Apple hardware design coincidence? - <AUTHOR> http://unvisualdesign.tumblr.com/post/4042954624/i-dont-know-if-this-is-a-sign-of-apples-minute

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of a story I heard from one of the package guys from Apple when I worked there:

The iPod classic package at one point, if you recall, had a recess that the iPod sat in so you'd see the iPod sitting there waiting to be popped out when you opened the package. That recess was white, but the package engineers didn't like the lack of contrast where the recess walls met the recess base, so they tooled out a small sub-millimeter section of material so it would cast a subtle drop shadow on the base.

That kind of attention to detail, on packaging no less, is one of the big reasons I'm a big Apple fan.

<comment><USER3> DAE think the Apple form-over-function worshipping here is a bit excessive? Scary, even?

<comment><USER4> Yes.

When I first saw the change from the PowerBook keyboard to the MBP, I couldn't fathom why they would make such a decision. The new keyboard, while not as bad as it looks, is still nowhere near as comfortable.

Then came the iPod shuffle: switching from a tiny device with few buttons, to one with no buttons at all. "Tap 3 times to...." I don't know anyone who would jog with earbuds, let alone reach for a thin cable while running. What was the target audience for the shuffle?

The Mighty Mouse? No buttons at all? Inability to rest your fingers on the mouse. Inability to click both "buttons".

Glossy screens? Which people defended to the death. Only until Apple finally released an "Anti-Glare" screen on the higher end models.

I don't know. Apple, when the aluminum PowerBooks just came out, was melding form _with_ function. Removing the latch that snapped off on laptops, hiding it in the bezel with a magnet. MagSafe plugs. Not having all the worthless little switches and buttons on the laptop like that oh-so-useful "Wireless" switch.

Now I don't get it.

<comment><USER5> While I'm not generally in the habit of defending Apple's decisions, I'd argue that all of those examples have tradeoffs that improve function. I don't necessarily agree with the tradeoff, but improvements to function do exist.

* The new style keyboard (with bezel between keys) is _vastly_ more reliable for me. On the older keyboards, keys would come flying off all the time. I'd have to replace the keyboard every 8 months. My unibody macbook has lasted almost 2 years with no signs of wear.

* I can't comment on the reliability of the new ones, but I had an old iPod shuffle that was flaky as hell, especially when covered in sweat. Button clicks would get ignored or falsely triggered frequently.

* The Mighty Mouse is optimized for multitouch gestures, and having no seams on the top surface of the mouse makes that experience fantastic. Personally, not my style, but I see why they did it that way.

* The glossy screens have much better color and contrast than matte, and stay cleaner. Yes, glare is a problem in the sun, but I'm using an apple glossy LCD in an office right now and I can't find any angle or spot of the screen where there is even the slightest hint of glare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It could of course just be a coincidence... however I am reminded of the story about how the (new) Mini Cooper exhaust tip was modeled on the bottom of an aluminum beverage can, because the designer happened to find one lying around when building a mockup, and afterwards no one saw any reason to change it. Maybe a designer traced their iPhone while working on an early sketch of the laptop, and then the detail just stuck?

<comment><USER7> But, the unibody MacBook design came well before iPhone 4?

<comment><USER6> The MacBook in question is the October 2010 redesign of the Air. It's conceivable that there were iPhone 4s (or prototypes of such) in the Apple design office at the time it was being designed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something to do with multiple Apple products being cut from the same sheet of aluminium to reduce waste, perhaps? From Ive's comments in the Objectified documentary:

'This is the bezel for the iMac. When we remove the aluminium from the display in the centre here, we actually take that material, and then we can make two keyboard frames from it.'

[2min30 into this clip: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdVG4LcoY4Y> ]

<comment><USER9> Machining doesn't work that way. The groove in the laptop is done with a round nosed end-mill. It makes the rounded profile and creates lots of chips. Those chips are then melted down and made into something else by some other company.

<comment><USER6> Machining still doesn't work that way, but on the Air the cutout goes all the way through so there is no need for a round nose mill specifically.

<comment><USER9> Sorry I haven't seen one. I only have an aluminum macbook

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If this was deliberate it would fit perfectly, which it doesn't - the radii on the corners are very different. Apple aren't that sloppy.

<comment><USER11> I would have to agree with this. More likely, the same design team was on both projects and they used a set of proportions to create a visual harmony across the entire product line.

Phi doesn't change, why should your proportion change if it's nailed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there really a submission with 47 up votes because 2 Apple products seem to fit together?

<comment><USER2> File under "misses the point."

<comment><USER12> What's the point? Please enlighten me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm wondering it it's connected to some kind of conclusion apple has about what constitutes the typical "width" of an adult's hand, since that groove is designed to fit your four fingers for opening and the iphone is probably also sized relative to some data how what is easy to hold.

</comment><comment><USER14> I noticed it too recently and reddit it : [http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/g6gho/iphone_4_and_mac...](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/g6gho/iphone_4_and_macbook_air_a_perfect_match_is_there/) Really weird, but soo apple like ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> maybe they just like using a specific radius for the corners of their products

<comment><USER6> On a more historical note: <http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/design2.html> describes a design system for early Apple products that specified corner radii for various situations.

<comment><USER16> That is a great site, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Strangely random, as opposed to ordinarily random?

</comment><comment><USER18> Does not apply for macbook pro 13 and iphone 3g. So I am guessing it depends on which macbook air you get be it 11 or 13 inch.

</comment><comment><USER19> anybody else hearing Also Sprach Zarathustra?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I heard when I discovered this at my kitchen table and the "docking" succeeded. :)

<comment><USER19> it looked like you photographed it that way. well done sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ohh, the future! Hmm... Has somebody checked if the size has some sort of golden ratio in it?

</comment><comment><USER21> I noticed this too. It's not a perfect fit, but it's close.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's true. Apple is one of a few companies who care about design too. The Mac OS X, iMac, MacBook/Pro and all devices are designed to fit us the best way.</comment>


Best VOIP Clients for Linux (That Aren't Skype) - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/812894-best-voip-clients-for-linux-that-arent-skype

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised not to see Jitsi in the list. In my opinion it is really the best one available.

[https://jitsi.org/](https://jitsi.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> talky.io</comment>


Axcept: Visual Testing for Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://axcept.io <comment><USER2> Axcept helps you creating, organizing and executing your screenshot testing suite. You write the tests with our powerful test editor, we execute them with high speed (up to 100 tests in parallel).

We solved most of the problems of screenshot testing such as: \- Mocking \- Screenshot Management \- Scaling

You can get up and running in a matter of minutes!</comment>


Ask HN: How did you organize your technical job search? - <AUTHOR> I've found the process quite cumbersome for a number of reasons:<p>- Parallelizing processes across recruiters and companies<p>- Email communication and scheduling is time consuming<p>- Simply clicking apply doesn't have a great conversion rate so I've spent lots of time finding connections in my network and generally coming with up ways to highlight myself.<p>I've seen things like Huntr and JobTrack and heard about many people using spreadsheets; how else do people manage this process? <comment><USER2> I realised there is a lot of variance in the process and only a small amount of the variance is under my control. So much is outside factors due to random chance. Therefore, I decided that since I have little control over the outcome, then the more effort I put into an application, the more energy/time I waste. So instead I decided to optimise for quantity and not quality. The way I scale it up is to automatically apply to everything on who's hiring monthly posts that have an email address. I have a std email template that I have honed over the months. Otherwise I can apply on a website in under 45 seconds. Every month I'll spend 20 minutes get out at least 30 applications of which 80% will convert to recruiter calls of which about 95% will convert to tech screens of which %10 (I suck at coding puzzles under pressure) will convert to onsites of which 15% will convert to offers.

As long as you diligently use your calendar and keep notes for each company it's pretty easy to manage this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finding interesting work is difficult. Learning stuff is fun. Watch conference talks for every conference that represents your professional interests. For all speakers that you enjoy, track their company on site like `linkedin`. This allows you to have a quick list of interesting companies that will dynamically update as they change their names and are bought out. This should be done at all times, not just when looking for work.

Track Coverletters with git. Each company get's its own branch. Repository it private. Easy to make derivative coverletters for companies of overlapping disciplines.

Only one current resume. Resumes do not need to be fit to a company. That is what a coverletter is for.

Networking is more valuable than most believe. Contribute to your developer community and help others get hired as often as possible. Connect with people and discuss your projects at meetups. Cross-list job postings for different forums and slack channels of similar content.

Often high end recruiters represent many companies, they can increase your exposure quickly.

Set a fixed number of applications per week. Try to fill with interesting, but by the end of the week meet your quota. You don't always need cool work, random applications can fill the remaining quota, and can be surprisingly fruitful.

Do not waste time on overly complicated application processes, unless you are very passionate about the company subjecting you to that. They may never read it.

Help young programmers. They will grow your whiteboarding, puzzle solving, and communication skills. Remember that you are lucky to have young programmers as a resource.

Update resume every month. Any work someone has paid you for is valuable, you may forget some of it. You can always prune down later.

When possible, send follow up emails.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's the searching itself, and then all the additional work. It can be quite cumbersome, especially with multiple tailored CVs, letters of application, multiple agencies and so on. I'm back on LinkedIn again and finding that helps ease the burden somewhat.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just used a google doc to be honest. I'd write a section for each application that I would use to write the job title, requirements, cover letter, etc.

I hear you though, it can be really overwhelming when you're submitting through so many different platforms.

</comment><comment><USER6> For me the best solution has always been connecting directly to recruiters in my linkedin network. It saved me a lot of time, typically they only ask you for the resume and no cover letter. Also, among different strategies I tried, it's been the one with most "yes".

</comment><comment> git-pull If you do startups, find places with healthy engineering cultures.

Try this out website: [https://www.keyvalues.com/](https://www.keyvalues.com/)

You can select multiple categories of what the company values, so you have a better fit before you ever walk in.</comment>


Operating System Design Book Series - <AUTHOR> http://www.fysnet.net/osdesign_book_series.htm <comment><USER2> I was ready to order the first book until I realized the second version is not available on the Kindle format, which really sucks. Digging deeper, I've found this on the change notes:

"Please note that the Kindle version will not be updated at this time. I get very little interest in the Kindle version and at this time will no longer pursue that format. If I get enough interest from you readers about the Kindle version, I may decide to update that format then."

That's a real bummer, I don't feel like paying the international shipping fees and hassles... this really demotivated me from the buy.

<comment><USER3> I can't seem to find the quoted text on the website, nor any mention of the second version.

<comment><USER4> "Volume 1: The System Core" -> "The 2nd Edition is now available. See this .pdf for what's new" ([http://www.fysnet.net/docs/vol1_whatsnew.pdf](http://www.fysnet.net/docs/vol1_whatsnew.pdf)) -> "Availability"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I like about this series is that there's a whole book on GUI which most other resources ignore.

[http://www.fysnet.net/the_graphical_user_interface.htm](http://www.fysnet.net/the_graphical_user_interface.htm)

<comment><USER5> Have you read these books and are they reputable? The website seems a little... unconventional, and the books look like they're vanity published. But I have an open mind if they are indeed good.

<comment><USER6> _The website seems a little... unconventional_

...as in "handwritten HTML with no bloat"? This is what all sites used to be like, very information-packed and free of fluff. When I come across sites like these, the content is almost certainly going to be very good.

<comment><USER5> > ...as in "handwritten HTML with no bloat"? ... free of fluff

Are we looking at the same page or are you being sarcastic? The one I'm looking at has a ring binder theme, lots of random low resolution icons and is basically just a wrapper for a big pre element so everything appears in an awkward typewriter font. Part of it looks like it's dynamically generated by JavaScript.

I mean the chap is free to design his website however works best for him. I'm just saying that and the vanity publishing triggers my skepticism before buying the book and I was looking for opinions.

<comment><USER6> Yes, we're looking at the same page and I'm not being sarcastic. Despite the images, the total size of the page and its assets is <64KB and it loads extremely quickly.

For comparison, this page and its assets is >160KB and yet it contains a fraction of the content:

[http://faculty.salina.k-state.edu/tim/ossg/Introduction/desi...](http://faculty.salina.k-state.edu/tim/ossg/Introduction/design.html)

 _I 'm just saying that and the vanity publishing triggers my skepticism before buying the book and I was looking for opinions._

I think the disparity of reaction between you and me shows how subjective design can be.

<comment><USER7> You don't know what you're talking about. Chris spotted the developer's unfamiliarity with the web and he was right.

      200ms: http handshake done. let's download this HTML page
      207ms: ok the page is downloaded. let's see what it's all about
      213ms: better look ahead and queue up all the files this page needs. it's a CSS file, a JS file and a bunch of PNGs
      214ms: parses 9 lines. stops parsing.

      217ms: CSS starts downloading!
      220ms: JS starts downloading!
      221ms: one of the PNGs starts downloading!

      nothing happens

      384ms: CSS is done downloading :)
      389ms: CSS is done parsing :)
      405ms: the first PNG is done downloading :)

At this point, I have loaded the all the HTML, CSS and even an image but not a single pixel will be drawn until the JS is done downloading and running. The problem here is not JavaScript, but render-blocking tags. This should be relevant: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4396849/does-the- script-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4396849/does-the-script-tag- position-in-html-affects-performance-of-the-webpage)

Why can't the website just load everything and then, only after showing you the contents of the page, run the necessary JavaScript? Probably because the developer never even thought about all of this. I don't blame him. He's not walking around saying his website is fine handcrafted HTML free of bloat or fluff. He's just making a website about his book.

As a sidenote, you believing that this is a website that "loads extremely quickly" reminds me of Jonathan Blows's "there's generalized insanity about software and people often don't know what makes programs slow" ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWv_vUgbmug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWv_vUgbmug) )

<comment><USER8> I think it's less of an unfamiliarity and more of an outdated development practise. Plus, completing the entire page in under 750ms (measured in Firefox) is still faster than some other pages out there (reddit: 4s, HN: 1.2s, etc)

I would personally say the website has it's charm, even if it's a bit dated in design.

<comment><USER7> Oh no, I don't have anything against the website. It worked 100% of the times I tried in less than one second and it responds well to every lighthouse audit for performance except render-blocking tags. Also the books look amazing.

But the point was all about the look of the site and the defense was that it should behave like an old-time simple barebones website because it looks like one. This is not true.

This website waits to parse a JavaScript file that adds like 5 lines to the bottom of the page. It looks _and behaves_... unconventionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nitpicking a bit, but from the description of the content, this rather seems to be a series of books on implementation of operating systems rather that on OS design. While this is certainly a worthwhile topic, I find the series title to be misleading.

</comment><comment><USER6> Benjamin David Lunt. I recognise that name from the old DOS software scene. He also has a pretty good book on USB: [http://www.fysnet.net/the_universal_serial_bus.htm](http://www.fysnet.net/the_universal_serial_bus.htm)

Looks like his homepage still shows his old DOS stuff: [http://www.fysnet.net/](http://www.fysnet.net/)

</comment><comment><USER10> According to the table of contents on Amazon, it looks more like an encyclopedia of x86 and PC platform minutiae.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish I would have known about this sooner. I taught an undergraduate OS course last year and the students found the Tanenbaum book to be very abstract and dry. It would have been nice to mix in some of this material.

<comment><USER12> I recently bought Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces after hearing good things about it. Didn't really have time to go through it yet, but it does seem interesting. There's also a free PDF version.

[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi guys. I happened to stumble across this thread and was pleased to read your comments. Let me try to answer most of your questions in one reply. 1\. The Kindle versions may not be available any longer, I am sorry to say, due to the fact that it does not display the images well, as well as the tables and figures. However, I have not totally abandoned the thought of updating them. 2\. My web page is simple and to the point. I don't have any desire to make it otherwise. I do hand code it, as one mentioned. The reason for the script at the end, to display the few lines of text, is simply to allow me to modify one file and all pages will see that update. Yes, I could do it differently, but as you mention, it loads in less than a second. If that isn't fast enough for someone, they are in too much of a hurry. Besides, web development is not my interest. 3\. My books are an on-going project that I enjoy doing and thought that others might benefit from my work. Yes, I make a slight profit from it, but nothing is free. You have to earn it some how. With that said, I fully support each book and its contents. If something is not clear or understandable, a simple email asking about that subject is happily accepted and replied to. I then try to make that subject more understandable in the next issue. 4\. About the "Vanity Publishing" comment. I never looked at it that way. I started to write the book and looked at other books to see what they had for a Contents page. I filled in my name expecting to replace it with other names as that process was done. At this time, no outside sources have been used. Maybe a later time. However, please be assured that it is not due to "Vanity". I am a humble man, and am writing another book explaining exactly how humble I am (Yes, sarcasm intended) :-)

My books aren't the next best thing, I admit that. I don't expect them to be wonderful and the best reference out there. The main reason I do the work is for the enjoyment of the project. If you see an improvement you would like, all suggestions are welcome. I won't promise that they will be added, but all suggestions are very welcome. I give credit at the end of the book to those who contribute.

Again, if any questions are asked, I freely do my best to answer them, whether someone has bought my book(s) or not. I suggest obtaining the book first, then ask a question, but that is not required.

Thank you for your comments. I was pleased to read them. Ben

</comment><comment><USER14> The typography of the website reminds me of Phrack magazine :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to have something like this, as it's got all of the practical information needed that most other books don't provide, but with so many volumes at >$22 each, it just seems a bit pricey.

<comment><USER16> That's extremely cheap dude...</comment></comment>


A Japanese language guide for analytical thinkers - <AUTHOR> http://guidetojapanese.org/

<comment><USER2> Thanks mbrubeck, great reference.

I highly recommend this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Step-Innovative- Approach-Spea...](http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Step-Innovative-Approach- Speaking/dp/0658014900) as another excellent resource. Written by an engineer for engineers, with detailed flow charts for the various conjugation rules and other aspects of the grammar.

The book lists the various common sentence structures then teaches you how to expand the various fragments to construct more complex sentences. Somewhat similar to learning via a CFG and deriving a parse tree. if you want to absolutely nail your Japanese grammar, this is a solid logical way to go about it.

Book's biggest drawback is that it is rather dry. You will need to complement it with a book that focuses on vocabulary, idioms, and colloquialisms so that you don't sound like a robot.

<comment><USER3> The best books I've read regarding learning japaenese are 'Making Sense of Japanese Grammar'. I recommend it a lot. [http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense- Japanese-Grammar-Paper/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Japanese- Grammar-Paper/dp/0824825837)

If it weren't for that book I would have never understood why there are so many exceptions with verbs regarding the whole intransitive and transitive thing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the reference I wish I had when I was learning Japanese. I tend to learn natural languages a lot like I learn programming languages: I get a lot faster at learning once someone explains the underlying rules and how they combine and interact.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for this link.

I took ~3 years of Japanese (using Japanese for Busy People I - III) but I'm definitely not as far along as I'd like to be.

This is the best replacement for a ~$300 electronic dictionary on the iPhone I've found so far: [http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290664053&mt=8) (iTunes link). As it's been said, learning to speak vs. learning to read is a whole different story.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of Japanese: The Spoken Language, which is what I used to learn Japanese. It's quite challenging at first but I can't think of a better way for an adult to learn the language well.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I gotta disagree with you. Learning Japanese using an antiquated romaji system (si vs shi, etc.) and not learning any kana or kanji won't get you very far. What good is that when show up in Japan and can't read any of the signs around you?

I saw Eleanor Jorden (writer of JSL) talk at Cornell, and a kid in the audience asked, "I opened a book and saw a bunch of squiggly lines!" To throw out a language's native written system is folly.

We used the _Genki_ bookset in school, and it worked pretty well.

<comment><USER5> See my other comment. I would be willing to bet that more top performers under the JSL system compared with top performers under a reading / writing focused system will end up being much more successful in careers / life in Japanese society.

Japanese people take for granted that Kanji is hard and are forgiving when Westerners aren't that great at it, but it's painfully hard to listen to someone speak with non-native intonation and poor grammar.

<comment><USER7> Actually Japanese know it is hard, and focus on it like madmen. A top Nintendo DS game for adults in Japan is a Kanji re-training game.

In any case, Kanji is so visual - until I learned it many words didn't make sense to me. Knowing how to say it, but not understanding the real-underlying meaning is not fun.

As far as intonation, Japanese is one of the easiest languages with regards to that. Once you get the basics it is simple, but still you must talk with others (Japanese club, co-workers, neighbors, skype, etc) and listen to real Japanese (anime, news, etc.)

<comment><USER5> I don't meet many Westerners that think Japanese intonation is easy. :-) It's probably the most critical aspect of sounding natural when stacked up against all other factors and can make or break the tone of the conversation.

<comment><USER8> I think Japanese intonation is very hard for native english speakers but it's not hard at all for someone speaking romance languages (the sonorities are rather similar to spanish I find...)

<comment><USER9> _the sonorities are rather similar to spanish I find..._

This is very true. I grew up in an area where lots of Spanish is spoken, and I learned a tiny bit myself. For me, Japanese pronunciation was trivial. My teachers were praising me right off the bat. The only difficulty I have is with my current tutor, who is bent on teaching me to pronounce the Japanese r/l the way a Japanese would. (AFAIK it's not necessary at all for understandability, just a pet peeve of hers.) I had a very different experience with French and German, so I know I'm not especially gifted at phonetics. I think the early exposure to Spanish was the key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brilliant! Where was this all my life?

I only wish he would deconstruct Kanji and the resulting combinatorial explosion in the same way...

<comment><USER11> Use this: [http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese- Ch...](http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese- Characters/dp/4889960759)

And this: <http://kanji.koohii.com/>

The problem becomes tractable, and maybe even a little friendly.

Fwiw, the explosion isn't really combinatorial. It'd better if it was, because at least that would be predictable. No, it's best though of as entirely irregular combinations of a medium-sized number of components. But the aforementioned resources help you deal with it.

<comment><USER7> I can't upvote this enough. I went from 200-300 Kanji characters that I acquired painfully to now 2053 Kanji characters using RTK in about four months. I use Anki (<http://ichi2.net/anki/>) to do reviews, but the Kanji koohii site is awesome for stories and has a nice active forum. I keep track of my progress here: <http://kd7yhr.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER12> Are you learning just the meanings, or the meanings, kunyomi, and onyomi?

I ask, because I'm somewhere in between 2級 and 1級 with the JLPT, and since I've only spent a collective six months in Japan, it's a bit of a struggle sometimes to retain vocabulary.

I'm finding that I have a very easy time with the meanings, and so I can figure out new compounds pretty easily. For example, in the novel I'm reading last night, 脱皮 came up, and although I figured out the meaning (a snake shedding its skin, a crab moulting, etc.), I still had to look at the dictionary because I couldn't remember the onyomi for the first character, even though it's very common.

Reading out loud has helped a lot, and I'm going to start blogging in Japanese about starting a company, but I'm always looking for tips on improving. :)

Newspapers still send me running for the dictionary, but I think that's because I read a lot of articles about politics and business, which are very kanji-heavy.

<comment><USER7> at first, I focused on production of kanji from a keyword, e.g., discuss -> 談, at this point there is no Japanese and I spent four months getting through all the kanji. I still test daily and have gone through 21k kanji tests.

Currently, I am reading みんなの日本語 wherein I am focusing on sentence mining and grammar. My current deck of sentences is around 800 sentences that I review as well, wherein I review recognition and speak out loud. My level is currently in between basic to low-intermediate. In the sentence mining I learn the readings of the kanji in context and could care less about kunyomi/onyomi, e.g.,幼稚園 -> ようちえん (or infancy-immature-park in RTK keywords).

The method I am using is summarized at: <http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com> I don't follow it all, but some of it is good.

I studied Japanese for 12 years half-assed never getting anywhere. For the first time I am making progress and I have a plan (which is the part that I lacked before).

BTW, to retain vocabulary, I would recommend Anki <http://ichi2.net/anki/> it is open and regularly updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of my Japanese classes in high school, my/our teacher had made his own litterature for the class and we constantly played our scenarios/theater/sketches. Trained Japanese "thinking", grammar, writing, talking, interacting.. all at the same time. Landed me at "little of everything".. I wish I paid more attention now!

</comment><comment><USER14> afaik

        japanese language = japanese culture</comment>


MS CS Decision Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sjs7007/MSCSAPPStatus

<comment><AUTHOR> I have applied to a bunch of universities for a MS in CS degree and it is a pain to manually go to website to check the status so I made this simple script to simplify my work. It'd be nice if other fellow CS Applicants here could also contribute to it so we can have it simplified for other universities as well. So... Just contribute if you can... Cheers.</comment>


Why was Android Ad Hoc Networking marked "Obsolete"? This issue has 6277 stars - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82

<comment><USER2> _Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25_ (2014)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118)</comment>


Firesheep, a new Firefox extension, opens big Facebook privacy hole - <AUTHOR> http://www.freep.com/article/20101025/BLOG36/101025009/1437/NEWS/Gaping-Web-privacy-hole-exposed

<comment><USER2> _Until Facebook, Twitter and other sites plug the privacy hole, it's best not to use a public WiFi connection to access your personal accounts._

Was it ever a good idea to access personal accounts over a public WiFi connection? I rarely connect to a router I don't own...instead, I either tether using my phone (I've been doing this on Sprint since 2000) or use my MiFi.</comment>


A Surprise for Evolution in Giant Tree of Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150505-a-surprise-for-evolution-in-giant-tree-of-life/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this obvious to anyone who takes a little time to think about evolution and biodiversity? Yes, little changes caused by chance persist if they don't hinder the creature's ability to survive & reproduce. And these relatively benign mutations can accumulate until one family is very different from one that was once more obviously related. I don't see how this "surprising" and "provocative" proposal that chance plays a role in biodiversity is at all "controversial" or even new. What's more, the journalist seems to think that this "finding" means she can downplay natural selection, when in fact this article should really be nothing more than an emphasis of the role of chance in speciation since natural selection is basically predicated on the biodiversity caused by chance mutations. This really seems like publishing something 100 years after the first airplane was built to say: "Hear ye! Amazing new finding: In the absence of wings or power, an airplane simply falls due to gravity!" Maybe the actual research/paper is of more merit than the article suggests?

<comment><USER3> In the 1950s, nobody would have believed that "genetic drift" happened at all. The reason was because back then, the thinking was that any genetic change must be adaptive and caused by natural selection. The accumulation of "neutral" changes-- genetic drift-- was very controversial when it was first proposed, and wasn't really widely accepted until at least the 1980s or 1990s.

This main thrust of this paper seems to be the idea that genetic drift is the primary driver of speciation (the process of creating new species.) The paper also makes claims about a "speciation clock" that seems to tick every 2 million years, for many different species.

These two claims seem somewhat at odds. Presumably genetic drift will happen more rapidly in species like fruit flies or beetles that have short generation times. Genetic drift should be slow in species like whales since they take so long to reproduce, and drift can't happen except during reproduction. So if species are splitting off every 2 million years for both whales and fruit flies, that suggests genetic drift can't be the only factor, since it's 1000x faster (or more) in fruit flies as in whales. Anyway, I didn't read the paper that closely, so maybe I'm missing something.

In general, speciation is a complicated and poorly understood topic with a lot of controversies remaining. For example, is it more common for a species to split into two because of a physical obstruction (body of water, mountain range, etc.), or because different sub-populations start occupying different ecological niches due to slightly different environments, and gradually grow more distinct? (allopatric speciation versus parapatric speciation). It's hard to actually measure how much mixing there was between populations millions of years ago, so this is still controversial. And parapatric speciation gives more weight to natural selection so it used to be the preferred explanation. But this is far from a settled debate.

<comment><USER4> Just look at those graphs of distributions for speciation times. Reading the description of the "speciation clock", i would have imagined a sharp distribution with a very tall peak at 2 million years. Yes, the mode is about 2 million years. But the distribution is veeery broad. Looking at the graphs, there is no reason to believe that whales and flies have similar speciation times. A very misleading description, unfortunately quite typical of the scientific news cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It makes sense that simple historical happenstance is the cause of much speciation. When learning about evolution and natural selection, we hear so much about nice-sounding stories about Species X and how they got some particular Adaptation Y because it allowed them to be more fit in some particular way Z. While these are likely true, they run the risk of being just-so evolutionary psychology stories that are told not because they are _representative_ of mutations and adaptations, but because they are _illustrative_ of the concept.

There are about 400,000 known species of beetle, some of which are extremely similar. For how many of them can we point to a cause-and-effect meaningful- to-humans story of why they have diverged from their closest relative?

Sometimes weirdness just happens and circumstance leads to change.

</comment><comment><USER6> Natural Selection however is the process that chooses one random mutation to succeed over the existing line, or another slightly less advantageous random mutation.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought speciation happened due to chromosome fusion/fission?</comment>


New 'Dexter' malware strikes point-of-sale systems - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57559171-83/new-dexter-malware-strikes-point-of-sale-systems/

<comment><USER2> Given the huge number of small businesses that run a box that doubles as a POS and a general-purpose PC (used for email, web surfing, and such) I'm honestly surprised that we don't see this more often.

A lot of mom and pop stores simply don't have any technical people on staff. I'd wager that a lot of these machines are running old, vulnerable versions of IE, and I'd wager that a lot more are operated by people who could be convinced to double-click an executable email attachment.

Throw in the potentially high per-target payoff (compared to, say, using a machine to pump out spam) and if I were a black hat I'd be tripping over myself going after this target.</comment>


Fight the Virus Please - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/fight-the-virus-2.html <comment><USER2> The reason this hasn't happened is because of hubris: the politicians all assumed defeating the virus was a given and wouldn't take long. Everyone was already talking about the 'shape of the recovery' (U shaped or V shaped?) before it was even clear there would be a recovery.

It really reflects a disgraceful amount of overconfidence and lack of creative problem solving on the part of Congress.

</comment><comment><USER3> The media and even the scientists started it.

We knew everything in January, but both the media and scientific community ignored every issue as it came up.

Back then it wasn't even on Congress's radar.

This isn't the politicians. Fix the Fourth Estate. Fix the University's. Fixing the politicians is a dead end.</comment>


Man sacrifices Tesla to aid unconscious driver; Elon Musk foots the bill - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-sacrifices-tesla-to-save-unconscious-driver-elon-musk-offers-to-foot-the-bill/ <comment><USER2> A Good result for everyone here.

VW Driver - saved. Tesla Driver - Hero and gets to feel good for a while (been there :-)) Tesla - good publicity

Interesting to see if it's even possible to spin any negativity into it.</comment>


Density.io - <AUTHOR> http://www.density.io <comment><USER2> Risky. MAC address tracking is definitely a legal 'grey area' at the moment. I can imagine mining/fingerprinting in this way could easily become illegal in the not-to-distant future.

In the UK, City of London already banned the wifi-enabled bins that were tracking MAC addresses.

It would be really easy to tie a name to MAC address (from point of purchase with a credit card), then see exactly where that person went via the 'sharing' of data with other retailers. This is certainly something you would expect to need 'opt in' to.

<comment><USER3> City of Houston does MAC address tracking on the freeways and surface streets to power their traffic tracking measures. It's probably used in hundreds of other places you haven't thought about. If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off.

[http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/](http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/)

<comment><USER4> > If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off.

No, you shouldn't have to turn off a _very_ commonly used service so that people can do better business by tracking it in an intrusive manner. Privacy should be the default option in such programs.

If the city used a ton of cameras + facial recognition to track you and your car everywhere and then sold that data to companies so they could optimize for whatever meaningless metric, would you still be as casual about this, and go "Oh, you should just cover your face and walk everywhere if you expect privacy."?

<comment><USER5> Devil's advocate mode:

What privacy is that? Your device is broadcasting information, in the clear, to anyone who cares to receive that information. You've taken no steps to prevent anyone from receiving that information.

Your device is doing the equivalent of standing on the street corner and screaming various things. You can't rightly tell someone not to listen or write down what's being said.

I don't see how this is any more invasive than CCTV cameras that every business already has anyways.

<comment><USER6> > Your device is doing the equivalent of standing on the street corner and > screaming various things.

Except there's one huge difference: anyone with eyes and ears can understand what the person is screaming. I would wager that even fewer than half of HN readers realize what's being broadcasted here.

What you're saying is that every human must have complete technological and implementation knowledge of any possible invention or they are not deserving of privacy. That position is not only elitist as a technophile, it's arrogant to think that any one person could possess that knowledge, let alone billions. At some point, you'll be the clueless one.

<comment><USER5> And anyone with a smartphone (or any other reasonably general purpose device with a 802.11 radio) can "understand" (read: pick MAC addresses out of a WiFi ping). This isn't some hidden, elite, arcane black-arts knowledge as you imply, this is standard stuff.

The idea that MACs should be somehow private because someone found a novel use for them doesn't even pass the laugh test. IP addresses are not "private". Your face out in a _public_ area is not "private". Why is this different? How is this somehow worse than the CCTV cameras in most public places anyways? How is a MAC address PII by any stretch of the word?

I'm starting to really think "privacy" has joined the heap along with "patriotism", "socialism", and "terrorist", words which are being abused so badly they've lost all meaning and and as a result mean whatever their speaker wishes them to.

>That position is not only elitist as a technophile

One shouldn't hold strong opinions about things they don't understand even on a remedial level. This hand wringing is pure and simple fear mongering.

<comment><USER4> > The idea that MACs should be somehow private because someone found a novel > use for them doesn't even pass the laugh test. IP addresses are not > "private". Your face out in a public area is not "private"

I think you might be misunderstanding the part of this I have a problem with, or perhaps my language wasn't explanatory enough. I have a problem with the company _linking back this info to a specific person_ , not the information itself.

MACs shouldn't be "somehow" private. MACs are not private. But when you use them to tie back to a specific person who is in your shop (with the credit card purchase info), you are essentially tracking a person. I think this activity should be regulated and should be an opt-in thing for users. (Enforcing this regulation could be admittedly a challenge, but it will at least be a step in the direction of strongly discouraging businesses to implement such 'features'.)

Similarly, your face out in a public place is not private. But if I have a startup that sets up CCTVs in participating businesses' premises and then track the movement of specific customers from shop to shop and generate data like "Okay -- the same face that was tracked shopping at Nordstrom then went on to have lunch at the Whole Foods next door; and from the credit card that was used, we can see that it was Mr. Karunamon", it's going to run up against major privacy concerns. I think this is very similar, but not that controversial because it is not so visible.

<comment><USER5> >I think this activity should be regulated and should be an opt-in thing for users.

I think any possible regulatory hurdles that could be imagined will make life for anyone who does anything neat with wifi or some other combination of information miserable. The credit card thing makes me wonder.. like what exactly are they grabbing? Just the fact that a card swipe was recorded at the same time that X wifi radio was in front of the register?

Somehow I'm still not bothered by this. As long as there's no "hidden" information being exposed (say, my CC#), my response is a big fat "meh". Combining different kinds of public information (as in, things that any person could just walk by and see) doesn't somehow combine to become private information.

I mean, let's see what pieces of data we're dealing with here:

        * Entry to the store. Public. Via CCTV, door sensor, etc.
        * Items selected. Public-ish. (Recorded after checkout, some stores use RFID tagging)
        * Location in the store. Public. (Anyone can see.)
        * Time card was swiped. Public. (Anyone in line can see)
        * Basic WiFi information (Mac address, SSID, etc). Public. (Anyone with a smartphone can see.)

Given the fact that all of these pieces of information are freely available, I find it impossible to call for someone's head or feel even vagely "creeped out" by simply combining that info.

Put yet another way, the information's always been there in the open, but now that someone decides to collect it, there's a problem??

<comment><USER7> To be clear, we're not collecting credit card data / swipes. Just anonymous movement. There's been some discussion about eventually using in-store payment systems with open API's to marry purchasing behavior to foot traffic >> but this wouldn't be tied to the individual.

The goal is not individual (person) tracking. The goal is identifying and operationalizing trends at an location-specific and network level.

We encourage users worried about privacy to opt out. But realistically, they're not individuals to the system. They're part of a trend.

As long as we get a statistically relevant percentage of movement (15-20%) we believe we can still be useful to the business. Worst case: a lot of people opt out, we drop from our current 60-70% capture to 20-30% capture and we simply extrapolate the remainder.

It's an inexact science but, we believe, very useful.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the clarification. I think the NSA shenanigans and everything surrounding them have people hypersensitive with regard to any kind of "tracking", no matter how innocuous.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This idea is cool, but there are some issues with their privacy claim.

They say they are hashing the MAC address (presumably on the device). However, they can't be salting the hash (else they wouldn't be able to match across different stores).

Since there is no salt (or a fixed salt), it is trivial to de-anonymise a specific MAC address (just hash it and see if any server has it).

Worse, there are only 46 bits that are variable in a MAC address, and there is structure in there (3 bytes manufacturer, 3 bytes serial), so a complete mapping from MACs to the hashed MAC is very doable.

A secret per-device key for a HMAC would preserve privacy much better, but would stop them doing the cool stuff they plan — the usual trade off.

<comment><USER9> why not salt and store the salt with the hash?

<comment><USER8> That seems like it would work, but it turns into a "open using crowbar found inside" problem: how do I know to use the same salt on a second density.io device unless I have already matched the MAC address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a privacy nightmare.

Perhaps wifi devices should no longer provide constant MAC addresses....

<comment><USER11> What's the advantage to a constant MAC address anyway? There must be a reason for it, but my first reaction to this article was to see if I could change mine.

<comment><USER12> At the link level, your MAC is your unique address.

First: You do _not_ want a MAC collision. I have worked with hardware that sometimes picked a non-unique MAC and your life gets really weird and sucks away a lot of debugging time to find out why impossible things are happening.

Continuing – It made ethernet easy to implement. They could have added some complicated address negotiation protocol and then handled address collisions when partitioned networks healed, but it was "olden times" and something that complicated would not have gained traction.

Fast forward to Wi-Fi. The reason you have Wi-Fi instead of any number of other wireless ideas that died is because it looks like ethernet so people didn't have to think much about it, so you inherit that baggage.

If you really want to change your MAC address then you will want to make sure you aren't going to collide with anyone else. The odds are tiny, but it would be rude to ruin their day. Fortunately, there is a locally administered range of MAC addresses. If your first octet's last digit is 2, 6, a, or e then you are a locally administered unicast address. Assuming your network segment doesn't have an administrator actively handing out local addresses, drop 56 random bits in the remaining octets, cross your fingers, and bring up your network stacks.

<comment><USER13> > _First: You do not want a MAC collision. I have worked with hardware that > sometimes picked a non-unique MAC and your life gets really weird and sucks > away a lot of debugging time to find out why impossible things are > happening._

I can confirm. Working with a bunch of Chinese hardware with non-unique MAC addresses is painful. It was easier to buy new NICs with real serial numbers than to work out how to fix them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really clever. So it's like Google Analytics (or any analytics) for your brick and mortar business. This is the kind of stuff I love to read about and see being developed, it makes a refreshing change from yet another javascript framework or social network for your pets.

<comment><USER11> They're not the first; Path Intelligence tried it in 2007: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/14/path-intelligence- monitors-...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/14/path-intelligence-monitors- foot-traffic-in-retail-stores-by-pinging-peoples-phones/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Before you say more, check euclidanalytics.com. The creator of Google Analytics has been working on this, with funding, for a number of years already.

I had seen news about this recently and am surprised that more people didn't notice how it is essentially the same, without funding, and less developed.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hadn't realized how trackable cell phones were until I was experimenting on a wifi project and saw both MAC addresses and Preferred Network List of devices within the area that had not joined my network. Cell phone wifi is a privacy nightmare. Even the most technical people don't realize this, so projects that popularize it are going to kick up huge amounts of mud. Think of how easy it is to identify "whale" clients, if not by direct tracking, then by revenue correlation (these N people were present for $N,NNN,NNN in revenue events). They're valuable to track because when they show up you want your sales people to be at their best, but a service that starts tracking those people is going to make real enemies quickly.

</comment><comment><USER17> Without wishing to belittle the privacy concerns of my fellow HNers, I wonder how long it will take for people to just be ok with being tracked in this way? This seems like one of those social changes that feels strange and uncomfortable at first, but over time becomes the accepted norm.

<comment><USER18> Commercial Wifi routers already do retail traffic analysis.

[https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2013/12/get-a-visual-on- your-b...](https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2013/12/get-a-visual-on-your-black- friday-foot-traffic/)

So people are probably already being tracked... and no one has noticed.

<comment><USER19> There are multiple companies doing this at scale in the United States. It's a passive process. Good luck spotting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has there been any work on developing and commercializing personal RF "firewalls?" I'd buy one in an instant to block intrusive tech like this.

<comment><USER21> Have you seen the Off Pocket? [https://offpocket.com/](https://offpocket.com/)

Though in the UK I have unlimited 4G for £20 per month, so I just leave WiFi permanently disabled.

<comment><USER22> Is Off Pocket any different to putting your phone in airplane mode every time you put it in your pocket?

It's certainly more convenient, but also harder on the battery life as the phone continues to search for a signal.

<comment><USER21> Battery life was talked about on the original Kickstarter campaign: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offpocket/off- pocket](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offpocket/off-pocket)

I never ordered one as I missed the window of opportunity. But it was claimed by the creator and users that battery life was variable depending on the make and model of your phone, and whether you had lots of background apps attempting to do things.

The claim was that in some combinations you get better battery life by using Off Pocket, and with others you get worse.

Phones don't drain greatly when they don't have a signal. A day riding the tube system between meetings in London doesn't significantly affect my battery life, so I've no reason to believe that Off Pocket would've resulted in a different outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Keep in mind that these "anonymous" data points aren't. Your phones MAC address exposes your home wifi network thanks to Google's databases. They also expose where you work, where your friends houses are, what your favorite coffee shop is. This is beyond dangerous, it's completely unacceptable.

<comment><USER23> I am confused where you are linking MAC addresses of phones with MAC addresses of home wireless routers.

<comment><USER13> Your devices broadcast the names of networks it has seen recently in frequent intervals. "Yo HomeWiFI you there" essentially. Anybody listening can then correlate them with Googles database to find out detailed information about the user. Usually people have a huge list of connected networks which will be announced and give huge information about the user. "MIT" SSID? Probably a student then.

<comment><USER24> Phones don't simply broadcast a complete list of networks they remember.

<comment><USER25> yes they do.

[http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2013/papers/imc148-barber...](http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2013/papers/imc148-barberaSP106.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apparently Nordstrom did an experiment with this for a while - [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention- shopper...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper- stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html) \- even going as far as monitoring passing traffic so you could monitor the percentage of people passing who actually come into the store. This could be pretty fascinating in the context of running certain types of window displays, sales/offers, etc, and lead to ecommerce-style split testing and the like. It says they stopped the experiment partly due to people whining though, but I imagine it'll just go 'under the radar' in future since it could be too valuable not to try.

</comment><comment><USER27> Everyone here seems to be complaining about the anonymous tracking, which isn't really an issue for "normals". Its a relatively useless complaint too as that data already exists in the credit card network.

The real issue with this is that most SMBs are unsophisticated when it comes to the technology stack they use. I saw this firsthand in many ways working at Swipely (swipely.com) as we figured out product market fit. While things like 'see where else your customers shop' might seem like an interesting feature from an outsiders perspective, the businesses don't actually care. They often barely have the bandwidth to worry about their own customers.

<comment><USER28> Exactly, this is basically a physical manifestation of what google already does with your online presence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Don't surveil your customers. It's creepy.

<comment><USER30> Most businesses have video cameras

<comment><USER31> Well at least the cameras have stated purpose of preventing theft and possibly solving crimes.

Also Cameras are fairly visible.

This tech is stealthy and most people won't have any idea that this is actually happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is creepy. I will actively avoid stores that use this.

<comment><USER33> How will you know?

<comment><USER32> I guess I have to start looking towards outlets. I wonder if there is any other way to 'protect' yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have stickers for stores to put on their doors so you know if they're using Density. We don't want to be sneaky about this.

<comment><USER34> Stores will have a strong incentive not to advertise that they're using your service, as Nordstrom found out. Will you be doing anything to check whether stores post the stickers properly? Will you terminate service if they don't?

Euclid Analytics keeps their customers secret, so if a store _doesn 't_ post notices, there's no way for us to know they're using the service. Will you be keeping your customers secret as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Where's their opt out?

<comment><USER36> I guess you always have the option of turning off wifi.

<comment><USER33> "We're working on more than just wifi as well."

<comment><USER37> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI- catcher)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Great execution, completely unethical

<comment><USER31> Looks like I need to turn off WiFi (or Airplane Mode) when I leave home.

People need to know about this and it should be an opt in!

This is why we can't have nice things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The funny part to me is that people think this is new. Companies like Euclid have literally been doing this for a couple of years(and quite successfully I might add) [http://euclidanalytics.com/](http://euclidanalytics.com/)

Not only is it not new, its probably not going away.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've actually seen a crude version of something like this on a trip to Taiwan a couple of years ago. I was at a mall and I noticed a wifi network called "People Counter." I wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with it, but I assumed it was counting MAC addresses.

</comment><comment><USER41> Am I correct to assume that the hardware/device piece is similar to a Pineapple ([https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/wifi- pineapple](https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/wifi-pineapple))?

As I understand it, the device is like a WiFi Router looking for nearby clients broadcasting their MAC. Since phones have the ability of turning themselves into WiFi Hotspots, could a phone/app offer this same capability, or is it missing a hardware piece that lives in Density/Pineapple?

</comment><comment><USER42> Now that's cool!

If anyone knows or can say: What physical principle(s) is the sensor operating on? There doesn't seem to be much information on that (possibly deliberately).

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a video of a recent pitch where we explain the technology: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA#t=4198s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA#t=4198s)

We're working on more than just wifi as well.

<comment><USER43> So it only counts people that count ;) Just kidding witchya – best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Did I miss something with the video? It plays an interview between pg and Calacanis that's 2 hours long.

<comment><USER45> #t=4198s

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> By the way, I'd love something like this for the gym.

I'd like to check if it's too crowded before I decide to go or not.

I guess for any kind of business with lines or waiting rooms, (banks, ATMS, restaurants) customers might appreciate a way to quickly gauge the crowd level before going.

<comment><USER47> No need for such a perverted privacy violation, the shop could just install a door step counter like they are commonly used already. Then you would have the information how many people are currently in the store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm seeing people talking about MAC address issues.

But how does this device work exactly? Is every phone throwing around a mac address, even if it's not trying to connect to wifi?

For example I have my phone set to use 3G expect on my home network. Would I count?

<comment><USER48> I'm making an assumption about your phone, but it is probably broadcasting packets every now and then saying "Hello, is mrfusion's home network in range?" \- and that packet has your MAC on it, and can be picked up by other devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Met these this last week, they're absolutely incredible and they understand their market really well. They take privacy incredibly seriously and they've built a product that can change the industry.

<comment><USER50> "They take privacy incredibly seriously"

What does that even mean? They're tracking not only the number of people in a location, but where they go ... then sharing that with their customers. From their own website:

Understand your business in the context of others:

1\. Who you share customers with.

2\. Where else your loyal customers love to go.

3\. Where foot traffic in the city is trending.

How is that respecting my privacy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely understand your concerns. In the system you're an anonymous datapoint. The information can't be used to determine who a specific individual is.

<comment><USER50> So if a shop signs up for the service, and on Monday morning they have one customer who comes into the shop and buys something ... then that customer goes to another shop and just browses. You'll likely have the name of the person because they paid by credit card. You'll also have the information that this customer went down the block to some other shop. And you'll know which customer it was because you only had one customer that day.

So tell me again how I can't use this information to identify who a specific individual is.

<comment><USER51> It's not like the shop has information on individuals, they only have information on the total number and total flow. It would take a lot of collaboration with each and every store owner to be able to get to a point where they know exactly who you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Pretty good execution. We recently build something pretty similar for keeping track of who was in our office and where they were (partial write-up here: [http://matthewmacleod.co.uk/blog/passive-wifi- tracking.html](http://matthewmacleod.co.uk/blog/passive-wifi-tracking.html)) - strictly opt-in, but we still had to wrestle with the privacy implications.

Problem is, this is a really effective and totally passive system with great benefits. But privacy-wise, it's scary.

</comment><comment><USER53> Do devices broadcast their MAC adress when looking for an AP? Do devices encytpt their MAC when they are connected to an AP?

I want a phone that randomizes the MAC every time it connects to an AP.

</comment><comment><USER54> Are there any good apps for location-aware WiFi toggling? I rarely use WiFi outside of home or work so I'd like it to turn itself off to avoid stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER55> Placemeter offers a substantially similar product that works based on strategically placed small cameras and machine intelligence. It recognizes individuals coming in and out of a retail location based on what they look like. Pretty cool technology and the founders were part of my Techstars class.

[http://placemeter.com](http://placemeter.com)

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm OK with the measuring traffic volumes using this method but I'm uncomfortable with the identifying information being stored without permission.

If they provided incentives to install an app/visit a website to register for rewards or be entered into a prize in return for allowing density.io to track you that would be acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER46> Could a device like this use bluetooth instead of wifi / mac address?

Or for that matter could it somehow look at cell signals?

<comment><USER57> Euclid discusses this on their blog: [http://blog.euclidelements.com/2013/07/why-wi-fi-is-right- ap...](http://blog.euclidelements.com/2013/07/why-wi-fi-is-right-approach-for- retail.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Ok so this system works by tracking MAC addresses. I assume the same sort of system using cameras and facial recognition would work too, and you can't turn off your face. I assume this must be already happening somewhere.

The amount of privacy we think we have must be a small fraction of what we actually have.

</comment><comment><USER59> What is the percentage of people who always leave wifi enabled? I turn mine off every time I finish using it.

<comment><USER60> From their launch conf pitch, they did an experiment in a stadium with an attendance figure of 20000 and found 71% of attendees had a phone with wifi enabled. No idea if that audience is representative, but it seems plausible to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I wonder if the market for 'dumbphones' will increase as/if this sort of thing becomes more common? Probably not, but it's fun to think about. I know Nokia are still making bare-bones, extra-long-life models aimed at developing countries (eg the 105, 220).

</comment><comment><USER62> Density's worst enemy is this app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.p...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.pryfi) :)

</comment><comment><USER63> Why are posts allowed that just have the site's URL as the entire post title?

<comment><USER64> The post title is the same as the page title, which is what you're expected to submit.

<comment><USER65> I imagine HN would just scrape the title automatically if that's the low standard that's been set for headlines here. The "title" field is presumably there so that people can enter something more descriptive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Mental note : before your next hold up, remember to turn off your smartphone ...

</comment><comment><USER67> Interesting idea, but wouldn't you get better coverage of people using GSM addresses, rather than Wifi MAC addresses?

Also it could be rather easily tricked by competitors, by constantly switching the MAC address.

</comment><comment><USER68> Anyone else thinking this looks a bit like Brendan O'Connor's CreepyDOL?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFA6lew2tcE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFA6lew2tcE)

</comment><comment><USER69> While I understand the concern about tracking peoples presence with phones, I don't feel like this is new. The cellular companies can track location, and it's already happening.

</comment><comment><USER47> Time to build a device that pollutes the databases with useless data.

<comment><USER70> No need to build anything, just use an existing device that can change its wifi MAC address.

<comment><USER71> How about an app for rooted Android phones?

'Click here to transmit 802.11* broadcasts with randomized MAC'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> If you want to build one of these, check out this library: [http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy](http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy)

<comment><USER59> Thanks, I've just asked this in another comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I thought this was a SaaS for dentistry (somehow) and I was going to be excited since it's been a while since I've gone to the dentist.

</comment><comment><USER74> Definitely creepy.

</comment><comment><USER75> Shouldn't something like Leap Motion be able to do this (for one store at least) and without the privacy concerns?

</comment><comment><USER59> What do I need to do to build my own version of this device? Can I do it with any router? A Raspberry Pi?

<comment><USER19> [http://br1.einfach.org/tech/horst/](http://br1.einfach.org/tech/horst/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> In this flat, rectangular world, I have liked your flat, but curvy rectangles in common card UI.

</comment><comment><USER77> If you have Wifi disabled on your device will they still be able to pull your MAC?

</comment><comment><USER78> I gotta try this out when I'm wearing my wearable Hadoop cluster ;-)

</comment><comment><USER79> sounds very similar to this [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490) which was shut down.

<comment><USER33> It might be different since those were in public places, and not in shops.

<comment><USER47> How are you going to restrain the signals to inside the shop?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Awesome product.

</comment><comment><USER81> my density has bought me to you

</comment><comment><USER82> are .io domains still so hipster, that you just drop em somewhere and people klick on it?

</comment><comment><USER83> To everyone screaming about privacy, RELAX, this is opt-in.

<comment><USER84> Where does it say that? And how long until it's not?

<comment><USER51> [https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt- out/](https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/)

<comment><USER84> Okay but where was the link to that? I don't see it anywhere on their site.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Dangerous Wealth Of the Ivy League - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_50/b4062038784589.htm

<comment><USER2> Dangerous wealth?

I was always rather impressed with the size of the funds these Ivy league schools have. They have enough money that they can sustainably increase the quality of their services year over year. Imagine having a few hundred million in profits from the fund alone each year to work with, you could support a lot of research, equipment and grants.

I don't see the problem with these schools having a huge amount of money. Of course the money could be misallocated, but that would be rather unlikely in such an institution (or i am being naive).

<comment><USER2> Followup:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aWq9...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aWq9KoEaxM2g)

Family makes 60k or less? You go for free. Perfect usage of the huge fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/12/11/not-without-a-fight/>

(Cosmic Variance's response to the article)</comment>


The Detect Nudity API - <AUTHOR> http://www.programmableweb.com/api/detect-nudity

<comment><USER2> No source code, but I bet this implements Rigan Ap-Apsid's algorithm: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.96....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.96.9872&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

By "implements" I mean interprets Ap-Apsids sometimes vague explanation. Ap- Apsid's paper looks good, but when you get into the details, you can see multiple ways of doing some things, and no way of doing others.

Also this algorithm and the specific API are shockingly easy to fool. [http://stratigery.com/bediger/50.jpg](http://stratigery.com/bediger/50.jpg) totall fools it, and isn't even vaguely human-colored, much less human.</comment>


Billy Mitchell's current Donkey Kong score removed due to suspected emulator use - <AUTHOR> http://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/176004-Dispute-Jeremy-Young-Arcade-Donkey-Kong?p=946633&viewfull=1#post946633 <comment><AUTHOR> Note that the score was removed from the Donkey Kong Forum High Score List, not Twin Galaxies.</comment>


OverlayFS Proposed for the Linux 3.18 Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc5OTc

<comment><USER2> Looks remarkably similar to what Sun had 25 years ago, something called TFS.

I found the paper about it and converted it to pdf, you can get that here:

[http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/papers/tfs.pdf](http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/papers/tfs.pdf)</comment>


Cosmos - OS Written in C# - <AUTHOR> http://www.gocosmos.org/index.EN.aspx

<comment><USER2> In related news, Microsoft actually built an OS years ago based on .net technology called Singularity.

<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/>

<comment><USER3> And there are rumours that they are now working on a new commercial OS codenamed midori, possibly based on Singularity.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the Technical FAQ:

      How do I write to a file in COMOS
        You can't, yet.

      What doesn't work
        Interfaces (In the programing sense, not the graphical sense)
        Foreach - Requires interfaces, so use for instead for now

On a brighter note -- from FAQ:

      What is the Project Vision?
        We would like to design Cosmos as:
        (...)
          *The LINUX of tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER5> This project made a lot more sense to me after reading this introductory article: <http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/CosmosUnderHood.aspx>

In short, it's a way to develop operating systems, rather than being a particular operating system.

</comment><comment><USER6> The main page states that the compiler IL2CPU compiles IL to x86 code utilizing NASM. So IL2CPU translates c# code into x86 assembler? Why not translate c# code into C and then use gcc (rather than nasm) to build native binaries? That way you get support for x64, arm, ppc, etc.

Also lots of confusing answers:

Can I use Delphi.NET? Maybe. Unfortunately the Delphi libraries for full of P/Invokes. If you only use the .NET libraries, and use the .NET 2.0 version it might work. Alternatively, you could use Chrome.

Are they talking about Chrome, the browser here? ??

Also why do you need the non free version of Visual Studio? "To further the features of Cosmos development we rely on extending Visual Studio" Why??

<comment><USER7> I believe they stated it's an OS entirely in C#, therefore having it compile to C would contradict their whole vision. As for your other questions, C# is kind of a mess, with all the different .NET versions and Silverlight. I really enjoy using C# and I'm looking forward to what this project comes to be.

<comment><USER8> Trying to make a point is fine and all, but turning C# into essentially a compiled language in leu of a more practical approach seems silly.

It seems like instead of using C as an intermediate stage they've basically C-ified C#.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also... renrakuOS <https://github.com/daeken/RenrakuOS>

</comment><comment><USER10> I there the guys behind this are smart. But I also think they have lot going on. The project seems to move slowly. Interesting ideas tho.

<comment><USER2> I think <http://www.mosa-project.org/> is slightly more active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 404 on the screenshots.

<comment><USER12> I had to remove the Old/ directory name from URLs.

<http://www.gocosmos.org/Screenshots/gfx/guess.JPG>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Screenshots please?

</comment><comment><USER14> Operating systems are only written in one language, machine language. Everything else is done in the compiler.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an old project... and even Microsoft is now using HTML5 for Metro UI in Windows 8... what happened to WPF? Ask Windows 8: Lack of perfomance!. I can't imagine how useless this operating system would be. What's next, a kernel based in Javascript?</comment>


How did you break into the programming industry? - <AUTHOR> http://codejustin.com/how-did-you-break-into-the-programming-industry/ Tell us how you broke into the programming industry by leaving a comment on the blog post and also see what other programmers had to say! <comment><USER2> By programming. Do enough of that, and other people will become aware of your existence.

IRC and mailing lists are good places to hang out if you do the open source thing -- every job I've ever gotten has been via IRC. (This probably works only if you are an active participant in a smallish community. I wouldn't join #java on Freenode and ask for a job, or expect someone to offer one.)

Actually, I'm wrong -- presenting at local user groups (and conferences) is also a good idea. That is how I got started teaching training classes (and writing).

</comment><comment><USER3> To be honest, I think the story of how I broke _out_ of the "programming industry" is far more interesting. Then, the story of how I broke out of the consulting industry.

How I "broke in": started programming age 9. After university (physics degree), in a dead market (2002), the best option that I found was to start working as a Java programmer for a large consultancy's software engineering arm.

How I broke out of that, into consulting: quickly realised that being just a programmer wasn't enough to satisfy me, so tried to transfer to the consulting arm of that corporation. Was told it was impossible. Did it anyway, through a combination of doing awesome work and convincing the right senior people to be on my side.

How I broke out of consulting: worked my bollocks off to start my first business - 9 months of waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, working till 7, napping for an hour, then off to work for a long (and challenging) day of consulting work.

What happened next: First business slowly tanked for a number of reasons (main one detailed at [http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a- friend...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a- friend.html)), but I managed to hop onto the second one (<http://www.woobius.com>), which is going great for the moment.

Don't try to break into the programming industry. You might find it's not so easy to break back out of it...

</comment><comment><USER4> I have always had a thirst for knowledge, especially electronics and computers. I started programming quite young on Atari Basic, got into HTML/Javascript when I was 12 or so, took 2 C++ courses in high school. Graduated but did not go to college.

At 19, I found a posting on a local college bulletin board for a full-time web developer position. The pay was low for a web developer, but good enough for a 19-year old. I have been absorbing knowledge from peers and internet sources ever since. I learned Coldfusion, ASP, SQL, PHP, regular expressions, server administration, AS2, C# .NET and AS3 through the 8 years I've been there. I have since advanced to Senior Web Developer and my salary has too. I am now focused on learning Python/Django and Cocoa/Objective C for iPhone development.

I just skimmed your article and your portfolio. I was, in fact, very much like you. I am not saying you should not go to college, if you have the ability. But college is not necessarily a requirement to get into a programming job. I learned a ton once I was in a professional atmosphere.

Two recommendations, take them or leave them: (I am not a professional resume writer) Remove your age from your portfolio, I think some companies may shy away from hiring someone so young (just from reactions I've gotten when I've told people my age). And remove "one day" in the line about where you want to become a programmer. You want it, right? If your are a senior, you must be graduating within a month or so. Start looking.

Go check your local college's bulletin board (the real one in the commons). You might get the opportunity to get your foot in the door. Never stop learning.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cross post from the blog to here:

To be honest, I worked for next to nothing. When I was in college my parents nagged me to death about getting a job. I didn't want just any job, and I kept getting rejected from the lowest of the low end positions. I stumbled across an ad at my university looking for web developers at a small company called Cloudspace. I shot them an email with my resume and had an interview that week. The interview was with the owner, and he just asked me to brush up on my PHP and MySQL and come in for a quick test the next week. I crammed my head full of PHP and MySQL tutorials and went in the following week. I had to write a simple page that would query out data for a select box with option groups, each with its own set of options. The task was to select out the data with one query, allow the user to select an option and send a message to the database. I finished it all in about an hour, but hadn't thought about SQL injection. One single quote and a press of enter and I was done, but they let me take the job anyways. I met the other candidate on the first day we started, and we worked together pretty closely. He had an edge on me, as he knew quite a bit more, but I caught up in the following month.

About 2 years passed, and I had went from making minimum wage to making $10 an hour. It wasn't great, but the experience was well worth it. I left Cloudspace and took on my own contract job. From there, I graduated and went to work at another small company writing ColdFusion (and 12 other things), and from there on to where I work now at one of the largest defense contractors in the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> The old traditional path I suppose . . .

Years ago, began hacking on home computer (not a PC, but something called a C64, for the curious). Went to college, wrong major, quit . . . bounced around, bad jobs. Started doing some db hacking in Excel (don't ask).

Decided to make more than $8 an hour, went back to college, got a BS in comp sci. Loved undergrad this time around, jumped into internships and co-ops with companies as an undergrad.

Finished undergrad with a good GPA and did well on GREs, realized I could go to grad school via research assistantship. Cool. Hung out with really smart hackers there. Finished year 1 with absolutely zero interest in staying for PhD (never found really good research/advisor match, would probably do differently now). Finished 2nd year, got a job out in the IT industry, escaping grad school with a MS in comp sci.

Almost all my really relevant experience in breaking into the industry came about by internships or deep project work at the undergrad/grad level (usually not classes, but research efforts on the side). These days, I get the impression you can get all the same experience without college. Beware that some big industry players will hold the lack of a CS degree against you (this seems mainly to be a "getting in the door" problem).

Mainly, I got into industry by really enjoying coding and grabbing every opportunity to do so where someone was willing to pay me for it. Everything else was a means to that end.

</comment><comment><USER7> True story: I walked into the front door of a startup and said, Hi, I'm X and I can do Y, are you hiring? And they were. This was April or May, technically I hadn't actually finished college but exams were over. Only stayed there 7 months, they changed direction and didn't do what I wanted to do anymore, but that experience was enough to land me my next job.

</comment><comment><USER8> Started programming when I was about 10, went to college and got a CS degree, got a job.

This question is worded strangely. The "programming industry" is not like the "movie industry" or the "music industry." Just start coding. It'll be easier to get a job with a CS degree, but plenty of developers can get jobs without it if they are good enough.

</comment><comment><USER9> Start with an idea you love and then learn how to write it. Repeat this enough times and you'll either develop a marketable skill (a particular programming language, platform, etc.) or you'll write something that others can use and you'll just have to put a pricetag on it.

Things like iPhone apps, Facebook apps, etc. have made it allot easier, in my opinion, for a developer to bootstrap their own business, but I would focus on writing something you're passionate about because you won't require the financial motivation (which is unpredictable) to keep at it.

If you truly desire the results of your own work, nothing (including any classical definition failure) should be able to stop you from completing it.

</comment><comment><USER10> When I was 17 I was playing games at a private computer college. We had a beta copy of Tribes 2, which would crash on startup. I opened up some files, modified a few scripts and eventually got it working.

The owner of the college asked me if I could code PHP. I had done a PHP tutorial a week before, so I told him that I could.

I worked for them in my final year of high school and got a full time position the day after I matriculated. I've been programming ever since.

</comment><comment><USER11> Built a couple of DirectX/OpenGL c++ demos and showed them to Ubisoft. First thing I know, I was working on the Myst IV production, and then Assassin's creed at Ubisoft Montreal. The game industry is a lot of fun when you are 21. Of course things change afterward if you are slightly entrepreneurial, independent or self-starter...

</comment><comment><USER12> I built a college class scheduler app in Rails & Javascript on the side while working at a tech support job. I taught myself everything from sites online. I finally applied for a web developer job and showed my app as my "experience". I got the job and doubled my salary.

</comment><comment><USER13> The one thing I've noticed about all successful programmers is that they incubated their interest and skills outside of academics.

</comment><comment><USER14> Opened the manual and taught myself BASIC on a PDP 11/44 running RSTS/E. Then Pascal and C. I still enjoy writing code.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dont be shy! Tell us your story!

<comment><USER15> Using a crowbar, I shattered a window at Redmond, Washington and then threw a pie at Bill Gates's face.</comment></comment>


The Onion headlines could teach AI what makes satire funny - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/onion-headlines-could-teach-ai-what-makes-satire-funny <comment><USER2> I legitimately cannot tell if this headline is some sort of meta joke.

<comment><USER3> On the internet, no one knows you're a dog-bot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> PDF link for paper:

 _Reverse-Engineering Satire, or "Paper on Computational Humor Accepted Despite Making Serious Advances"_ \- Robert West, Eric Horvitz, Jan 2019

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.03253](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.03253)</comment>


Japan's Space Agency Says Rocket Information Was Stolen by Computer Virus - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/world/asia/japans-space-agency-says-rocket-information-was-stolen-by-computer-virus.html

<comment><USER2> Let me guess. They were using Windows XP.</comment>


Tesla's Autopilot engaged during Utah crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46320103&nid=157&title=teslas-autopilot-engaged-during-utah-crash <comment><AUTHOR> Highlights:

* Tesla Model S was going 60 mph, slammed into the back of a fire truck stopped at a red light

* car appeared not to brake before impact

* driver said that AutoPilot system was switched on and she had been looking at her phone

* Elon Musk tweeted it was "super messed up" that the incident is getting public attention, when so many other accidents don't

<comment><USER2> Tesla's autopilot seems to have a thing for fire trucks. Here's an earlier one [https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/tesla-on-autopilot- sl...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/22/tesla-on-autopilot-slams-into- parked-fire-truck-on-freeway/)

While I'm sure self driving systems will save many lives overall there seems to be a bit of work needed here.</comment></comment>


Hickory (YC S15) predicts when you are going to forget something - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/hickory-startup-predicts-exactly-when-you-are-going-to-forget-something-and-makes-you-remember-2015-7

<comment><USER2> So this is just Anki[1] under an umbrella? E.g. flash cards are provided by someone higher up who can also look at the data?

[1] [http://ankisrs.net/](http://ankisrs.net/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Emerongi, CEO here and great question.

SRS systems are a good start, however they typically only utilize flashcards and treat all information the same. Where we are starting is looking at the type of knowledge that's trying to be retained and building a solution for each one.

Without giving to much away, a SRS flashcard is quite good at helping you remember a vocabulary word, or a single fact. These systems break down quickly if you have a multistep process (like closing a sale) or a tree of conditional steps. We have solutions for each of these and we're learning a lot of interesting things from our early customers.

The entire system is built around creating information that is highly memorable, so from first view to latest review we're optimizing the learning path.

<comment><USER2> This should have been in the article. From the title, I was expecting something completely else; reading the article I thought "nothing new" and eventually I was left with "there's some dude doing something".

As a daily Anki user, this seems interesting though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was a daily one for years, then completely moved on once I had Hickory (we use it for ourselves internally) and trained to get into YC with it.

Happy to talk more about this and talk go over what we're thinking. email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if they plan to tackle other educational settings in the future (e.g. schools, self-studying individuals, etc). Am also curious to know if the card design happens automatically or maybe the customer selects from different card types depending on content. The space of tech products that help improve learning seems more sparse than it should be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions! Thanks bluusteel.

We'll see regarding other educational settings, right now it's very targeted on these sales / customer service. What we learn here however can be applied anywhere.

Card types are a bit automagic and templatized based on the course type. I.e. if it's a sales pitch there are different templates & exercises than if it's about a product.

"The space of tech products that help improve learning seems more sparse than it should be." \-- Completely agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried to figure out what this app is doing for a few minutes, my understanding after reading a title was that it reminds me about e.g. my keys or wallet before leaving the house :-) It would carry so much more information if you phrased it in a way that mentions learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yeah. I'm happy to text you everyday and tell you where your keys are. It will most likely be a guess however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyplace and bite-sized learning, even before personalizing it to a commute or using other data, seems totally green field. Most corporate training is just videos. Pretty exciting.

</comment><comment><USER6> After seeing early prototypes and having known the founder for years, this has the potential to be a truly great product and company - congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> <3 More to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is 100% for me. I am the world's worst forgetful bear. And by my at least my subjective experience, the number of times I think back to the thing at spaced intervals determines in a large degree the likelihood that I am going to remember it longer.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can you imagine any downside to remembering all the material you try to learn?</comment>


Connecting Functions to Redux Store - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/en-Zee/Redux-Funk <comment><AUTHOR> I've recently created this new package to connect functions to the Redux store and retrieve the state as it updates. It behaves similarly to React-Redux and is really just a thin wrapper for the subscribe function. It retrieves state updates and returns back the data however you need it. I found this pretty useful and am actually kind of surprised it hasn't been done before. Can I get some feedback on this?</comment>


MacOS High Sierra App Store System Preferences Can Be Unlocked with Any Password - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/10/macos-high-sierra-app-store-password-bug/ <comment><USER2> Honestly, I don't know that I will ever upgrade to High Sierra. They need to re-establish the independent MacOS software team and get them to just sit down and focus. If 14.0 isn't like 10.6.8 I think we've all given Apple it's last chance it'll get for a while.</comment>


High Performance Caching with Readthis - <AUTHOR> http://sorentwo.com/2015/07/20/high-performance-caching-with-readthis.html

<comment><USER2> What are the benefits of readthis when compared to redis-rails ([https://github.com/redis-store/redis-rails](https://github.com/redis- store/redis-rails))?</comment>