mistake for not understanding that facts are apparently unwelcome hereabouts. If people assume that by mentioning this sum I am necessarily disapproving of the project then they are simply wrong and indeed had not one iota of evidence to suppose that. Now I know better - 'I must not mention the cost in case something thinks I am moaning about it'.

<comment><USER27> Just let me know what you need. I'm happy to forward to you anything I can get through my university access. I'm sure others here are willing to do the same so we should have most things covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I assume that Philae isn't meant to be powered directly by sunlight but has an intermediate battery? So wouldn't it make sense to simply wake him once this battery is full, do some experiment, send the data and go back to sleep until recharged again? Shouldn't that work even with low light conditions, just that the sleep phases would be much longer than planned? The article sounds like they aren't sure Philae will ever wake up again.

<comment><USER3> The space is unbelievably cold. The lander is in the shade, meaning the temperature there is probably mostly at least around minus 60 degrees. The battery has much higher operating temperature.

<comment><USER29> It's actually unknown whether there's an atmosphere there. Temperature in space is very cold, sure, but if there are no gas collisions nothing carries the heat away (like, say, on Antarctica). So the lander would only really be cold where it touches the comet, and the comet actually gets quite hot at times. Wikipedia mentions that Haley's comet was 70 degrees celcius (above zero) last time it passed by Earth.

Despite geostationary satellites operating in an environment that's nominally -265 or so degrees celcius, the problem they usually experience is overheating, not freezing. Blackbody radiation will eventually carry the heat away, but we're talking decades to get to -100 or so.

For instance, a human body at rest generates about 150 watts of power, which would kill you in geostationary orbit without a cooling system. It would kill you because it wouldn't take long for your body temperature to rise to 52 degrees, at which point your cell metabolism abruptly stops (your mitochondria will stop generating energy). It would take longer than it takes you to choke though. Though nobody's ever tried for obvious reasons, you should be able to exit a space station and get back in with just a helmet that protects your mouth and nose and ears from decompression. You wouldn't freeze, you wouldn't explode. You'd overheat in 10-15 minutes or so. If you survive that, you'd die 2 weeks later from radiation poisoning. On the moon you need heating, because it actually has an atmosphere that would carry heat away.

It is fun reminiscing about just how special our place in the universe is. Human bodies wouldn't be able to survive on planets 30% closer to the Sun, or about 15% farther away. We wouldn't be alive without a mostly oxygen atmosphere, because without the ozone layer, solar radiation would kill us. Without the earth magnetic field, solar radiation would kill us. Without the sun protecting us from interstellar radiation, we'd die. If our solar system was further to the outside of the milky way, we wouldn't survive the radiation, solar protection or not. If it was closer to the middle, we wouldn't survive. It's unknown whether it's a black hole at the center or something else, but it sure outputs a lot of radiation. Oh, and we're in the < 0.1% of the milky way that hasn't experienced a supernova explosion for about 3 billion years (a supernova explosion at 20 lightyears or less would kill all life on earth. 50 lightyears is considered the minimum safe distance for large mammals to survive). The milky way has collided with at least 3 other (tiny) galaxies, none of the collissions were (are) anywhere near us, as the tidal stresses would alter planetary orbits, and so on and so forth.

All of this is ignoring the physical necessities for life to exist. If the fine structure constant, for instance, was 0.1% bigger or smaller, there would be no chemistry, and no humans. If the speed of light was ~5% bigger or smaller, there would be no atoms, as there would not be any stable electron orbitals, and so on.

<comment><USER30> > "It is fun reminiscing about just how special our place in the universe > is..."

I think you have it slightly backwards there. Life on earth, and us specifically, don't look the way we do because of chance. The reason we only operate in this specific environment is because we were shaped by our environments. Who knows in what environments life can exist. If you think of life as some sort of self-organizing system it's not unthinkable that 'life' could be possible in places that seem extremely inhospitable to us. Inside a star for example.

<comment><USER3> In order to have "life" in the sense that can be interesting to us (that means, not the "life" in the sense of something that is organized inside of a some star which is unreachable by us) the properties of chemical elements can be studied and apparently the properties of carbon are such that it is the most probable element for organic chemistry. There are possible alternatives, like silicon, but every alternative is less probable and less efficient that carbon:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry)

"Sagan used the term "carbon chauvinism" for such an assumption. Carl Sagan regarded silicon and germanium as conceivable alternatives to carbon; but, on the other hand, he noted that carbon does seem more chemically versatile and is more abundant in the cosmos."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Rosetta wouldn't have some mirrors, or even reflective surfaces, would it? It could position itself to reflect sunlight onto Philae.

I mean, I'm sure Rosetta has neither (in useful conditions), but there's a thought for next time :/

<comment><USER32> This was asked in a French Q&A session with the ESA and they dismissed it as "science-fiction" :)

[http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2014/11/13/philae- peu...](http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2014/11/13/philae-peut- transmettre-des-informations-tant-qu-il-dispose-de- puissance_4523384_1650684.html)

<comment><USER31> Well, I meant it more as "hopeful pondering", but point taken :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was a very interesting mission, and sticking the landing alone means that it was a success.

Well done, let's hope some interesting data was collected as a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is that a grammatically correct contraction for "Our lander is asleep"?

<comment><USER34> Yes.

<comment><USER35> Hey dang - I noticed the comment below I made which stuck to the top for most of this thread's life dropped to the bottom at the time you commented here.

What's the process for penalising posts in this situation?

Is it just an individual decision where you've decided it distracts from a valuable discussion?

I see I could have been a little less harsh with the damnning commentary (only to a point), but ultimately if we're all scientifically-minded then knowing that the internal targets were airbrushed for the public is a bit of a cerebral 'what?' I'd expect we're down with exploring on HN.

<comment><USER34> This is the sort of thing the HN guidelines ask you to email us about: firstname.lastname@example.com.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> We shot that fridge from earth and guided it for 10 years and prior to launch we had it in planning for another 15 years or so to have a battery depletion on the second day?

Why didnt they just use nuclear energy?

</comment><comment><USER35> As late as 12 November, the ESA's own FAQ [1] was stating that Philae's _minimum_ mission target was one week of surface operation (powered entirely by primary batteries), with even more operational time powered by back-up batteries (themselves recharged by solar) - resulting in an expected surface operation period measured in months.

They airbrushed the FAQ on 12 November to remove mention of the minimum one week mission target, and inserted among other things '2.5 days'. [2] A diff of the two versions would probably be interesting.

Now with the lander mission prematurely ended an associated scientist is tweeting a very rosy summary [3]:

"What a perfect ending. All the science completed, data received. Primary mission successful. Well done everybody."

How can a week of carefully-planned scientific activities be 'completed' in only 2.5 days? It seems implausible.

How did the primary and secondary batteries not power the lander for the calculated one week+ of operation?

Why aren't they open about what clearly seems to be a major failure with the scientific mission?

It seems a case of intense bureaucratic / political pressure to change targets after they aren't met, and the fact scientists are participating in this is pretty disappointing.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140805030451/http://www.esa.in...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140805030451/http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Frequently_asked_questions)

[2] [http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Freq...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Frequently_asked_questions)

[3] [https://twitter.com/rocketeddy/status/533421309553016832](https://twitter.com/rocketeddy/status/533421309553016832)

<comment><USER3> The targets have to change during the mission. The initial plan was even the another comet. It shouldn't matter.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28spacecraft%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28spacecraft%29)

"Rosetta was set to be launched on 12 January 2003 to rendezvous with the comet 46P/Wirtanen in 2011.

This plan was abandoned after a failure of the Ariane 5 carrier rocket during a communications satellite launch on 11 December 2002, grounding it until the cause of the failure could be determined."

No reason to blindly stick to the initial target when you're doing something for the first time _ever._ It's not that you planned to drive from your home to the shopping mall and have to excuse to your other that you went drinking beer instead. You would probably complain that it's not an initial comet now too?

The device landed on the darn comet! After travelling 6 billion km in 10 years. Managed to work a few days and send the data! First time ever! Powered only by the solar energy! (+) In the outside temperature of absolute zero. How many firsts do you need?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E)

Nothing built by humans was ever on the comet surface before. This thing even worked.

+) Edit: Thanks to jdiez17 for pointing that the lander used _a non- rechargeable battery_ on the comet surface. It was all the time planed to do the main work with that battery. The solar powered work wasn't the primary objective.

<comment><USER35> I'm just raising the kind of precise, detail-oriented questions that typically emanate from this community.

Your response relies on an appeal to emotion rather than logic, and doesn't seem particularly interested in engaging with the substance of the questions raised?

<comment><USER3> The logic is: to get something at least approximately close to your goals done _for the first time ever_ , you have to adjust your targets as you go. Every other strategy simply doesn't work. You are welcome to just stick to your initial goals in your endeavours. Write now absolutely exactly what you plan to do for the first time. Than please report in some time and stick to describing your failures. Observe how motivated for more you'll be.

And to paraphrase Louis, since when the 25-years lasting mission that you've learnt it existed only recently owns you exactly seven days of function on the darn comet?

To be more serious: of course the scientists will learn a lot even from every thing that went wrong. That's exactly how science works. It still doesn't mean that the public attention should concentrate on that now. See also my comment response to the "mistake" claim.

<comment><USER37> Of course you adjust your targets. But it doesn't imply you must rewrite your expectations to fit with reality after the facts as if those expectations never fluctuated. You actually lose data points by doing so.

<comment><USER3> Data points? The poster justsee actually complains about the FAQ page which didn't even have to be precise in the first place and doesn't have to be now. It's a web site directed to the uninformed public. Honestly, who do you expect to use the FAQ page for anything serious?

Among other questions on that page are

"Why is it so important to study comets?"

"What is the difference between asteroids and comets?"

You don't bother public with engineering stuff like "we have 1000 Wh power budget from the primary batteries, which will last depending on what happens when, and the different devices have different energy needs and we aren't actually sure what can happen but we prepare for as much as possible with the hope of at least something giving us some good results." They just switch off. We at least know where justsee switched off in being interested in the details: the expression "during a week" he understood as somebody promised him "exactly at least a week of entertaining news from the lander."

<comment><USER37> > It's a web site directed to the uninformed public.

The `uninformed public` deserves to be better considered, thank you.

It's not about the quality of explanation or the depth of the technical details in the FAQ but about the way it gives the feeling facts are being rewritten to fit reality (if there are no mention on the page it is being edited to accommodate for mission updates then it's completely understandable people would frown over number shuffling).

Did you count the words on that FAQ ? Any `uninformed` person who would read that FAQ would have questions about why the wording change over time.

Because it's a FAQ, not a live update.

> Honestly, who do you expect to use the FAQ page for anything serious?

Really ?

<comment><USER38> The FAQ _is_ rewritten as the facts change. They wanted a week, but the landing didn't go well, so they figured out they could get 2.5 days, and they changed the FAQ. It's not complicated. It's not a conspiracy. No one is being cheated.

<comment><USER37> Sigh...

> [..] if there are no mention on the page it is being edited to accommodate > for mission updates then it's completely understandable people would frown > over number shuffling [..]

Did I say I feel cheated ? No. Did I say there was a conspiracy ? No.

The web page has all the qualities of a static web page (no `live update`, no `last modified` label, etc.) and it's on the ESA website which gives it some kind of an official vibe. Yet, they are updating it to reflect mission objective changes (which is totally fine as far as I am concerned, by the way) which lead to confusion and questions such as "Did they just changed their stated goals to accommodate for the fact Philae is going to operate for a short time than planned or expected ?". Add to that some Internet tweets about how "it smoothly perfectly gone well and all the data we wanted are there" and someone goes back to the FAQ and spot changes (1 week turn into 2.5 days).

Allow me to take you for an idiot as well: _It 's not complicated._ to understand that web page is a bit misleading. It doesn't relay the information that the mission parameters and objectives changed (and of course I know they changed, were likeley to, etc.). If you go back to that document in 20 years you'd have no idea there was some problems with the landing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: gif.gg, a gif creation service - <AUTHOR> https://gif.gg/

<comment><USER2> This is kinda neat. Nice and simple, easy to use. Plus, I've always wanted a gif of myself eating rice and beansprouts on repeat: [https://gif.gg/iT7mk6](https://gif.gg/iT7mk6)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why to gif though, when you have services like [https://mediacru.sh](https://mediacru.sh) that are awesome _because_ they replace gif by video?

<comment><AUTHOR> Every frame is taken separately by the user, and you can change the delay between frames: it's more a stop-motion tool than video capture.

That being said, I'm almost certain that video formats performs better than gif (e.g. WebM), but the gif format is still the easiest to work with at the moment:

      <img src="http://gif.gg/xyz.gif">

</comment></comment><comment> a-l Here [https://megavisor.com/composer/](https://megavisor.com/composer/) is much powerful tool.</comment>


Source Code Comment Remover for Java - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ertugrulcetin/CommentRemover/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the use case for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> projects might have unnecessary comments so you can remove with this tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always assumed the compiler would remove the comments?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah of course but it's for source code that you are currently working on.</comment></comment>


Canadian bill to crack down on illegal downloads has privacy experts worried - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/04/13/new-bill-to-crack-down-on-illegal-downloads-has-privacy-experts-worried/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what the broader implications are of this bill. Is the bill broad enough that if I detect an IP address connect to my business SSH server does that afford me the privilege to obtain the customer information from the IP address?

Think about that for a moment, as a business owner I can now send a request to any ISP that owns an IP address that connected to my website. Why do I need your customer information, why because I did not authorize the IP access to /index.html, and the IP address showed repeated attempts connecting and using my computer resources (of course to the ISP I make it sound a little more sinister, like embed an image tag to a resource like /employee-portal/login so that I can tell the ISP the unauthorized access was to the employee portal, and of course that image tag will result in generating requests in my server logs to show the repeated requests from the IP trying to fetch that resource. Poof now I have the name and phone number for everyone that has been to my business website and is potentially interested in what I'm selling.. Of course, I won't tell the individual how I got their phone number. I wouldn't practice this, but for a morally corrupt business it sounds viable.

If the above is possible by the bill, and from the articles that I've read it is, then this bill strikes me as particularly stupid legislation bought for by moneyed interests. I can only hope that our government isn't so corrupted by those moneyed interests that this thing passes.

<comment><USER2> From the bill:

"an organization may disclose personal information without the knowledge or consent of the individual... if the disclosure is made to another organization and is reasonable for the purposes of investigating a breach of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada or a province that has been, is being or is about to be committed and it is reasonable to expect that disclosure with the knowledge or consent of the individual would compromise the investigation;

So, yes, if you can convince an ISP that the information is for an investigation (not necessarily a police investigation, a private eye or corporate audit would suffice) then yes the ISP can give out your private information.

I especially like this nugget:

"reasonable grounds to believe that the information relates to a contravention of the laws of Canada, a province or a __foreign jurisdiction __that has been, is being or is about to be committed "

So, personal information can be disclosed even if I am about to commit a crime in another country, e.g. I surf a beauty pageant website and view the enter pageant page that is hosted in Nigeria (beauty contests are illegal under Sharia law).

Sigh, well done Canada. Well done.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell this only _permits_ the disclosure, it doesn't compel it. Time to switch to an ISP that has a backbone.

What's especially concerning to me is that there's no recourse. Given the shotgun approach typically taken by copyright trolls, this is likely to expose more than just copyright offenders.

Not to mention chilling effects on free speech. Who would dare to criticize an organization when they can get your personal information from your ISP.

<comment><USER4> Difficult to find an ISP with a backbone that actually can follow through. I'd be interested to know if anyone in Canada has had an ISP successfully stand up to procecution.

<comment><USER5> I would hope that Teksavvy and other technorati-driven indie ISPs would do the legal minimum in sivulving customer info.

<comment><USER6> TekSavvy is a fantastic company, but their business model is completely dependent on the big telcos who control the last mile. The UBB crisis a few years ago was a very close call, and it is bound to happen again in one form or another.

So if TekSavvy et al. try to resist the information leaking that the proposed legislation permits, I wouldn't be surprised if the MAFIAA took extralegal measures to force their hands. For example, Bell & Rogers might be persuaded to change the terms of their contract with indie ISPs the next time the contract comes up for renewal, _unless_ the indies agree to some sort of "standard Canadian telco privacy policy" drawn up by the big telcos.

So Canadians might end up with a difficult choice: you can have privacy, or you can have 300GB traffic caps, but you can't have both.

> _sivulving_

I don't believe autocorrect is capable of producing words like that...

<comment><USER5> Oh....err...divulging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This bill does not serve the interests of Canadians. It serves the interest of foreign corporations.

Spying on citizens' internet connections and jailing them for sharing media does not benefit society. I understand why media companies are upset but draconian laws will not solve their problem. We have a choice between widespread media sharing and technological innovation, or widespread media sharing and people in jail for nonviolent crimes. Eliminating piracy is not possible. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

</comment><comment> a-priori Some stats about the Canadian legislature, because I'm a nerd:

Since January 17th, 1994 (35th Parliament, 1st Session) when the government started digitizing its records, there have been 4197 bills put before Parliament. Of those, 395 (9.4%) have come from the Senate, like this bill, and 3764 (89.7%) have come from the House of Commons. Eventually, 437 (10.4%) received royal assent (i.e, are now law) and the rest were either defeated, dropped on the floor, or are still being debated. However, this is being dragged down by private member's bills, of which there have been 3165 and only 40 (1.3%) have received royal assent.

Government bills, on the other hand, have much better track records. Of the 83 Senate government bills introduced in that time period, eventually 46 (55.4%) have received royal assent. This is similar to the House government bills, of which 325 out of 599 (54.3%) have received royal assent.

Source: [http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISInfo/](http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISInfo/)

<comment><USER5> Realistically, going back to '94 includes a lot of minority governments. With a solid majority, the Cons have a free hand for legislation. This will become law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly aside, but I am glad to see my monthly donation to [https://openmedia.ca](https://openmedia.ca) (like a Canadian EFF) seems to be paying off as they are getting their name and their point into big Canadian media :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Something not noted is that a number of vpn and seedbox services are hosted in Canada and run by Canadian companies. Americans use them as low-latency workarounds for similar US-located laws. I have never considered Canada to be a safe haven for such activity, I wonder if this crackdown effort will take a toll on those services.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone wanting to take a look at the bill itself.

[http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Lan...](http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=6524312)

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately there's an erosion of privacy on a couple of fronts: [http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/groups-complain-bell- us...](http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/groups-complain-bell-uses- customer-data-for-mobile-ads/88917)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the only thing that will ultimately save us from this is to strengthen our contracts with our ISPs.

Anyone want to make some mass commitment to get Bell to add a clause prohibiting their participation in this? (whether or not this particular bill goes through) Perhaps we could all threaten to switch ISPs, or reduce our grade of service to one which gives them lower margins.

</comment><comment><USER13> Canadian bill to crack down on illegal downloads has VPN providers excited

Sounds _much_ nicer already.

<comment><USER14> See, y'gotta always look on the bright side.

Canadians can sell us Americans their cheap prescription drugs, and we can sell them VPN services to, uh, negotiate the complexities of their new downloading legislation.

The system works!

<comment><USER15> Actually, we already are several canadians who use such services to either watch amazon prime, hulu or the US version of netflicks.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the most popular ones aren't full VPNs but simply DNS servers that redirect key services to proxies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is an "illegal download"?

<comment><USER17> A download that someone with lots of money doesn't want you doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> With PM Harper and his goons you know that the nicer the Conservatives try to make it sound the worse it is, just like the Fair Elections Act bill.</comment>


Trump's FCC Launches Attack on Net Neutrality Transparency Rules - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/it-begins-trumps-fcc-launches-attack-on-net-neutrality-transparency-rules <comment><USER2> >As a result of Thursday's action, "thousands" of small and medium-sized internet service providers (ISPs) around the country are no longer required to give their customers detailed information about broadband prices, speeds and fees, according to the FCC.

This seems regrettable, but what do this have to do with net neutrality? Isn't the point of net neutrality that all consumers of bandwidth should have equal access to the internet, and they should not have to pay more for access to any particular part of it? The article's title seems inaccurate, at no point do they explain what this new lack of transparency actually has to do with net neutrality.</comment>


Cinemagr.am - create and share animated gifs with your iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://cinemagr.am/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the slickest apps I've seen lately. (No affiliation.)</comment>


Don't know what you've got till it's gone - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/dont-know-what.html <comment><USER2> I'm actually pretty upset about Sandy/Stikkit. I hope Twitter decides to relaunch the service, instead of just killing it (which is what I'm expecting them to do).

If not, I'd like to see the source released so someone can spice it up and relaunch a new service.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...but if it's a free service with no revenue model and you tell everyone about it, doesn't that speed its demise by increasing costs?

<comment><USER4> But then if they have a large user base that really cares for the service, it should not be that hard to monetize it. People might even be willing to pay for the service than to see it shut down.

<comment><USER3> Monetizing a large user base is proving to be more difficult than some had assumed.

<comment><USER5> You do need to actually ask for money, or put a price on it. Until then, the difficulty of monetizing is largely undefined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "They paved paradise.com; put up a parking page" :(

</comment><comment><USER7> I feel worse for the users of stikipad.com. There were paying users and the service just shut down without notice. People didn't even get a chance to transfer their data.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this speaks to the power of online reviews and the confidence they can build, online you can do things that would make you feel like a "shill" in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why would Twitter buy the company then shutdown its services? I assume iwantsandy.com was a paid service?

<comment><USER10> it was a free service</comment></comment>


Brilliant: Lord Christopher Monckton (if you follow the global warming debate) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2zaPCYgovg&feature=PlayList&p=BC2D71C7AB28A6C8&index=0&playnext=1 <comment><USER2> Oh god, what a waste. This is basically some old toff having a whinge. He's trying to turn the debate on global warming into a political football — for example he ignored the core issues to start banging on about lefties, atheists and how Al Gore won't talk to him. Boo hoo.

As soon as he takes a break from his rather childish needling, the first thing he talks about is the Medieval Warm Period. Ugh. I agree with him on one point, people should do their own research. In particular people should investigate the MWP and do so in broad context i.e. look at the temperatures over a longer period of time and particularly in comparison to recent years.</comment>


Google's decision to abandon Caps Lock. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2277926/ <comment><USER2> A coworker has one of these and the missing caps lock was one of the very first things I noticed, and good riddance indeed.

It's too bad Google didn't go the extra step and put the control key back where it was before IBM did the swap.

</comment><comment><USER3> I repurpose the capslock with autohotkey on start up. I accidentally hit it too often on my laptop. Funny thing is that I'm typing this on a Maylong and it is even quirkier with caps than the iPad.</comment>


Ask HN: Requirements-Based Project Management - <AUTHOR>

My company has used quite a few project management tools over the years, but none of them have fully satisfied us. Currently we're on JIRA which is great for tracking at the task and issue level, but we feel that it doesn't have great support for managing documentation and application requirements.
Our vision for a PM tool is based around writing requirements and documentation first, then generating tasks based on creation of or editing those requirements. A requirements list might look like:

    Business
    |-Orders allowed only from 8AM-5PM
    |-Order minimum is $5
    |-...
    UI
    |-All tables have an 'Export' button
    Etc
 Each requirement is a first-class item that can be modified, can have comments attached, etc. When changing a requirement, you can generate a task that is inserted into a backlog or sprint for a developer to work on. The requirements document would be version controlled along with the tasks that are generated for each requirement or change, so you can view requirements of a previous release. You would also be able to diff the requirements between versions to see changes between each and the tasks completed for those changes. Bugs could be filed against a requirement that is not working as intended.
The benefit we see is that your documentation is directly tied to your project management. Before a work task is generated, a requirement must be written in the documentation so it forces the documentation to be written (which is usually so rarely/poorly done). A lot of PM tools can integrate with Wikis, but it always feels like an after-thought and the wiki inevitably rots in many projects as effort isn't put forth to maintain it.
So, do any tools exist that do what we're searching for? We're not opposed to writing one ourselves, but obviously we'd like to save time and money by adopting an existing tool. Would anyone else be interested in using a tool like this? What issues or problems do you see with it? <comment><USER2> I actually had a very similar idea that I never really implemented but documented it in my notes a while back. Basically, it will revolve around "Deliverables" or "Requirements" and everything will be tied to it whether an enhancement, a bug, issue etc. This way, all you need to do is roll up all your "deliverables" and you know where you are in the project in terms of timelines, issues,risks etc.

JIRA is an awesome tool to manage issues/bugs (I use it extensively at work) but like you said, it is hard to keep track of a particular requirement/deliverable against the JIRAs. When I say keep track, I mean the ever changing requirements, customer priorities, new risks/issues that could hinder the progress, audit history etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried just using Jira for this as well?

* "First-class item" => Make a custom work-item type for "Requirement"

* "have comments attached" => Jira comments

* "Generate a task/see tasks completed" => Add items as sub-tasks

* "Version control" => Jira history tab

* "Bugs filed against req" => New issue, link to Requirement

Confluence also has pretty good integration with Jira if you want to write longer/formal documents - you can link to Jira items and the wiki page will update the status of the item automatically.

<comment><AUTHOR> We considered doing something like that briefly, but decided against it since it wouldn't be easy to get an organized list of the current requirements. With some of our more zealous clients, business rules might have modifications every week. With that amount of changes going through, I could see Jira getting unwieldy.

If you had to change a requirement, would you create a new one delete the old requirement or update the existing one? If there is a complex system with a couple hundred requirements, how would you organize them? Nested "folders" would be our ideal choice, but I think that we would just have to stick to some kind of label system in Jira.

I don't think it's a bad idea, but for me it doesn't feel like the requirement is driving the project management. By convention it certainly could be, but I don't like having to rely on people following the convention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have also needed a tool like this when doing acceptance tests. We had acceptance tests that needed to be traced back to requirements. A QA guy used an XML document to write all the requirements and tests and then wrote a Python script to generate HTML that presented the requirements, tests, and traceability. Obviously, this is not interactive; it's basically a static site generator for a specific domain. Not ideal.

</comment><comment><USER5> I always thought having messaging(email) tied to the documentation would be nice to so the reasoning behind decision could be documented.</comment>


Should Programmers Also Provide Customer Support? Eight Tips We Learned. - <AUTHOR> http://www.getdonedone.com/programmers-also-provide-customer-support/ <comment><USER2> My job tried that the first few years I worked there and it was a nightmare. Yes, as a developer I knew the software better than anyone else and could provide quick and effective support, but it was detrimental to my coding. For example I'd be in the middle of thinking through a process and get a phone call and the call would completely take me out of the mindset of the problem at hand, since I'd have to focus on the customer. After that it would take many minutes of reading through code or looking at diagrams to get back into the mindset of the problem, what happens then if I get another call; the process starts over again. In addition to the time spent on the phone, many calls can easily be an additional 15 minute time sink.

I wasn't the only developer who felt this way and after enough complaints from almost every developer they changed the policy to have support and development separate (with the developers being available to help with support problems, but only after support attempts the problem first). I don't see any reason to ever disrupt development for a trivial problem, there are better hires for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, I like immediate responses from a support person who can run issues by a developer if necessary. Developers shouldn't have to spend any time walking a user through logging in, helping explain how to import data, etc.

I don't see support as a valuable use of developer time, and I don't think that developers should patch code on the fly in response to a single support ticket.

I also worry that what might be a well-meaning response with a few technical details can come off as very condescending.

If you're a small team and you don't have a dedicated client coordinator or support person then of course your developers are also support -- you don't have any options. If you do have options it's best to have someone between the customer and the developer. If for no other reason than to screen common/simple issues and ensure a timely, polite response.

<comment><USER4> > Developers shouldn't have to spend any time walking a user through logging > in, helping explain how to import data, etc.

I actually find that spending such time is one of the few effective ways to reliably show developers where their user experience is poor.

If your users keep asking the same question, it's not their fault -- it's a problem with the software, and developers need to be the ones to fix it.

<comment><USER5> Bug reports do that just fine though. I don't need to physically run the person through the login process, a report or series of bug reports can clue me in just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If programmers ever do provide customer support, I think they should probably never be expected to do both during the same time period, and possibly not even the same work day.

The economic benefits of specialization are such that even if developers can provide awesome support, they should be doing the job they are best at-- software development--as much as possible, and the support should be handled by a person better at support than software development. The workload might not balance out perfectly such that each person does exclusively one job, but there is no way in hell you should be attempting to handle customer support without at least one customer support specialist.

Let the developers support that person if necessary, but be aware that pre- empting them with support-task interruptions will send your regularly scheduled development to Hell with all the losses from context switching.

And do you really want to pay developer rates for customer support work while constantly giving your employees work completely unrelated to their self-image or career growth? It's fine for them to be _involved_ with support, but they cannot be _responsible_ for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> My previous job required quite a bit of customer support at the beginning, which tapered down to almost none at the end (out of necessity). I just couldn't get my development done.

It was almost always hosting type help, and development slowing down was a huge issue.

I learned a lot, but primary that I'm not interested in doing that kind of support at all. I'll simply turn down jobs that require it of me, and it's something I ask in interviews. Some personnel support is fine, and working with the UX department doing testing is welcome (and encouraged on my part), but answering calls to help people set up their outlook or helping them reset their password? No way. Not my cup of tea.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found doing tech support for my software to be a very valuable experience. It wasn't nearly as disruptive to my coding process as some of my brethren seem to find it; perhaps because when I'm puzzling out a thorny issue, I tend to take copious notes--and let the phone go to voice mail if I think I'm on the verge of a breakthrough. And being the first person to speak to the users who have issues, you can very quickly sort out the user-education issues from the UI/UX problems.

It was also always good for a smile when a caller would ask if I was familiar with the system. I was, I would say, reasonably familiar with it. Then they'd start explaining to me how it was supposed to work. I let them, because hearing their interpretation of the system narrative gave me valuable insight into how my users' minds approached the problems that my software was intended to solve.

I also wrote my own User Guides, reference manuals, and training material. Who had better understanding of the system than I did?

</comment><comment><USER8> After mentioning the usual "Betteridge's Law" implications, my answer is "if they do, then the company should account for the time it takes and set release dates and such appropriately." Support is not something that can be just added to responsibilities without consequences.

<comment><USER5> I agree entirely. If I were forced to do support calls 6 hours a day, I'd rather not be expected to make those 6 hours up developing off hours. Especially to meet deadlines that don't take the support into account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Depends on the company size.

For our startup, the answer is a resounding yes. As a matter of fact, extend beyond customer support -- go to Sales, Marketing, and whatever other departments matter. Not permanently, but enough to get familiar with that aspect of a business.

It goes to being well-rounded, and I find too many developers who simply aren't. Show me somebody who wants to stay in their own world and doesn't care to understand the other components of the business, and I'll usually show them the door.

</comment><comment><USER10> I worked for a small software company that had a good system. Programmers, especially customer-facing consultant programmers, rotated through the support group for... I think 9 month stints. (it's been awhile). It was great experience to see real-world uses and issues. I think it stopped after we were bought by a much larger software company.

<comment><USER5> This seems more reasonable. I probably still wouldn't take said job, but certainly more likely to do so than if I were expected to Develop and meet timelines without taking support into effect (not the case at my last job - which was odd because I wash hourly).</comment></comment>


How to Implement a Tree in Ember.js - <AUTHOR> http://billysbilling.com/blog/How-to-implement-a-tree-in-Ember-js Representing data structures such as trees is really simple with Ember.js. I'll show you how to do it in about 50 lines of code. We will use the experimental {{control}} Handlebars helper. <comment><USER2> Very nice... It's good to see that complex UI components can be handled so elegantly in ember.js!</comment>


How to hire well: check code samples and references - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/how-to-hire-well-check-code-samples-and-refer

<comment><USER2> I may be out of line, but I don't think this article has made me any smarter. Do we really need to reiterate that you need to check references and code to hire well?

I'm not by any means trying to insult the writer, just the relevance of it.</comment>


I traveled to Iran as a solo woman; & here are myths that I found need debunking - <AUTHOR> http://matadornetwork.com/life/traveled-iran-solo-woman-myths-found-seriously-need-debunking/ <comment><USER2> I'd imagine the situation for the average Muslim (or at least nominal Muslim) and foreign travellers that toe the line would be somewhat similar to the experience in the German Democratic Republic.

I suspect the situation is rather different for, say, gay people, atheists, Baha'i or, given the subject at hand, women in more tribal areas.</comment>


Why Apple doesn't sell to the enterprise market - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2007/08/09/stuck-on-the-enterprise via Raganwald's submission on Programming Reddit <comment><USER2> Another consideration is the availability of software. There aren't _that_ many things the average home user does on the computer -- word processing, web browsing, music, digital photography -- and all of those needs are served quite well on the Mac platform right now.

In the enterprise, sure, everybody does word processing, web browsing, etc., but beyond that, all bets are off. When I worked in a banking environment, I supported dozens of business-critical Windows apps, from third-party market data software to nasty, internally-hacked-together VB apps. Abandoning those apps wasn't even close to being an option. Even all the web apps in that environment worked only in IE on Windows. Any other enterprise of significant size is almost guaranteed to have dozens of critical apps of its own. I suppose if you _really_ wanted to get a Mac into such an environment, you could access the Windows apps over Citrix or something, but that'd be a pain.

Even if app support wasn't an issue, most enterprises are already quite tied into the Microsoft stack -- Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint -- which makes supporting Macs even as a secondary platform challenging at best.

And even if you consider that surmountable, it's still no wonder that Apple is more interested in home users -- they are (if you'll pardon the expression) the low-hanging fruit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe the reason is that the enterprise market is downstream. They're not the trendsetters. If you get all the individual users using Macs, eventually big cos will have to switch. Just as happened with desktop computers, in fact.

So maybe Apple ignores this market because they know they'll get it automatically (but only when) they're the default for individual users.

<comment><USER4> >but only when

Easy answer. When they allow OS X to run on regular x86 hardware. Unfortunately they seem to think they're tied to the hardware business when their software is really impressive.

<comment><USER5> Apple seems to enjoy a reputation of making stuff that "just works." They are probably not prepared to guarantee that OS X will "just work" on anything but Apple hardware, and don't want to risk damaging that reputation.

<comment><USER4> If it's based on FreeBSD then I'm am very sure that there are drivers for most, if not all, of the hardware that a typical PC user runs. If not, the Linux drivers shouldn't be a complete pain in the ass to port?

<comment><USER5> I suspect you're right, but the issue is not how much of a pain they would be to port, it's how much of a pain they would be to support and what would happen to the typical end-user experience.

For example, I've never _not_ been able to install Linux or Windows on an x86 machine, assuming the hardware actually works, but it's rare when two installations on different sets of hardware turn out exactly the same. An obvious example would be on windows, go to Control Panel:Display:Settings:Advanced and you get a whole bunch of options that are specific to your actual video card and monitor. A less obvious example would be an intermittently crashing program, because there is a bug related to memory addressing in the firmware of the motherboard.

The result is less consistency in the use of a Windows or Linux machine. By sticking with their own hardware, Apple can better establish a reputation for consistently satisfying their target audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "To the extent that Apple products have actually infiltrated big businesses, it's been through small groups of enthusiasts--the canonical example being the art department that somehow manages to get themselves Macs"

It's not just the art department anymore, it's now the software engineering department now too. (I'm talking large 10,000+ employee corporations.) This is mainly due to OS X's BSD upbringing. Deployment and general development on Windows is just a bitch when your production servers are nix based. Besides why have a Windows box when Macs themselves can run both Windows and MS Office easily (not to mention IWork is now a viable alternative).

<comment><USER7> iWork08 is nice isn't it? I've been using it for a week or so and I'll probably buy it. NeoOffice has done ok but it's time for something a bit nicer.

<comment><USER4> A bit nicer? iWork08 blows everything out of the friggin water :D

<comment><USER7> Ok, I was trying to be nice to the poor NeoOffice guys. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Luckily PC snobbery has been on a steep decline for some time now.

Intel/MS people still love to deride osx/apple market share, missing the point entirely.

Does BMW try to be the Ford Taurus of the automobile market? No, that would of course be ridiculous. /end speaking to the choir =)/

</comment><comment><USER9> Because none of the leading-edge engineering design tools will work on the mac.</comment>


Email is like Tetris: you lose eventually - <AUTHOR> http://www.crackunit.com/2009/01/11/email-is-like-tetris-you-lose-eventually/ <comment><USER2> I have an as-yet-unproven hypothesis about email equilibrium: that we eventually settle into the right rhythm with emails such that we just barely get through the last email every day, with our last fading bit of energy before falling into bed with exhaustion.

Here's the thinking: 1\. There are too many emails to start with. 2\. We try hard to keep up; fail. 3\. The emailers who don't get consistent replies eventually get the message or look elsewhere for answers/action and stop emailing as often or at all. 4\. The volume of emails reduces towards the level at which we can keep up. 5\. If/when it overshoots, and we start to really get on top of our emails, we have more energy and time and start writing more intelligent replies, or indeed initiating more email threads, thus generating more replies back to us. 6\. So we converge on a certain email equilibrium, with lack of replies correcting for when we've got too many emails, and the instigation of replies from others correcting on the low side when we've got too few.

So why doesn't email equilibrium last? Because, alas, we get burnt out running at optimum speed. A day comes along when we just get tired, say screw it, I'll take a day off, and then we fall off the hampster wheel, and the emails pile up again. If only we could just keep up, then we would indeed keep up!

</comment><comment><USER3> No, you _can_ win e-mail tetris without cheating.

You must decide for yourself which action your e-mails require: Trash, Defer, or Action. GTD gets this right.

If you don't make those decisions as e-mail enters your box, you're effectively saying (while playing tetris) "I'm going to ignore all of the L-shaped blocks and deal with the wreckage they leave behind later." Yeah, you'll lose. You have to make a decision on _every_ piece that drops into your inbox.

Filters can do wonders, if you really do have a huge influx of mail. You don't have to read and respond to every message unless you really want to.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Hacker News consider Elite Daily links as spam? - <AUTHOR>

I tried posting a link to an article titled "The Science of Simplicity: Why Successful People Wear The Same Thing Everyday" from Elite Daily and HN gave me a very harsh message about spam. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _" Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us > questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If > you want to say something to us, please send it to firstname.lastname@example.com."_</comment>


Quora Doesn't Know What a Contract Is - <AUTHOR> https://sneak.berlin/20200210/quora/ <comment><USER2> I'm very disappointed with how Quora turned out. It seemed to be on a strong trajectory a few years ago, but has now devolved into Yahoo Answers 2.0. There are still good answers here and there.

But there are far, far more answers that look like this (with an alarmingly high number of upvotes):

> "I read a study once that said <insert thing> was bad for you. <couple > sentences of possibly made up statistics>. Unfortunately, I forgot where I > read it, or I'd post it here, sorry!"

I feel like if it were not one of the Silicon Valley TechBro™ companies, Google would have already de-ranked results from this site to the second page by now.

<comment><USER3> I'm amazed at how many people speak nonsense with seeming authority, with bad or unread or irrelevant sources and credentials that are either fake or maybe just don't mean much. Yahoo Answers was clearly just random people answering your questions. Quora is full of people pretending to be experts giving perniciously wrong answers that sound authoritative. That's far more dangerous, in my opinion. When your girlfriend's friend recommends you a crank cure, or your cousin who was in jail once tells you that you can't sue for damages, you're more skeptical of the claims. When that person calls themselves a doctor, or suggests they're a legal expert, but really they're a poorly trained nutritionist or LEO at best and not true experts, then people get seriously fucked over.

<comment><USER4> Makes me wonder if there's a market for a Quora like site where credentials are manually verified by staff.

<comment><USER5> There are subreddits that are more specific that operate in that market, such as r/askscience and r/askhistorians. In these subreddits, anyone can ask questions, but answers are given by people whose credentials is added as flair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The point of this post is not some legal analysis, simply the common sense > observation that in our society, simply putting some copy up on my webpage > that basically says "if you use my website, you are agreeing to not sue me" > is Not How Any Of This Works.

> A contract is a meeting of the minds. This is decidedly not.

> Saying that anything I do "constitutes acceptance" short of explicitly and > unambiguously agreeing to your contract and terms is foolish and > disrespectful. At the very least, it's shady. I sure hope it's > unenforceable, as well.

I couldn't agree with this more. It applies equally well to shrink wrap software licenses and "social contract" arguments.

<comment><USER7> This is a good place to note that a lot of current cookie disclosure popups state that "by using our site, you agree to our use of cookies".

<comment><AUTHOR> It is up to the browser whether or not to store the cookies sent by the server, and up to the browser to send those same cookies with subsequent requests or not. By choosing a tool that does that, the user has explicitly opted in to that. The dialog is superfluous.

My browser, for example, is configured to ignore all cookie headers sent from the server. Those dialogs appear just the same!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "Hello, friend. (I'm quite sorry for the interruption—the non-modal popups > didn't fit enough text.)"

I was reading your post when suddenly that bullshit popped right into my face, in the middle of a sentence. How on earth can you think it´s a good idea to interrupt my thoughts process in this actively-aggressive way? You pissed me off, I am out and I won't come back.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry if the popup offended you. It's possible to block such things by using a browser extension such as uBlock Origin, which will allow you to black or greylist 3p requests to services such as Mailchimp that provide that modal.

I urge you to consider the alternatives though. Publishing today happens via a very small number of heavily censored services that decide not only what you can say, but who gets to see it, how often, and when.

Millions seem unfazed that a tiny handful of people decide what they are allowed to read.

Aggressively requesting direct contact information from my audience is one of the few remaining censorship-free ways of communicating with people. I don't like popups either, but sometimes it is necessary to yell a bit to get people's attention.

I vastly prefer slightly annoying people (exactly once, see below) to having the only push-based method of communication being censored and surveilled systems like most modern centralized social media. I'm sorry it upset you. There just aren't any other great options that I know of to ensure that people who want to receive push-based communications from me always can in the future. RSS usage died some years ago and the only remaining feeds people look at are their email inbox and censored algorithmic "timelines" (which are anything but).

In any case, it attempts to set a cookie on your device, so you should never receive it again in that browser for any page on my site. If you are anything like me, you might wish to browse with uBlock greylisting all third party resources on all sites. It works a charm for de-annoying the web when all you want to do is read.

<comment><USER9> I don't think the problem here is centralisation or censorship. The problem is simply that people don't like shit-letter popups and not all content has to be push-based.

<comment><AUTHOR> Without push, you won't reach very much of your audience unless you are hyper- mega-famous. I am not and have no wish to be.

I don't like popups either, but you don't get emails very well otherwise.

Ugly high-contrast pancake buttons convert better than slick, elegant ones too. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quora was a very good site when the userbase was small. All the content was very high quality, and I learnt a lot of stuff reading it back then. Now that quora has a very large number of users, it resembles the real world more closely, as in the average quality of content is very low. I am wondering whether there are websites which manage to retain high quality discussions even with a huge user base (HN certainly is one, but I think HN has way less users than quora, and HN is geared specifically towards certain people looking for intellectual excitement).

<comment><USER11> StackExchange manages to do this, and it's not just the developers of StackOverflow, it's also all the other communities. Set a proper model and see good information flow.

<comment><USER12> Most of StackExchange is good. The Skeptics site is ironically full of troll posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This has nothing to do with Quora and is standard practice for _terms of service_ for all major websites.

While it's on shaky foundations right now, the slowly building wave of website consent management platforms due to data/privacy regulations will make these agreements much more solid since you will be actively consenting to them.

<comment><USER9> The majority of consent management solutions are absolutely not compliant with the law they're supposed to help you comply with.

<comment><USER13> Sure, we published a study about all the complications but regardless there's more upfront agreements now than the use-it-therefore-you-agree terms before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like the author doesn't know what a contract is either - it's something that requires consideration, which is clearly lacking when using a website.

Contracts, licenses, and terms of service are all completely different things.

<comment><USER15> Using a website would certainly constitute consideration in a legal sense. Assuming there's some value to the content of the website then that's consideration.

I still agree with the author that posting something in public and then saying you've agreed to a contract by looking at it is not good policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why push the website usage as a middleman? Why not just say "If you are able to read this email, you can't ever sue us." /s

</comment><comment><USER17> This all started in the US with Judge Easterbrook in ProCD. [https://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/procd.html](https://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/procd.html)

The basic gist of Easterbrook's argument is that in everyday life it is common to buy now and find out the terms later, and under the law and the UCC the sequence of money and accepting terms don't matter.

While the case has been stretched to the limit, and lots of research shows that users aren't reading the terms of service, the practice and the law in the US has only strengthened.

</comment><comment><USER18> IANAL, but that arbitration clause doesn't sound remotely enforceable to me. Regardless, that they put it in there is more than good enough reason to not use the site.

<comment><USER19> Why are you using HN then, when its terms include a similar arbitration agreement?

> You agree that any and all disputes or claims that have arisen or may arise > between you and Y Combinator, whether arising out of or relating to this > Terms of Use (including any alleged breach thereof), the Site, any > advertising, any aspect of the relationship or transactions between us, > shall be resolved exclusively through final and binding arbitration, rather > than a court, in accordance with the terms of this Arbitration Agreement, > except that you may assert individual claims in small claims court, if your > claims qualify.

> YOU AND Y COMBINATOR AGREE THAT EACH OF US MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE > OTHER ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN > ANY PURPORTED CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION OR PROCEEDING. UNLESS BOTH YOU > AND Y COMBINATOR AGREE OTHERWISE, THE ARBITRATOR MAY NOT CONSOLIDATE OR JOIN > MORE THAN ONE PERSON'S OR PARTY'S CLAIMS AND MAY NOT OTHERWISE PRESIDE OVER > ANY FORM OF A CONSOLIDATED, REPRESENTATIVE, OR CLASS PROCEEDING. ALSO, THE > ARBITRATOR MAY AWARD RELIEF (INCLUDING MONETARY, INJUNCTIVE, AND DECLARATORY > RELIEF) ONLY IN FAVOR OF THE INDIVIDUAL PARTY SEEKING RELIEF AND ONLY TO THE > EXTENT NECESSARY TO PROVIDE RELIEF NECESSITATED BY THAT PARTY'S INDIVIDUAL > CLAIM(S).

HN doesn't even offer the ability to opt out of arbitration, so it's even worse than Quora in this aspect.

<comment><USER20> For myself, and where I am, I know this clause to be non-binding. And it in fact invalidates the entire agreement because it tries to enforce something that is not considered to be legal (forced arbitration). (Some places may only invalidate that particular section, however the precedent here is an invalidation of the entire contract).

I don't really have any interest in going down that particular road, but that's one of the hiccups these sorts of contracts hit when faced with real world legalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't disagree with the sentiment of the post, but unfortunately this has been the norm for web service terms for a very long time. As far as I can see, there's nothing unusual in what Quora specifically is doing here.

Even HN's privacy policy and terms include both an arbitration agreement and phrases very similar to the ones he's complaining about, like:

> By using the Service, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy > Policy.

> Your continued use of the Site after the date any such changes become > effective constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms of Use.

<comment><USER21> This isn't unique to Quora and somewhat unfairly picks on them.

However, just because it is common doesn't mean it isn't utterly ridiculous and unenforceable.

<comment><AUTHOR> The practice is bullshit. They are performing the practice. Therefore, they are choosing to engage in bullshit and picking on them isn't unfair.

"Everyone's doing it" is not a legitimate defense to well-reasoned criticism.

<comment><USER21> It is unfair insofar as they are not unique examples of it.

Otherwise, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a person who has seen Quora evolve over the years, I am truly surprised that it's respected even nearly as much as it is. By all accounts it's a glorified content mill that is the slightly smarter consumer's answer to Yahoo Answers, fielding such important questions as "how is babby(sic) formed?"

This is an honest question— how many HN users are relying on Quora as a viable alternative to something like a Wikipedia search when researching? I've nearly never found that a Quora answer was sufficient to answer my question. I'll admit that in terms of SEO they've got things figured out; they always appear near the top of DuckDuckGo searches, but as far as real content goes, they leave a lot to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER23> This does seem quite sneaky for terms of service on essentially a QnA website. Lately, the Quora results that show up for me in search have been very ad- like. It's as if a team of accounts are trying to direct traffic toward their own individual websites or businesses. It amkes Quora very spammy. Not a fan.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm going to quote myself from 2012 [1]:

> I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign > that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is > Silicon Valley seemed to think it is ...

This being about the forced login requirement. I said then and stand by it now that there is limited upside in Q&A sites.

We saw this with ExpertSexChange years before. At first some quality content but ultimately the only growth is from low-value content, SEO, dark UX patterns (eg hiding answers, requiring logins, putting answers after a long set of ads) all for something that just isn't that special.

Stackoverflow did an admirable job of organizing technical answers but ultimately Google remains their primary source of traffic (~90% was the last figure I heard) and by publishing their answers with a Creative Commons License (a move I applaud) they've insured the community against a later management change that would otherwise decide to enact those same dark patterns as the only viable growth path.

And yes I know there's Stack Exchange but none of those sites has hit similar success to SO.

As for this post about Quora's attempt to force binding individual arbitration on users, the first comment I have is of course I'm not surprised. The second is that IANAL but this this isn't a contract, it's an updated Terms of Service. That being said, I'm pretty sure this isn't necessarily legal in all (any?) North American jurisdictions and even where that question is unknown it probably just hasn't been tested in court yet.

I was going to say that Quora is based in California and CA has generally been pretty user-friendly here but that may not exactly be true. A couple of things I found:

\- California law (specifically the California Arbitration Act or CAA) may be preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA"). There's a pending case in Federal Court where a stay has been issued against CAA pending that trial. It's not clear to me (being NAL) if this is specific to certain areas (eg employment, construction) or general and whether it applies to updated ToS;

\- A California court upheld an arbitration clause in clickwrap ToS on an app as of October 2019 [2]

My main takeaway however is I don't care about Quora, I've never cared about Quora, I don't understand why anyone cares about Quora, I've never posted to Quora and I've never understood why anyone else posted or continues to post to Quora so this has net zero effect on me.

Quora wasn't (IMHO) relevant in 2012 and is less relevant now. These are the moves of a company in its death throes. Ok, bye.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377904)

[2]: [https://www.natlawreview.com/article/court-enforces- arbitrat...](https://www.natlawreview.com/article/court-enforces-arbitration- clause-clickwrap-agreement-ganjapreneur-app)</comment>


NoSQL and RDBMS (how to make a decision) - <AUTHOR>

Using the right tool for the job is the best advice I have heard on this subject but how do you know what the right tool is if you dont have years of hard won experience?  What type of information do you need to know to make an informed decision?   Lets have a discussion that will be relevant to 2012 problems and available technologies, but lets also discuss history so that there is an understanding of how we got here. <comment><AUTHOR> I guess it really is just news here, in case you want to have a discussion that might help people, lets discuss over here: <http://branch.com/b/nosql-vs- rdbms-how-to-decide> as long as you are willing to keep it constructive, you are invited.</comment>


Did LinkedIn just do a small rebranding? Blue is gone - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/ <comment><USER2> Like [https://www.reddit.com/](https://www.reddit.com/) they made their logo (temporarily?) black and probably related to [https://blog.linkedin.com/2020/may/june/16/Working- Together-...](https://blog.linkedin.com/2020/may/june/16/Working-Together-to- Create-a-Just-and-Equitable-Future)</comment>


Show HN: Search engine for 20,000+ machine learning models - <AUTHOR> https://modeldepot.io/search <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! As part of running ModelDepot, I get a ton of requests for models that might solve a specific problem. Unfortunately the current volume of curated ML models on ModelDepot wasn't nearly enough so I thought if there was a better way to discover the ones that already exist out there, that could go a long way and help people use ML even easier (and hopefully lower the amount of 2am chats that are asking for a specific model haha).

I've spent the last month learning how to build a search engine from nothing, and had a lot of fun creating various ML pipelines and tuning Elasticsearch to surface good results on everything :)

I'd love to hear any feedback you guys have on different search patterns it's missing, genre of models it hasn't indexed yet, weird result rankings, or anything else in general! I'm also always free to chat via the in-site chat as well :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Yes! I've been waiting for this

</comment><comment><USER3> This is excellent. Just signed up for community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome :D Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what are the criteria for aggregating your models?

<comment><AUTHOR> It starts off with a set of searches on Github like Tensorflow, ICCV, etc. and then from there it classifies repos as ML related or not, and then continues to crawl referenced repos from the ones that are ML related. Would love to hear if you know of any other interesting sources :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> this is pretty hypergrowth :D</comment>


DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01724 <comment><USER2> > DeepStack becomes the first computer program to beat professional poker > players in heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em

Whether any others have been made before now is anyone's guess. Botting is a known problem in online poker. If there's a golden goose out there, I'm sure it's being kept under wraps.

<comment><USER3> You can collude multiple bots or perform other tasks which could make the botting problem in Texas Holdem not equivalent to the same achievement that they present in the paper.

<comment><USER4> I believe the primary botting "problem" is not rule breaking activity like collusion but the farming of lower-skill players at lower limits than a professional would be willing to play at. A bot will happily rake in a 1x big- blind/hour advantage that a comparably skilled human would consider a complete waste of time. It's my understanding that the real state of the art here is not in the play algorithms (existing bots are more than good enough to beat weaker players) but in avoiding detection by both human and automated monitors.

<comment><USER5> Correct. When I last played for income in 2012, the site I played on had 1-2 bots at virtually every table from the $10 buyin cash games all the way up to the $200 buyin games. Around the time I stopped playing it came out that there was a botting ring that had been winning at $1000 buyin games for some time.

Most of their income does come from the weaker players at the table, but many of these bots were good enough to breakeven or do slightly better against the pros at the table too.

<comment><USER6> Most these bots are likely using standard well established techniques.

Strategic play, card counting, etc. A handful of heuristics make you an above average player and will get you thrown out of a casino. They'd be trivial to program.

I guess all that is _novel_ here is a bot learned these techniques on its own.

<comment><USER7> With all due respect, do you have any idea what you're talking about? This is poker, not blackjack. Card counting is useless and there's no strategy that will get you thrown out of a casino because it's not the casino's money you're playing for.

I'm not sure what sort of "standard well-established techniques" that "would be trivial to program" you're talking about. Optimal play in no-limit hold'em is a tremendously complicated mixed strategy with a massive decision tree. To make things even more interesting, in almost any given situation there will be multiple "correct" plays that, to avoid being exploitable, should each be made some percentage of the time at random.

This AI is novel because it achieved a result that (as far as anybody knows) has never been achieved before, not because it figured out how to do something on its own.

<comment><USER8> I think it's pretty clear he either legitimately thinks this is about blackjack or is completely clueless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be fair, none of the so called pros are considered big names in today's no limit heads-up games. They should probably challenge ppl like WCGRider, Jungleman etc. next.

On another point, CMU just can't seem to catch a break, their thunder continuously being stolen by UofAlberta in poker research, first in limit, now no limit. UofA clearly tried to publish this before the CMU poker challenge that's supposed to begin soon.

To read more about the CMU challenge [http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/january/poker-...](http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/january/poker- pros-vs-AI.html)

<comment><USER10> Doug Polk is WCGRider.

<comment><USER11> Doug Polk is not one of the professionals who was part of this study. The list is in Table 1 of the paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The players they recruited were incentivized by a $8,000 prize pool up for grabs among the 34 of them...average $EV $235. They have to play 3000 hands to get a shot at that money, which is probably around 10 hours of multitabling. So that's ~$24/hr in expectation.

And then of course you don't get anything unless you're one of the top three winners against the bot, so there's likely nothing to be gained from grinding out a marginal victory. You should just go ahead and play kinda stupid/aggro and hope you win some of the big flips and whatnot. There's literally nothing at stake for you except time value, so you might as well flame out early and then quit or run up a big stake to give yourself a shot at top 3.

Basically, the study design ensures the bot faces off against weak players playing in a way that would be sub-optimal in any other situation. Not surprised the bot won by a decent margin, nor that they are trying to spin this real hard in advance of the CMU poker bot matchup next week, which will be much more rigorous.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think I can wrap my head around neural nets being superior at games with perfect information like chess or go. But how would you teach bluffing and randomness to a neural net?

<comment><USER14> I imagine it's mostly just playing the percentages. Bet when it has a high percentage of winning, fold when it doesn't. It doesn't need to read its opponents if it can play the percentages perfectly.

<comment><USER15> This is true for Limit Hold'em, but very much not true for No Limit. Limit Hold'em is a solved game, because as long as you're playing the odds, you can play perfectly. No Limit changes things because the bets can vary wildly. If you play a tight game (just play the odds), and opponent will get out whenever you're in, and will bluff just to see if you call or fold.

Bluffing is a major component in No Limit, and there are very different profitable playing strategies.

<comment><USER16> I fell to this when I randomly decided to play some limit hold'em one night. Kept losing to a guy that chased every chance at odds he could, because I couldn't make bets big enough to scare him out. Lesson learned!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love it, research that pays for itself :-) I think of poker and other card games as imperfect but predictable information. So while you don't know what cards the other players have you can certainly estimate the likelyhood of what they have and prune your choices that way. Think single deck card counting in Blackjack.

</comment><comment><USER18> the fact that they used hearts and spades instead of number for affilition is just lovely.

</comment><comment><USER19> most people (including here on HN) are complete n00bs when it comes to understanding how poker is played and how computers can play it, so just to straighten y'all out at the git-go here:

computers are _better_ at bluffing and randomness than humans are. Bluffing is an important optimizing strategy in playing poker well, and it entails tracking the expected value of a pot (which includes cost expectations, don't forget) and it entails randomness, necessary to obfuscate patterns of betting that could give away evidence of your bluffing strategy. Like chess and go, we may not be "there" yet with computers, but n00bs need to understand the theory.

What computers _can 't_ do is read "tells", so if you are a master poker player via tells (whether it's unconscious or conscious thinking on your part) then you will beat other humans better than a computer will; but, by the same token, the computer will not give you tells to read nor be fooled by your fake tells. I think the mistake in thinking newbies (even highly experienced ones) make is mixing together "the psychology" of the game with the mathematics of the game.

So to give an oversimplified concrete example of a poker bluffing strategy (inspired by Nesmith Ankeny's book), if odds of you drawing one of the cards you need to win a showdown are 1 out of 4 but the expected payoff is 20x then you not only need to stay in purely on expected value, but it is also an optimal time to bluff if you don't get your card. It is informationally better to have a bluffing strategy that masquerades as an "I have good cards" strategy _and gives random information after the showdown_ rather than "bluffing" being something you do sheerly when you have shit cards. And to enforce a _random_ strategy on yourself, he recommends using a system of the cards in your hand as the random number generator to tell you whether to bluff or not: as you can see, his strategy designed for human players is more perfectly implemented by a computer.

<comment><USER20> No - If the only thing computers couldn't beat humans at was reading tells, they'd win online poker.

But they don't yet do that: this paper is about beating humans at heads up, which is a much more limited domain than a full table.

If you want to learn about why to bluff I'd recommend reading about using game theory to solve Kuhn poker.

<comment><USER19> online poker has the tremendous flaw that collusion between players is the _most optimum_ strategy, and there is just _noooo way_ to stop it. Collaborating poker-bots who outsource their peppy poker chatter to Bangalore (your feedback is important to them!) will soon be running all the tables if they aren't already. No, they'll never be the champions, because that suboptimal strategy would lead to discovery, but as a giant grist milling farm grinding out profit, seems irresistable.

I did a quick google review of Kuhn poker and I don't see how any of that would not benefit from the understanding I was attempting to convey in my initial post.

<comment><USER21> Collusion is avoided entirely by playing heads up only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Heads-up is solvable by just crunching the known probabilities, so i'm not sure what the achievement is here. Maybe the complexity of work involved to build the program is worthy of merit? Not sure.</comment>


Finding Responsibility by Caleb Thompson - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBdBoWAtLNI <comment><AUTHOR> There's a full transcript of this talk over at [https://calebthompson.io/talks/dont-get- distracted](https://calebthompson.io/talks/dont-get-distracted), and I plan to add some more related content to the blog.</comment>


Statins alert over computer glitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36274791 <comment><AUTHOR> The software is called "Q Risk 2".

This story is similar to the worrying report from EU Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group (EUSPRIG) about spreadsheets in medicine: [http://www.eusprig.org/2006/spreadsheets-in-clinical- medicin...](http://www.eusprig.org/2006/spreadsheets-in-clinical-medicine- warning.pdf)</comment>


Juicero's $400 machine performs no better than juicing with bare hands - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lutHF5HhVA <comment><USER2> The full article is pretty good - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon- valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze)</comment>


Shower think - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious as to what everyone's "shower thought" was today? (Refering to pg's idea that what your mind gravitates to in a routine (morning?) daily task can be a good litmus test as to how you are presently oriented in life)
I submit that you keep it to a simple sentence and that you be brutally honest.
Myself?
I keep gravitating to the hope my submission for this round gets me an interview. <comment><USER3> I was thinking about a girl, but I wish I was thinking about my next startup.

The "shower thought" is a fantastic barometer of what your priorities are at a given moment. I've tried to be conscious of this since I read that essay.

<comment><USER4> Being somewhat late to the party, can you provide the link to this read?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Today's shower think is trying to decide how to mete out my time.

Do I go more on the side of attacking a job search to get a better paying full time job so I can support my wife's immigration or do I take the route of just gettting a part time job (likely easier to procure) and then take it in the gut with regards to extra time (effectively killing a large portion of the time I'm planning on putting into advancing my database.

I want to see more shower think from others. Please post your shower think, even if you've already done it on previous days.

</comment><comment><USER5> This morning, I spent my shower time wondering why I had another episode of a recurring dream where my teeth and lower jaw crumbled and turned to ash when I was flossing. I've had that dream 4 times in the past year, and it's osmething of a puzzle.

I usually spend my shower time trying to figure out what the hell last night's dream meant. I don't believe dreams have any prophetic capacity, but I do think they can offer some sort of psychological insight and aren't totally random.

<comment><USER6> Dreams about tooth problems are common and usually are about lack of confidence (particularly in presentation). Read more: [http://dreammoods.com/cgibin/teethdreams.pl?method=exact&...](http://dreammoods.com/cgibin/teethdreams.pl?method=exact&header=dreamid&search=teethintro)

<comment><USER5> I read that after the first tooth dream and thought it was an interesting metaphor. It might apply in my case (I have a daughter en route), but the waters are a little muddy because I have a love-hate relationship with dentistry and am not sure whether that's what my subconscious is keying on.

Regardless, it's a disturbing dream and it regularly takes up my shower time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Investors and raising capital are the top ideas these days. I also think about how if I could go back in time and change one thing at my startup, it would forcing myself to get a co-founder.

As a solo founder it is already difficult to work on product development and handle business operations. You throw in raising capital to hire four people and your workday in the short-term hits 12+ hours if you want to make any progress.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well today's kind of dominated presently by a dispute last night with my wife.

Wish it wasn't that way. The stress of our baby boy's arrival is showing.

Going to work to get things resolved and moving on.

Any other takers? Feel free to come back each day.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've keep thinking about the design for a solar messager bag for my laptop - <USER2> was looking for one online, but they're all naff. So I've been thinking about how I could just make one myself that I would actually take out in public.

</comment><comment><USER9> After spending the past 3 days in the hospital with IV antibiotics for an unknown cause of a disease, I though "how can I get healthy enough to sustain the stressful workload of a startup."

</comment><comment><USER10> I woke up thinking about The Information and how the African Drums demonstration of "redundancy overcoming ambiguity" might play out in writing and mnemonics.

</comment><comment><USER11> Today I was deciding how I would store/access user settings for an app that I am working on. I need a way to write pseudo code in the shower.

<comment><USER12> get those crayons they make for kids to doodle on the shower wall. Depending on your surface dry erase markers work on some shower surfaces, assuming you have one wall that isn't too fogged up or getting wet (hate for your brilliant psuedo code to start running/bleeding/washing away :P )

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fantasies that someone will "discover" me and write me a check for say $100,000 so I can pay off my debts, quit my job, and spend more time trying to actively develop a means to effectively deliver the information I know about how to get well when doctors claim it cannot be done. And wondering how on earth I would explain such a development at work when I give my 2 weeks notice because I feel like most folks there see me as a "loser" -- my health issues have hurt my performance and few people there have any idea of the dramatic story behind my so-so/ordinary appearance.</comment>