Scientific Communication As Sequential Art - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/ <comment><USER2> Looking at this, it makes me realize just how much harm the journals are doing by limiting the number of figures per paper (and sometimes charging per-figure as well). If it really meant smaller, simpler, papers it might be a reasonable restriction, but in my field figures with 10 or more panels -- reproduced at a tiny size which makes them pretty much useless when reading offline -- are commonplace. They end up completely divorces from the flow of the manuscript.

Putting all the figures at the end (or separately) when the manuscripts are sent out for review just makes matters worse.

<comment><USER3> I haven't yet seen any charging for figures, only charging for colour figures (which probably really significantly increase cost). But since I don't know anybody who reads papers on paper it doesn't really mater anymore. And you might make the point that making sure that your figures loose as little information as possible when viewed on greyscale also improves accessibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really want to like (and buy) this "publication as a richer experience" as we need to find a way of getting beyond are book-like mentality in building documents that will essentially be read on a computer anyways. However, I don't really understand how to apply this technique in a way that could be successful and fairly generalized (i.e., it could become my new writing style). For better and worse, static linear prose allows the author to control the story that the reader is perceiving completely, it is quite efficient especially if the author can actually write! Anything else, like figures with verbose captions or lists, is often not very effective and a paper smell (like a code smell).

We'll need many more experiments like what Bret Victor is doing here before we can successfully evolve what is basically a 7000 year old format.

<comment><USER5> I use more verbose captions lately. It makes the figures be comprehensible on their own. The running text is shorter; The passage is mostly copy-pasted into the caption.

<comment><USER4> The caption approach often doesn't work very well in prose. The reader doesn't really want to divert their attention to a long caption, which interrupts their reading of a paragraph, if they bother they might have a hard time going back to where they left off after they've taken in the caption. This is why captions should be fairly short, especially when your reader is a reviewer who is not specifically interested in reading your paper. I actually prefer inlining my figures into the paragraph text, especially if they are short or math oriented. Reference becomes harder, but the reader's flow is better preserved.

Now, we can avoid that problem by moving to an illustrated comic book style (as done in Bret's example), where the figures become the story and panels are read in lieu of prose. But its very difficult to do a whole paper like this.

<comment><USER5> Reader flow is not a problem, if the figure+caption is used to make a point, which can be skipped for flow. Example from a recent publication [0], where the actual figure is not necessary, so the reader's flow is not broken:

> The libFirm API provides serialization and deserialization support for the > intermediate representation graphs. As can be seen in Figure 3, it is > therefore possible to compile the C part of the standard library with > cparser, stop before actual code generation and instead export the > intermediate representation to a file.

I believe most readers (e.g. me) look the figures first, so I want the figures to be comprehensible on their own.

[0] <http://digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/1000028112>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm willing to bet that any revolution in this field will involve Victor; one of the most fascinating thinkers in all of HCI.

<comment><USER7> I am really blown away by this man's innovation and productivity. A true artist, low key, strike high.

<comment><USER8> <http://worrydream.com/ClickShirt/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is how scientific publications should be at our technological level. Not a multiple-pages-based pdf.

However, the details still need some iterations. The design breaks when the browser windows gets narrow. Does it work on a phone or tablet?

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks very similar to the popular conference/workshop poster presentation format. Many disciplines have these sessions at meetings where authors display an A0/A1 poster summary of the paper and discuss it with attendees who wander around the room with a list of posters like art-gallery visitors. It can be very effective, with crowds around interesting posters and some debate. Often the visitors have a glass of wine in hand. In any case the posters look just like the posted page, though this is a very elegant example.

The authors don't mention the existence poster format, but it is clearly very closely related. Notice how politely I put that.

To see how common this is, Google for "conference poster" images. Many of the results returned are ugly and overdone - the idea is often executed poorly.

<comment><USER10> Conference posters are not considered a "real" publication, and the ones that I have seen are not as carefully designed as this example.

<comment><USER9> Surely, indeed I made your second point in my comment. Some posters are beautiful, most are not. My complaint about the OP is that it doesn't acknowledge the existence of posters, which are in exactly the format presented.

<comment><USER10> Then I did not get my point across well: I have never seen a poster in any approximation of the form the author presented. Hence, I find it reasonable that he did not mention them, because he likely has also never seen them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unrelated to the content of the article, but the light grey text is almost entirely illegible. The figure captions are particularly bad, and I am surprised Bret Victor chose such an awful color scheme. This page is basically a perfect case for <http://contrastrebellion.com/></comment>


Ask HN: What is the most secure way to do email? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In terms of transport security, ensure you control the server on your end and enforce TLS and certificate validation of the servers you converse with. Postfix+Dovecot are a popular solution for personal use or small orgs. For a business, consider CommuniGate mail server. If you can't host the mail server, then use a mail provider you feel you can trust from a legal and jurisdiction perspective.

In terms of payload security, gpg encrypt your messages. Exchange gpg public keys with the other parties in a secure manor. Avoid gpg key servers if you are privacy conscious.

Disable HTML, CSS and Javascript in your mail reader. Enforce plain text. Use an application firewall on the machine your mail client resides and ensure it can only connect to your mail server and nowhere else.

If feasible, use plugins on your mail server and/or on your mail client that convert all manor of hyperlinks and URL's into sanitized links that are not clickable. Strip out all forms of HTML.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thunderbird + enigmail was a decent combo a few years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its been awhile since I've used Thunderbird. I haven't used enigmail before, it sounds neat.

I've been using a mixture of email providers, like Protonmail for example. I was wondering if that's about as good as it gets in terms of security.</comment></comment>


5s - <AUTHOR> http://dcurt.is/5s <comment><USER2> Obvious statement of the day: Some people obsess over Apple products.

"Though Apple's technical specs claim both the iPhone 5 and 5s weigh exactly the same, the 5s feels lighter. It's very, very subtle, but I can tell in a multiple blind tests (I don't have a scale)."

Apple says they weight the same, yet the 5s feels lighter.

This is why Blackberry is going out of business. Nobody compares the size of the home button to the size of the icons to the size of the holes in the included case.

<comment><USER3> Blackberry is going out of business because they had incompotent management that reacted too slowly. It really should have never come to this.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/rim-ceo- quotes-2011-9?op=1](http://www.businessinsider.com/rim-ceo-quotes-2011-9?op=1)

Someone should claw back the money. Those guys were well paid.

<comment><USER2> Yes, on a financial scale, there have been many missteps. But nobody cares about the new Blackberry Q10 the way Gruber cares about the 5s.

Even if you love Blackberry, you're not measuring the size of the icons and comparing them to the physical characteristics of the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The exclamation point regulatory icon on the back of the phone appears to be about 2-5% larger on the 5s. I assume this change is to make the circle a mathematically perfect fraction of the other circles used throughout Apple's new design language."

No. Stop.

</comment><comment><USER5> Love the hilariously precise attention to detail. Reminds me of the in-depth review of the secret Disney restroom, [http://www.secretrestroom.com/](http://www.secretrestroom.com/) ( writeup at [http://boingboing.net/2012/05/04/tribute-to-disneylands- sec....](http://boingboing.net/2012/05/04/tribute-to-disneylands-sec.html) ), which I choose to believe is totally serious.

If you enjoy this kind of stuff, I have one obscure recommendation: check out this review of the Singapore Airlines economy travel experience from an authentic trufan, [http://www.airliners.net/aviation- forums/trip_reports/read.m...](http://www.airliners.net/aviation- forums/trip_reports/read.main/30239/) .

</comment><comment><USER6> reading that, I got to point 5 before I was struck by how unimportant all of this is.

given the problems we face in privacy from our own governments and the almost infinite need for real innovation, why are we fixated as a community on sizes of circles.

it really made me sad. is it a form of escapism?

<comment><USER7> I think it's more that people have a passion for well-made stuff, hand-in-hand with an ability to balance personal interest with societal concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <rant> I'm hoping the Nexus 5 (slated to be released in mid-October) is good, because I've completely had it with Apple's crappy iPhones.

* The App store ecosystem is toxic compared to Play.

* I'm absolutely sick of waiting for Apple to put in features that should have been included 3 years ago.

* The iPhone 5s/5c improvements are pretty minor and unimaginative. Dcurtis's list of minor changes further confirms that the new iPhone is _boring_.

* Each iPhone refresh since the 4 has been less and less impressive. </rant>

I'm certainly looking forward to moving on- Cheers!

<comment><USER9> I'm curious, what about the iOS App ecosystem is seemingly toxic in your opinion?

<comment><USER8> The lack of automatic app updates is unforgivable, and if they're included with iOS7, it's still too little too late in my opinion. Clicking 30 times to update 30 apps is a bad user experience. Often some of the updates don't start or finish, and the app becomes unusable unless you go to some lengths to fix it.

Then there are also the lengthy approval times for new app version submissions. Having to wait a week or more (and when Apple doesn't misplace your submission in their queue) is outlandish compared to the [more open] Google Play App Store where updates can go live in just a couple of minutes. Apple's walled garden is not fun to develop for. Every step along the way is painful compared to Android.

At SendHub, we have both Android and iOS apps. They are both updated very frequently (usually weekly), and the process for Android is a joy by comparison. If something went wrong with the latest release, it's not too big of a drama to roll it back. With Apple, we've ended up in nightmarish scenarios where something slipped past our QA and went live, and we had to call in special one-time favors to get the bad version rolled back.

The bottom line is that Android, while far from perfect, has a more developer friendly ecosystem which allows devs to do what they're good at: writing code, creating apps, and pushing out updates without a lot of fuss.

<comment><USER10> "Clicking 30 times to update 30 apps is a bad user experience."

I am OK with the rest, but I can see a button named "update all" in iOS 6 and have been using it for a long time.

and to answer your doubt yes automatic update is in iOS 7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While reading this, was anyone else reminded of this scene?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY)

<comment><USER12> "Look at that soft white coloring...the tasteful thickness of it... Oh my god! It even has a watermark!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Touch ID is really neat, and he misses on of the key interactions. At the unlock screen, you can just touch the home button (without pressing) and it will automatically unlock. No more slide to unlock.

This is great.

I suspect I'll start removing my phone from my pocket with my thumb on the home button. As I grasp the phone, I'll hit the home button but immediately release it. Touch ID will read my thumbprint and unlock the phone just as it's coming up in front of my face.

That's a half-second and a gesture I'll save, every time I reach for my phone.

<comment><USER13> Can you not use thumb print to unlock? The reason I gave my ipad to my brother, was his 1.5 year old could press the button and slide to unlock.

<comment><USER7> You can turn Touch ID off, no problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this 'article' border a fetish.

and i though some coworkers were bad case of fanboys...

</comment><comment><USER15> But the screen is larger than three point five inches. :(

</comment><comment><USER16> This post reads a little too much:

'Hi, I'm Dustin Curtis, I have an iPhone 5s, and I spent the whole day playing with it, and you probably didn't.'

Cool story, Dustin.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh, we're down to 2-character titles now?

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought this was going to be about the digit 5 in typography. Yet another article about someone anxious to talk about his new purchase.

</comment><comment><USER19> [autism intensifies]</comment>


A Curated Guide to PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://postgresguide.com/ <comment><USER2> > Its of note that Postgres does not automatically create an index when > creating the primary key, it is a separate step which you must do if not > using an ORM. ([http://postgresguide.com/performance/indexes.html#primary- > ke...](http://postgresguide.com/performance/indexes.html#primary-keys-and- > indexes))

This directly contradicts with what the PostgreSQL documentation says.

> Adding a primary key will automatically create a unique btree index on the > column or group of columns used in the primary key. > ([http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/interactive/ddl- > constrain...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/interactive/ddl- > constraints.html#AEN2493))

Is there a fundamental difference to the default pkey index versus an explicitly created index?

<comment><USER3> perhaps he meant a foreign key, not primary key.

postgresql doesn't automatically create indexes for foreign keys.

> Is there a fundamental difference to the default pkey index versus an > explicitly created index?

i don't know of any in practice.

<comment><USER4> You're correct it was intended to be foreign keys, correctly updated now.

I believe the difference would be on the constraint. A primary key is intended to be unique, where as an index does not alway carry that constraint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They ink to PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance (<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/184951030X/>), which I agree is a great book if you're a sysadmin supporting PostgreSQL.

<comment><USER6> what's up w the third book link tho? some crappy book by a guy named CJ

<comment><USER7> C. J. Date is a very well known technical writer. He has written extensively about SQL and relational theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While the idea is nice, please note that the official name is PostgreSQL and Postgres is an accepted alias. "Postgre SQL" is just plain wrong.

<comment><USER9> It's wrong, but probably unavoidable. Attaching a spoken acronym to the end of a pronounced name is just so bizarre (has anyone else ever done that?) that people will simply skip it.

I've heard people say "post-gre", and like a new English speaker saying "We goed to the park", this overgeneralization isn't at all surprising. In computers, acronyms _after_ names are very common, and it's typically harmless to omit them, e.g., saying "Windows XP" as "Windows" is more generic but not wrong.

I've never heard anybody ever say "post-gres-que-ell". ("Postgres" is correct, unambiguous, and sounds better. Why would I keep going and make it twice as many syllables?) They're trying to fight against the natural process of linguistic clipping with a FAQ!

I love Postgres as a database but I really wish they'd just drop that weird spelling. I don't think it's helping them at all these days.

<comment><USER10> > I've never heard anybody ever say "post-gres-que-ell".

I frequently, but not exclusively, say it like that. You knew someone would show up to say this. I admit I get weird looks. My coworkers all call it "Postgres."

I think you're right, but I also think if that's the best thing we have to complain about we have it pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Curated"? As opposed to a what, an automatically generated one?

SELECT RANDOM(GUIDE) FROM DATABASES WHERE DATABASE_NAME = 'POSTGRES'; ?!

The original article, thankfully, says nothing about being "curated".</comment>


Rackspace cloud incoming bandwidth 100% free & un-metered? Is it really true? - <AUTHOR> Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'David M.'
David M.: Welcome to Rackspace Cloud.  My name is David.  May I have your name and email address in case we are disconnected?
you: With cloud sites. For 100 p/m how much incoming bandwidth do I get?
David M.: 500GB per month
you: How much outgoing bandwidth do I get?
David M.: the 500GB is the outgoing
David M.: all incoming is free
you: What happens if I use 500GB incoming bandwidth p/m?
David M.: you can use as much incoming as you want... we don't bill for incoming with Cloud Sites
David M.: only outgoing
you: Ok, just to be clear. I'm thinking of hosting a web based Twitter client http://tweetminer.net on the rackspace cloud. If I had 1000 users running the client at full capacity it would equate to 879GB per month incoming bandwidth
David M.: if you're running your website on Cloud Sites.. then that 879GB of incoming bandwidth would be free
David M.: the $100/mo includes 500GB of "outgoing" bandwidth so if you don't exceed that.. then you don't have to pay bandwidth overages
you: hold one sec... let me run a calc by you
you: Based on my calculations I could host 3578 users @ 500GB per month outgoing. But those 3578 users would consume 3145 GB's Are you saying I can consume 3145 GB's per month for free?
David M.: the only free part is the incoming bandwidth to Cloud Sites
David M.: any incoming bandwidth regardless of the amount.. is free with Cloud Sites
you: What about 1000000000000GB incoming bandwidth?
you: Free?
David M.: yes it will be free... we don't measure incoming bandwidth with Cloud Sites
-----
My question to HN is... Do you think this is really true? <comment><USER2> Yes, absolutely. Rackspace has TONS of idle inbound, outbound is what they're buying bandwidth for. The reason for this is very simple, the vast majority of their customers has a roughly 20:1 outbound vs inbound pattern.

Almost every big hosting provider is in the same position.

And, predictably, on ISPs it is the opposite. That's also why as a rule you don't get much uplink capacity, because as soon as you have that you can start hosting serious stuff on your home network. For instance, I have 20 Mbit down but only 2 Mbit up (well, what's only, but still the difference is huge).

I have a small (5 node dual opteron) cluster in Amsterdam co-located with a friend on a similar deal, so I really have absolutely no problem believing this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi Everyone,

My name is Daniel and I actually work with the Cloud division of Rackspace. Incoming bandwidth to Cloud Sites is indeed not charged to you. @byoung2 was spot on in that compute cycles would take effect since it would be the CPU processing time that your site used to process any incoming requests on the system.

If you have any questions about the service, please feel free to contact us at any time using live chat on our site at rackspacecloud.com or calling in to 1.877.934.0409.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should remember that bandwidth is sold wholesale using bit/s in chunks of (eg.) 5Mbit; limiting users by some arbitrary number of bytes is an invention of hosting companies.

Thus for "serious" levels of traffic, you should look at the actual bandwidth (as in, bit/s) you would be connected to, not the byte cap. I'm not saying they are trying to deceive you, but just that it would explain your surprise.

<comment><USER5> In other words, just because you might get 10000000000gigs of "free" inbound, doesn't mean you can actually get that much inbound out of the pipe.

<comment><USER2> Typically your inbound rate is capped by the ability of your software to process the incoming data.

For the most part that's roughly comparable to how hard it would be to generate that much data, parsing and datamining are probably a little bit more cpu intensive than generating data. So if typically you find that you can push 300 Mbit out of a box you can expect to get around that much inbound or a bit less, depending on your application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remember with Rackspace Cloud you are also charged for "compute cycles" (a measure of CPU, memory, and database operations), storage space and outgoing bandwidth. They know that every incoming GB of data will have to get processed on the server, so they'll get you with the compute cycles, and storage, and you're going to have to send a response back to the client, so they'll get you with the outgoing bandwidth.

I host with Rackspace Cloud, and I can tell you that compute cycles go by pretty quickly with PHP/MySQL operations if you're not careful.

<comment><AUTHOR> You get 10000. Here's bumpf from their site....

\</comment></comment><comment>--

What are compute cycles?

Compute cycles measure how much processing time your applications require on the Rackspace Cloud. Using 10,000 compute cycles in a month is roughly equivalent to running a server with a 2.8 GHz modern processor for the same period of time.

How many compute cycles will my applications use?

Since web applications vary so greatly, it's hard to make a perfect guess. However, there are some guidelines that can help. First, you can think of 10,000 compute cycles as being about the same processing power as you'd get from a decent dedicated server or Amazon EC2 instance. For example 10,000 compute cycles would power:

        * about 2.1 million page views using a database-driven content management system

        * about 11 million page views of rackspacecloud.com

        * about 25 million requests for a static 15KB image

</comment><comment><USER7> Why would they lie? Rackspace is not some fly-by-night operation. They are, by some measures, the largest and most successful hosting provider in the world, and they have an excellent reputation. Lying to you to make a tiny sale like this would be just stupid.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't really implying that they were knowingly "lying". What I was mainly questioning was that they had some kind of internal cut off point or fair usage policy.

<comment><USER7> That would be "lying", wouldn't it? If their marketing materials clearly say it is unlimited...it would be a lie for it not to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SoftLayer switched to free unlimited incoming traffic earlier this year: <http://softlayer.com/press_2009_04_21.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Limestone Networks (rented dedicated server provider) switched to free incoming bandwidth like two months ago</comment>


Chinese border guards put secret surveillance app on tourists' phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveillance-app-tourists-phones <comment><USER3> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816)

</comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer: using a throwaway for the matter.

I've crossed this border before, and I did get my phone checked. A few additional facts:

\- 1-2 years ago, they were only taking the phone away while crossing the border TO China. If exiting China, they were using a portable machine in front of you

\- they attempt to connect your phone to a local WiFi network, download and install an app. The apps runs quick and is unlikely to send much data

\- at that time, they weren't checking iPhones, Android only

\- having another user on your Android phone, with restricted privileges (especially for chrome) seemed to be enough to prevent them from installing anything. The guard ended up searching the phone manually (i.e pictures) - <USER2> still on the restricted user

Oh and: all police checkpoints have "charging" stations along the way.

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER5> I am curious; what border did you cross? How was Xinjiang? Did you just go there for tourism?

<comment><USER4> The same as mentioned in the article: Irkeshtam (kashgar -> Kyrgyzstan). Yes mainly tourism, but also to see from my own eyes what's happening in Xinjiang, and the situation at the time wasn't great at all and very close to what you can read now and then (and it probably still is).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has been going on for at least a year.

See [https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-orders- xinjiang...](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-orders-xinjiangs- android-users-to-install-app-that-deletes-terrorist- content-07142017102032.html)

Some news outlets have also mentioned it in passing previously:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how- chi...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chinas- surveillance-state-overwhelms-daily-life-1513700355)

[https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has- turn...](https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned- xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/in-chinas- far-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/in-chinas-far-west- experts-fear-a-ticking-timebomb-religious)

Around that time, a user on reddit also reported that the app had been installed on his phone:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/)

So not really news. Best advice remains to buy a burner phone to bring. Avoid public USB charging stations.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's illuminating that even on Hacker News, the first two comment are "It's old news" and "They don't do too much". Even here public perception on surveillance is changing.

<comment><USER8> Yes and no. It's atrocious, but what can you do besides not going there, trying to persuade Trump et al. to conduct a much different foreign policy, use a burner phone, all of the above?

And all of these have been already said. Today/yesterday in quite a few submissions and their comments.

<comment><USER9>
      It's atrocious, but what can you do besides
      [...] trying to persuade Trump et al. [...]
      all of these have been already said.

American politics would look very different if people who were for/against abortion, or for/against gun control, or for/against tax cuts were so quick to abandon their positions when they suffered a setback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Burner phone it is for China travels.

</comment><comment><USER11> you gotta love the openess of android. such delightful side-loading is not possible on ios. oh and sandboxing makes everything so hard.

</comment><comment><USER12> What about iPhones though?

<comment><USER13> Apple iphone has signature check on packages being installed

I guess Apple refused to sign that</comment></comment>


Up to 20% of all U.S. electronic waste may be ending up in Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/4567397/recycling-electronic-e-waste-us-hong-kong-ban/ <comment><USER2> I think we can do better than that. I'd like to explore how we can get our numbers up a little bit. I don't think the 30% range is entirely unrealistic...</comment>


Smart Watchers - <AUTHOR> http://kyrobeshay.com/post/60387655373/smart-watchers

<comment><USER2> DOA, no one will buy them.

The only real value would have been entry level $99 smart phone with stripped down features, or medical device to track your heart beat. It is just redundant otherwise. I need something on my wrist to tell me to get my phone from my pocket? Talking to a watch is just ridiculous.

Overpriced, oversold, just over. Dead on arrival.

It is ironic because the smartphone killed the wrist watch; in the modern age you know what time it is every time you look at your phone.

waste of time, money and talent if you ask me

</comment><comment><USER3> > always measuring, always sensing, always watching

Is that something to fear or commemorate? We need alternatives to Android.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't tell whether this is satire or not.

<comment><USER5> It's not.

<comment><USER6> what about stuff like garmin gps watches or tomtom multisport watches that already track tons of data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Cyril-Boh Is watchers (with an s) a typo?</comment>


Clojure Linear Algebra: Orthogonalization and Least Squares - <AUTHOR> http://dragan.rocks/articles/17/Clojure-Numerics-5-Orthogonalization-and-Least-Squares <comment><USER2> source code of the library used in the tutorial: [https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal](https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal)</comment>


Google Is the Gatekeeper to Life:( - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/dn6k2s/google_is_the_gatekeeper_to_life/ <comment><USER2> If you ever want a lesson in fear of the power of Google, just put your phone on a WiFi network that is also hosting some sort of spamming operation.

Once you do, for the next month, three quarters of the internet will show you multiple captcha challenges. You will give up on using mobile banking, ride- sharing, or just using any internet service that requires a sign-in.

Because every action will take 10 minutes of tedious captcha solving

(Something like this happened to me. My phone got flagged by Google as a likely spammer, and so I had 10-15 captcha for every site. Then I ce home, and because the phone joined my wifi network, my home PC got treated as a spammer too.

It took two months before the internet was actually usable again.

And this was all honest error. Google could easily have made it infinite captchas if they were to actually want to ban me from the internet.</comment>


Saw these guys on a list of startup accelerators. Anyone heard of them? - <AUTHOR> http://www.obsidianlaunch.com <comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting but there is only one portfolio company listed, a maker of leather sheaths for knives.

<comment><USER2> Not only that, but the one company in their portfolio was founded in 2006, and it's still not anything anybody has ever heard of.

There are enough tech focused incubators that, assuming you are doing a tech start-up, would probably be able to offer you more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> on closer inspection, their is more than one portfolio company, just a very bad UI on their site.

Still, go with a known entity if you can.</comment>


Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma due to gravitational challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459

<comment><USER2> Some of the comments made by HN participants who posted during the first hour this 2003 article was posted bring up the main point: clinical trials should be informed by prior probabilities. That's why some medical researchers, while not saying that clinical trials are a bad idea, identify the best practice as "science-based medicine" (medicine that takes into account prior probabilities and basic principles of science when evaluating clinical trials) rather than "evidence-based medicine" (which many observers take to be a designation for relying on clinical trials to evaluate treatments). The "About" page on the Science-Based Medicine group blog site puts it well:

[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/about- science-...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/about-science- based-medicine/)

"Good science is the best and only way to determine which treatments and products are truly safe and effective. That idea is already formalized in a movement known as evidence-based medicine (EBM). EBM is a vital and positive influence on the practice of medicine, but it has limitations and problems in practice: it often overemphasizes the value of evidence from clinical trials alone, with some unintended consequences, such as taxpayer dollars spent on 'more research' of questionable value. The idea of SBM is not to compete with EBM, but a call to enhance it with a broader view: to answer the question 'what works?' we must give more importance to our cumulative scientific knowledge from all relevant disciplines."

The previous comments posted here mentioning what we can know about falling human bodies from first principles of how free fall in the earth's near gravitational field works, or by experiments with dummies including instruments, or by historical experience with aircraft disasters, correctly point out that randomized controlled trials should be designed with all the relevant science in mind. Further, clinical trials should be designed both to gain knowledge of the effectiveness of varying treatments and to minimize risk to human subjects of treatments (jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, for example, or using acupuncture, for another example) with no strong evidence of effectiveness.

See my all-time favorite link to share in HN comments, LISP hacker and rocket scientist (and now director of research at Google) Peter Norvig's article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

on how to interpret scientific research.

AFTER EDIT: In answer to the question, "Where is the evidence that EBM or SBM helps?", the evidence is all around you, all over the world. I've lived in more than one country, and I have had access to the research library of a major university health sciences center since I was in high school, and the incremental improvements in human lifespan at all ages, young and old, and the reduction in disease burden from all kinds of diseases

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity- why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

are an outcome caused in large part by better understanding of how to prevent or treat disease, an understanding that comes about from science-based medicine.

The article I just submitted today

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644708>

about systematic reviews of acupuncture research in China illustrates the drawbacks of doing anything but science-based research on human disease prevention and treatment. People can imagine that a lot of speculative treatments work, but the way to demonstrate that one treatment or another works is to investigate it carefully with the underlying science in mind.

<comment><USER3> Where is the evidence that EBM or SBM helps?

<comment><USER4> You mean where's the _evidence_ that _evidence_ based medicine works?

I could produce some evidence but I'm afraid that then you'd ask me where's the evidence that my evidence actually supports the hypothesis that evidence based medicine actually helps.

<comment><USER5> That's the problem of induction, a.k.a. "how do we know the sun will rise tomorrow?" problem.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Best understood in context as a combination of medical humour, and a critique of evidence-based medicine. In this case pointing out the lack of controlled randomized trials of parachutes, and how this would affect the evaluation of the efficacy of parachutes as a life-saving medical intervention.

<comment><USER7> This must once have been true of seatbelts too, before all the experiments that were done with dummies and cadavers.

One could argue that similar experiments should be done with parachutes: Throwing dummies and cadavers out of aircraft onto various surfaces (rock, grass, woodland etc.)

Interesting engineering problem too (you need a robot to pull the ripcord, but then it needs to get out of the way so it does not interfere with the outcome by causing additional injuries, adding too much weight etc.)

<comment><USER6> The problem here is that we have a condition ("jumping out of aeroplanes") where, without an intervention ("give the patient a parachute") the consequences are almost certainly fatal (yes, a handful of people have survived falls from altitude without parachutes: but a fatal outcome is sufficiently certain that defenestration has historically been used as a means of execution).

It's a major ethics no-no to expose healthy patients to potentially-fatal environments. It's also a major ethics no-no to withhold known life-saving treatment in the name of continuing a trial. So we can't contrive a proper randomized double-blind placebo-controlled test of the life-saving efficacy of parachutes, where we push people out of planes repeatedly to see how many survive without a parachute vs. _with_ a parachute.

We can't test parachutes any more than we can contrive an evidence-based test of the efficacy of being-rescued-from-burning-buildings-by-firefighters, by arranging for a city's fire department to randomly _not_ rescue half the victims of house fires, so that we can subsequently compare their survival rate with the survival rate of those who were rescued.

Basically, evidence-based assessment of medical treatments breaks down when it hits the edge condition defined by the patients automatically dying if not treated. _At best_ we can compare different types of parachute, or different types of emergency tratment, and see which has a lower associated mortality rate. But we can't, ethically, compare treatment/no-treatment if there's a high likelihood of no-treatment resulting in death.

<comment><USER8> But the thing is that you can use proxies to study this to an extent.

Amongst rock climbers there is a naturally occurring population of free climbers, and it is possible to note the type and severity of injuries between different types of rock climbers (although i'm guessing your n is going to be low).

The safety of parachutes themselves is an interesting question because they're not used as a preventative mechanism, I think that's the primary difference between them and climbing ropes/harnesses/pitons.

Edit: I just noticed that I didn't address the randomized component. I'd still argue that evidence based medicine can actually include arguments that aren't randomized trials. That said, randomized trials are still one of the strongest sort of argument that can be made. As noted above, seatbelts are another sort of device that I don't think we need randomized trials to test the efficacy of.

p.s. Just finished (and enjoyed) the Apocalypse Codex. The Laundry Files is one of my favorite series of books as someone who's always believed that empiricism and existentialism are reconcilable. Please write more :)

<comment><USER6> _Please write more :)_

I'm writing #5 right now. Publication due in mid-2014.

<comment><USER9> Please excuse the hijack, anything in the pipeline for release in 2013?

<comment><USER10> [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/10/still- un...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/10/still-under- siege.html) mentions "Neptune's Brood", space-opera set 5k years after "Saturn's Children" but it sounds like it may not actually be coming out until next year, along with three volumes of Merchant Princes (the existing books, in omnibus editions with minor changes) and maybe a UK edition of "The rapture of the nerds".

<comment><USER6> "Neptune's Brood" comes out in July 2013. (It's a high-concept space opera and a meditation on the 2007-08 liquidity crisis. Also, nominally, a sequel to 2008's Hugo-nominated "Saturn's Children".) "The Rhesus Chart" is in the pipeline for July 2014. The other stuff is all, effectively, reprints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is kind of making me froth: of course parachutes are tested. Lots and lots of R&D time has gone into developing better crew/passenger escape system for aircraft.

The authors are simply whining about evidence-based medicine, which is now finally being pushed after a realisation that a lot of the medical interventions we use are based on gut feeling, hearsay, or ancient, tiny, badly-implemented trials.

Human beings are extremely good at seeing patterns where there are none. We need good, solid stats to keep us grounded in reality.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, The problem is always that very few, very few indeed, medical procedure rises to the prior that parachutes have... but anti-EBM people somehow have a surprisingly long list of such procedures, a list that rather resembles the list they would've made _before_ EBM began insisting on RCTs.

<comment><USER13> I like EBM. I would love to live in a world in which it is practiced properly. One of the biggest problems with EBM, though, is that what often is advertised EBM, actually isn't.

My ex was a medical doctor, and for fun I used to read NEMJ and BMJ articles through her subscription. If you trace through references, you often find a (reasonably rigorous) study with reasonable effect observed on a group 40 norwegian women aged 40-50; which in a later article referencing it is assumed to apply to all women in that age group; and through the years is assumed to apply to all women in all age groups. And that's the part that is "easy" to trace (except no one ever does, and it's not really easy)

Additionally, the statistical evidence is inherently weaker than is presented (in a way which no one can actually evaluate) due to the lack of accounting for negative results and unreported trials.

Also, accepted login in EBM is not acceptable from a math perspective. Seth Robert's recent blog post gives a striking example: [http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/10/11/jama-jumps-to- conclus...](http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/10/11/jama-jumps-to-conclusions- about-vitamin-d/) ; Tell someone about YOUR (n=1, but better controlled than most medical tests!) experiment with Vitamin D, and they'll likely counter with "Oh, but that has been refuted. It's just placebo". That's a big percentage of how EBM is used in practice. And that's the part I don't like.

<comment><USER12> > Seth Robert's recent blog post gives a striking example: > [http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/10/11/jama-jumps-to- > conclus...](http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/10/11/jama-jumps-to-conclus..). > ; Tell someone about YOUR (n=1, but better controlled than most medical > tests!) experiment with Vitamin D, and they'll likely counter with "Oh, but > that has been refuted. It's just placebo". That's a big percentage of how > EBM is used in practice.

Actually, it's funny that you bring that up. Yes, my own vitamin D self- experiments were more rigorous than Roberts's vitamin D experiments/anecdata, and both of my self-experiments used blinding precisely to avoid the placebo refutation, so anyone trying to refute them so simplistically would be engaged in poor reasoning; but Roberts is not innocent himself of poor reasoning himself!

I pointed out in his _previous_ post on that study that his criticism makes no sense since the injection happened once a month, which implies the following dilemma (if we believe his criticism): the effect from bad timing should either be undetectable due to contaminating only 1/31 of the data (1 day out of each month), or if the negative effect is persistent over many days, renders every single anecdote & self-experiment (including mine) completely unreliable trash since none of them were expecting an effect which contaminates so many days. So either his criticism is wrong or his entire collection of data is worthless. (Besides that, plenty of vitamin D studies have shown benefits while completely ignoring administration time. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.)

So maybe EBM is abused in practice... but I don't see your examples showing this.

<comment><USER13> > So maybe EBM is abused in practice... but I don't see your examples showing > this.

I was giving a (paraphrased) example from my history - it was 10 years ago, and I didn't keep my notes.

But Seth's example is typical: A result (negative in this case) applicable very narrowly is assumed to apply very broadly (By a top practictioner in the field, and his view is unlikely to be rejected; most readers will take his conclusion without trying to confirm or criticize the rationale).

> the effect from bad timing should either be undetectable due to > contaminating only 1/31 of the data (1 day out of each month), or if the > negative effect is persistent over many days, renders every single anecdote > & self-experiment (including mine) completely unreliable trash since none of > them were expecting an effect which contaminates so many days.

I don't follow you; In this experiment, they gave 100,000IU once a month; meaning that there must be a sharp rise in the beginning, followed by a decay which we believe (from other experiments) to happen slowly over a month.

If the effects are modulated by the _delta_ in vitamin D, rather than the _level_ (e.g. if there's a phase-locked-loop somewhere), then Seth's reasoning applies perfectly well: In the JAMA experiment, there is a (very small) constant negative delta, and nothing for a biological PLL synthesizer to "lock on" to - whereas with your experiment (and other anecdata collected by Seth), the sleep cycle can be locked onto the Vitamin D delta (with 12 hour delay), and all would make sense.

> so anyone trying to refute them so simplistically would be engaged in poor > reasoning;

Yes, that's exactly my point. Most people who think they follow EBM are actually engaged in poor reasoning, and even worse meta-reasoning, as in: "The fact that other people did not notice that this evidence is inadequte, is evidence that YOUR reasoning is flawed". Yes, more than one person with an MD/PhD told me that if what I claim about how B12 is produced is right, they would have learned about it in school; even after they relented and looked it up themselves!

Furthermore, most placebo-controlled double-blinded experiments are not actually blinded: the substance or procedure being tested is known to have an effect (e.g. dry mouth) but it is not known if it has the _desired_ effect. The placebo is known to have no effect (e.g. sugar pills). The patient therefore knows when they got the real thing (though they're still in the dark if they got the placebo).

The only way this is ever controlled for (if at all), is by comparing to an accepted substance/procedure used for the same purpose - which might, itself, be subject to the same kind of bias.

So, to cut a long story short ... The ideal of EBM is nice. The practice is very, very far away, but is assumed by most EBM proponents to have all the properties of the ideal.

<comment><USER12> > In the JAMA experiment, there is a (very small) constant negative delta, and > nothing for a biological PLL synthesizer to "lock on"

Exactly. With nothing to lock onto, there should be no effect or a 'very small' effect since people will continue their normal circadian rhythms and light exposure levels which zeitgebers will, just as usual, adjust things daily - if that delta over the entire month even matters, which it probably doesn't since it's fat-soluble and should be released gradually at need from fat stores. To say that there should be a strong benefit to colds and this tiny non-existent effect explains why we don't see it (without also explaining why this doesn't eliminate all other benefits observed from vitamin D, since use of injections is common in vitamin D experiments) is just totally obvious special pleading by Roberts.

(And yes, the relevant factor cannot be the _level_ , because that is flagrantly inconsistent with my self-experiments where the level was kept constant and only the timing was varied.)

> Furthermore, most placebo-controlled double-blinded experiments are not > actually blinded: the substance or procedure being tested is known to have > an effect (e.g. dry mouth) but it is not known if it has the desired effect. > The placebo is known to have no effect (e.g. sugar pills). The patient > therefore knows when they got the real thing (though they're still in the > dark if they got the placebo).

'Most'? Cite.

<comment><USER13> I guess I can't support 'most'. It did happen in two out of three experiments for which I actually had intimate details.

But this is one of those things that will never get a trustworthy citation, and yet is probable (replace "most" with "significantly many" to increase probability according to your own probability measure).

A drug tested today on humans has, with high probability, been shown to be safe, but most importantly, effective, in an animal model - or is already known to be effective and safe in humans for another use.

Note the term "effective". That means that it is known to have a measurable effect. For many drugs, it is therefore probable that the (human) subject receiving the treatment can tell that it isn't placebo.

Specifically, quite a few psychiatric drugs are known to cause obesity, compulsive thoughts and lactation (even in males). Niacin is known to cause flushing (at lower levels, it is not externally visible, but the sensation is still there). Viagra was discovered during an attempt to treat hypertension. I'm sure the subjects could tell it from the placebo. Similarly for Minoxidil.

To actually assess how prevalent this is, you need at least access to notes made during the experiment, or worse - you need to do measurements and stats that weren't made in the first place (and which making may only make the results less promising; which is a problem in for-profit development)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can I just point out that the BMJ's Christmas issue always includes 'humourous' pieces of research:

In 2011:

"Is 27 really a dangerous age for famous musicians? Retrospective cohort study"

<http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7799>

or

"Orthopaedic surgeons: as strong as an ox and almost twice as clever? Multicentre prospective comparative study"

<http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7506>

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes.

All evidence of parachute efficacy is anecdotal (as well as the occasions where the parachute failure "allegedly" caused the death of a person.

Enough with this pseudoscientific babble that parachutes work!!

I love this kind of humor, EBM is certainly important, but some people try to make all and everything out of something.

</comment><comment><USER4> Media report: "SCIENTISTS CONFIRM: PARACHUTES INEFFECTIVE" "JUMPING OFF A PLANE WITHOUT A PARACHUTE CONSIDERED SAFE"

<comment><USER16> That's basically how the media report every little doubt in global warming research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love our sense of humour, very British:

"Contributors GCSS had the original idea. JPP tried to talk him out of it. JPP did the first literature search but GCSS lost it. GCSS drafted the manuscript but JPP deleted all the best jokes. GCSS is the guarantor, and JPP says it serves him right."

</comment><comment><USER18> This is actually quite relevant for bicycle helmets. There is no evidence that they actually make you safer, and the debate can get very passionate.

<comment><USER19> Maybe I'm missing the point of this entire thread and don't truly grasp the argument for EBM vs. correlation, but can someone explain why a statistically significant correlation for this kind of efficacy is not evidence in and of itself?

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500000488)

<comment><USER20> Those aren't prospective randomized controlled trials. They're retrospective observational studies. They are evidence of efficacy, no doubt, but not particularly convincing evidence for all the normal reasons observational studies are often unconvincing, but maybe even moreso in light of some other contradictory results in the literature as well as the general concept of risk compensation (i.e., it's not like a parachute where it's very clearly obvious that it works).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where's the post from tokenadult about the methodological shortcomings of this paper?

<comment><USER22> Right here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644687>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I see the point they're trying to make, but randomized controlled trials would still be valuable to determine the relative effectiveness of different parachute designs.

</comment><comment><USER24> If Monty Python were allowed a medical license....

"Contributors GCSS had the original idea. JPP tried to talk him out of it. JPP did the first literature search but GCSS lost it. GCSS drafted the manuscript but JPP deleted all the best jokes. GCSS is the guarantor, and JPP says it serves him right."

</comment><comment><USER25> For those that actually want to see how some canopies are tested then check out this video from the R&D department of Performance Designs.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERRrUcyOiE4>

</comment><comment><USER3> A humorous article in the BMJ that describes evidence-based medicine (EBM) as a religion:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139053/>

</comment><comment><USER26> ...for all values of gravity?

<comment><USER27> Hilarious!

Doesn't it get just RIDICULOUS reading some EBM stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So what's the catch? Why is it wrong?

Is it we know lesser falls cause death and as such we can extrapolate out.

Or since the differences are so pronounced there is no need for randomised placebo trails?

<comment><USER29> It's not really wrong. It makes the correct point that randomized controlled trials are only one kind of useful knowledge. It's possible to know stuff that can't be tested that way, so blind insistence on EBM is likely to throw out some babies along with all that bathwater.

Seth Roberts often makes similar points in his blog - people running experiments on themselves of size N=1 can often discover stuff that is useful, even vital, but can't be discovered or demonstrated in a big double-blind study.

Imagine that we had no scruples and were willing to throw people out of aircrafts with dummy or with real parachutes. The ones who had parachutes would still _notice_ when the parachute opened and slowed their fall. So we can't rule out the placebo effect! :-)

<comment><USER30> You could link the ripcord to release a toxin to cause unconsciousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_Improbable_Research#N...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_Improbable_Research#Notable_articles)

</comment><comment><USER32> Sign at the loading ramp at Zephyrhills Skydiving center: "Gravity is the law, obey the law!"</comment>


A Haskell webserver ... - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=6kfwTsB0

<comment><AUTHOR> Courtesy nostrademons, [http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/cguuj/a_haskell_web...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/cguuj/a_haskell_webserver_in_ascii_art/c0sgz2w)

Hint: view-source:<http://localhost:8000/>

<comment><USER2> Is that an Easter egg?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is an Easter egg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using ghc (version 6.6), I get:

        webserver.hs:1:8: parse error on input `{'

<comment><USER5> GHC 6.6 is almost 4 years old, please upgrade. (<http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh God, IOHCC?

</comment><comment><USER7> purty! :)</comment>


How a Chairman at McKinsey Made Millions of Dollars Off His Maid - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenation.com/article/the-strange-true-story-of-how-a-chairman-at-mckinsey-made-millions-of-dollars-off-his-maid/ <comment><USER2> already posted, with unaltered title, earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10543627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10543627)</comment>


Mutamate: a darknet dating website for genetic freaks - <AUTHOR> http://megazinemagazine.com/muteamate/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for linking that really interesting short story.

A magical part of the internet has always been about creating communities that transcend the limits of the place and culture in which you find yourself. You no longer have to feel other-worldly or strange, you can finally below.

I presume in the past, that's what going to college meant. Being exposed to a broadening of possibilities and experiences. The internet, however, opens perpetual, life-long, self-discovery and self-actualization.

Here's hoping we all fight to keep it that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> So the link is to a short story in a literary group blog called MegazineMagazine.com. The title of the story is "Mutamate." The story's author, Miracle Jones, whom i had never heard of before reading the short story linked to her, is an extraordinary writer. Another of his story stories (also on this Site) begins with the line "So I used to have the same drug dealer as one of the guys who invented Kickstarter."</comment>


Show HN: Giving a Broken Barcode Scanner a New Life with Elixir and Nerves - <AUTHOR> https://bcarrigan.com/2018/04/20/wunderscan/ <comment><USER2> I love these little stories, they always make me want to go out and buy a proper oscilliscope so I can start my own adventures.

I'm surprised by how simple and easy to understand the data serialisation is on some bits of hardware as in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words! I will echo slig and say that I have been really happy with the Rigol DS1054Z so far. I love that you can build a really capable electronics lab at home in 2018 for less than $500.

<comment><USER3> Any guides in getting started with an oscilloscope?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTPhuRQBmLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTPhuRQBmLQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The laser scanner is kind of fancy, but you can get USB scanners for $10-$20 that present as keyboards. For me, the most interesting part of this is looking at Elixir.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any recommendations? I've been looking to get one to play with the same concept as this article but I've never pulled the trigger on buying one as I'm not sure if there any quality aspects I need to be aware of. The shipping costs for my location are a bit too much to just try one. I can also imagine there's no real difference for that price range but I want to be sure before I order one.

<comment><USER7> Getting whatever is the cheapest one Amazon has listed at any given time has worked for me.

The only differentiation I can see is the really expensive ones can scan the tiny 2d codes that are silkscreened on some ICs, and the cheap ones are limited to about the same resolution that a standard consumer printer can print a barcode at. Unless you have some very specialized requirements, you should be good with just about any cheap barcode scanner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We've found Wunderlist to be truly amazing as a shopping list app, and my family has been throwing this type of idea around for a while, though instead of using a dedicated scanner we were thinking of just throwing together a simple app that used the camera and available barcode reading software that connected directly to our shopping list.

It's nice to see that someone else came up with this idea, executed it so well.

<comment><USER9> Most shoppinglist apps we tried when we were selecting our app had barcode scanning but we never used it, it is far faster to just type twi chars and select the too thing. Or just go thru the list of most used items.

<comment><USER8> My problem with most of those apps is that they're too large and offer way more features than we're interested in, often to the point that they break the way we'd like to do things. Can you recommend an app that you use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At first I thought it was going to be a :cueCat goes to rehab article, but no... a legit barcode scanner. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER11> Love this!

I was thinking of something similar, but mostly as an inventory + expiration tracking system, because we often forget what we have in the fridge and cabinets. I love the integration with Wunderlist for adding to the shopping list as well!

</comment><comment><USER12> I would pay $100 for something like this. I want to just scan something, have it beep, and add to a shopping list. I know amazon has something similar but I don't want to order it, just log it. Excellent project.

<comment><USER5> The Android app "Out of Milk" will do this for free using the phone's camera.

<comment><USER13> How good is the scanning speed? I've tried a few apps which will scan a barcode, but they all seem quite slow. If I buy 50 items at the store, I don't want to fiddle with it for 10 minutes to get everything scanned in, I'd like to buzz through them relatively fast.

<comment><USER5> It is a bit slow, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is such a cool little project! I'm planning out a dedicated setup for my kitchen, particularly for recipes, but inventory management is another opportunity I've been wanting to explore.

Great writeup with detail!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much! I'd love to hear about what you come up with for recipe management.

<comment><USER13> Right now I'm going very low tech for recipe management...I send a DM to my SO on slack. That's most of what we use the DM for, an archive of things we've made. We mostly need a bigger screen in the kitchen that stays on while making a recipe. A Microsoft Surface we have laying around will be used for that.

I'd like to do a database of products purchase, purchase date, price paid, scan a barcode and mark it as consumed, and calculate typical consumption rate of the products.

I will keep things pretty simple, either a sqlite database that stays local or a LAMP setup so I've got access to an inventory list at the store along with "price check" functionality.

<comment><USER14> I'm working on this idea too! Hit me up on gmail! Love to chat.

<comment><USER15> Apparently many grocery store chains offer APIs where you would be able to download information on what you bought. Anybody know more on this?

<comment><USER13> I checked Aldi and two regional grocery stores near me...no public API. One does have a delivery service, but that API is closed off it looks like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now, if only I can get Wunderlist to stop randomly duplicate my groceries list items or clear the wrong item when checking off... I can see why array indexing is a hard problem..

</comment><comment><USER17> Where can I buy a scanner like this that is already hooked up to a todo-list?

<comment><USER18> Maybe you need to find someone to do a Kickstarter

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm already nervous to try it out.</comment>


Show HN: We build a calendar for people that schedule to-dos - <AUTHOR> https://amie.so <comment><USER2> Interesting, this appears to be the same concept for the app I was going to build because I couldn't find any like it!

Edit: Nevermind, I thought it allowed scheduling of one-off or periodic Todo lists.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah we actually will allow scheduling off a periodic to-do list.

I think we talk about the same thing.

like this: a category called "Repeats/Habits/Chores". every item in there has a count, e.g. 3x/ week. every time you drag the item into your calendar, the count decreases when you dragged it the 3rd time, it disappears until next week

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the ui and feel. I am definitely interested because I've felt the need for a little more precise control like this. Keep up the updates!

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean with "little more precise control"?

Probably relevant on HN: We're prioritizing an open API. All features will be accessible programmatically in the long term.</comment></comment>


Adobe is suing Forever 21 for pirating Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7948241/forever-21-pirating-photoshop-adobe-corel-autodesk <comment><USER2> This could be a sign that business is not going well at Adobe. Overall the pirating of PhotoShop has likely been very beneficial for Adobe over the years as it has helped young designers who do not have money learn the tool before they are hired professionals. Eventually, due to the designer knowing Photoshop rather than some other tool Adobe makes money throughout the designers career. Im guessing this means things are slowing down, and rather quickly.

<comment><USER3> Yes and no. Piracy is good to help people learn and get the skills to do a job. It's in Adobe's interest to allow piracy during the learning phase, but also in its interest to enforce it's right to earn when companies and individuals start to earn.

If all ~60 designers pirated photoshop to learn to use it professionally, that's not a problem. When forever 21 gets those ~60 designers copies of photoshop to work with, they should be paying for it. First, it is the right thing to do. Second, it's good risk management. 60 pirated seats is putting a target on your back, and sends a message that it's not okay not to pay when you're making money at scale.

Personally, I'd love to see gimp win (never going to happen, I know), but photoshop is the de facto tool for image manipulation in industry and Adobe has put a ton of work into making it a really good tool. They deserve to be paid for that work. If people don't agree with that, then they should contribute to or help fund OSS development of an alternate tool for that job.

What I would like to see happen though is required symmetry in enforcement, as opposed to selective enforcement. Selective enforcement of copyright is a toxic tool that helps Adobe unfairly maintain market dominance, since it gets everyone hooked and invested in its tools during the learning phase. Not enforcing its copyright on people during the learning phase is implicit approval that pirating is okay. The alternative that they could pursue is to make it freeware, where you get to use it for free until certain criteria are met.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I would have a dollar for every copy of pirated software used on a (rather small) company I would be rich.

Stories that say that interns have kind of a code to knock the door and be able to come inside the (architectural) small office, are rather common..

Maybe not in US, but in South Europe this is almost a standard.</comment>


The case against time zones: They're impractical and outdated - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=ezraklein&utm_content=tuesday <comment><USER2> No; this isn't a good idea. The developers on our team live in 3 different time zones (this number has been as high as 6 in the past), so I have some experience in this.

Times have _meanings_ that would be quite difficult to track without the reference points.

I'd be happy if daylight savings were gone -- that's much more cost than it's worth. But even if it _were_ possible to switch everyone to UTC, it'd be awful.

Let's say you're in SF and you want to schedule a conference call with someone in Bangalore. You'll use worldtimebuddy.com or similar to compare your day with theirs, and you'll find that your first thought, 2pm, is 2:30am in Bangalore. So... maybe you can get up early -- 7am for you is 7:30pm for them. Better ask if maybe they'd prefer to meet after dinner, or (since you stay up late) perhaps YOU could call after your dinner and catch them at 9am Bangalore time... that's when the most common working day starts.

Think about doing this check _without_ timezones. 2pm for you is... 2pm for them! How useless to know that. So you'll still need some reference to figure out when they will probably start their workday, when they'll probably break for lunch or go home for dinner, etc.. But how can you refer to those times sensibly without using times? You'll say "oh, so 2pm for YOU is sort of like 2 AM for me, how awful that I called your mobile then". And boom, you've re- invented timezones.

<comment><USER3> > Let's say you're in SF and you want to schedule a conference call with > someone in Bangalore. You'll use worldtimebuddy.com or similar to compare > your day with theirs, and you'll find that your first thought, 2pm, is > 2:30am in Bangalore. So... maybe you can get up early -- 7am for you is > 7:30pm for them. Better ask if maybe they'd prefer to meet after dinner, or > (since you stay up late) perhaps YOU could call after your dinner and catch > them at 9am Bangalore time... that's when the most common working day > starts.

And then you discover that you misread the direction of the shift and you actually should have arranged in the early morning for you, or you've checked time in that country's capital rather than in the place your contact is, or they thought the time you gave them was in your timezone... _and neither of you realize you 've fucked up until meeting time_.

Without timezones, you look the timezones up and suggest 7pm, but you've shifted the wrong way and that's the middle of the night for them when you thought it was early afternoon? So you say "how about 7pm" and either they say "no, that's the middle of the night, how about 10am", or they just get up in the middle of the night. But either way, that time you've agreed is completely unambiguous for both of you and there's no way for it to go wrong.

<comment><USER4> You could use a calendar that is aware of timezones, and then you and your contact both see the meeting time as local time rather than someone else's timezone.

Without timezones, each person attending the meeting has to do the mental calculation, "04:00UTC is 14:00 my time, so I'll actually be awake for that meeting, and will have to ensure I don't start anything big after lunch." And then you'll make mistakes "12:00? that's fine … oh, it's actually just after midnight my time".

All these arguments about timezone math and "getting the shift the wrong direction" apply to "let's all use UTC". In fact if we all use UTC it makes the problem demonstrably worse: you now have to do the adjustment all the time. No longer does "6pm" mean "close to sunset" for most people. You have to keep a sunset/sunrise calculator with you at all times just so you can remember what time to set that alarm in order to be at the local office on time. Then when you travel between places that will used to have timezones you'll need to adjust your sunset/sunrise calculator. No longer can you simply set the alarm to go off at 6am local time.

You're replacing a superficial problem with an actual one: everyone who doesn't live in the reference time locality will be living on bizarre time.

So how about just using a calendar system that stores information in UTC but presents it in local time, and exchange calendar appointments with your colleagues using this calendaring system so nobody has to do the mental math when transcribing the appointment into their calendar?

My calendar already does this. It's a solved problem, and changing the solution won't make the problem go away.

<comment><USER3> > Without timezones, each person attending the meeting has to do the mental > calculation, "04:00UTC is 14:00 my time, so I'll actually be awake for that > meeting, and will have to ensure I don't start anything big after lunch."

No you don't. The whole point is there's no "14:00 my time". You just work from 23:00UTC to 08:00UTC and take your lunch at 02:00UTC. All your clocks are UTC.

> No longer does "6pm" mean "close to sunset" for most people. You have to > keep a sunset/sunrise calculator with you at all times just so you can > remember what time to set that alarm in order to be at the local office on > time. Then when you travel between places that will used to have timezones > you'll need to adjust your sunset/sunrise calculator. No longer can you > simply set the alarm to go off at 6am local time.

True, it makes life harder for people who are physically travelling to a different office every week. But how many is that, compared to the number of people who need to arrange a phone/video call with someone in a different office? And that ratio is only going to push further.

> You're replacing a superficial problem with an actual one: everyone who > doesn't live in the reference time locality will be living on bizarre time.

What's the problem? You get up at 01:00, the shops open at 03:00, you go to bed at 19:00 - so what? Ask anyone who lives in Vladivostok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So we all shift to a single glorious time zone to solve all the author's pains. You still need to remember "zones".

You work in NY and propose a meeting at 1300 GMT? You still need to remember how far ahead London is, how far behind California is. Want to call your cousin in Tokyo? You still need to know when she's likely to be awake. Heading to a vacation and want someone to pick you up from the airport? You need to know if your flight lands in the middle of the night or while your ride is at work.

Sure, you could divide the world up into 24 zones and call it a day. Then people still face the same problem of a strong dividing line separating suburbs and cities. Or a country split between two or three zones when it really only needs one. And then you realize, as a self centered programmer, people aren't robots and local time makes sense for 99.9% of peoples' lives.

<comment><USER3> > You work in NY and propose a meeting at 1300 GMT? You still need to remember > how far ahead London is, how far behind California is.

But it's a lot easier to see when the appropriate time is if you know London works 8am-4pm GMT and California works 4pm-12am GMT, than trying to remember that they're three hours behind and calculate it every time.

> Heading to a vacation and want someone to pick you up from the airport? You > need to know if your flight lands in the middle of the night or while your > ride is at work.

If you're talking to them they can presumably tell you. Again, much easier if they know what time they sleep in GMT than if you have to calculate it afresh for each conversation.

> And then you realize, as a self centered programmer, people aren't robots > and local time makes sense for 99.9% of peoples' lives.

People in eastern Russia, or western China, already work on a distinctly nonlocal time. It works well; the shops open at whatever time makes sense local time, but when you call someone across the country you can talk about times with them without getting confused.

<comment><USER6> It would probably be a bit simpler to remember that California is 8 hours behind London than to remember their work schedule is 4pm to midnight( oh wait, 12am is no longer midnight)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you move to one time zone, dates get complicated as well. You may have meetings scheduled on separate dates but in the same business day. Birthdays: they're now the afternoon of one day and the morning of the next.

Furthermore, while travelers may not have to change their wristwatch to account for the local time, they still would have to grasp "what time the locals do X." This may be more difficult for people to reason about if they can't easily draw on their expected scheduling from "back home." Simply knowing that 8:00 to 5:00 is a common work-day will no longer be easily translated, as it may be 11:00-20:00 one place and 05:00-14:00 somewhere else.

In any case, people are creatures of habit, so they tend to fight change. So I don't foresee this ever happening, regardless of whether it would solve some problems (and debatably it may cause as many problems as it solves).

<comment><USER2> > Furthermore, while travelers may not have to change their wristwatch to > account for the local time, they still would have to grasp "what time the > locals do X."

Good point -- everyone is welcome to switch to this system _now_ , when traveling. Just don't reset your watch.

You'll just need to learn the new time to set your alarm in the morning, the new time to say "whoa, we'd better get lunch before restaurants close", the new time to think about getting the kids to bed....

It's so much easier to just reset your watch (or like most people I know, just double-check your phone has auto-updated to the new time zone), and keep your reference points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, changing date when everyone is sleeping is a horrible backward idea, I want my days to change randomly in the middle of daylight.

We could then invent a new word to differentiate between the "day" as the date and "day" as this daylight cycle. Then we would need seven new week day names to differentiate between the official date and light cycle. Lot of fun in perspective.

But then it would make visiting other countries easier, no need to set my watch... oh... wait I have to change my whole brain to adapt to the new schedule instead.

<comment><USER9> This is the issue where it really falls apart for me. As someone who regularly stays up until 2 or 3 or 5 am even now, I'm well aware of the careful phrasing that is required if I send an email in the wee hours referring to upcoming events---"today" and "tomorrow" are to be avoided, or clarified. Probably most of the people here have had to be careful about this at some point. But, it's a reasonably constrained problem, as it currently stands; at least we don't generally have to deal with events that cross the date boundary.

If that date transition happened in the middle of the bulk of daytime events, though....

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Timezones are fairly simple to handle, it's Daylight Saving Time that brings an inordinate amount of difficulty. Some timezones observe DST, some do not. The switchover to/from DST is at different dates for different timezones - often even different dates for different years in the same timezone! DST makes date/time calculations extremely difficult and error prone. Eliminating DST would be a huge step to bringing some level of normalcy back to time.

<comment><USER11> > Timezones are fairly simple to handle

I guess you've never had to deal with time zones then.

DST isn't the only thing you need to take into account. You're forgetting that cities, states and countries modify their timezones for political reasons e.g. America/Sitka went from UTC-8 to UTC-9 in 1983. Just to repeat this if it's not clear, that's a UTC offset change for the Sitka zone, not a DST update.

<comment><USER12> This kind of thing isn't even that rare, if you look historically and even applies to whole days.

The most extreme example was how the Swedish calendar attempted to swap to the Gregorian calendar:

 _n November 1699, Sweden decided that, rather than adopting the Gregorian calendar outright, it would gradually approach it over a 40-year period. The plan was to skip all leap days in the period 1700 to 1740. Every fourth year, the gap between the Swedish calendar and the Gregorian would reduce by one day, until they finally lined up in 1740. In the meantime, this calendar would not only not be in line with either of the major alternative calendars, but also the differences between them would change every four years.

In accordance with the plan, February 29 was omitted in 1700, but due to the Great Northern War no further reductions were made in the following years.

In January 1711, King Charles XII declared that Sweden would abandon the calendar, which was not in use by any other nation and had not achieved its objective, in favour of a return to the older Julian calendar. An extra day was added to February in the leap year of 1712, thus giving it a unique 30-day length (February 30).

In 1753, one year later than England and its colonies, Sweden introduced the Gregorian calendar, whereby the leap of 11 days was accomplished in one step, with February 17 being followed by March 1._[1]

So February 30 1712(!) is a valid date in Sweden, but February 17 1753 + 1 day = March 1.

Imagine building something like a utility billing system over a time period like that....

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar#Solar_calendar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar#Solar_calendar)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's like the college kid sitting around with his buds in the dorm room, smoking a little weed: "dude, did you ever think that maybe what I see as 'blue' is different than what you see as 'blue'?" Most of us soon find out that we're not the first to think of it (not even close), and we also quickly figure out why you'd have to be stoned on bud to think that's a deep thought.

I mentally picture the same thing here. "Dude, instead of all of these time zones that make my work difficult, what if we had one big time zone?" Based on the comments here, most of us have figured out why it's not a brilliant idea, and no, we're not the first to think of it. The author instead wrote a blog post about it.

<comment><USER14> > _and we also quickly figure out why you 'd have to be stoned on bud to think > that's a deep thought._

That's only because most people are like sheep, capable of only thinking of their immediate practical problems.

Far from being just a "stoner discussion", the perception (of color etc) question has been examined in length, both in philosophy and cognitive science, and is as deep as they go indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These things come up in computing circles on a regular basis

"Wouldn't it be easier to write my code if I didn't have to deal with time zones?"

All you have to do, of course, is persuade people to change their entire system of local time, which is what they use 99% of the time. How hard can it be?

<comment><USER16> When a system becomes so complicated that you find it difficult to express logically in the context of a machine built to run on logic, I think it's fair to say that system has some flaws.

<comment><USER17> The flawed system in this question is the machine, not the time zone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funnily, before clicking on this link, I was expecting that the author would suggest that instead of discrete time zones we should have continuous ones, e.g., no matter where you are, it's always noon when the sun is highest. You know, just like it used to be pre modern times, and I was kinda curious how the author thinks he could pull something like that off in a completely different society.

Instead, his suggestion is pretty much the opposite: instead of discrete time zones, let alone continuous ones, the proposal is to have one static time zone globally. Strange that the headline calls the _current_ system "impractical", as the disadvantages of a single global time zone are kind of obvious (see the comments here on HN).

I suppose, the current system is a good compromise that tries to address the disadvantages of continuous and static models.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is stupid. While true we didn't have time zones per se until fairly recently, it was worse... Basically noon was when the sun was directly south, which means one town away might be five minutes off.

<comment><USER20> I agree it's stupid. Just as stupid as the harebrained proposals that occasionally pop up to divide a day into perhaps 10,000 seconds. Or to throw out our current calendar and maybe have 10 months of 36 days with 5 extra holidays a year. Etc.

Not gonna happen. But the reason it gets talked about at all is because it's something that ordinary people can think about and propose. It's not rocket science.

As an alternative, wake me up when the USA goes completely metric. That's something much more important and useful and still it hasn't happened in my lifetime, even though I was taught metric in school nearly 50 years ago.

<comment><USER13> > As an alternative, wake me up when the USA goes completely metric.

Oh, $DEITY, don't get me started on that off-topic topic. All that book learnin' forty years ago and all we got out of it was 2 liter bottles of soda. We don't even get the miles/kilometers signs anymore. At least I rarely have to deal with SAE fasteners these days.

But point taken: we're not getting rid of time zones if the U. S. can't even jump on board on the measurement system used by every other country (yeah I exaggerate a bit, Captain Pedantic) in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> China has one time zone [1] and it works. I don't really see any advantage over timezones though.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/china- only-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/china-only-has-one- time-zone-and-thats-a-problem/281136/)

<comment><USER22> I was going to raise the same point, but with India.

Would be interested to hear how these "wide-zones" work in practice from people who have lived in them for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Been done, since 1998[1]. Had mainstream coverage when it launched. Been totally ignored ever since.

[1] [http://www.swatch.com/zz_en/internettime/](http://www.swatch.com/zz_en/internettime/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting article, but a bit far fetched. You can sync your clocks to GMT, nothing stopping you do that. But I doubt you will convince anyone else to. And what about daylight saving time? As much as I hate daylight saving, its still a custom that is used in many parts of the world. There was no mention of this in your article. In the end of the day, we are all quite used to syncing our clocks relative to sunrise. 9am means the same thing where ever you are in the world. So in some ways time zone keeps us all in reasonably in sync to sunrise

<comment><USER14> > _Interesting article, but a bit far fetched. You can sync your clocks to > GMT, nothing stopping you do that. But I doubt you will convince anyone else > to._

I don't think it was about "convincing". It was about it happening by decree. You know, just like how the timezones we use were enforced in the first place, or Gregorian calendar, or any other regular time keeping...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you think this is a good idea, just set all your clocks to UTC and start coordinating meetings with people using only UTC.

If the idea has any merit, people will go with your superior plan :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Swatch Beats were a better idea to communicate unambiguous time. I kind of wish some big websites would adopt it - Reddit AMAs for example.

<comment><USER16> Any benefits to that over UTC?

<comment><USER25> Well, it's in base 10 rather than base 60. But, yeah, perhaps it's even more quixotic than Esperanto..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This proposal reminds me of the people that want to redo the world's calendar (every year still has 365 days, but each Jan 1st is always Monday, for example).

Changing something as deeply ingrained as time simply isn't going to happen anytime soon.</comment>


Dallas Man Gets 30 Years for Recruiting for ISIS Through App - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/us/dallas-terrorism-isis-sentence.html <comment> blaser-waffle > "During his trial in May 2019, prosecutors said Mr. Rahim, 42, used a > messaging app called Zello to try to recruit the fighters and tell others to > kill enemies of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS."

How'd they get the info from Zello?</comment>


Facebook destroys billions of dollars of shareholder value with open source - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@daxaxelrod/facebook-destroys-billions-of-dollars-of-shareholder-value-with-their-open-source-projects-ec2548ea83ea <comment><USER2> I'm upvoting not because I agree (I fundamentally don't!) but because it's important to our entire industry that we develop quantitative counterarguments to these types of articles.

Interestingly, it's possible that Microsoft will soon have the best concrete numbers here; as it moves more and more towards open-sourcing key components of their developer tooling, it will be able to compare everything from talent pipelines to internal developer productivity before and after the sea change.

That said, could Facebook capture more of the "React consulting and services" market? Could it, for instance, offer hosting for component sandboxes, or develop paid tooling that builds on React for rapid line-of-business application development? Possibly, but it would be such a drop in the bucket compared to any other use of a Facebook engineer, that it's not worthwhile. There's value to shareholders in a company, however large, having a "cohesive focus" in its lines of business.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might like this [https://medium.com/@daxaxelrod/facebook-destroys- billions-of...](https://medium.com/@daxaxelrod/facebook-destroys-billions-of- dollars-of-shareholder-value-with-their-open-source-projects- part-10947d5e8f1a)

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing you're OP? I have to say, I've never seen someone create a full DCF in response to an internet comment I've made!

At a high level, it's a really cool build you've put together. You might consider writing down some of your methodology and assumptions in the blog post, as it's unclear from the post alone where those multi-billion figures come from. And someone could reasonably argue that there's overlap between the categories you've chosen; for instance, is a big part of the goodwill value of a NPM download realized in the improvements to recruitment and code quality? Even so, even if many of the assumptions are inaccurate, the order of magnitude may very well be correct... and if so, it does speak to the open- sourcing of React being a very valuable move for FB, even if payoff is spread out over time.

Taking a step back, I think you'll find a big segment of Hacker News really dislikes clickbait in the way you titled and structured the first blog post. It's a shame, because I think your devil's-advocate analysis deserves more attention. Certainly the followup deserves discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! I think it would be cool to do some more analysis of the technology industry like what's the NPV of sponsoring a hackathon or a conference? Does it matter what type of company you are and things like that? Interesting, I thought of the NPM aspect as separate and didn't account for the fact that as a repo gets more popular, the higher the chance for better code quality.

I really regret the clickbait and won't be doing that again in the future. I think the way that people responding means the future of open source is bright however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: complete bullshit analysis.

If you count all the potential downsides of anything and conveniently ignore any calculation on the upsides, that's what you get.

Facebook similarly destroys billions of shareholder value by hiring people.

<comment><USER4> I'd recommend you read part 2 which came out today.

[https://medium.com/@daxaxelrod/facebook-destroys-billions- of...](https://medium.com/@daxaxelrod/facebook-destroys-billions-of-dollars- of-shareholder-value-with-their-open-source-projects-part-10947d5e8f1a)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like the author likes getting attention from clickbait titles. I have stopped taking it seriously. The HN thread on the second part adequately responds to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you read this article as satire about technologically illiterate MBA's who drain all long term value from companies in order to extract short term profits for the next quarter, this article makes a lot more sense.

</comment><comment><USER6> The author misses the point where Facebook was only able to attract talent to their company because of open source. FB currently employs the creators of Babel, Redux, and Inferno; whom otherwise would not be there without OSS to show their talents.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where's the analysis of how much Facebook benefits from other open source software? I'm sure billions of it's valuation can be attributed to everything from Linux that powers it's servers & networking to git & mysql, ...

Coming squarely to react - how many community react libraries has Facebook used in it's apps? Isn't that the community doing Facebook's work for them? And how many bugs in react were found & fixed by the community? How many features were added by the community?

React's relationship, as with other open source, is highly symbiotic. David is deeply flawed in making it seem like Facebook is the monetary loser in this relationship

</comment><comment><USER8> Well. I wasn't exactly expecting my "most myopic article of the day" to come this early, but here we are...

<comment><USER8> Among other things, the author completely neglects to consider how the projects being open source contributes to their success in the first place. He also fails to consider the goodwill that it generates for the developer community and the ways in which that helps other aspects of Facebook's business (recruiting, hiring, culture).

Also, you'd think that someone talking about money would have some notion of how big a price differential "free" and "having to pay" is for a service, but that seems to have completely not been a consideration.

<comment><USER5> He also vastly overestimates the value of a front end library and how easy it would be to switch to Vue or any other library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The assumption that the popularity of react would be anywhere in the same order of magnitude if it was not open source is grossly misguided. Many companies, mine included, avoided it just for the patent lawsuit clause alone.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the kind of outrage article (in hn context) that social networks feed on to exploit human psychology and drive user engagement

<comment><USER11> Indeed

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is no way this isn't well done satire. Facebook might as well hire people to work on their open source just to keep them away from being productive at other companies, and that has more value to them than whatever bullshit monetary value their open source may have.

</comment><comment><USER13> What tools was Facebook built with again?

<comment><USER14> This comment should be voted up, the OP completely misses the fact we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. If Axelrod feels there should be a balance sheet it goes both ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there any reason to believe react would be anywhere near as popular if it weren't open source? Or am I not getting where the $3 billion figure is coming from?

</comment><comment><USER16> Man, the scale of one sided bullshittery here just reeks of failed analytic skills. Look at the whole deal! The long game!

</comment><comment><USER17> I haven't read something this terrible in weeks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Since you can form a company for any reason, there is not always truly a 'fiduciary dury' to shareholders as often claimed

<comment><USER18> That ceases to be the case once you start taking money from outside investors. You don't own the company anymore: the shareholders do.

<comment><USER10> I'll grant that may be the case here, or once you enter such a contractual agreement.

However, I'll take issue with the ownership part. I don't think shareholders own the company, even if they wield the most influence by contract.

In the u.s. corporations aren't truly owned by anyone - even the CEO .

Corporations own themselves.

That is why we give corporations rights and free speech and treat them as persons legally - corporations are not, in fact, property.

So shareholders do not in fact 'own' the company, even if they can control it.</comment></comment></comment>