I Broke My Phone's Screen, and It Was Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4018 <comment><USER2> There's a cultural quirk buried in the article, when the technician uses his or her "very long thumbnail (in lieu of a spudger/guitar pick)."

Some Chinese men grow one fingernail quite long as a sign that they do not toil in the fields (else the nail would be broken)[1]. It has been for some time a symbol of high status. Yet here we see a long fingernail employed specifically to aid manual labor.

I now wonder if there are budget repair guys walking around Shenzhen appearing to show off their socioeconomic status but actually just hoping their nails don't break because it would make splitting open broken phones less convenient.

[1] [http://www.vagabondjourney.com/why-chinese-men-grow-long- fin...](http://www.vagabondjourney.com/why-chinese-men-grow-long-fingernails/)

<comment><USER3> Interesting how a long fingernail can also imply cocaine usage.

<comment><USER4> It's funny how many different connotations can be conveyed by something as simple as fingernails. The cocaine pinky, false nails in pornography, some varieties of massage, as a status symbol, and classical/flamenco guitar playing come to mind.

<comment><USER5> I find even moderately long nails make throwing pots on a pottery wheel nearly impossible to do (well). So you can add no-fingerprints + short nails to the list under potter.

<comment><USER6> Violinists and pianists also have to keep their finger nails clipped because nails get in the way of hitting the key/string properly. Interestingly, this is opposite to some guitar/banjo/mandolin players, who keep their nails long to help with picking, as mentioned above.

Add one more to the list!

<comment><USER7> This is the height of pedantry (and I apologize), but guitar/banjo/mandolin players are not really "opposite" to violinists--they all need to keep the fingernails of their _fingerboard_ hands short. The difference is that the former may choose to keep the nails of their _picking_ fingers long, whereas the fingernail length of a violinists' bow hand is almost inconsequential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Contrast this with my recent experience at the 14th Street and Fifth Avenue Apple Stores in New York.

Two weeks ago my Mac stopped booting. Made an appointment at the 14th Street Apple Store. Arrived 15 minutes early. Discovered there was a line to check in. That put you into a second line, the line to be seen by a "Genius". Forty- five minutes after my appointment time, I'm seen by someone with no intimate knowledge of my device. Laptop is checked in overnight.

Two days later, I receive my "fixed" Mac. SSD replaced, problem still there. Take it to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store at 4AM. This time I'm seen within 30 minutes of my appointment. "Genius" asks me to call phone support. Phone support insists Genius can solve the problem, asks to speak with Genius–nobody at store can find him. Thirty minutes later, phone support tells Genius what to do. Genius disappears into a back room, emerges 20 minutes later with the right tool. No clear answer as to what went wrong provided.

I am willing to pay for fast, smart solutions. Sometimes the brainpower is not available, and I accept that. Curious that I feel that brainpower would have been more amply available in the streets of Shenzhen than New York.

<comment><USER9> > _Curious that I feel that brainpower would have been more amply available in > the streets of Shenzhen than New York_

...although perhaps not at 4AM, which is when you went? Not to play down the fact you had a pretty rough time of it, but the fact you could find someone to fix is at 4AM is to me an achievement in and of itself.

<comment><USER10> xobs and I have a game we like to play when we live in Shenzhen for extended periods -- it's called "let's buy a soldering iron at 2AM". We'll hack until some stupid late hour and then get hungry, and go out to find street food and "something else", e.g. soldering iron, spare parts, phones, power adapters, etc. in the street markets of Shenzhen. So far, we have not been disappointed. That city simply does not sleep.

This is in part because the EU and US is awake during Shenzhen's nighttime, and if people waited until the morning to fill all the orders coming their way, they'd have to spend all day catching up.

<comment><USER11> That game sounds like a lot of fun. What's the trickiest/most obscure item you've been able to locate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shenzhen, and particularly the Huaqiangbei area, is a great place to be if you're into electronics in general. Components are cheap and plentiful, and so are component-level repair shops. "Fixed while you wait (and watch)" is the norm, and some of the more popular shops have lineups of people waiting with their tablets/laptops/desktops/etc. in need of repair. A friend had his laptop's chipset reballed there (the nVidia one that was famous for failing early.) Very different experience than in the West.

Bunnie has been there before:

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=283](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=283)

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=147](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=147)

<comment><USER13> >A friend had his laptop's chipset reballed there

Sounds like he got scammed. Reballing only is a temporary few months at the most fix. Its not the pcb-bga contact that fails, its the silicon-bga package that has the problem. Reballing heats up whole chip and by accident reseals broken solder joints directly under the silicon. Those joints will crack again because NVIDIA used bad glue that gets plastic under heat stress.

The only way to fix bad Nvidia GPU is to replace it with a brand new one from the fixed batch with new glue formula.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjmBv6nvUOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjmBv6nvUOM)

<comment><USER12> Worked well enough, he didn't mention any problems and I heard he'd sold the laptop over a year later. The reball was ridiculously cheap too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish I had more adventures like this one, but I've found one of the things that holds me back is the language barrier. I don't speak any of Mandarin, Korean, or Japanese (I wouldn't be surprised if bunnie does, given how brilliant he is), and I worry that not being able to communicate effectively rules out serendipitous moments like these.

For others here, did you learn Chinese (or Spanish, or Arabic, or Russian) to assist you in your travels? I've always found learning computer languages easy, but human languages frustratingly difficult for me (different muscles, I know).

<comment><USER15> Just go. I just went to Shenzen last month. I don't speak a word of Chinese. It really helps that you can go to Hong Kong (where you can get by with English) first and cross the border by train/car. If you change your mind, it's easy to come back.

Crossed the border, got a SIM card with a data plan. Browsed wikitravel, showed taxi driver the characters for where I wanted to go. Then just take another taxi ride to a hotel from google maps, reception spoke English. Rest of the trip went similarly. Had no problems.

<comment><USER16> Yes, just go. But you should add that the traveler must be ready to let things go, when traveling in deep China without knowing Chinese. And to be confident. Then serendipity will not be just another trendy word.

<comment><USER17> And try not to achieve anything on an expected timeframe. Allow for delays; missed trains because you couldn't find a platform or taxis going to the wrong place because your directions were vague, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One interesting aspect of replacement is the difference between a good rework job and a bad rework job is typically environmental sealing. Does the case still snap perfectly tightly, with sealant/gaskets, if any, around the borders etc?

This is useful advice not just for people doing it themselves, but to evaluate a shops ability to do rework. If its a busy shop catch a guy leaving with a replacement and ask to see some completed work.

There is an analogy with programming where a mere "it compiled" is not exactly the pinnacle of all possible compliments.

</comment><comment><USER19> Same deal here in Bolivia, you break something chances are someone somewhere in Los Cachis can fix it for you inexpensively.

For example my Kindle 1st gen charging port was no longer snapping the connector cable correctly - I took it in and for 20Bs ($3) they fixed a soldered part that had come loose with the ins-and-outs of the charging cable.

</comment><comment><USER20> I did this myself for my Nokia Lumia 920. Same fault - the glass cracked but the digitizer and display were fine. Hair dryer, tweezers and a ton of patience. It took me four hours though, but it was a complete success.

If you're planning on doing this yourself, don't be tempted to buy an unbranded replacement - they may be fakes or poor quality reproductions (not gorilla glass, digitizer inaccurate, etc.) - My phone was a developer device but I replaced the screen with an AT&T branded one. The branded screens are usually genuine.

<comment><USER21> Simply obtaining branded hardware can be difficult -- I recently had to replace the full assembly on my Nexus 4, and in the process had 2 orders out of Shenzhen seized by customs, while a 3rd out of HK successfully shipped. This was all due to an LG logo that was only visible on the back of the part.

<comment><USER22> Why were they seized?

<comment><USER21> My understanding is the seller didn't have the appropriate paperwork to export hardware bearing an LG logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This post hints at one of the great advantages of being close to suppliers. When you're that close to the supply source, you gain all sorts of advantages like:

a) You can typically find the person actually building the damn thing, and ask about it.

b) You can probably get your hands on a large set of cheap, defective parts to play around with.

c) You can get your hands on the actual parts really cheap.

b and c together vastly reduces the cost of experimentation, and more importantly, reduces the cost of screwing up.

This is some of what you lose when you become just the end node of the supply chain. This is the type of 'magic' that some people speak about when they talk about when 'America (or insert your choice of western democratic country) built things'.

<comment><USER24> This is also a hardware metaphor for the concept of "open source" software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The hairdryer as heat-gun method was first shown to me by an incredibly gifted Electrical Engineer (from China) who used this method to fix dry joints on PCBs (including consumer mainboards).

It was astounding the first time I saw a dead MB revived with nothing more than a bathroom accessory!

<comment><USER13> Sounds like quite a feat considering hair dryer wont produce more than 50-60'C and solder needs >180'C to even start thinking about melting.

Hair dryer in Bunnies case was used to heat up the GLUE between glass and screen.

<comment><USER26> Just partially block the air intakes. It'll get hot fast. Just be careful it doesn't start to melt inside.

<comment><USER13> no it wont, there is a thermal cutoff inside

<comment><USER26> Hmm. I've got one here I use for heat-shrink tuning I used masking tape on to lower airflow and boost temp. I'm not sure its hot enough to melt solder (probably not) but its great for heat-shrink. I suppose a YMMV is in order.

<comment><USER13> If you remove thermal cutoff you will:

a/ burn the heater

b/ melt whole thing

c/ burn your house

a combination of those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's pretty nice, but in the US at least, the digitizer alone is almost always never replaced because it is a fairly dangerous maneuver. [1]

Also, if you have the tools (and I would recommend buying a small electronics tool set to everyone, because it's a lot cheaper and funner to fix stuff yourself than to pay someone to fix it), then you can buy a complete LCD + digitizer for $36 on Amazon. [2]

[1][http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/111483/iPhone+5+cracked+g...](http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/111483/iPhone+5+cracked+glass,+but+the+screen+still+works)

[2][http://www.amazon.com/Generic-Screen-Digitizer-Assembly- Repl...](http://www.amazon.com/Generic-Screen-Digitizer-Assembly- Replacement/dp/B00APSNZSG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1401023285&sr=8-4&keywords=iphone+5+screen)

<comment><USER28> It's hard to understand Shenzhen if you've not been there. I just returned from the Dangerous Prototypes Hackercamp in Shenzhen, and quite frankly, I don't think there is anyway you can fully comprehend what they can do there if you haven't seen it with your own eyes. Such things as replacing the glass are completely routine and done with incredible speed and precision. They have tools and techniques there not found anywhere else.

I ran into Ian and Jin from Dangerous Prototypes at the SF Bay MakerFaire last weekend where they were demonstrating the BGA reballing techniques we learned at the Land Mobile Repair School in Shenzhen. Ian told me that earlier in the Faire, a couple of Intel engineers stopped by to tell him that what he was doing was wrong, incorrect and impossible (or some combination thereof). He ran them through the process and left them agog, not only that the process developed by the Chinese (about $50USD in tools and supplies) was comparable to a $XX,000 reballing machine, but that they'd never seen or heard of these techniques before. They were throwing away prototypes worth thousands of dollars instead of fixing the problem because they didn't have proper reballing machines/jigs.

It is well worth the trip to Shenzhen if only to see them disassemble a phone completely and refurb it faster than imaginable. Ian hopes to make HCS a regular event and I highly recommend it!

<comment><USER29> For someone without the contacts, can you recommend a way to plug-in to the scene? This hackercamp sounds interesting .. any more on the way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> When I repair phones, I always replace the digitizer and the LCD, firstly because it is too difficult to separate them, but secondly because buying the LCD+Digitizer as one unit isn't that much more expensive than buying the digitizer on its own.

<comment><USER31> The shop is apparently in the business of refurbishing the units. That should be helping keep your prices low...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I didn't have the same luck with a nexus 7 couple of months ago. It fell from a small night table and the screen shattered (the digitizer still works). I did the same process as the post explained and I got a replacement in Amazon ($60 and $6 for the tape), but for some reason it didn't work. The broken screen used to work, but now I only hear noise when I turn it on, but no image. I think I made a mistake when I was removing the graphic ribbon, who knows. Now I feel like I don't want to put more money and time into it. It's great a company like that recycle everything, just separating the digitizer takes a lot of work.

</comment><comment><USER33> FTA:

> _I had originally assumed that the glass on the digitizer is inseparable > from the OLED, but apparently those clever folks in Hua Qiang Bei have > figured out an efficient method..._

There is a large amount of skill involved. I saw a designer take apart a smartphone to use the digitizer in a "looks like works like" prototype. Getting the glue off and otherwise dissembling a smartphone screen without breaking anything is not easy! It's not meant to be repairable. And this guy is a wizard at building prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've got the iFixit repair kit. So far I've used it to repair a kindle hdx, a samsung android device, and an iphone 5c. Basically I just wait until a friend breaks their device and fix it for free. I got a free kindle fire HD out of the deal anyway. I don't ask for money since it's usually friends. I've also used it to replace the battery in my lenovo p500 which does not have a removable battery i.e. you must crack it open.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone here get anything useful to happen by dialing ∗#0∗# on an iPhone? I just get the message "Error performing request: Unknown Error"

<comment><USER36> I don't have an iphone handy, but I bet if you google "iPhone USSD" you'll get some pointers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > This is the power of recycling and repair — instead of paying $120 for a > screen and throwing away what is largely a functional piece of electronics, > I just had to pay for the cost of just replacing the broken glass itself.

Some level of replace-ability should be enforced by law. There should be universal interchangeable types of batteries. Board self-test should be available and so on.

<comment><USER38> That's not how engineering works. There are good designs that can't be achieved while making things replaceable. For example, the reason screen glass often isn't replaceable is because it's optically bonded to the underlying LCD, which improves sharpness, reduces glare, and reduces parallax when using a pen. The reason batteries usually can't be replaced is that it saves space and weight to use naked Li-Poly battery packs molded to the available space. Making say a back case removal reduces structural rigidity and reduces space available for a battery. That's engineering--making trade-offs between features people may not care about in favor of features they care more about.

<comment><USER39> Most people could stand slightly thicker phones. We are dumping huge amounts of toxic stuff because phones are designed for planned obsolescence. If there were pressure to use replaceable or upgradeable parts then we would see thinner phones with these traits, but without that pressure we are going to get more planned obsolescence. That's engineering too.

<comment><USER40> Inability to repair is not planned obsolescence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The three times I've broken phone screens it's always the OLED/LCD display that popped and the digitizer just sat there and grinned at me having protected sod all. I've replaced them all myself and it's been pretty easy on all devices and very cheap. The OLED/LCD displays all came from ebay.

</comment><comment><USER42> I was curious about the diagnostic code mentioned * # 0 * #

I tried it and the phone did seem to go into some diagnostic mode and showed "please wait" for about 5 seconds, then just stopped with "Unknown Error" Sad.

</comment><comment><USER43> I guess it takes skills @dannyrohit

I have tried to replace the set on an ipod touch in the past. Didn't succeed. Screwed up taking the face/body assembly apart.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't fully get Bunnie's point. I got my 3gs' screen replaced for £30 here in the UK (over the post though)

</comment><comment><USER45> There's no better place than any oversaturated labor market to get cheap labor! How uplifting.

</comment><comment><USER46> Can you replace the iPhone LCD screen with an OLED display?

<comment><USER47> Technically yes, there's nothing stopping you from that. However you have to find a suitable display assembly of the same size and with the same connector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Video of the process for anyone curious.

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

</comment><comment><USER49> Maybe I'm just grumpy since I haven't had coffee yet this morning, but why is this worthy of being #1 on HN? Author got a part replaced on his phone. Wow.

<comment><USER50> Here's why I find it interesting. We live in a world (in the west) where our gadgets are a big part of our lives, and yet we're pretty helpless when anything goes wrong with them. We use these pocket-sized supercomputers for the most mundane tasks, and compared to the rest of the world, we live a life of leisure.

This piece is interesting because it's a nice short story that gives a great sense of place. To me, it feels like Blade Runner. There's a society of people that can repair a $500 smartphone like it was reattaching rubber to a boot. They possess advanced repair skills, but belong to a class that would be doing menial labor here in America.

<comment><USER24> They are doing menial labor in China as well (being paid nearly nothing),

And most of us here can't reattach rubber to a boot either.

<comment><USER50> Yes, that was my point -- though I worded it poorly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't eat your dog: The moral case for free enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NfLUCBZ1is#!

<comment><USER2> While I tend to agree with the sentiment of the video, unsourced statements that "free markets are best" do not constitute a working argument.

</comment><comment><USER3> A know a letter way, let all spread-the-wealth fans live a couple weeks in countries that actually do that and did for a while.</comment>


Crypho – Encrypted enterprise messaging - <AUTHOR> https://www.crypho.com <comment><USER2> _> ElGamal Elliptic Curve Cryptography_

(384-bit prime) - Why not just use X448 since that's now an Internet Standard?

 _AES-256-CCM_ is an _interesting_ choice. At least it's an AEAD mode.

It also uses Fortuna for IVs, etc. instead of directly /dev/urandom (or window.crypto in JS land). Userspace CSPRNGs are a devastatingly stupid idea.

Where is the identity verification ("How do I know I'm speaking to the correct public key?")?

 _> Europeans: Did you know that when you use U.S. cloud services, your data is stored under US jurisdiction, and handled under under the Patriot Act? This means that a foreign government can inspect your or your client's data even without informing you._

FUD. Where you host the data shouldn't matter, because the server should never be given access to your plaintext.

My advice: Avoid like the plague.

<comment><USER3> Hey, I used to work with their CTO! Hopefully he'll respond himself, but in case he doesn't:

> (384-bit prime) - Why not just use X448 since that's now an Internet > Standard?

I believe they started working before X448 was standardized.

> It also uses Fortuna for IVs, etc. instead of directly /dev/urandom (or > window.crypto in JS land). Userspace CSPRNGs are a devastatingly stupid > idea.

IE doesn't have great support for window.crypto. If you're building an enterprise product, you probably care about this.

> FUD. Where you host the data shouldn't matter, because the server should > never be given access to your plaintext.

I believe their point here was that most cloud services today DO have access to your plaintext. It's not FUD if it's true =).

I know I'm a bit biased, but these guys are pretty smart, and I'd trust them.

<comment><USER2> > I know I'm a bit biased, but these guys are pretty smart, and I'd trust > them.

I know a lot of smart people who have made crypto mistakes.

If they want anyone to trust them, open source the app. Otherwise, GTFO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The crypto choices are quite odd (not using OTR or something like it, using ElGamal and not other standard curves). The logging policy is also broader than I'd like. We should really be pushing for Ricochet (which anonymises your social graph using Tor hidden services and uses OTR for the end-to-end encryption) to have a mobile app and better user experience and just get everyone to use that.

<comment><USER5> Ricochet looks interesting ([https://ricochet.im/](https://ricochet.im/)), but can it scale with TOR as the means of transport?

As much as I like the notion of anonymous communication, I wonder if the TOR network can grow beyond its current state in order to be used reliably for this type of service. From what I understand, TOR needs lots of independent exit nodes to offer dependable anonymity and have enough bandwidth, but running an exit node seems to open you up to serious legal consequences because of content passing through it that may be illegal in your jurisdiction. Doesn't that rule out normal consumers running an exit node at home?

<comment><USER6> Richochet is a service on the Tor network, thus it would not hit exit nodes, only relays; an exit node is only required to reach traditional internet services, not hidden services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does nobody create a self hosted Slack clone with security in mind? Seriously everytime i see another Slack clone pop up i hope it fails and open sources.

I need a place where i can talk about all my criminal activities to friends :3

</comment><comment><USER8> Take a look at balboa.io too. Similar slack-like idea and developed by folks with a strong crypto background.</comment>


Ask HN: Which print magazines do you read? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Silicon Chip

[http://www.siliconchip.com.au/](http://www.siliconchip.com.au/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.admin-magazine.com/](http://www.admin-magazine.com/)

To get the digital addition you have to subscribe to the print addition.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nautilus and Science & Vie.

</comment><comment><USER5> 2600</comment>


Uber co-founder opening a no-fee crypto exchange, $25 Bitcoin for joining (US) - <AUTHOR> Referral party?  I signed up -- https://bit.ly/2FfRmuh <comment><USER2> I don't have enough business experience to understand how the exchange will function once acquisition of new users saturates and income drops below operating costs. Can someone explain this?

<comment><AUTHOR> they will get fees from institutional investors who want access to the exchange's liquidity.</comment></comment>


Make flexible road routing at least 15 times faster - <AUTHOR> https://www.graphhopper.com/blog/2017/08/14/make-flexible-routing-15-times-faster/ <comment><USER2> Terrific to see this.

There's been an explosion of research into routing algorithms in recent years, but no open-source implementations of many of the new algorithms. Contraction Hierarchies is the best represented (it's used by Graphhopper and OSRM, inter alia), and there are Customisable Contraction Hierarchies and Multi-Level Dijkstra implementations. But many of the new algorithms simply don't have any open-source code available yet.

ALT* (A*, Landmarks, Triangle inequality) is one of the most interesting algorithms and so it's great to finally see this open-source implementation.</comment>


Brave Entertainments: On Samuel Pepys - <AUTHOR> http://jhiblog.org/2016/02/17/brave-entertainments/ <comment><USER2> That's interesting, Samuel Pepys appears as a character in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but I didn't know he was an actual historical figure.

<comment><USER3> His diary is one of the most entertaining historical sources I've ever read so I'm not at all surprised that Stephenson found a way to work it in. (One part of the diary that I remember thinking felt like a novel was when he rushes to bury his prized Italian olive oil in his backyard during the Great Fire of London.)

The whole thing's online and cross-referenced here by the way, highly recommended:

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

<comment><USER4> Agreed. It is well worth a read.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: From "apps doing DNS" to websites doing their own DNS - <AUTHOR> There's been a lot of talk recently about "apps doing DNS", where every application on your computer could be talking to it's own DNS resolver. This is because of the somewhat recent 2018 protocol, DNS queries over HTTPS (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484). Turns out that with DoH, not only can every application do it's own DNS -- essentially every website you visit could be using whatever DoH resolver they want when fetching external resources that require a DNS lookup. That means stylesheets, scripts, images, etc, call all be loaded from whatever domain without going through your default DNS resolver. For a lot of people, that might be disturbing. For others, that might be super useful. Other might not care.
I'm personally still unsure of how to feel about it. I see some possible benefits, and also some privacy concerns. With all that in mind, I decided to make a JavaScript library a few months ago to make it easy to do DNS lookups from within web apps. It's called DoHjs (super creative name, I know). You can check it out on Github - https://github.com/byu-imaal/dohjs. There's also a page you can try sending DNS queries directly from the browser from called https://dohjs.org. It's far from production ready, but it's got some really cool features right now with more coming soon!
I'd love to hear some thoughts/feedback - could be about DoHjs, websites doing DNS, DoH in general. I suspect many will be interested to use DoHjs, perhaps for different purposes than bypassing people's default DNS resolvers. Feel free to comment here what you think, or open up an issue on Github if that makes more sense. <comment><AUTHOR> For those who hate copy/paste - [https://github.com/byu- imaal/dohjs](https://github.com/byu-imaal/dohjs)</comment>


Ask HN: What happens when there's nothing left to invent or discover? - <AUTHOR> Eventually we will reach that point. What happens when we do? How does it affect our economies and societies?
There have been very long stretches of history in which general human progress was stagnant.
Productivity growth will eventually slow, given that we are limited in what we can do by the laws of physics.
Of course I could continuously rearrange superficial designs of things, which may give me an infinite number of things to do, but that doesn't increase productivity. There are a finite number of ways to do something in a more productive and efficient way than previous methods.
Given this, eventually we will reach a time when we can't make any more progress in the traditional sense. <comment><USER2> Paul Graham would argue that since human desires are unlimited, we will never reach a point of not having any problems left to solve. This may be true. But... The question is what if we run out of SOLVABLE problems. There are sooo many extremely important problems that humanity has (housing, transportation, food/water, education inflation, medical) that can't currently be solved due to either barriers to entry or mostly due to government regulation.

In fact, I think we're starting to reach a plateau in the last 10 and the coming 10 years. With the exception of medical science and the entertainment industry, I feel there hasn't been much meaningful innovation that changes consumers lives. Sure, we have google maps and millions of apps, but honestly, 10 years ago, I didn't have any problems finding my way around the road, even if I had to draw out a map by hand (lol). Today, Transportation is still at the same speeds and costs, housing costs even more, medical insurance is everybit as expensive, etc.

The most dire forms of innovation needed by humanity today, are at the bottom of maslow's heirarchy of needs: shelter, food, water, and by necessity: transportation and medical insurance. These areas are not being worked on, due to the above reasons i mentioned.

<comment><USER3> Recently we landed booster rockets and took a picture of an atom... And there is so so much we don't know about our own planet. We still have a lot to learn and discovered and invent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why on earth would we run out of things to invent? This shows a stunning lack of imagination in my opinion. I guess at any point throughout the history of the human race, since before the time anyone had thought to invent shoes, rope, pottery, or fish hooks, there were people thinking that everything has already been invented, and there can't possibly be anything else to invent.

There will _always_ be new things to invent.

<comment><USER5> On the contrary it is very imaginative. Seeing far beyond the horizon. We know (or think we know) the universe has finite entropy. Therefore there's an end somewhere - regardless of how far away that is.

<comment><USER6> It sounded to me like OP is assuming there will be a 'horizon'. "Eventually we will reach that point." Why assume that? It sounds like a false assumption to me.

It reminds me of the argument I hear occasionally about how one day soon there will be no new music, it will have all been written. Which sounds to me about as wrong as can be.

What you're talking about is an entirely unrelated matter, and mixing it 'very imaginatively' with the OP's point as if they're the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems a good place to bring up Charles Holland Duell, the US Commissioner of Patents who supposedly said "Everything that can be invented has been invented" back in 1899. That quote has since been debunked as apocryphal, but the story behind the alleged quote is interesting.

[https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote- every...](https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything- that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html)

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

</comment><comment><USER8> What makes you think that we'll reach that point? We've barely scratched the surface...

</comment><comment><USER9> Nothing left to discover or invent _within our means_ , or do you mean that there is literally nothing left?

If it's the former, we've hit a local maxima. If it's the latter, I don't think we could speculate what would happen in that situation. It's too alien.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Eventually we will reach that point"

No, we really won't. As life continues to evolve and conditions in the environment continue to change, new solutions will constantly need to be invented to solve the new problems that arise. That process will never end.

</comment><comment><USER11> There was a time when the European countries developed transoceanic sailing capabilities and began an age of discovery spreading outward to other lands. I wonder if they considered that finding and exploiting resources from new lands would be the norm, or if they realized that it would all be over in 300 years?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Right now we believe creating new products and product categories is the norm. But eventually everything will become commodified, according to my thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We will do a big bang some where in the middle of no where, we will simulate life on the planets created by it, from time to time we will visit them, observe them, and one day we will fedup with that. We will leave them on their own to attain what we attained. And may be they will call us God.

</comment><comment><USER13> In a sense, we're already reached that point. Everything that can ever be talked about or written, can be found in this library:

[https://libraryofbabel.info/](https://libraryofbabel.info/)

Though that includes all possible gibberish as well as all possible knowledge.

Though as a more serious answer, something like the above link does make me wonder about the limits of information. I like to think that there's no limit on information, but clearly there's a limit on information that can be described by the English language (assuming a fixed book size).

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see why there would ever be a lack of progress... maybe at some point progress won't be at all relevant to our current society, but there will always be something new. And at that point, where we have solved all problems, like mortality, hunger, peace, etc. And the world is a perfect place, it will be so far out from our current lives, that it seems like a misallocation of brain power trying to think about "what then?".

</comment><comment><USER15> Heat death of the universe.

It's not clear to me why you believe we'll reach that point before extinction --I find the notion _highly_ implausible.

<comment><USER16> Extrapolating previous trends of energy consumption. Historically, technological advances have greatly increased the energy consumption per human. At an accelerating pace (exponential energy consumption growth).

According to Geoffrey West's "Scale", humans biological needs are about 90 watts at rest, 250 watts for an extremely active lifestyle. The average American uses about 11,000 watts, 2 orders of magnitude more, and more than a blue whale.

It is possible we will invent new ways to tap energy, but exponential growth will have to end somehow.

(Unless you meant to imply that our technological progress could hasten the heat death of the universe, in which case I fully agree.)

Note - I do not mean this will happen any time soon, just that there is a theoretical upper bound to innovation: how much energy exists in the universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think people were asking themselves the same question at the end of the 19th century, when everyone thought mankind had mastered all of Physics. Suddenly so much new stuff(Relativity, Quantum Mechanics) was discovered and flipped our world view upside down. So I think there will always be something to be discovered or invented.

</comment><comment><USER18> > when there's nothing left to invent or discover?

You're not married are you? You don't have kids either?

Most married people with kids find new challenges/problems/pain everyday, requiring innovative solutions. Spend a day with a toddler, they invent stuff ALL day.

</comment><comment><USER19> Huh? How could we ever reach that point? The amount of things that can be invented are infinite.

</comment><comment><USER20> That would mean we had a perfect understanding of our biology and how chemicals effect the brain. It would mean having perfect predictive power about the future. That's when the fun starts.

</comment><comment><USER21> Since it would require discovery, we wouldn't answer this question.

</comment><comment><USER22> There will never be a point at which there is nothing left to invent or discover; it will be preempted by a point at which humanity is no longer around to invent or discover anything.

</comment><comment><USER23> With there being more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth, running out of things to discover is not a worry that's on my list.

</comment><comment><USER24> _There have been very long stretches of history in which general human progress was stagnant._

Or even going backwards, see Britain after the Romans left.

</comment><comment><USER25> We will never reach such a point. Given an infinite lifetime, we will find infinite ways to rearrange things and come up with new things.

</comment><comment><USER26> That which we create, shapes us. Our reshaped selves have differing needs and desires ..

So we solve new problems, and create new things.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a wrong question and indicates a misunderstanding of what the universe is: infinite.

</comment><comment><USER28> How will our economies and societies change if we fully understand how human beings work?

</comment><comment><USER29> Nobody living right now is qualified enough to even attempt to answer this question.

</comment><comment><USER30> Then discover why there is nothing left to invent or discover.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think we will never reach that point.

</comment><comment><USER32> Everyone and everything will be dead.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully, lots of play.

<comment><USER34> We will finally have time to invent new methods of play. I am sick of this stick and hoop game.

<comment><USER21> This guy at the YMCA has a new game you play with balls and bushel baskets [0].

Edit: Looks like having a mustache helps you play it better.

[0] [http://rate-sport.com/wp-content/uploads/images/original- bas...](http://rate-sport.com/wp-content/uploads/images/original-basketball- rules-10.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We will finally start writing sufficient documentation.

<comment><USER36> Lol, and the maintenance and repairs industry will boom.</comment></comment>


Toilet paper orientation - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation <comment><USER2> This made me laugh :) but I Wonder if humanity can find an even more useless debate.

</comment><comment><USER3> What can I say... Over is the right way and under is heresy.

<comment><USER4> > The question "Do you prefer that your toilet tissue unwinds over or under > the spool?" is featured on the cover of Barry Sinrod and Mel Poretz's 1989 > book The First Really Important Survey of American Habits. The overall > result: 68 percent chose over.[24] Sinrod explained, "To me, the essence of > the book is the toilet paper question ... Either people don't care, or they > care so much that they practically cause bodily injury to one another."</comment></comment>


15 Year-old kid's Social Media Ecommerce Startup is looking for feedback - <AUTHOR> http://www.sailr.co/go/

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think?</comment>


Facebook/Twitter too shall pass - <AUTHOR> http://rarestblog.com/2009/05/facebooktwitter-too-shall-pass/

<comment><USER2> I suppose I am one of only a few here who agrees with the author. He calls them fashions, I'd call them fads. They are fads, like the pet rocks and beanie babies and friendster and on and on. There will probably be die hards forever, but innovation won't stop and there will be newer and better ways to communicate in the future, so these new things will become old, just like newspapers and magazines and television...

Facebook and Twitter actually damage real world interactions from what I have seen. Before facebook, when you saw someone, you had a conversation with them and you could make small talk filling in the gaps of what has happened since the last time you met.

Now, people say, "Why are you asking if I'm dating someone, why don't you look at my facebook page?" It's like you have to go catch up with someone's facebook page before you meet them.

I don't know maybe it is something about a particular kind of mind. I don't hate FB or Twitter, but I don't understand the real value. Maybe there is real value that can be gotten, I don't know... I don't really use them too much.

I suppose the author's point though is that he doesn't like Facebook and Twitter because they are just more of the same stuff in real life. In real life, people are boring and on Facebook and Twitter, there's just more of that same boring kind of interaction. I wonder if he were to find interesting friends in real life and interact with them online would it make his impression of facebook and twitter different? A lot of people I admire/respect use twitter and facebook, so there has to be something there, they just aren't for me. But neither is WOW or Shoots and Ladders or TV or reading romance novels. Doesn't make those things bad, just "not for me." There's no reason to believe that same "not for me" can't apply to things lots of people find popular on the internet too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article isnt saying much, and pretty much misses the point of social networking in general.

there is a huge gap between your friends that you talk to every day, and long lost strangers you havent seen in 20+ years. not only that there is a difference between the amount and type of information thats exchanged online / face to face.

facebook / twitter etc enable the type of information exchange that people have been trying to do since forever, in a better way.

the idea that they will just quietly pass through when didnt some study put facebook as 90% of internet time somewhere recently? just a bit off base.

<comment><USER4> > there is a huge gap between your friends that you talk to every day, and > long lost strangers you havent seen in 20+ years.

The Cynic: Yeah, you care enough to stay in touch with one, and not so much in the other case. Sure, it might be kind of fun to catch up, and in some cases renew a friendship, but generally if you'd cared, you would have stayed in touch anyway.

<comment><USER3> exactly, I have various levels of "connections",

for my close friends facebook / twitter is useful for passive information, they might say they watched a film and it wasnt great, I dont discuss every film my friends have ever watched, but I would take into consideration their opinion.

For friends that I dont live nearby, I can keep track of what they are up to, say hello once in a while, and not lose track of them for 20+ years, then when they or I have time to go visit I know where to get in contact.

I have people that I meet through the work I do, I want to know what they are working on, if they are working on something cool that I am interested in then I find out.

for people I dont even know but seem to consistently talk about things I am interesting in then I dont need to ask for them to send me a weekly update email

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been writing a blog for 8 years. I'll probably be writing one 10 years from now.

Facebook? Not so much. Twitter? It'll probably pass in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you think you'll still be using Facebook, and/or Twitter, 10 years from now?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I had the genius to be able to conceive the next quantum leap in social web processes then I'd be able to answer this question. How many of us could envision the impact of a FB or Tw even 5 years ago?

<comment><USER7> I think I could. 5 years ago Friendster was popular and people were talking about blogs and rss. Facebook and Twitter are just iterations of those same concepts.

Which is my answer to the original question. I think the same concepts will be around 10 years from now but on the question of "will it still be Facebook and Twitter" I think that all depends on how well they deal with the issues that still plague these services (most notably the signal-to-noise ratio on both services)

One way or the other I think the idea of broadcasting information about yourself and having others be able to subscribe to that is here to stay..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I'm not surprised to see my cousin use such things as she's a "people person" - she always wants to be a center of attention - that validates her existence. Don't get me wrong - I don't condemn her"

well, as long as he doesn't condemn her.

</comment><comment><USER9> His main argument seems to be "I don't like it, therefore eventually people will stop doing it." Just because he doesn't see a point to social networking doesn't mean that everybody feels that way.

<comment><USER10> I for one am with him on this. Just yesterday deleted my second FB account, just don't see the point of it. This whole social networking thing feels like high-school all over (might have sth to do with connecting to old high-school people, but not just). Generally, I find those messages about who thinks what about what and does what right now, eh, embarrassing. It's like a 3-year old saying "look at me, Mum". Still, I don't think they will fade. There is a large segment of humanity that enjoys just this behavior. I also think there is a cultural element here, although this is simply a hunch, no data on that.

<comment><USER11> Then Twitter might be for you, it is not as enforced as FB - you don't have to pretend to be friends just to follow somebody's timeline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sarcastically going through Twitter Trends is about as strong an argument as the xkcd character shouting "Stop having fun!" (<http://xkcd.com/359/>)

</comment><comment><USER13> Remember that twitter craze we experienced on hn one month ago ? It passed.

</comment><comment><USER14> "you've been tricked into thinking that it is important."

The power of marketing...

...and ten stories on TC's frontpage per day.

<comment><USER15> While I agree with your point, I have to admit I know absolutely noone who reads techcrunch or are even aware of its existence. Only reason I even know about it is that people here keep on yammering about it constantly.

I think you might have been tricked into thinking techcrunch is important. Maybe by the power of marketing? ;)

<comment><USER14> PR submarines are not only related to the web. They run on tv, radio, newspapers, etc.

Never underestimate the power of a PR agency, and money, lots of money.

TC is just one of the most known propaganda hubs on the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He thinks he is so smart, but has not yet realized that what the media portrays Twitter to be is not necessarily what the users perceive it to be.

Edit: to clarify, it seems to me he based his assessment of Twitter on what the media writes about Twitter, not on real knowledge of Twitter.</comment>


Stock Jump – a ski-jumping game with real stock data - <AUTHOR> http://stockjump.sos.gd/ <comment><USER2> It looks like to get the best jump, you need something with a ton of volatility along the way (to build up speed), and then with a sharp drop off toward the end so you fly off the edge instead of ride the slope down.

Not surprisingly, BTC has beaten everything else I've tried.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you want a sharp drop off at the end, but a sharp incline. Build up speed and then shoot up into the air. WMT is the best for me so far. 230+ every time.

<comment><USER4> I think only the sharp decline to build up speed counts. Allegion PLC has just that: [http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=ALLEN.MX&currency=MXN&name=A...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=ALLEN.MX&currency=MXN&name=Allegion%20PLC)

Just jump on the flat at the end gets me over 700.

<comment><USER5> [http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=AKEN.MX&currency=MXN&name=Ar...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=AKEN.MX&currency=MXN&name=Arkema%20SA)

763.84m

No decline, no turbulence, an entirely flat line the entire time.

Weirdly, this one, unlike every other one I've tried, runs at a crawl.

<comment><USER5> Here's a fun glitched one; exactly 11 meters regardless of what you do; you don't get to jump, and the line itself is incredibly thick:

[http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=SPYG.MX&currency=MXN&name=SP...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=SPYG.MX&currency=MXN&name=SPDR%20Portfolio%20S&P%20500%20Growth%20ETF)

<comment><USER5> -3.18m

[http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=UUP.MX&currency=MXN&name=Inv...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=UUP.MX&currency=MXN&name=Invesco%20DB%20US%20Dollar%20Index%20Bullish%20Fund)

<comment><USER6> This one can get you -4.75m:

[http://stockjump.sos.gd/?crypto=&symbol=BINANCE%3ADOGEUSDT&c...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?crypto=&symbol=BINANCE%3ADOGEUSDT&currency=USD&name=Binance+DOGE)

(basically, the whole chart is under 1 USD and it gets rounded to 0)

<comment><USER5> Nice find!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a moment I got excited and thought this was going to be something like SkiFree.

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

<comment><USER8> Thank you for this link. I extracted some very important info from that: you can play Ski Free online on the Internet Archive [42]!

[42] [https://archive.org/details/win3_SKIFREE](https://archive.org/details/win3_SKIFREE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> First link to a web game in my life that .... works on mobile! Well done.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgRLlqEvOT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgRLlqEvOT8)

</comment><comment><USER11> LOL. Funny idea, excellent execution. Thanks for a laugh, I needed that.

<comment><USER12> flawless execution of this incredible idea!

<comment><USER13> kudos to everyone involved!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 300+

[http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=ABX.BA&currency=ARS&name=BAR...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=ABX.BA&currency=ARS&name=BARRICK%20GOLD%20Co/SH)

<comment><USER15> 393: [http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=000060.KS&currency=KRW&name=...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=000060.KS&currency=KRW&name=Meritz%20Fire%20&%20Marine%20Insurance%20Co%20Ltd)

<comment><USER16> 400.45 :P that's a nice one

<comment><USER17> 407.32 this is the best I've seen. The guy who made it got 461, though, so I think he's got the high score. I did get 438.34 on this: [http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=035420.KS&currency=KRW&name=...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=035420.KS&currency=KRW&name=Naver%20Corp)

Seems that S. Koren stocks have spiked in just the right way for optimal jumping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ha, back in 2008 I did this with the Dow, but by hand, in Line Rider. I think I've got it recorded somewhere.

<comment><USER19> Man, I spent so many hours drawing in line rider... Shame I couldn't save the runs properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They need to hide the cliffs and hills that are in front of the skier to make it realistic :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/Sosowski/status/1241448735374221313](https://twitter.com/Sosowski/status/1241448735374221313)

disclaimer: I am not the author of this game ;)

</comment><comment><USER21> The only control is the mouse button, AFAICT.

</comment><comment><USER22> A lot of cryptocurrency altcoins are completely flat.

5 years ago, I was sure that cryptocurrency was a bubble and I would never have imagined that cryptocurrencies would be a safer investment than stocks in a bull market, let alone during a bear market.

Banks are printing too much money and it's been used inefficiently. The fact that cryptocurrencies have been able to grow and then hold value for so long is proof of that. The message is clear: Popular assets which have global exposure to investors are somehow getting free money from the Fed. The free money will give value to anything. If it's an asset and investors all around the world can invest in it, they will invest in it and the price will keep going up; no matter what fundamentals are behind it. This is the reality of our global fiat economy. Cryptocurrencies are backed by nothing but they will keep going up simply because the popular ones are in limited supply (and the slots to be a 'popular cryptocurrency' are themselves limited).

Large corporations and other high-exposure financial assets don't make a profit from their business activities (that's just a pretext), they make a profit by being a conduit through which money enters the system and 'trickles down' through the rest of the economy. Their actual main line of business is being a financial conduit for the Fed by creating jobs and hiring contractors.

Advertising is not as valuable as it is made out to be (even targeted advertising). It's just were all the surplus fiat money which businesses don't know what to do with ends up going. Advertising is valuable for the same reason why crypto is valuable; because money is constantly losing value and no one wants to hold any surplus.

<comment><USER6> That's because the game rounds the values to 1 USD, so for altcoins that stay way below 1 USD all the time all values get rounded to zero, resulting in a flat shape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How are the stock charts derived? Is this 1 day, 1 week, 1 year, ... chart?

</comment><comment><USER24> In few months most of the tracks in this game will become much more challenging (if there will be economic crisis after the coronavirus vanish).

</comment><comment><USER25> It's really funny with BLUE APRON HOLDINGS INCA.

</comment><comment><USER26> Love it. Do you have the record or max theoretical distance for each challenge?

</comment><comment><USER27> /r/wallstreetbets would like to have a word with you.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is the Abominable Snowman WeWork?

</comment><comment><USER29> This made my day.

</comment><comment><USER30> good concept, but no HTTPS, seriously?

<comment><USER31> There are better ways to phrase your sentiment.</comment></comment>


Why passwords should not be stored on a mobile device - <AUTHOR> http://mobilesecurityares.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-passwords-should-not-be-stored-on.html

<comment><AUTHOR> As I published two month ago an analysis about Samsung Knox ([http://mobilesecurityares.blogspot.de/2014/10/why-samsung- kn...](http://mobilesecurityares.blogspot.de/2014/10/why-samsung-knox-isnt- really-fort-knox.html)) I thought it is time to write a short article about passwords in general on mobile devices.

<comment><USER2> Since 4.4 Android uses the Enforced Mode of SELinux, which should limit some privileges. Can the root user still have access to the passwords in this situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Android introduced SELinux with version 4.3. There it was really permissive, since version 5.0 Android moved to full enforcement of SELinux. Yes this will help to prevent it a bit, but it's not a "jack of all trades". There are still proccess which are running as root and can be exploited, thus circumventing the SELinux rules, like the core 'Zygote' service. "Zygote is one of the only services available on Android L, which is started as root within the unrestricted "init" SELinux context." ([http://www.xda- developers.com/android/supersu-beta-lollipop-...](http://www.xda- developers.com/android/supersu-beta-lollipop-root-stock-kernel/))

Regards,

Ares</comment></comment></comment>


Hey Android, why no love for UTC? - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39099 <comment><USER2> This is only issue #164 on the list of most annoying Android bugs as measured by the number of people that got so annoyed that they hunted down the unfriendly Android open source issue tracker, searched through countless other issues for the one they were annoyed by, logged in or created an account, and starred the issue. Some of these bugs have been open for over 7 years.

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=&colsp...](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=&colspec=ID%20Status%20Priority%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars%20Reporter%20Opened&sort=-stars&num=100&start=0)

<comment><USER3> I remember 7 years ago following this one: [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1109](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1109) (Alarm clock produces no sound or vibration). I was an "early adopter" of Android and, as result of this bug, got late for work two or three times. :)

They marked it as "obsolete", but - to be honest - I still wouldn't trust an Android as my alarm for anything.

<comment><USER4> The few times I've used it, the Android alarm app has worked right every time.

<comment><USER5> I'm confident in saying the countdown timer is not 100% reliable, because several times the screen has very obviously said something like "-2'15" when the alarm has gone off. I didn't really pay this much mind this the first few times, because I mostly use it for timing food, and most food isn't sensitive to an extra 2 minutes. But then one day I was timing a bread roll (8 minutes) and after 10 minutes it was noticeably charred.

If they can't get the countdown timer right I don't see why there can't also be bugs in the alarm clock too. I use it every day, and it's mostly reliable, but I'm suspicious it's failed to go off a couple of times...

<comment><USER6> I think that's an intentional choice to show you how long past the timer you are if you haven't cleared the timer. It could be useful in some situations especially if you didn't notice the timer and need to know how ruined your food is going to be.

<comment><USER7> t03m means that the alarm didn't start going off until the timer was 2 minutes overdue.

<comment><USER5> Yes - this is also with the phone right next to me the whole time, so it's not a case of me missing something. I assume it's possible for the phone to go into some kind of sleep mode whereby timers are checked much less frequently. Seems a bit daft to allow this if there's an active countdown timer that could expire before the next check...

<comment><USER8> It's really a shame that our two major mobile platforms are a choice between insanely shoddy software and insanely victorian censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sad. I have a similar example.

Android also conflates language code (say, en-GB) with physical location for many apps. And does not provide a Canadian English (en-CA) -- so if you want to not have the phone constantly spellchecking your emails incorrectly when you type colour, neighbour, etc, and switch it to en-GB to get it to shut up it then starts giving you UK news in the News & Weather app, and reads your turn by turn directions with an English accent.

And there's a similar ticket open about the subject. Also ignored for many years by the Android team.

I've thought about raising a ticket internally (I work at Google) about it, but I imagine it would suffer the same fate.

<comment><USER10> On a related note, I live in Germany and like setting my device's language to en-US. I like the US news, as they are personalized to my taste anyway.

What I dislike is that temperature and distance in a couple of apps are now in US units, which I find unreasonable. I should be able to choose SI units if I want to.

Windows has been getting locale settings right for ages now. I find it sad that Android is so far behind in that regard.

<comment><USER11> > What I dislike is that temperature and distance in a couple of apps are now > in US units, which I find unreasonable. I should be able to choose SI units > if I want to.

And I'm in the opposite situation: I prefer British English but want traditional units only.

This really should be user-settable. Heck, even outside of America some folks prefer decimetres over centimetres!

<comment><USER12> _even outside of America some folks prefer decimetres over centimetres!_

? Isn't a decimetre a metric measurement?

<comment><USER13> Yes, and I'm guessing gp was suggesting that I might want my units in dm rather than cm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Last I checked, the stock Clock app has a similar dysfunctionality: in the World Clock tab you can add multiple timezones but there is no option for either UTC _or_ GMT. Weirdly, many of the listed cities are just plain wrong. IIRC, it had Santa Fe, NM listed as UTC+0:00.

<comment><USER15> At least in latest iOS, UTC is an option in the World Clock tab. It's also an option for system time zone.

<comment><USER16> It wasn't this way a few releases ago. I remember setting up Liberia time zone when I wanted UTC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for this post. Now I'll wait a bit longer before moving to an Android phone.

From a developer's point of view, Android is known to be a mess. I thought the reason was the lack of organization between the numerous manufacturers. Now I see that the reason is even more fundamental.

<comment><USER18> Please don't let this be the reason you don't switch to Android. I think this is a stupid bug to exist, but it hardly affects most people.

<comment><USER19> Maybe not most people, but Iceland is a relatively big country to completely exclude your product from (especially for such a silly reason).

If the OP were Icelandic I think that'd be a pretty good reason not to switch to Android.

<comment><USER20> Reykjavik is available on the world clock, and if you go there it picks up the correct timezone automatically. The only missing part is that the system timezone widget which you would never normally use doesn't have it.

Also, while excluding a country would be a fairly crappy thing to do, Iceland is the 174th largest country in the world by population, so it's not big relative to very much at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is endemic to a lot of Google products it seems. Google Calendar has no recognition of UTC/GMT either. It's really irksome since a lot of calendar invites I get that are sent out to global participants have their times in UTC/GMT, and I have to manually convert them to create calendar reminders that fire at the right time.

Any time I, as a human, have to do something that a computer can trivially do, and get right -every time-, is an indication of seriously bad UX.

<comment><USER20> I've never had a problem with calendar invites in other timezones on Google, and I suspect a number of those come in UTC. Is it possible that the UTC invites you are getting don't actually have the timezone attached? In the absence of a stated timezone I'd have thought assuming the user's current timezone was the safest course of action

<comment><USER21> You can't create a calendar invite in UTC. Period. This was a year ago; I don't remember the specifics, but either the invite I had was for UTC, and Google Calendar put it in in my own timezone, despite it being clearly UTC, or I had to enter it by hand, and there is no way to specify UTC/GMT by hand in Google calendar. The issue is not an import issue, it's that Google calendar literally does not have the option, at least that I can find. You have to select a region, and there is no special 'UTC' or 'GMT' region, and clicking on the UK does not give you "Greenwich" or "GMT" either.

Though per another comment, yes, if you happen to know a locale whose timezone is the same as UTC/GMT, you can use that, but that's still hilariously unfriendly to the user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you ever want a crushing sense of "this project is totally mismanaged", just read its issue tracker.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are lots of tiny little issues like this in android that have been fixed for a long time in things like GNU. The worst part about android is that it's just so incredibly huge there's no way for anyone to come in and tweak little things.

<comment><USER24> It's actually pretty straightforward to come in and tweak little things, and there are lots of projects that do it. The problem is that nothing ever gets accepted upstream, and (therefore?) lots of projects never try.

<comment><USER23> How do you go about doing this? Last time I started I was told to pull down 100 GB of code. That's ~ the monthly limit of my connection so that wasn't happening

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Damn, this was lodged in 2012!

This seems like a complete no-brainer.

</comment><comment><USER26> They could call it Z, for Zulu, as the military does.

<comment><USER27> > Z, for Zulu

I think it might be the other way around.

<comment><USER28> Right: It was designated with the letter "Z" quite a long time ago, and only later did military (esp. NATO) communication-guides bring "Zulu" into the picture, as a way to disambiguate individual letters like Z, T, C, D, etc. when spoken. </joke-frog-dissection>

<comment><USER29> I thought "Zulu" was just the common phonetic code for "Z", like Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, etc.

<comment><USER4> For reference, the entire list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#Code_wo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#Code_words)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would be very glad if they just find a way to make android adjust the clock to the local timezone when I'm traveling. There is a option for that, obviously, but it simple don't work. iPhones and macs take 2 minutes or less to update the clock, but here I am, two days at my destination, and my Nexus 5 still shows home time.

<comment><USER31> Turn off Data and let the phone connect to a local cell network, as soon as it connects it'll update the time.

<comment><USER30> I wish it was that easy. I tried, since I bought this phone, all combinations of turning off wifi, data, airplane mode, shutdown phone, hard reboot phone. ;(

<comment><USER32> It requires two things:

(1) your mobile service provider needs to actually provide NITZ information (I've encountered a Russian provider that simply failed to do it); and

(2) your phone needs to be configured to use that timezone information (settings → date and time → automatic time zone).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> But do you know how much work that would be? It could take them multiple minutes to implement!

<comment><USER34> And twice as long to code review! Meanwhile they're spending time on really useful features like full-screen album art that you can't turn off on your lock screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not aware of anybody outside of IT who uses or even understands UTC in place of GMT, so making this change would be a significant backwards step in usability.

<comment><USER35> The problem to me seems like they are only offering political / locational zones. It does not seem like it would be a significant step backwards to offer an option to set your time zone to a manual fixed offset, which is all the people on the tracker seem to want.

<comment><USER20> Most people get timezone set correctly automatically to their current location, including folks in Iceland. Specialist users who want to do something odd might discover the unloved system settings widget (it's missing on a lot of phones anyway) and want that to cover their use case, which it couldn't without getting too complex for most users. The specialist timezones are available however, they just need an app like timezone changer to pick them.

<comment><USER35> I want advocating switching the main time zone selector over to a text box that says, "Enter a valid POSIX time zone string", I was suggesting that at the bottom of the list of selectable time zones (which you only reach generally if you turn off automatic time zone selection) there be a button that says, "choose a fixed offset". Seems like a no brainer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you set up a VPS for personal projects? - <AUTHOR> I have manually followed DigitalOcean's guides in the past with success[1][2]. Do you go beyond what the linked guides recommend or use a configuration management solution (e.g. Ansible)? I'm curious what, if anything, people are doing.<p>[1] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-14-04 [2] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/additional-recommended-steps-for-new-ubuntu-14-04-servers <comment><USER2> Bash scripts -- write scripts, check them into git, make sure they are idempotent and repeatable. Whenever you start something new, reuse them and fix whatever broke since the last time.

For testing the scripts, I've used virtualbox -- install the latest ubuntu server LTS into a VMinstall your ssh keys, dotfiles, etc but leave it otherwise bare-bones. Then, clone it (this takes just a few seconds) and do your testing inside the clone. When you need a clean environment, delete the clone and create a new one... Makes for fast iteration on testing that install scripts always work. Don't configure anything by hand -- learn enough sed/awk/grep/etc to modify what configs you need without invoking an editor.

If you need to scale this up to something real and in production on multiple systems -- then start learning Ansible / Salt / etc. Doing in those systems what you now have documented in bash scripts will be some work, but doable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote Chef script ([https://github.com/cupnoodle/rails-server-starter- pack](https://github.com/cupnoodle/rails-server-starter-pack)) for setting up Rails stack in VPS. Chef is similar to Ansible, I think it is quite handy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Depends on what you mean by "personal projects". I have never used the likes of ansible for personal projects. Are you thinking of installing rails, django or a lamp stack? Or setting up a VPN? Really depends on the use cases.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a reason you're doing this stuff manually instead of using something like Elastic Beanstalk or Lambda on AWS (or the equivalents on Azure or Google)?</comment>


Can We Automate the D*#k Pics Away? - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/can-we-automate-the-dick-pics-away-ccd64570c8e3 <comment><USER2> Sounds like a chaperon program. Wasn't that done away with a hundred years ago?</comment>


Visualising High Frequency Trading in Bitcoin (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book-visualisation/ <comment><USER2> This is really old, from around the end of 2014 it appears.

Also there is no HFT in cryptos: there is no colocation and not a single exchange can support either the market data dissemination or order processing capabilities right now. Every crypto exchange is horribly slow and appears to be terribly written.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't mean there's no HFT; automated trading as fast as the exchanges allow is HFT.

<comment><USER2> Not by any definition I've seen. There's always the notion that hft techniques have always existed and there is some validity to that but usually when referred to in a modern context it relies on qualities that make speed of light (hence colocation) a limiting factor.

<comment><USER3> On a modern exchange it does mean that because that's what it takes to trades as fast as possible, on a low tech bitcoin exchange where such speeds are not possible, it takes much less; it's HFT none the less. It's still computer programs trading the same algorithms offering up liquidity to flip a quick profit as fast as the tech allows.

<comment><USER2> I work in HFT and i probably couldn't run most of my stats on these exchanges. There are some that can be but their performance limits what can be run.

The ones that could be run are often the same that were run on the exchange floor but you wouldn't call those 20 years ago HFT.

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin exchanges are full of manual TA chart traders, to them everyone running algo's is a HFT; context matters, you can't compare the nascent tech in Bitcoin to a modern Wall Street exchange. If you're algo trading as fast as technically possible on the exchange, you're HFT'ing. Words have meaning, you can't get any higher frequency than as fast as the exchange allows.

HFT'ers collocate because it gives them an edge, they were HFT'ers before they discovered that edge, collocating isn't what makes it HFT. Trying to trade faster than your competitor, competing on speed, that's what makes something HFT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I submitted this post back in 2015 and it's no less impressive now - I'd love to see some updated analysis now that automated trading is even more prevalent in btc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Plan B?

Just buy what you can afford each week. And don't think about it. Come back in a year.

Retire to Goa. AKA A beach. :-)

<comment><USER6> This asset class is different. Prices only ever go up.

<comment><USER7> It's hard to tell what's satire and what's serious when people are talking about bitcoin

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is the most in-depth analysis of dodgy Bitcoin trading I've ever seen.

Is this kind of thing still possible, or do exchanges prevent it these days?

<comment><USER9> Order book spoofing still happens all the time.

"Related to fleeting orders (inevitable order cancellations), laying involves adding volume at various price levels with the sole intention to influence other market participants into believing (observing) an order book imbalance or strong buying/selling pressure."

As a trader, this is something you should be learning to spot.

<comment><USER10> Right, if people are expecting spoofing then it should lose money. People won't change their prices in response to it, but they will accept your overly generous offers.

<comment><USER9> Not everyone does and there can be multiple layers of reverse psychology even if there is. Is this wall fake? If so, are they trying to fake that there is sell support? Or do they know people will think that and there really is sell support?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Streamz: Python pipelines to manage continuous streams of data - <AUTHOR> https://streamz.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html <comment><USER2> We at NVIDIA are heavily invested in developing streamz. We've made streamz compatible with RAPIDS cuDF, which means streaming jobs in Python can be GPU- accelerated now.

Folks interested in GPU-streaming data using 100% native Python (no Spark setup needed is a big win) can look up the Anaconda package called custreamz, which is part of NVIDIA RAPIDS open-source GPU Data Science libraries.

Streaming feature-parity-wise, we've made Kafka integration robust, and added checkpointing to streamz which is a must-have feature for production streaming pipelines.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys may have, and would love to have more people use streamz and contribute if possible.

As for scaling for big data streaming, streamz works well with Dask, so GPU- accelerated streaming in distributed mode is on! :)

<comment><USER3> How does it integrate into other GPU-accelerated frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch? E.g. I could use Streamz to perform some preprocessing (on GPU) and make that available as a tf.data dataset. Can I just pass on the GPU pointer, or would there be a GPU->CPU->GPU transfer?

<comment><USER4> PyTorch supports both `__cuda_array_interface__` and dlpack which allows effectively sharing the GPU pointer without having to go through a host numpy array. Tensorflow is actively working on adding support for dlpack here: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/24453](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/24453)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know of any good resources to learn about data streams in general? Some weeks ago I had to implemnt some streams (in nodejs) to upload a file to s3 "on the fly", without storing the file locally and then uploading it, but I culdn't wrap my head about the data stream concept.

<comment><USER6> Have you reviewed data-intensive architectures? I've found that book quite useful.

I'm just talking out my butt right now but I think fundamentally, a stream is just a chunk of data lifted from persist into memory. I imagine a cursor process traversing some bytes in a file, and then lifting some of those bytes into memory, and sending that memory over network.

<comment><USER7> > data-intensive architectures

I suspect you mean __Designing Data-Intensive Applications__, by Martin Kleppman, but I am not entirely sure.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I just didn't want to type it out :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice. This would help solve the issues of deploying pytorch/tensorflow models in a streaming environment (Apache Beam do not make it easy). I am curious as to how performant this is when compared to Flink or Spark Streaming/Structured Streaming. When you deploy deep learning models in pyspark, you run into performance issues from serializing from jvm to python.

edit: just found out flink now has a python api! so include it along in the comparison. not sure if the apache flink api also has serialization overhead.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how this compares to Apache Flink (or googles Data Flow) with regards to scalability and fault tolerance for stateful computations. Checkpointing is mentioned below, but is this really equivalent with what Flink can do?

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool! I'm interested in learning more about the memory model of multi- stage streaming systems. From my limited understanding of distributed data systems, we went from saving files and checkpointing completely on disk a la MapReduce to a disk/memory hybrid with Spark RDDs and lazy job execution (not sure at all?) to pure streaming like Kafka. Could somebody please enlighten me? I'd love to learn more.

<comment><USER10> I just started reading Streaming Systems: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34431414-streaming- syste...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34431414-streaming-systems). Seems really great so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this running in production anywhere?

<comment><USER12> Define production. But probably not by a reasonable definition.

<comment><USER13> We are investing heavily on streamz @ Nvidia as a python streaming library. One of the core requirement is "Kafka checkpointing" for reliable end-end pipelines which we implemented recently and commited to the trunk. With that big milestone, we are one step closer to moving to production</comment></comment></comment>


Amoeba Interview Question - <AUTHOR>

Amoeba Question: A population of amoebas starts with 1. After 1 period that amoeba can divide into 1, 2, 3, or 0 (it can die) with equal probability. What is the probability that the entire population dies out eventually? <comment><AUTHOR> source link with commentary: [http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4768/amoeba- intervi...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4768/amoeba-interview- question)</comment>


What Gives You an Edge as an Entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR> What skills, knowledge, or combination of skills have been most valuable in your career? How have you gained an edge over your competition? As a 22-year-old starting out career in tech, I would appreciate if you could give some advice. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Grit and endless learning, especially learning non-technical aspects as a technical founder.</comment>