Electricity stored as temperature difference - <AUTHOR> http://www.windpowerengineering.com/featured/business-news-projects/didnt-think-electricity-stored-temperature-difference/

<comment><USER2> Europe has already looked at industrial freezers as batteries.

Take them to -40 when electricity is cheap let them get to -20 during peak.

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/swiss- wareh...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/swiss-warehouse- helps-buffer-the-grid)

<comment><USER3> They call it a "virtual battery" but that seems misleading to me - I don't see any way to get electricity back out, it sounds more like it just saves electricity consumed at peak periods by using, but they couldn't store more than they could use in the first place?

<comment><USER4> One element of using intermittent or variable renewable energy is to take the approach of dispatching demand to meet your available capacity rather than dispatching capacity to meet demand.

Presently, electrical generation relies on base-load power -- plants which run very nearly all the time, typically coal or nuclear -- with "peaking" and matching capabilities -- generation which can be rapidly added or removed, with response times typically measured in minutes (grids can change fairly rapidly, but not _that_ rapidly, and much demand is highly predictable based on weather, human behavior, and other patterns).

Some large power loads can effectively be banked, and heating and cooling loads are key among these. By providing a large thermal storage mass (either hot or cold), it's possible to "bank" energy when there's a surplus, or when generation is low-cost, and draw down that bank when energy's scarce. Other alternatives are running energy-intensive processes which can be cycled either rapidly or predictably as needed. Aluminium smelting (very electrically intensive), hydrogen electrolysis, and other industrial processes are candidates for this. It's also effectively how pumped-storage hydro works.

You may not be getting back electricity directly, but by _offsetting_ a large cooling load, you're shifting demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is essentially the same system as Light Sail Energy:

[http://www.lightsail.com/](http://www.lightsail.com/)

Started by HN's own DaniFong ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DaniFong](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DaniFong)).

<comment><USER4> Yes in that it's utilizing compressed gas for energy storage, but no in that in how they're addressing the issue of adibiatic heating and cooling of gas -- the fact that gasses heat when compressed and cool when expanded -- they're actually using this heat itself as the energy storage mechanism, with argon as the working fluid.

Light Sail's approach harvests the provided heat and cooling, but utilizes those for what is effectively a coordinated heating/cooling service. The heat itself isn't part of the energy storage/recovery process.

Both are interesting approaches to the heating/cooling problem.

If you _don 't_ allow for the heating and cooling, you run the risk of explosions or of excessive thermal loss from your compressed gas. Explosions are possible if you're storing large volumes of gas in underground former natural gas reservoirs -- injecting large volumes of high-temperature N2 + O2 atmospheric gas risks igniting the residual methane. You also have the problem of icing over your recovery apparatus. As a consequence many CAES (compressed air energy storage) designs incorporate a natural gas burner on the exhaust side which both heats the expanding gas and adds additional energy to the process. The resulting systems are a hybrid of natural gas generation plus energy storage.

<comment><USER6> The heat is certainly part of the energy storage in lightsail, if the heat generated by the compression wasn't being stored in water and then fed back in during expansion then that energy would be lost.

Is just that with lightsail it is a minor part of the storage, the majority being pressure. They are two very different solutions that approach two similar but differently structured thermodynamic problems, lightsail's system being high pressure/low temperature, and these folk doing a low pressure/high temperature store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thats actually an impressive efficiency as the maximum theoretical efficiency of this "carnot engine" is 85% at these temperatures.

<comment><USER8> For anyone curious, Carnot efficiency is the maximum efficiency of extracting work from a temperature differential:

Carnot efficiency = 1 - Tc/Th = (Th - Tc)/Th <\- I find the last form easier to remember

Where temperatures are in Kelvin. So in this case 500 C and -160 C are 773 K and 113 K so:

Carnot efficiency = (773 - 113)/773 = 85.4%

It's a handy approximation for the most efficiency that could be expected from other cycles. So for example an internal combustion (Otto cycle) engine running below the temperature of boiling water would have an expected efficiency at room temperature of about 68 F or 20 C or 293 K of:

Carnot efficiency = (373 - 293)/373 = 21.5%

Whereas jet (Brayton cycle) engines may have a temperature differential of 1000 C:

Carnot efficiency = (1293 - 293)/1293 = 77.3%

Things are a bit more complicated than this because with active cooling it's not just the temperature of the engine's components, but the temperature of the exhaust gasses, efficiencies of valves, compressors, turbines, etc. So modern internal combustion engines may reach 25% efficiency and turbines may reach 45% efficiency but I still find the Carnot cycle good for guestimation.

So for example, I remember research in the 90s for making ceramic internal combustion engines lubricated with graphite or exhaust that would run at a higher temperature and have an efficiency closer to jet engines. There were also working Stirling engine cars that would have gotten significantly better mileage because it's more practical to approach the Carnot limit with the Stirling cycle than the Otto cycle:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs)

The main tradeoff is that there hasn't been as much research in high compression Stirling engines so they tend to have a higher volume than internal combustion engines at the same power output. But since Stirling engines have significantly fewer moving parts and use external combustion (meaning they can run on any fuel), I could never quite figure out why they were never mass produced. Perhaps if they had been, we would have seen industrial sized Stirling engines with Argon as the working fluid decades ago.

Then again, before the web and Wikipedia it would have been hard to make these kinds of points at a Thanksgiving dinner table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok, so this makes a lot of sense for renewable sources of energy like wind and solar - production facilities that are distant from bodies of water can store surplus energy during peak production times (windy or sunny days) and then use that stored surplus when production is stagnant (calm days or at night).

The current practice is to use surplus energy to pump water into a reservoir during peak production, and then converting it to hydro-electric power later when production is stagnant. The Isentropic advantage is that you don't need a reservoir to store the energy, the storage system can be build regardless of geography.

I have two questions:

1\. What kind of insulation does it take to keep the gravel hot or cold enough to store the energy for a long time? Is the energy lost due to natural thermodynamic processes comparable to energy lost due to evaporation in a pumped-hydro storage system?

2\. If the storage system is geographically independent, could it be moved in an energy efficient manner? The problem with almost every energy source we have right now is that it has to be close to the population it serves. On the other hand, if we could generate everyone's electricy as solar energy in Nevada or nuclear energy hundreds of miles from populations, and then move it to distribution plants, then we could answer a lot of energy questions.

<comment><USER10> re: #2 - the challenge with power systems and their locality to the population is the cost of Transmission System. The closer they are, the less real-estate you have to dedicate to massive transmission towers, as well as less lost energy due to heat in the transmission lines.

Placing the Isentropic center near a population center wouldn't give you any advantage there.

<comment><USER11> I read 2. as about moving the storage unit itself. Charge the unit at on place then move the unit and generate power at another place.

<comment><USER9> Yes, this was what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a completely non-technically-inclined person, can someone explain how this is intended to yield electricity as output?

From what little I do understand, the enormous surface area of the crushed gravel acts as a very efficient heat transfer mechanism, so it can cool(or heat) the Argon, depending on which chamber one is looking at.

The pistons are there to cycle the Argon between high and low pressure.. Presumably to keep the gas flow going. But can't this be done with just the pistons and without the pressure gradient? (edit: nvm this part; the heat energy is obviously generated by this pressure gradient).

Then comes the time to get the heat energy out for actual use. The article mentions that the gas flow can be reversed. So presumably the gravel that was previously being cooled, will now be heated. Isn't this just exchanging the heat between the gravel and gas? How does this yield net energy output?

<comment><USER13> Isentropic PHES Technology Explained [https://youtube.com/watch?v=sIxt6nMf- IQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sIxt6nMf-IQ)

<comment><USER12> Thank you! It seems my confusion arose from assuming this is a power generator, while it is a storage device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like the molton salt systems that are already deployed. I assume this is better?

</comment><comment><USER15> If that pumped gravel heat exchanger works that well, why don't they create phase change reservoirs and save most of their capital costs?

<comment><USER6> Phase change systems like steam engines follow the Rankine cycle, which cannot reach as high an efficiency as systems like this which follow the Carnot cycle.

<comment><USER15> Not a phase change heat engine, but a phase change heat reservoir. Yes, they'll lose some efficiency, but if they can exchange heat as well as it's implied (from their efficiency figures), they may lose very little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > a per hour storage cost of $103/kWh

Ouch!

<comment><USER5> I think the confusion is that the $103/kWh is the _capital cost_ to build the storage rather than the _operating cost_ to actually recover a kWh of energy. So to provide 10kW for 10 hours (for instance, overnight storage for a large house), they'd need a 100kWh system at a cost of ~$10,000, where they're claiming that a pumped hydro system would cost 20% more. The benefit of course to pumped hydro is that you can have hundreds or thousands of MW in storage.

These units would be consistent with other reporting for grid-scale battery systems costing ~$250/kWh to construct:

[http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/18/utility-scale-battery- st...](http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/18/utility-scale-battery-storage- costs-dropping/)

As for operating costs, I'm assuming that the nameplate storage capacity is the output. So if you have a 100kWh system with ~60% throughput efficiency, you'd need 160kWh of input at your standard energy rates and then the energy coming out would be 'free' \-- of course there'd be costs for maintenance and depreciation too though.

<comment><USER17> > So if you have a 100kWh system with ~60% throughput efficiency, you'd need > 160kWh of input at your standard energy rates and then the energy coming out > would be 'free'

I think the idea is that this is storage for renewables. As such, you wouldn't need more "input at your standard energy rates" than what it might take to charge the system for overnight use.

<comment><USER5> Right, I guess I was getting at the 'cost' of energy would be he opportunity cost of not selling it back to the grid which is typically the retail price in areas with net metering. Although in off-the-grid situations, you're right that there wouldn't be any incremental cost to charging the storage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can We Do Better Than XML and JSON? - <AUTHOR> http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/08/can-we-do-better-than-xml-and-json.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oreilly%2Fnews+%28O%27Reilly+News+and+Commentary%29 <comment><USER2> Binary is the enemy of View Source, with all that it entails. Tou think code is self-documenting and you only use FORTRAN because anything invented after 1990 is rubbish? Can't interop. Your schema doc is a bit out of date? Can't interop. Your schema is under NDA? Can't interop. Your competing standard is plaintext? You've already lost. And so on, and so on.

The search for network efficiency is often just premature optimization.

</comment><comment><USER3> yes.

There is a time and place for both XML and JSON. Making a website? want to create a data feed for web type stuff? JSON away.

Work in enterprise world? perhaps you like JRR tolkien? XML is your friend.

Working in mobile/embedded/low bandwidth applications? no, XML/JSON is not your friend.<edit> unless you don't care about network/power efficiency.</edit>

I know Binary protocols strike fear into the hearts of programmers, but what is JSON? its a string of binary. Its just there happens to be lots of lovely tools to make it dirt simple.

as with all things there is a tradeoff. You need fast low latency interchange of large amount of data? Binary, and yes you'll need to make a schema first. I know it sounds a lot like planning, but trust me, giving real structure to your data will save you weeks in debugging later.

just want to send and address to javascript? well hello JSON.

The example that is given there, is just utterly horrible. however if it works and is easy, then who cares? its only a problem if you need to scale. But then you've got bigger issues.

<comment><USER4> I laughed at this line: "Work in enterprise world? perhaps you like JRR tolkien? XML is your friend."

Thank you :)</comment></comment>


Is Your Protein Really PROTEIN? The Amino Acid Spiking Scam - <AUTHOR> https://blog.priceplow.com/protein-scam-amino-acid-spiking

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I wrote the vast majority of this article, and it is on my startup's blog.

I apologize in advance for the shameless self-promotion, but I figured this community would be the best one to tear it apart from a scientific standpoint. I'm certain there are some technicalities you could call us out on.

Either way, the situation is real, and in my corner of the world, it's been causing a little a bit of pain and anger.</comment>


A Tiny Compiler for a Typed Higher-Order Language - <AUTHOR> http://jozefg.bitbucket.org/posts/2015-03-24-pcf.html <comment><USER2> This is similar to an idea that I've been kicking around.

It is basically a arbitrary precision beta-reducer for untyped lambda calculus. I think I theoretically would need a machine that only needs four instructions on a theoretical machine (presumably some sort of FPGA), those being write, load, flip, and meld.

I bring this up, because instead of compiling to C, you could simply use a general purpose beta-reducer, and this would allow for arbitrary precision computation instead of being limited to 32 bits or 64 bits or whatever.

It is written in Agda, meaning that it could be a compiler for any arbitrary calculus that could be translated into an untyped lambda calculus.

Unfortunately, my adviser told me that it is a side-project due to lack of theoretical grounding.

You can check it out here: [https://github.com/jbodeen/-ava](https://github.com/jbodeen/-ava)

<comment><USER3> This idea has been knocking around the collective consciousness of computer science for a while now. For example, the SECD machine [1], a virtual machine for functional programming languages to target. Then there are also examples of people compiling functional programming languages to various lambda calculus bases, such as SKI [2], and BCKW [3]. Through the judicious use of some extra combinators, you can also get more compact "object code"[Turner79].

One advantage of compiling to something like an SKI or BCKW basis (or a mix) is that you can represent abstraction (functions/closures) without bound variables, or scoping, which can be a pain to implement (esp. in hardware).

Take, for example, the SKI basis. Suppose you had two functions, with types as follows:

      f :: a -> b
      g :: b -> a -> c

And you wished to combine them in the natural way to get `h`:

      h :: b -> c
      h x = g (f x) x

Then, to achieve the same with S, K and I combinators we do the following (assuming we have SKI representations of `f, g` as `F, G`.

      H := S(S(KG)F)I

The `x` has disappeared! But, if we apply H to some CL expression `X` we get:

      HX = S(S(KG)F)IX
         = S(KG)FX(IX)    ;; apply S
         = KGX(FX)(IX)    ;; apply S
         = G(FX)(IX)      ;; apply K
         = G(FX)X         ;; apply I

We can use S to Split (duplicate) parameters, and K to Kill (ignore) parameters, in a very straight forward way. Imagine the AST of the original code:

         App
         /\
        /  \
       App  x
       /\
      / App
      g /\
       /  \
       f  x

Every `App` is replaced with an `S`, every `x` with an `I`, everything else (`y`) is replaced with `Ky`. In my example, I have also gone to the trouble of "optimising" `S(KF)I` away, as it is equivalent to just `F`.

Interesting stuff, and plenty of theoretical grounding to boot. Especially as this sort of thing has started enjoying a renaissance, in the likes of "point- free" notation in languages like Haskell.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECD_machine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECD_machine) [2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus) [3]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B,C,K,W_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B,C,K,W_system) [Turner79]: [http://courses.cecs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP3610/assignments/...](http://courses.cecs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP3610/assignments/Asst1/Turner- Combinators.pdf) (apologies, I couldn't seem to find a version with an intact abstract).

<comment><USER4> Interesting stuff.

btw I think the type of your the function h is a -> c. I know its a minor typo, but it confused me while I was trying to follow.

<comment><USER3> You're right `h :: a -> c`.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is fourth (different) site in the last week that displays "foo.bar" as "foo . bar". What is happening!? Am I going crazy???

edit: hm, ok, so some extension was doing it, I'm glad I'm not going insane.

<comment><USER6> Not sure if this is what you mean, but while `foo.bar` tends to be "property access of the property `bar` of the record/object `foo`", in Haskell `foo . bar` is "the function `bar` followed by the function `foo`".

In the latter case it's written with spaces to look a bit more like the mathematical notation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it sort of terrifying that this was written by a teenager.

<comment><USER8> This boy has a loooot of free time ([https://github.com/leachim6/hello- world](https://github.com/leachim6/hello-world)).

<comment><USER9> If he does have a lot of free time... great! The more STEM prodigies with free time in the world, the better.

<comment><USER8> It is pure jealousy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haskell, BitBucket - good taste!

<comment><USER11> Yet the code is hosted on Github ([https://github.com/jozefg/pcf](https://github.com/jozefg/pcf)) and it generates C. Worse is better.

<comment><USER12> I actually host the main repo on my ([https://bitbucket.org/jozefg/pcf](https://bitbucket.org/jozefg/pcf)). I've just found that most people would prefer to see the GitHub version (for starring, more pleasant forking, better code viewing) so I usually link there.

I generally duplicate my repos on bitbucket/github so I can feel smug when one goes down for a while.</comment></comment></comment>


Inside Black Holes, a movie from computation - <AUTHOR> http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/intro.html <comment><USER2> direct to stereo: [http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/frontstereo_720x360....](http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/frontstereo_720x360.gif)

</comment><comment><USER2> direct to hq: <http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/front_640x360.gif></comment>


Ask HN: Webhooks provider for managing subscriptions and emitting callbacks? - <AUTHOR> I've been trying to find a software package (docker image, npm module, ruby app, etc) that provides:

  - An API and preferably a web UI for adding webhook callback URLs for events
  - A backend that lets me feed in events and will deliver these as webhook callbacks to the registered subscribers, possibly with re-tries via a queue, etc.
 Does something like this exists? All I've managed to find are a lot of libraries and frameworks for receiving webhooks, not sending them.
The few I've found seem quite bare bones and/or unmaintained:

  - https://github.com/progrium/hookah
  - https://github.com/roccomuso/node-webhooks
 Have I missed something? Is this usually part of the delivery side of a generic message queue framework?
Thanks for any pointers! <comment><AUTHOR> Basically I'm looking for [http://www.webhooks.io/](http://www.webhooks.io/), but not as SaaS :)</comment>


Why Did An Angry Man Punch Me? - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2014/01/why_did_an_angry_man.php <comment><USER2> Punching random people in the streets is not normal behaviour, that man needs medical treatment and likely needs to be detained until said treatment takes effect.

That is not something that companies like Google are equipped to provide. Not by a long shot. It would not even be legal for them to take that situation into their own hands. The government of San Francisco is the most immediate entity actually in a position to do something there.

If the government of San Francisco needs more money to do their job, then you should be asking the government of San Francisco why the hell they aren't raising that money by, perhaps, taxing Google.

Asking why Google did not do anything is farcical.

<comment><USER3> > why the hell they aren't raising that money by, perhaps, taxing Google.

Perhaps because Google hides most of its income from the US and California governments through various international subsidaries.

And perhaps also because the moment they worked around all these loopholes and actually started to get money out of Google, Google would simply up and move away, making things worse.

Google, Twitter, and companies in general, should have some duty to their communities, if only out of gratitude for providing an environment in which they could thrive. That they don't speaks volumes on their corporate values.

Personally, I think it's a problem with the "profit for shareholders above all else" which dominates the discussions about corporate values.

<comment><USER2> They may be hiding most of their international income in Ireland or wherever, but San Francisco does not need access to _most_ of their income, do they? Tax the portion that they are able to tax.

If the tax avoidance becomes or is excessive, you refocus your efforts above local government to seek a solution.

 _" If we increase taxes they'll leave, so there is no point even trying"_ is a defeatist attitude. And assuming that is how Google _really does_ operate, then expecting charity from Google is ludicrous _anyway_.

(And you are still ignoring the fact that Google is not in a position to do anything besides provide money anyway. Your local government is the one that can actually _do something_ with that money to combat this problem.) _

<comment><USER4> "They may be hiding most of their international income in Ireland"

Bermuda[1]. Google does its best to avoid paying tax in Ireland too.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/to-reduce-its-tax- bu...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/to-reduce-its-tax-burden- google-expands-use-of-the-double-irish/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's quite a stretch to lay all urban strife at the feet of tech companies. Twitter's job is to run twitter. They're not a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen or a free mental health clinic or whatever else this author thinks they should be. And if they were, they wouldn't be Twitter, and they wouldn't have the resources to do much of anything.

Why look at homeless people and say Twitter/Google/Apple etc. should fix this instead of the government should fix this or maybe _I_ should fix this?

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Why look at homeless people and say Twitter/Google/Apple etc. should fix this instead of the government should fix this or maybe I should fix this?"

When you vote in government that don't support a strong social/welfare system companies and citizens have a social responsibility. I don't think Twitter should be housing the homeless but doing things like building services inside the business so employees never have to venture out hurts local businesses and the local economy. All businesses should be supporting their local communities, not just tech businesses.

<comment><USER6> "When you vote in government that don't support a strong social/welfare system companies and citizens have a social responsibility."

Isn't San Francisco pretty "socially aware" already?

<comment> k-mcgrady I'm not sure but from what I've read about the numbers of homeless people and those with mental health issues left on the streets I wouldn't say it's that socially aware.

<comment><USER7> You've got this almost completely ass-backwards. It's a far more complicated issue than that.

Paradoxically, places with more homeless-friendly policies attract far more homeless people (for obvious reasons). As a famous example, Santa Monica has a history of hassling homeless people and effectively criminalizing homelessness, which has the effect of forcing the homeless population elsewhere.

Also, relative to a lot of other places in the US, SF's far-more temperate weather increases the appeal for those living outside. On top of all that, you get asshole states like Nevada bussing homeless people to places like San Francisco[1] (SF is actually suing the state of Nevada for this).

Now granted, the way _anywhere_ in the US treats their homeless and mentally ill is not particularly "socially aware", but looking at SF's relatively large homeless population and assuming that it comes from a relative lack of social awareness is a completely wrong-headed approach.

[1] [http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san- franc...](http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-francisco- sues-nevada-patient-dumping/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Why are our cities suffering from the same problems that every other city faces?"

I don't even know what to say to this. How can the author even be asking this question?

Here's a basic outline. It feels weird typing this because it should be obvious, but here goes.

Northern California cities are cities just like any other. There are people of all income levels doing all sorts of different jobs, or not doing any jobs. There are a disproportionate number of tech workers in that region, but other than that it's pretty much the same as anywhere else. People are still people are still people. The reason a shirtless man randomly punched you is because he was crazy. The more people you have concentrated in a small area, the more likely you are to meet up with a crazy person when you're walking down the street (that's just statistics/probability). I live in NYC, a much bigger city, and I see crazy people all the time. When you see someone not wearing a shirt in public, babbling or shouting, hanging around on a street corner by themselves, etc., etc., they are most likely crazy. If you see a crazy person, stay as far away from them as possible and do not make eye contact. Definitely do not engage with them in any way (this includes taking pictures of them) because it will provoke them. Welcome to city life!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm all for tech companies giving back more and helping with community building, but I don't see that a bunch of tech-obsessed individuals with autistic tendencies are going to be best at solving the incredibly serious and deep-rooted social problems we face in this country.

I totally understand why tech people are a lightning rod for frustration in a place like San Francisco, but I don't see tech as the cause _or_ the solution of these problems. That's not to absolve tech people of responsibility—I think everyone with money in this country has a responsibility—but it's just that we can't do it alone.

</comment><comment><USER10> Alrighty, Tom. What, exactly, do you want the tech companies to do?

Reopen the mental institutions? Maybe under private management? California closed them when Reagan's budget slashing lined up with the counter-culture's "Who are we to judge them?" mindset.

Give this guy some money and see how it turns out?

Hire people to reason with him?

It's easy to see there's a problem. The answers to these problems are harder, and certainly less popular, than asking the tech community to "fix" them.

<comment><USER11> 80s style insane asylums were abusive and were rightly closed.

The lack of suitable community treatment and smaller, better mental health hospitals is the problem, not the closing of horrible institutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Connecting the dots between an act of a single mentally ill individual in San Francisco (1) and the tech businesses and workers that have moved in within the past few years, is a bit of a stretch.

No, make that an _enormous_ stretch.

I get that it's supposed to illustrate the disparity between the nouveau riche and the people left behind. But this is something for individual families and/or the state to solve. Google, Twitter, or Oracle do best when they are left to focus on their core business. If you need them to contribute more to "society" than they already do, raise corporate taxes and pray they don't move to Austin.

\----

(1) a city famous for _decades_ for the extreme and outlandish behavior of its homeless people

</comment><comment><USER13> People are jumping over the fact that he singled out tech companies but I think he did so because he was talking about San Francisco specifically.

While Twitter doing more in the community may not have prevented this incident from occurring, I think the overall idea is right. Corporations should give back to their communities. Corporate influence is huge, corporations are members of their communities and have the power to effect real change.

I also think it goes a long way for company culture when the company as a whole is genuinely focused on giving back. A lot of people rarely feel the joy of giving because they don't know where to start. They're intimidated. If the company you work for provides a platform for you to be able to roll up your sleeves and help people, that can be incredibly rewarding. Everyone benefits, including the company who gains credibility and good will within the community.

</comment><comment><USER14> I spent only one week in SF: I found the vibe horrendous. The existence of a caste system based on ethnicity and culture is incredibly evident just by taking a stroll in the city -- it was disturbing, and it made me feel unsafe (please note that normally I live in a rough London area, I am no shrinking violet).

I agree with the author of the post that successful entrepreneurs have a social responsibility towards the territory; otherwise they are just exacerbating the tension between 'classes'.

<comment><USER15> I've been by the bay for going on seven years and I'm just now starting to perceive this caste-system aspect of the place. I perceived it first as something that I call "dynastic culture," which is, I think, how it shows up on a individual basis. But when you collect together in the same place a bunch of people whose consciousnesses run "dynastic culture," you end up with a caste system emerging at the more macro scale. Anyway, I suspect I would enjoy corresponding with you. If that's mutual, my email is mpdakin at Google's service. Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If we're going with noblesse oblige, we have to admit that we're nobility.

</comment><comment><USER17> > What did xyz do to help this man?

What did he do to help himself? Unfortunately, its damn near impossible to help people who won't take the first couple steps themselves. I'm all for helping people who are taking some kind of initiative but being stymied by bureaucratic indifference, harsh economic reality, or some other circumstance. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the advocates for the poor and homeless in SF expect tech companies to fix everything by paying even higher taxes and eliminating shuttles without expecting the "victims" to take any initiative themselves.

<comment><USER18> Considering his strange outfit, it's entirely possible that he's mentally ill (or, alternatively, he doesn't like people taking pictures of him). The article doesn't give any real context.

<comment><USER17> This applies even all but the most extreme cases of the mentally ill. Outside of involuntarily confining someone and throwing away the key, if someone with limited mental illness or addiction doesn't want to get better and take the first baby steps on their own to doing so (even just stepping foot in a clinic for example) then no amount of resources will help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because instead of getting away before he was in punching range, you stood there and took a photo?

</comment><comment><USER20> The point is that technology is supposed to be helping make the world better. However it clearly does not work very well, or very fast, in the case of personal conflict. Could it? Perhaps, but let me ask a few similar questions.

How quickly did mass literacy change society for the better? How quickly did public education change society for the better? How quickly did the printing press change society for the better? How quickly did antibiotics change society for the better? I'm sure it wasn't fast enough for many who perished during the transitional points.

</comment><comment><USER21> Another "What have tech companies done for SF post" huh. I still don't understand when it became the obligation of private companies to do anything other than run their companies to the best of their abilities?

Situations such as this is why people formed a government that is able to tax corporations and people to fund homeless shelters and public housing and drug rehabilitation programs.

Clearly there is a MAJOR societal problem in most of the United States, but I don't see how people can lay it at the doorstep of Twitter.

<comment><USER22> Its about being a great LOCAL corporate citizen. That is what the issue is about. There is a huge problem for lots of people in San Francisco, rent prices. People are being displaced at an alarming rate that would be much worse if it wasn't for some rent controls that were put in place. People are angry, they are being forced to uproot from a place they called home for many years. Who's taking their place? Well paid people working for the tech startups. Who do people then blame for their problems? Tech startups.

Now, the question becomes... do the tech startups get involved in the conversation and try to find ways to help the inevitable gentrification that is happening hurt those pushed out less than it otherwise would? Or do they just take the line the everyone is responsible for themselves, quit crying and get a better paying job!

There are real people being hurt by Silicon Valley, for no fault of their own. And lots of these people are very hard working people who just want to live in a nice place like everyone else. But because their 40 hour weeks only clear them a couple hundred bucks after taxes they get pushed out to some other area that is probably more crime ridden and dangerous. Other posters are correct, you get a very clear economic class system happening.

<comment><USER21> Well from what I know about SF rent-control-policies, (which is becoming an annoyingly large amount due to the influx of these posts) is that San Fransiscans have been historically hurt more from these policies than helped.

You raise valid problems, which I would again say are the traditional responsibilities, and the reasons why, we have a government. Corporations historically have had TERRIBLE ethical and moral compasses which is why we need things like Child Labor Laws. I completely understand why people are mad at SF tech companies, but I think the rational place to direct their anger is towards the government that is not looking out for their interests.

To think that Twitter is somehow equipped to tackle the SYSTEMIC societal issues the US face is baffling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > What have you done in your neighborhoods that helps people like this poor > man?

Fascinating attitude. I can certainly understand the desire to help the clearly insane but being subjected to random violence is absolutely unacceptable. Who would subject children to such an environment? I guess the people putting up with this are young people without families or dependants?

</comment><comment><USER24> After reading this article I have a pretty good hunch about why the man punched him.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm having trouble reading this thread with its stigmatising views of "crazy people", compared to other HN threads that are supportive and urge people with me tal health problems to talk or to seek help.

Well, some of the attitudes displayed here are precisely why some people feel unable to talk about their depression or paranoia or hallucinations. Some of the attitudes here are why people do not disclose their MH problems to emoyers even though US law provides protection.

<comment><USER25> I think it's pretty rare for someone to have problems similar to the person you depicted and also be employed. And despite legal protections, who would want to employee or supervise someone prone to taking off their clothes, wandering the streets, and punching people? Why is it wrong for others to _not_ want to be around such a person?

Sympathize with everyone!

<comment><USER22> That's not true at all. I have a good friend who is treated for "bi-polar" (not the real term) disorder. He had an issue a couple of years ago. Granted, he didn't hurt anyone, but he wasn't stable. He got treatment and is a highly functioning member of society. He holds a full time job, has a wife and a child. Just because someone isn't completely disabled 100% of the time so that they are institutionalized or homeless (and should be institutionalized) doesn't mean they don't have real mental health issues. Its not an on or off switch. In fact, you wouldn't even know this person had an issue if you weren't told.

If you don't like sympathy, maybe you could try some empathy. I'm sure your high horse won't mind if you get down off of him for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An angry man punched him because a critical mass of humanity continues to choose dystopia over utopia.

All of the specifics and examples in that article really are just symptoms of dystopia. The phenomenon of mentally ill people running around on the streets punching people is merely just a symptom of dystopia.

If you want to blame something-- it's not tech companies, Google, Twitter, etc. It's human nature in general, and it's the dystopian beliefs and behaviors of a group of assholes+morons alive on this planet right now who collectively pull humanity towards dystopia by their actions and behaviors in the world relative to the other humans they interact with.

Humans on this planet at this moment in technology-time have all the technological know-how to create a world-wide utopia-- theoretically, it could be done in a matter of months. Unfortunately, there is a critical mass of humans who prefer to live in dystopia. And there are many in that critical mass who are willing to kill other people who disagree with them. So dystopia is what we have at this moment in time.

Free will's a bitch when there is a critical mass of dystopian assholes+morons on a planet. The behavior of that critical mass of dystopians has a sort of spooky action at a distance for the rest of humanity, even those who are not directly connected/interacting with the dystopians.

I can't wait for dystopian actions, behaviors, ideas, models, philosophies, religions, corporations, and governments to die, finally.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems to me that if he had enough time to take his phone out of his pocket and take a picture so that he could blog about it he had enough time to turn around and run in the opposite direction. That's worked perfectly well for me a couple of times.

Was he waiting for someone to send him a tweet: "leg it!" ?

<comment><USER27> He did say that he was a big strong fellow and that the punch didn't bother him. What bothered him was that incidents like this are a daily occurrence in a city with the largest concentration in the world of people who want to do things differently and solve problems.

Either few people bother to read the article or he really is right that the people of HN don't really care about solving hard problems, just the easy get- rich-quick kind of problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/The-crisis-of- homelessn...](http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/The-crisis-of-homelessness- is-rooted-in-mental-3236733.php)

</comment><comment><USER29> Have you seen the TV show 'Arrow'? They solved the problem of their inner city ghetto in quite an original way.</comment>


Life Is Too Short to RTFM (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/iwc/article/28/1/27/2363584 <comment><USER2> This makes an interesting contrast to the discussion on rabbit holes ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791174)) which is also on the front page right now, and largely concerns reading man pages (with various degrees of success).

I think it speaks to the overall improvement in interface design (along with increased general familiarity with user interfaces) that people can get away with not reading the instructions and still be able to operate any software at all.

This has lead to an interesting dichotomy, though, where many people don't ever need to learn the research skills which were once necessary to use a computer at all, and are still necessary to learn anything deeper than the UI.</comment>


"Programming in C is a premature optimization" - <AUTHOR> http://patricklogan.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-on-stable-layers-regarding.html <comment><USER2> That's a pretty ridiculous statement. First of all, I happen to like C for certain types of problems. Second, porting a large program from one language to another is not a trivial "optimization", so if you suspect a problem may need the speed, it's probably wise to use a suitable language in the first place.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you in principle, but most languages let you interface with C programs so you can often rewrite speed sensitive parts of an application in C and integrate it with the rest of your application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stronger: <http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/16834044></comment>


Women write back to Google engineer - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/08/06/a-google-engineer-wrote-that-women-may-be-genetically-unsuited-for-tech-jobs-women-wrote-back/?utm_term=.9f5ab88f4400 <comment><USER2> If you fear that: "The engineer's words reflect the unspoken thoughts of many others in an industry dominated by white men.", would it be wise to dismiss those words with: "it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I'm not going to link to it here"?

The tech world is supposed to be a meritocracy where views are discussed using arguments, facts etcetera.

Most engineers have not been exposed to the body of research into gender differences, and without at least an informed discussion they will not change position.

Just giving out plain dismissals will _not_ solve this issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> title should be closer to OP title: _A Google engineer wrote that women may be genetically unsuited for tech jobs. Women wrote back._

</comment><comment><USER4> It crazy how much flak someone can get from stating the obvious.</comment>


Should We Set a Speed Limit on High-Speed Trading? - <AUTHOR> http://daily.jstor.org/speed-limit-high-speed-trading/ <comment><USER3> what about a simpler strategy of randomizing order delay between 10ms - <USER2> or thereabouts ? that might mess with lot's of algo's no ?

<comment><USER4> I think it would still advantage fast traders because they'll know that statistically they might be faster than other orders sent original around the same time.

<comment><USER3> > ... statistically they might be faster than other orders sent original > around the same time

how about if you take a block of interval (10-150 ms), and mess up, err, randomize all orders within that interval ? there goes the statistical advantage. moreover, if the difference in arrival of order between the fastest and slowest upto say 1(or 2)-sigma is what is taken (as the interval block) then it should level the playing field somewhat perhaps ?</comment></comment></comment>


A Circular Economy in the Netherlands by 2050 - <AUTHOR> https://www.government.nl/documents/policy-notes/2016/09/14/a-circular-economy-in-the-netherlands-by-2050 <comment><USER2> Wikipedia:

> The circular economy is a generic term for an industrial economy that > promotes greater resource productivity aiming to reduce waste and avoid > pollution by design or intention, and in which material flows are of two > types: biological nutrients , designed to reenter the biosphere safely, and > technical nutrients, which are designed to circulate at high quality in the > production system without entering the biosphere as well as being > restorative and regenerative by design. This is contrast to a Linear Economy > which is a 'take, make, dispose' model of production

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd argue this is the future of all economies and those that are best at scaling it will reap the greatest benefits.</comment></comment>


Xennials, the micro generation between Gen X and Millennials - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/people-born-between-gen-x-millennials-xennials-2017-11 <comment><USER3> I don't understand why so much effort has been put into branding "generations," but it's just gotten more and more ridiculous as time goes on. Now we're doing transitive generations, apparently. Soon every quarter will have its own generation, like game consoles. Probably named after game consoles.

<comment><USER4> You cant have identity politics without identity.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but irrelevant, and your comment is seemingly more a random attack against liberals than anything deep.

It's more likely a marketing term. It's much easier to sell to people if you can convince them of a special identity, and promote things as being part of that identity. Marketers spend a lot of money trying to identify and target certain demographics, and they will try different things to see what works.

Consider Malcom Gladwell's TED talk on "Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce". Prego made a lot of money by identifying different market segments with different tastes and preferences in pasta sauce. You can think of it as a k-means clustering, where each cluster center is a different flavor ... or a different group of people.

Of course, sometimes there aren't 'k' clusters, or the clusters have been misidentified, or the boundaries are simply vague.

In any case, it could also simply be that talking heads love to promote their sociological interpretation of how the world works.

<comment><USER4> Gladwell is pop science at best. He weaves everything into a neat narrative which is too convenient.

It's funny how you construe the mere mention of "identity politics" as an attack on your beliefs. :)

<comment><USER5> It's funny how irrelevant "identity politics" is to the topic, and yet you keep bringing it up.

I thought my example was quite apropos.

Most of marketing is based on pop science. That is, I believe that this so- called identification of (micro)generations comes from a marketing technique of identifying sub-populations that can be marketed towards. Gladwell gives an example of why marketing people try to do that. I then relate it with clustering, where there's a long history of finding good - and bad! - <USER2> centers.

Would you care to explain how identity politics provides a more meaningful interpretation than what I gave?

Or, for that matter, how it provides any meaningful interpretation, other than "talks about identity therefore must be associated with identity politics."

To be clear, I think that 'identity politics' can be meaningful. Consider the transphobic bathroom bills which sprang up last. That's a clear case of people using the formal political system to castigate others based on identity.

Similarly, when a security guard attacks someone who identifies as a woman and who was assigned female at birth, for using the woman's room because she didn't look feminine enough (on the presumption that she must be male), than that's an informal use of identity politics. (This is not hypothetical: [https://www.advocate.com/business/2015/06/17/detroit- woman-k...](https://www.advocate.com/business/2015/06/17/detroit-woman-kicked- out-restaurant-bathroom-looking-man-sues) ).

But _politics_ must somehow be involved for this to be "identity politics", and I just don't see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This argument is really weird. Somebody born in the US in 1980 certainly wasn't too old to have gaming consoles growing up. The Atari 2600 already was in millions of homes by then and the Nintendo NES would have been released when they were toddlers.

<comment><USER7> NES released in North America in 1985. Toddlers are 1-3 years old. I don't mean to be pedantic but as someone born in 1979, your statement didn't match my experience.

I agree though, I already had significant time on my Atari 2600 and on my father's Intellivision before NES came out.

<comment><USER8> Why is toddler the age you use to consider whether someone grew up with game a console? I was born in the early 90s and had a Nintendo 64 first (released in 96). Just because I was 6 or 7 when I got it doesn't mean I didn't effectively grow up with one.

<comment><USER7> Toddler is what was said, so toddler is what I was correcting. I didn't make the statement in your question, "toddler is the age you use to consider whether someone grew up with a game console."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Born in 1980 here and prefer "Generation X-wing" thank you very much.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. I much prefer "the MTV generation", ie. those of Ian that remember MTV as primarily playing music videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That experience doesn't seem much different from millenials born in the early 90s. We also played outside, made phone calls and used floppy disks. Most of my friend group didn't get cell phones or myspace until high school, forget facebook.

The only real difference I see is we had playstation or 64s first, not NES, ataris, or sega genesis. Though I guess gameboys and tamagotchi were pretty new.

Seems like an arbitrary distinction. Just because the millenial experience isn't perfectly uniform doesn't mean they aren't still part of it.

<comment><USER11> I'm chuckling a little bit as someone who would be considered part of the Xennials (born 1983). Your comment about friends not getting cellphones until high school is what got me. I didn't get a cellphone until nearly the end of university. From my observations going back for my MSc a couple years after getting my BSc, university life with and without cellphones is dramatically different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Eh. Kuwait, Iraq, same thing, right? (~similar place, different decade) Also, the Balkans look far scarier when it's a few hours' drive...and even scarier in retrospect, when you find that some of your friends of the same age _fought_ in the Yugoslav war(s).

</comment><comment><USER13> If a recurring theme of your childhood was the saturation and ever present threat of nuclear war throughout the media you consumed, as was the case with most entertainment in the 80s, then you are a member of generation x. It does not matter what year you were born.

</comment><comment><USER14> Born 1981 here. My cohort call ourselves the "Oregon Trail Generation".

</comment><comment><USER15> Missed the cutoff by a year. Guess I'm a millennial. I stop working now, right?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a "website maintenance as service" service? - <AUTHOR> I have a WordPress site, and I just want to have a company on-call in case there are issues or if I need some small modifications. WPCurve is an example, but they were acquired and no longer offer services. I'd rather hire a company than an individual so presumably, there is always someone available 24/7. <comment><USER2> I run a website that does this. www.webmasteronsite.com, The plans are for small business owners, but we do custom plans based on your needs for as low as $50 a month. Send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com if you have any questions.</comment>


You Can't Pull the Market Towards Your Solution - <AUTHOR> https://justinjackson.ca/pull-the-market <comment><USER2> Some times you can, some times you can't.</comment>


Ask HN: Any tutorials/widsom on AWS Beanstalk, given the Heroku story - <AUTHOR>

Anyone got some good tutorials on running Rails & Postgres on AWS Beanstalk?<p>I still think Heroku is an excellent choice, and will be better once they address some issues, but now might be a good time to explore some options, at least :) <comment><USER2> I'm curious about the pricing situation on Elastic Beanstalk. T1.micro instances are very affordable, but is it wise to run a webapp and Postgres on the same instance? I'm not expecting a large audience, but I've heard that one should generally have separate servers for the two.

<comment><USER3> > but is it wise to run a webapp and Postgres on the same instance?

This really depends on the level of traffic you expect. For lower amounts, it works fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is a simple one. [http://ruby.awsblog.com/post/Tx2AK2MFX0QHRIO/Deploying- Ruby-...](http://ruby.awsblog.com/post/Tx2AK2MFX0QHRIO/Deploying-Ruby- Applications-to-AWS-Elastic-Beanstalk-with-Git)</comment>


Star Trek battle card game (RailsRumble) - <AUTHOR> http://the-glimmer-twins.r12.railsrumble.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't care about winning just want to play my game with other people. Join on in!</comment>


Dormant for five centuries, Jewish life in Italy's far south is stirring - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2017/02/jewish-revival-sicily <comment><USER2> My parents are from Sicily and we only recently found out that our ancestry is Ashkenazi. In fact, my family is even from a town right outside Siracusa which makes this article all the more interesting.

Although I know very little of my ancestors that would date back to the time of mandatory conversion to Catholicism, I do know that many of my family's traditions and dialect words blend together Greek, Egyptian, Jewish (passover traditions!) I'm always amazed over the rapid transformation s and upheavals people from that part of the world must have experienced.

<comment><USER3> I am always amazed by this history. And by how one's Jewish identity could have been lost should an ancestor have decided to assimilate during a difficult point in history. Quite amazing stuff! Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Btw, Jews of Rome are their own separate population. They are neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic. They trace back to the Jews brought to Rome by Roman Empire 2,000 years ago.

<comment><USER5> I was under the impression that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews derived from that population in Rome? Did the Ashkenazi come directly from Palestine to the Rhine valley?

<comment><USER4> I think you are right.

This is a good if somewhat technical book on this: Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008MWL9HG/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008MWL9HG/)

Quote:

The Jewish community of Rome is among the oldest, historically continuous Jewish populations. Jews resided in Rome during the Roman Empire and were brought to Rome by the Emperor Titus, following the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Spanish Jews came to Rome during the Inquisition and, paradoxically, were shielded from the hostility of their Roman Jewish neighbors by the Pope. Over time, the Sephardic and Roman Jewish communities co-mingled. Jews from Rome crossed the Alps to populate the Rhine Valley and establish Ashkenazim. So Rome has been a crossroads for Jews from different communities during their histories.

[...] Many members of the Roman Jewish community were fond of telling us that they were neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi. Our study from that time demonstrated that the Roman Jews had a low frequency of disease mutations that were found in both Ashkenazi and Sephardic populations, supporting the notion that they may have been a progenitor population for Ashkenazi Jews and that they had Sephardic roots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was some there specific language in Sicily or other Italian Jewish communities, like Ladino in Spain?

<comment><USER7> Apparently Ladino was used as a trade language throughout the Mediterranean/Adriatic, and Wikipedia lists it as being "native" to Italy [1]. There also are regional Judeo-Italian dialects, including two from Corfu [2].

My internal map of Italy isn't very good, but given the 'size' of the populations that must speak or have spoken these dialects, I'd guess there was a dialect specific to Sicily.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo- Spanish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo- Italian_languages#Dialec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo- Italian_languages#Dialects)

<comment><USER8> I think you misread the origin of the Judaeo-Spanish ladino. From the wikipedia page [1] :

"This Judaeo-Spanish ladino should not be confused with the ladino or Ladin language spoken in part of North-Eastern Italy, which is closely related with the rumantsch-ladin of Swiss Grisons (it is disputed whether or not they form a common Rhaeto-Romance language) and has nothing to do with either Jews or Spanish beyond being, like Spanish, a Romance language, a property they share with French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo- Spanish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Moving buku files from one remote server to another? - <AUTHOR>

I'm about to move many GB (about 11GB) of files from one unix based host to another.
Here is how: 1. SSH into old. 2. tar and gzip everything (to save on bandwidth and time in transfer). 3. SSH into new. 4. use scp to move this tar/gzipped file 5. gunzip the file 6. Profit (well, be done anyway)
Can anyone tell me if there is a better (more bandwidth efficient, faster, safer, smarter, etc.) way than this? <comment><AUTHOR> In case anyone ever references this post here is the command I used:

      rsync -avz --progress --exclude-from=exclude   email@example.com:/files/to/copy/ /place/to/put/them/

The exclude file is a plain list of several items to be ignored and they are just listed by name 1 per line. If you want to do a "dry run" on what will happen add a -n to the arguments ( -navz instead of -avz).

</comment><comment><USER2> rsync... it will basically do everything you just listed for you, while making sure everything gets over from server to server OK with multiple checks. If your transfer fails halfway through, you can just pick up where you left off.

I would not recommend gzipping 11GB of files into one archive... it will take _hours_ to compress/unzip.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh! I know rsync... perfect. Thanks for the pointer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      man rsync

Also, buku? You mean beaucoup?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. I mean buku, not beaucoup.

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=buku></comment></comment>


A New Approach to Online Collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/ccm/beta

<comment><AUTHOR> This beta was born of an idea that came to me while working with a focus group from Columbia University. Today's online office productivity suites are lacking. Their half duplex style of collaboration is clumsy and has the emotional impact of always being interrupted.

Have you ever been on a board of directors? In the monthly meeting, people talk just like a normal meeting. An assistant takes notes and publishes a summary of the discussion later on as meeting minutes.

Why can't we have that assistant all the time? That is what this iteration of Conversational Content Management is all about.

I invite you to try out the demo and provide feedback.</comment>


GNU Guix 0.8.3 released – Functional package manager and distribution - <AUTHOR> https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=8324

<comment><USER2> I hack on Guix daily, yet I'm always surprised by the number of new packages and features that make it into each release. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't get my Linux container implementation in this release, but it should be ready for the next one.</comment>


Google Maps is getting a lot more detail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/18/21373363/google-maps-redesign-detail-natural-features-environment <comment><USER2> It looks like crap. It's now insanely difficult to find public parks at zoom out.</comment>


Taking a Break - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thirdyearmba.com/the-value-of-recovery-time

<comment><USER2> Maybe the whole "write a log post a day" thing is not the right way to go. You can reflect without broadcasting to the world and committing to something like that. Just relax for 30 days and don't do anything of importance, just be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. The motivation behind writing a blog post every day is to force myself to put something down without worrying so much about what I'm writing. I have this perception that every post had to be an essay and a masterpiece, and I want to break that in favor of more honest, free communication.</comment></comment>


That Amazing New Star Wars Droid 'BB-8' [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXaDjuU0LHM <comment><USER2> Obligatory link to the xkcd that had this figured out a while ago:

[http://xkcd.com/413/](http://xkcd.com/413/)</comment>


OpenSUSE Is an Amazing Underestimated Distribution - <AUTHOR> https://fosspost.org/2017/06/03/opensuse-is-an-amazing-underestimated-distribution/ <comment><USER2> > Most of the lights are going toward distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, > Manjaro.. And those shiny new distributions.

OpenSUSE I don't think really compares against any of those distros. SUSE Linux and OpenSUSE really compare better agains RHEL/CentOS. I think the biggest reason that SUSE lags behind most other distros has less to do with other distros being "shiny" and more to do with strong network effects. I tend to use CentOS or Ubuntu LTS simply because I know that googling "centos 7 <problem I'm currently having>" tends to yield a lot more high quality resources than most other distros.

<comment><USER3> > _" centos 7 <problem I'm currently having>" tends to yield a lot more high > quality resources than most other distros._

And yet, most of the time the best resource I find is Arch's wiki ;)

<comment><USER4> The Arch wiki is fantastic. I've not heard an explanation as to why it is so much better than Ubuntu/Redhat. A community of tinkerers? Lack of hegemonic domination from Redhat/Canonical?

<comment><USER5> Probably because it's generic enough to be applicable to the broader Unix ecosystem. I refer to the Arch Wiki all the time even though my Linuxen are almost exclusively either Slackware or openSUSE.

The downside, though, is that some distros have specific tooling for solving a problem, and that tooling is often more appropriate than the information in the Arch Wiki (though the AW still helps if you want to understand what those tools are doing and why).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always had a soft spot for this distro, opensuse have been a quiet innovator over the years. top notch distro, really deserves to be more popular than it is.

<comment><USER7> Yep! Absolutely great ethos this distro has, pretty easy (and fun) to contribute to :)

        https://build.opensuse.org/

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Site not loading, just in case: [http://web.archive.org/web/20170612221956/https://fosspost.o...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170612221956/https://fosspost.org/2017/06/03/opensuse- is-an-amazing-underestimated-distribution/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The out-of-the-box support for joining an AD domain through YaST makes openSUSE the obvious choice when I need Linux and Windows systems to play nicely with one another. No other distro that I've tried comes anywhere close.

Hell, no other distro that I've tried offers anything really comparable with YaST in general, AFAICT. It's why openSUSE w/ Xfce is my go-to for migrating folks off Windows desktops (especially XP).

</comment><comment><USER9> Every time I've had to use SUSE, I've ended up getting bitten by one really bizarre implementation choice over another.

Point in case, about 4-5 years ago I was fighting the extremely strange mechanism they'd built in for managing firewalls, and the set of init scripts associated with it. It was utterly bizarre, even with multiple people looking at it, trying to wrapping their collective heads around it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Been using openSuse for years for personal device OS, highly recommend it. I would part ways about Snapper though, by default it periodically fills the root partition, preventing normal booting ... took a while for me to figure that one out....

<comment><USER11> I had the same problem, again after being a user for years. I ended up eventually rebuilding the system on xfs, ditching Snapper and the vagaries of btrfs. Not every release is solid though and you can go a few iterations before hitting a really good one. I've been on Leap 42.1 for a long time now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I deployed NFS/LDAP/KRB5 OpenSuSE at work with autoyast. Autoyast is the only automated installer thing that ever worked mostly as intended. Debian preseed is just horrible. Never tried kickstart though.

The SuSE stuff is hairy and there are bugs, but they put the elbow grease into it and it shows.

<comment><USER4> SLES was great until their parent company (Novell) went bankrupt, so much smoother than RH. Great driver support and high end system integration (HA, big NFS). But there were always packaging difficulties because there was a huge delay between releases. Just never had enough engineers to keep up with other systems.

<comment><USER13> Novell isn't their parent company anymore. Hasn't been since 2006 when Novell was bought by Attachmate. Attachmate then got bought by Microfocus which absorbed Attachmate, NetIQ, and Novell. SUSE survived and is an independent business unit. SLES 12 is solid.

<comment><USER4> Attachmate staved them of capital. Many of the best engineers left, e.g. for Red Hat. SLES has improved a little of late, but still far behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> SuSE was the first Linux distro I used, so it will always have a special place in my heart.

Last year, I kind of went on a buying spree and got myself two new laptops (in my defense, I'll point out I got an awesome bargain). I tried to install Debian on them, but the installer froze on both machines.

That's when I gave Tumbleweed a try, and I was pleasantly surprised. The major drawback is that a rolling release distro requires far more frequent reboots than, say, Debian or CentOS. At least once a week a package gets updated that is so central to the system (kernel, libc, systemd, ...) that a reboot is practically required. Besides that, I have been very happy with it for the past ~12 months.

</comment><comment><USER15> Personally I looked at OpenSUSE after watching "Linux Sucks". Mostly I skip distro's that use KDE as their main Desktop Environment. Besides that KDE provides a lot, I found it extremly confusing since it's overloaded. Gnome 3 however did the exact opposite, they removed nearly everything. however the later version tend to offer exactly what most people need (- a dock not sure why they don't prolly because they don't want to be ubuntu/mac). But I try to reinstall OpenSUSE in my VM with Gnome3 now, since it looks that it also has a good support for that.

</comment><comment><USER16> The thing that keeps me from investigating/investing in the Suse ecosystem is the lack of a free LTS offering.

OpenSuse is Fedora, not Centos which is what they need IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER17> They don't have first class support for Nvidia's drivers on Tumbleweed, and Leap's cycle is too slow, so that rules it out for me at least.

</comment><comment><USER18> 508 error

<comment><USER19> Same here.

This page isn't working

fosspost.org is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500 RELOAD</comment></comment>


The Muscle Patents [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/10/481597112/episode-705-the-muscle-patents <comment><USER2> Pretty sure this is the patent?

[http://www.google.com/patents/US6117872](http://www.google.com/patents/US6117872)

If it is, it seems rather absurd. It's a patent for feeding someone something that exists in nature. Boy I'll bet you General Mills would love a patent for feeding you wheat.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how most of the comments at npr are about how the defendant is a bad guy -- as if that's relevant to determining whether the patent is reasonable and if he violated it.</comment>


Matt Cutts: $1,000 to the 2 best implementations of the recently-hacked Kinect - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/open-kinect-contest/ <comment><USER2> I don't mean to be a downer but I'm not sure how productive this is. I applaud his wanting to jump start something but this is a huge project.

Think about it. Just because the drivers let your computer see a hand doesn't mean your computer can recognize it is a hand. That has to be done in software and doing that will be a massive amount of work. And that's just figuring out it's a hand. Not telling the program what a hand does. Anyone who has used a Kinect on the Xbox knows the software plays a huge part in its execution.

I'd wager the configuration program alone took Microsoft far longer than the 6 allotted weeks this contest gives.

I'd much rather see a high profile person like Matt Cutts start a fund for open source development of a Kinect library for Linux and then giving people the time to accomplish something great (it's certainly a project I'd be willing to donate to)

<comment><USER3> Half of the prize money is set aside for people who make it easier to work with the Kinect, e.g. working on a Linux library. Mainly I want to get people excited about doing neat things with very cool device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the sense of community this is building already. Microsoft's initial 'don't hack our hardware!' statement only served to bring more attention to it.

I've even got some ideas for games for it, but of course, I don't have a license to officially program for it, and I don't think it works with the XNA. This means I have a chance to use with with the PC instead, though. If I can just find the time. ;)

<comment><USER5> libfreenect has been hacked on a bit to work on OS X; <http://vimeo.com/16734124> for a demo + link to the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, that picture and video linked to the article is fantastic. I actually never heard about how the Kinect worked, but once you see that you really get it. I'm a lot more impressed now that I know about the hardware details!

</comment><comment><USER7> I was not going to get myself a Kinect but things are changing pretty fast..

</comment><comment><USER8> I love reading Cutts and I love my Kinect and would love to see exactly what he is asking for, however if a well known MS engineer conducted a contest on discovering/emulating the software* behind Google's search appliance, do you think it would be met with embrace or venom by the HN community?

<comment><USER3> Just to clarify, I have no idea what Microsoft's Xbox software or user experience is like, and I have no interest in duplicating that specifically. I hope that people come up with entirely new ideas and apps.

Also, I should make clear that I'm doing this personally; the fact that I work for Google has nothing to do with it. If anything, I think Microsoft deserves props for bringing such cool technology to market. I hope Microsoft does really well with the Kinect and sells tons of them.

<comment><USER8> If they embrace the non 360 owning community, it doesn't sound like they will be losing money ( <http://bit.ly/aEUq3p> ). That being said though I don't think that as a person in the tech community that you do not have some inkling about what the UX of this device entails as MS has developed it (re "I have no idea what Microsoft's Xbox software or user experience is like"). As it has been plastered from Alpha to Oprah.

<comment><USER3> I actually am pretty in-the-dark about the UX of the Kinect and how it works with the Xbox. I don't have a Kinect myself yet, for example. I have an Xbox but haven't turned it on in several months, mainly because it's so loud (like, helicopter loud. Are newer Xboxen quieter?). I'm not much of a gamer, other than Portal and Katamari a few years ago. I've yet to watch an episode of Oprah, either. :)

I do hope that the Kinect cost of materials is low enough that MSFT doesn't lose money on each Kinect they sell. But I have to think that the tinkerer/maker community is much smaller than the mass market for video gamers. My guess is that Kinect purchases for Linux will be a barely blip on MSFT's radar.

<comment><USER9> The new XBox S (the matte black one) is much quieter than the old XBoxes. This YouTube video gives some idea of the difference, throwing in a listen with a PS3 as well: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5QpoKwVcSk>

The Kinect experience so far is targeted at a wider audience than the traditional gamer. My mother, for example, absolutely loves the Kinect. She particularly likes the Tai Chi and yoga trainers in the "Your Shape" game. I didn't expect it to take off with her the way it did, but it's the first video game system where she really wants to play it.

Another thing: there are several different interfaces embodied in the launch titles around the same basic Kinect capabilities and interactions. If you want to develop new user experiences, now is a good time to check out what people are doing before everything settles into place. So it's worth at least visiting a friend who has one.

(Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. Speaking only for myself here, of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really really want to buy one of these now just to write python APIs for it. Anyone else interested in that?

<comment><USER3> Right on! I would love it if someone could plug in a Kinect and starting doing cool things in Python in five minutes or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Matt poses the idea of using two or more Kinects at the same time to reconstruct a true 3D-view of the room. But when I watch the video and see how a Kinect determines depth -by projecting infrared light dots- I have my doubt wether this will work. I suspect the the two Kinects will interfere with eachother.

<comment><USER12> You'd have to pose them to be non-overlapping. You could probably have a bash at trying to unravelling overlapping projections but I doubt you'd have much luck. Although with two of them you could maybe do a first pass active stereo - but I don't think you can get access to the low level IR camera output anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I give it two weeks before the open source demos become cooler than Microsoft's.

Maybe not doing the same things (I remember they have a database of human positions and bone structure), but at least as good looking as.

Or maybe just plain useful for non-gamers.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if Kinect (or several of them) can be used to create a do-it-yourself motion capture kit. Being able to do mocap for your own hobby on a hobbyist budget would be very cool!

</comment><comment><USER15> I understand that money is ultimately the answer to my question... however...

Why haven't Microsoft or Sony, or better yet some video game maker we've never heard of, realized that building a platform to encourage "hacking" would make a lot of money. If Apple's App store has thought us anything it's that people want to be engaged on a deep level with devices such as video game consoles.

I must be missing something.

<comment><USER16> _Why haven't Microsoft ... realized that building a platform to encourage "hacking" would make a lot of money._

Because while it would make some money (perhaps 'a lot'), forcing people to buy their locked-in $60 games (and often more like $80 in UK and Europe) will make them even more.

I'm a total open-advocate so the above saddens me but that's why consoles are locked to license holders who buy access to build games for them.

Keep in mind that even at $150, the Kinnect is probably being sold at cost/loss at the moment so essentially they are subserdising the hardware to make money on the software.

My guess is that if "Open Kinnect" becomes a trend with a lot of applications, you can be sure someone like Logitech/etc will bring out an 'open' bundle of the same technology stack that can utilize the foundation of apps. But it will probably cost more as it won't be subsidized like MS are with Kinnect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack" into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for? The overuse of this term in headlines drives me nuts. It's not like people can drive by your house and break into your XBox by waving their arms. And that's the colloquial meaning, which has sadly displaced the original, more positive meaning.

<comment><USER18> > _Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack" > into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for?_

I think reverse-engineering definitely falls under the "hacking" umbrella. I would go so far as to call the winner of the Adafruit prize a _hacker_ , not to mention kernel devs who manage to get a device working without proper documentation.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I would call people that work on this hackers in the older more positive sense, but the common, inflammatory meaning of the word "hacked" usually has something to do with a security exploit. As in Headline: "Blahblah.com was recently hacked." As a headline, you would never think that means blahblah was reverse-engineered, but that it was vandalized or people's accounts were stolen.

<comment><USER19> I see it as a positive thing that the media is shifting to using the word 'hacked' as it was intended to be. Sure it may confuse some people but over time it may return to being used exclusively in the older sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Low discrepancy and well stratified sampling dots it seems. Halton or Hammersley perhaps?</comment>


Identified: shows you how your Facebook profile looks to recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://www.identified.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Further information: [http://lifehacker.com/5842029/identified-is-a-new- profession...](http://lifehacker.com/5842029/identified-is-a-new-professional- search-service-that-uses-facebook-to-connect-you-with-recruiters) (lifehacker.com)</comment>


Announcing the Acceptable Ads program - <AUTHOR> Hi, it's Michael, the creator of AdBlock. Pardon the interruption!
For years I have wanted to help make it easy for you to see useful ads and block annoying ones. I am excited to tell you that it's finally happening.
AdBlock is now participating in the Acceptable Ads program. Acceptable Ads defines strict guidelines to identify non-annoying ads, which AdBlock now shows by default. This way, you can help support your favorite websites -- and if you still want to block every ad, you can disable this easily.
Want more details? </snip> You can learn more about Acceptable Ads here. Like I said: AdBlock has enabled this feature by default, but you can can disable it in AdBlock's Options if you ever want to block every ad. I think you'll really like the change. Happy surfing!
Michael
PS: Why now? Well, I have always shared similar goals for the Web with the ad blocker Adblock Plus, who created the Acceptable Ads program. But I did not like the fact that they also control the program, because they are supported by some Acceptable Ads advertisers. Now, Adblock Plus will be transferring custodianship of Acceptable Ads to an impartial group of experts. I love this idea -- in fact, it was my wife Katie's suggestion! Due to this change, I'm happy for AdBlock to join the program. As a result, I am selling my company, and the buyer is turning on Acceptable Ads. My long-time managing director will keep working with the new company. I believe this is a great thing for you users.
It's been an honor to make the Web a better place for you! :) <comment><USER2> Thanks for this announcement Michael.

I do online advertising for a living and have been in the space for a long time. Part of the growing frustration from people subjected to display placements in particular has been the degraded user experience that stems from massive amounts of ad server calls and the privacy issues that come from all of that data being shared (not to mention cookie onboarding services, DMPs and such).

The Acceptable Ads policy doesn't seem to address those issues at all (unless I'm missing something, in which case please by all means point me in the right direction so I can edit this post). What is your (and AdBlock's) stance on those issues? Do you think the Acceptable Ads policy goes far enough in combating these issues?

One of the larger reasons for Apple's recent ad blocking update has been the insane decline of mobile performance as more and more JS tags are loaded. Just this morning I read an article on the Chicago Sun Times website and my WASP Inspector plugin logged over 330+ ad server calls. Thank god I was on my laptop or my old Nexus 4 would have choked completely. The poor visual experience was only one part of the problem. The other part is happening behind the scenes in a way that users only notice from what they read, browser plugins, and when their experience becomes unbearably slow or crashes.

Really curious for your thoughts on how we can solve the other half of this problem collectively--and I say that as someone whose livelihood depends on ads continuing to be useful drivers of revenue and value for the companies that use them to grow their business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the confusion, Please see my reply to dang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please don't post this as if you wrote it, unless you actually wrote it. If you're quoting it, please make clear it's a quote.

<comment><AUTHOR> oops!,sorry. I didn't realize it that way. I don't think I can edit it now. Will remember this in mind for future posts.

URL: chrome-extension://gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom/pages/acceptable-ads- announcement.html

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the Chrome URL of the original announcement: chrome- extension://gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom/pages/acceptable-ads- announcement.html</comment>


Triple Gear - <AUTHOR> http://www.shapeways.com/model/779258/triple-gear.html

<comment><USER2> Seems like it could have applications for something like a rope climbing device, since all of the internal edges converge (or diverge) as the parts are rotated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this the first working triple gear? I'm having troubles understanding the significance of or uses for this device.

<comment><USER4> I think the primary (only?) value is as a demo object for showing off 3D printing.

<comment><USER5> I was thinking mainly for showing how awesome math is!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That looks like a piece of artwork!

<comment><USER7> Z-axis "elimination" due to the projection on a 2d plane makes it look like a triquerta[0] (really a trefoil knot[1]) on those shots, except there are three loops, not one.

[0]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triquetra> [1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trefoil_knot>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More cool gear here:

<http://bugman123.com/Gears/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> This is mechanical transistor. I'm looking forward to a Turing complete machine based on triple gears.

</comment><comment><USER10> really cool thrust bearing!?

</comment><comment><USER11> wtf? this is sick!</comment>


Show HN: Scale Heaven – Browse and play any scale/chord, chord progression - <AUTHOR> https://scale-heaven.com/ <comment><USER2> Took me a few tries to find "Hungarian Folk or Byzantine Major Gypsy" scale as I first tried the other aliases:

1\. Double Harmonic (main English language theoretical name) [1]

2\. Byzantine (finds it, but in my experience is known as "Byzatine scale" and "Major Gypsy" is another scale name -- it is weird to see them glued together.

3\. Mayamalavagowla

4\. Bhairav Raga

5\. Arabic (Hijaz Kar)

It would be nice if a given scale had all its known names attached to it.

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

<comment><USER3> Yeah it could use a more accessible categorization for named exotic scales. The amount crammed in there is impressive but depending on what you're looking for, it's too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to categorize it in a comfortable way, but I'll look into changing it to a more convenient alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really great! For your progressions section, are all of the progressions added manually? It would be cool to have a way to generate or manipulate them more flexibly.

I'm the founder of Songcraft ([https://songcraft.io](https://songcraft.io)), an online songwriting platform, and we've tackled some of the same problems. It'd be great to connect! My email is in my profile if you're up for a chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> The progressions are indeed added manually, I started looking into ways of generating them in a different way but dropped it atm because i'm too busy haha

And i mailed you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work! And I have a modest suggestion. I'll illustrate with an example. Let's say I'm browsing scales. I select scale type "classic," and I choose C as the tonic then hit Go. The screen changes, and I see a bunch of scales, including C major (which has no accidentals). Okay, say my theory is rusty (it is, actually!) and I'm thinking about modes. I want to verify that A natural minor also has no accidentals, and likewise D dorian. To do that, it seems I have to back up to the previous screen so I can change the tonic from C to A, then hit Go again. Then I back up to the previous screen so I can change the tonic from A to D, then hit Go again. Can that be streamlined a bit so the tonic can be changed without going back to the previous screen? Something to consider adding to your to-do list! :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

And added to the to do list :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can also find it on the play store - [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scales.sca...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scales.scaleheaven)

</comment><comment><USER6> The relationship between "Compose" and "Composer" is not clear. You probably can merge it in one screen. Otherwise great app for a total beginner like me! Thanks! And by the way, ditto the dark mode request.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, added to to do list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome! I'll experiment with it tonight.

edit: One comment - when I clicked on chords progression it took probably 10-20 seconds to load but there was no indication of loading so I originally thought that perhaps the section was unavailable

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thats fedinitely too long!

Ill check it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone into understanding and composing in less-common keys, also check these out:

1\. Ian Ring's Scale Finder and directory, which is as close to a canonical scale reference as exists online:

[https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/finder.php](https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/finder.php)

[https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/2475](https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/2475)

[https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/traditions/exoticisms](https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/traditions/exoticisms)

2\. "Modal Jazz Composition and Harmony" by Ron Miller: [https://archive.org/stream/BooksOnMusicTheoryHarmonyCounterp...](https://archive.org/stream/BooksOnMusicTheoryHarmonyCounterpointOrchestrationinEnglishJazzToo/_misc,%20jazz%20related/Miller%20Ron_Modal%20Jazz,%20Composition%20and%20Harmony#page/n1/mode/2up)

3\. "Musical Scales of the World," by Michael Hewitt: [https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Scales-World-Michael- Hewitt-e...](https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Scales-World-Michael-Hewitt- ebook/dp/B00B770AQE/) (available on Kindle)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great!

Only two feedbacks:

\- Sometimes the audio lags out a lot. I know it's probably impossible to get low latency audio via Web Audio API (which I suppose you are using) but yeah.

\- Dark mode > everything else ever. I would default to it.

\- I want to donate to you, but Patreon is a turnoff. I'd rather use Paypal or a similar one-time payment option.

Regardless, it seems to be an incredibly useful tool. I've been looking for something like this for a long time. Again, thank you!

<comment><USER10> > Sometimes the audio lags out a lot. I know it's probably impossible to get > low latency audio via Web Audio API

The Web Audio API lets you trade off how far in advance you schedule things -- so if you want to be able to react to events faster, you can use a smaller buffer, but if you want to ensure that things don't lag out, you can use a larger one. There's a good overview here: [https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/](https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/)

The only issue with the audio that I noticed is that when playing the progression with the metronome, the metronome timing seemed fairly uneven and also tended to come in slightly before the piano sound. I didn't notice any timing issues with the piano alone though -- are they scheduled using different mechanisms?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into it, thank you.

And weird, they are scheduled using exactly the same mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really cool! I think the chord naming has some bugs, but it's been awhile since I studied theory. For example all the diminished triads are labeled "min 7-5" which is kind of alien to me (and wrong, there's no 7), shouldn't it be "dim" or "o"?

Feature request: viewing the intervals on a keyboard/fretboard, with different colors/numbering for each scale degree.

<comment><USER12> In jazz notation it's common to use minus sign to mean minor or flat. That particular chord (the half-diminished) is written as -7b5

<comment><USER11> It's not half diminished though, since there's no 7? I'm talking about just the diminished triad (min 3rd + min 3rd). It's been years since I read jazz notation (classical background), but I thought that was just written "dim"

<comment><USER13> The triadic diminished chords are labeled dim, but the diminished 7th version does indeed seem to be labeled as a half diminished chord. Maybe a circle isn't being rendered for the 7. (It's a bit painful seeing it spelled as C Eb Gb A rather than C Eb Gb Bbb. If you play a string instrument, you might tune an A differently from a Bbb, so it's not just a theoretical difference.)

Also, if you're seeing sevenths thrown in, it might be because in jazz chords are more for suggesting a scale than the actual pitches of the harmony. At least, that's how I understand it as a classical musician.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on the spellings to be as accurate as possible :)

<comment><USER13> I didn't mean to be so harsh here: it's more like the pain that classical singers feel when they hear vowels pronounced "incorrectly" on the radio :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha i understand :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks cool! Any chance of mapping the scales to a guitar fretboard? My favourite way to learn scales is just jamming along to a backing track with the scale on a fretboard in front of me. Like this: [http://www.all-guitar- chords.com/guitar_scales.php?scch=E&sc...](http://www.all-guitar- chords.com/guitar_scales.php?scch=E&scchnam=Pentatonic+Minor&get2=Get&t=0&choice=1)

<comment><USER15> You might like [http://guitardashboard.com/](http://guitardashboard.com/) as well!

<comment><USER14> Thanks, that looks awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From a User Experience, I would prefer the 4 buttons on the main page to be a button, rather than having the press the text to make it work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Taken, will be changed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hi! It's very great work indeed. Though I think it would be better, music theory-wise, not to mistake F for E#. For example, when I run the Chord Heaven with C# as the root, it gives C# F G#, instead of C# E# G#. Even if the frequencies of the notes are the same (in equal temperament, obviously), it doesn't convey the same harmonic meaning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking into ways to improve the pitch spelling algorithm, which is a really complicated thing...

</comment></comment><comment> d-d I'm getting a blank white page on Firefox.

<comment><USER18> Works fine for me on Firefox - 69.0.1 on macOS 10.14.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks great! I'll throw this out here as well since I also saw it on HN a while ago, I use it all the time: [http://guitardashboard.com/](http://guitardashboard.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Bug: In guitar mode I only hear 2 tones for 3-tone chords (expected 3 tones).

<comment><AUTHOR> Check the octave you are on, there is no C2 note on a guitar...

The app has been tested thoroughly :)

<comment><USER19> Yep was in C2.

Not a guitar player, but I think you can tune a guitar to play that note.

No amount of testing will protect against incorrect design.

<comment><USER20> Not sure why you're being downvoted, drop-C tuning is a real thing people do (which would bring you down to C2):

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

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be a real thing, but it's still not a bug.

it's a feature that i will definitely look into adding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fantastic post, comments and further links!

</comment><comment><USER22> Excited to try this buuuut... on iOS, there's grey touch-blocking overlay over the entire interface with no way to dismiss it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, it's a pwa so you can install it as a standalone app and use it offline etc :)

<comment><USER22> Same issue present when used as standalone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can't wait to play with the progressions. It's an area I've been looking to improve for some time, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a completely blank page using the Tor browser in Tails Linux.

</comment><comment><USER25> THANK YOU. I've been passively searching for something like this for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> So glad to hear!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a wonderful app. Also kudos for the Note-Art lib.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your'e welcome!</comment></comment>