Ask HN: Turning an Android app into a company - <AUTHOR>

I have what I think is a pretty neat idea for a group of apps for Android and I'm fairly sure that there is a market for the apps.<p>Is it possible to take a group of apps that sell for $0.99-$1.99 each and turn them into a profitable company? It seems like you would need something that makes more money. <comment><USER2> Personally, I never liked the idea of developing apps. If you develop a successful one, it will make money for a couple of months, then you have to make another success. With normal software (desktop/web/SaaS/or even hardware) you can anticipate future revenue much more easily. The mobile market just seems too unstable and fickle for long term planning. (Notice how there hasn't been any billion dollar app development companies, like there are web development companies.) I don't see that changing anytime soon. Of course a company that could somehow leverage that fickleness would be golden.

<comment><USER3> The secret sauce may lay in the business model. Selling apps at 99c or more doesn't seem to be profitable. Giving them away in a freemium model however, may prove worthwhile. Social games do really well with virtual goods. I don't know how Foursquare makes money, but they seem to be doing alright. With regards to billion dollar app companies, ngmoco was acquired for $400m, not quite a billion but pretty damn good for a company that publishes a bunch of little mobile games.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately I don't see any way to successfully implement virtual goods into my apps. That's a great ideas though. Maybe I'll come up with an idea for a social game and make it free.</comment></comment></comment>


What the greatest coach in history can teach us about success - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewryan_65760/how-we-reach-our-highest-potential-4221cf984185 <comment><USER2> paywall

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this one [https://medium.com/@andrewryan_65760/how-we-reach-our- highes...](https://medium.com/@andrewryan_65760/how-we-reach-our-highest- potential-4221cf984185?source=friends_link&sk=725d63594ec2953b0f2be9de5cf3141d)</comment></comment>


Wish Facebook had a Calendar? - <AUTHOR> http://signin.momentler.com Wish Facebook had a calendar?
Now it does with Momentler! http://signin.momentler.com
#bootstrapped #nontechnicalfounder #lean #social
I want to know what my friends are planning and I also want to share my future plans too, so I created Momentler. Future plans are posted as 'Moments' (think of them as Tweets with a time/date) and they are put into your social calendar.
It's fully intergrated with facebook-
Sign in with facebook, you can view the calendars of all your facebook friends using the site, facebook events are imported into your calendar automatically and more.
I'm planning to apply to Y-combinator and so before I do I was hoping for some feedback from you guys RE the site and the idea. I am confident I am what they are looking for as an entrepreneur (disruptive, fast mover/learner, sucessful) I just want to make sure I'm on the right track product wise.
Thanks all! <comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback guys?</comment>


Repeal the New Surveillance Laws (Investigatory Powers Act) - <AUTHOR> https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199 <comment><USER2> You really need to keep an eye on these people.

[http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2007-08/1731](http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2007-08/1731)

A motion from 2007-2008 that ".. expresses concern at reports concerning the expansion of the powers introduced in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and the recent extension to the list of organisations permitted to use these powers from nine to 792".

This motion was brought by the Member for St. Albans Anne Main. The 2016 law basically extends WHAT is recorded without this previous concern of WHO should use the collected information being addressed (i.e. police vs. every man and his dog).

This would have been a tick in the Member for St. Alban's workbook if it weren't for the fact that she has since voted consistently voting FOR mass surveillance:

[https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11798/anne_main/st_albans/...](https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11798/anne_main/st_albans/divisions?policy=6751)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't really believe this will make a difference, but sometimes you just have to stand up for what is right anyway. I've signed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, it would have been much better if the public had opposed this bill before it was voted through, but at the time Brexit, and then Trump were still dominating the news.

I blame the press really- they spent so much time talking about Trump ( _in the UK_ ) that who knows what else was done without us being aware of it.

I sincerely believe that the majority of the British people, irrespective of political affiliation, would strongly oppose this bill if they realised what it actually does. The problem is getting the word out, which I think this petition (and similar moves) will help do.

Btw- I have nothing to do with the people who started the peitition, I only signed it :)

<comment><USER4> It just needs to be rephrased in terms of dick-pics and sexting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Much as I'd like to think that signing this would make a difference, it won't :(

Theresa May has been pushing for this legislation (or variants thereof) for years now. The existing powers which this bill replaces expire at the end of the year, and so the line "We cannot allow {terrorists|child pornographers|money launderers} a safe space to hide online" will be trotted out, and anyone arguing against it will be labelled soft on terror, and unpatriotic...

<comment><USER6> Eh, don't be too quick to write off the idea of activism here.

Expressing your opposition to this bill is important even if you don't believe there's a real chance of it being overturned.

In 6 months, snoopers will probably ask politicians for more power, and politicians will look back on what happened today. We want them to remember that it was difficult and had a high cost in political capital. Not that they snuck it in and everyone rolled over instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember - they'll know who's signing the petition ;)

<comment><USER8> Most of us are IT professionals. We are most probably already on intelligence agencies radar, and no, I'm not being paranoid.

[https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal- extre...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extremist- forum-and-its-readers-get-flagged-extra-surveillance)

<comment><USER9> 13 years ago a friend joined the ranks of "first responders". While they were studying and working up the org ladder he/she shared insights into the mechanisations of terror mitigation & response policies. The most noteworthy of them, for me, was the fact that if a 1st responder were to enter a domicile on _any type of call_ & observed _two_ or more computers(per resident) on premises they were mandated to report that residence to DHS for scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does it make sense to sign this if we are not from the UK?

<comment><USER11> No, because, as per the help page [https://petition.parliament.uk/help](https://petition.parliament.uk/help), only British citizens/UK residents are eligible to vote. No point undermining a legitimate process with illegitimate entries.

<comment><USER12> So... are the ISPs instructed to record only domestic connections? Or am I being surveilled too if I happen to connect to an ip address located in the UK? Or similarly, if a UK resident happens to connect to me?

<comment><USER13> Technically this law covers logging at the ISP level for UK DSL and cable customers.

However in reality, the UK is tapping all undersea cables coming into the UK (so basically almost all transatlantic ones), and logging everything. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables- secre...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world- communications-nsa). This is done under the Tempora program: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora).

So any connections into the UK are also being logged. This map gives you idea of the scale of connections coing through the UK: [http://submarine-cable- map-2016.telegeography.com/](http://submarine-cable- map-2016.telegeography.com/) and this map shows the taps that have been discovered as part of the NSA Snowden leaks: [http://lifewinning.com/submarine-cable- taps/](http://lifewinning.com/submarine-cable-taps/) (Source code: [https://github.com/lifewinning/submarine-cable- taps](https://github.com/lifewinning/submarine-cable-taps))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Turning Back the Clock – North Korea Creates Pyongyang Standard Time - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/08/07/uk-northkorea-time-idUKKCN0QC04120150807 <comment><USER2> Most of the country runs on solar time anyway...

[http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/12/north%20korea%20night%20photo_0.jpg)</comment>


Ask HN: Could the Carrier deal be a step towards Universal Basic Income? - <AUTHOR> The workers at the Carrier plant will get $26/hr [0] for jobs that could be done for $3/hr in Monterrey, Mexico. If it were the case that the jobs were done by robots at $3/hr, the case would be the same. American workers will be subsidized to the tune of $23/hr to do a job they are not needed for. If the government would take the extra step and tell American workers to stay home and do volunteer work for their community, then we'd have guaranteed basic income. A trusted and gifted politician, like some feel Donald Trump to be, could sell this to the American worker so they would accept it and not feel guilty about it.<p>[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/trump-to-announce-carrier-plant-will-keep-jobs-in-us.html <comment><USER2> furnaces are heavy and cost a lot to transport. It may not cost much more to make them in America and ship them to states close to Indiana as compared to producing them at lower cost in Mexico and shipping them a lot further. ANy cost difference may be a lot less then $23 an hour and worth the PR advantage to making them n the U.S.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get what you're saying, but Carrier said it would save 65 million a year by moving jobs to Mexico.

<comment><USER3> But now Carrier has got some incredible PR for being a good guy to employees and will probably sell more than enough extra to cover that 65 million.</comment></comment></comment>


SittingO - Like an IMDb for the conference circuit - <AUTHOR> http://sittingo.com/

<comment><USER2> What's the criteria for inclusion?

I did searches for Ruby and JRuby, and found nothing.</comment>


Startup Brex Is Raising Money at a Valuation Above $2B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/startup-brex-is-raising-money-at-a-valuation-above-2-billion <comment><USER2> >There are limits as to how much customers must hold in their accounts, which Brex monitors.

That doesn't strike me as all that difficult or ... something someone else couldn't just do.</comment>


'Israel's ancient NYC': 5k-year-old Canaanite megalopolis may rewrite history - <AUTHOR> https://www.timesofisrael.com/embargo-until-1130-5000-year-old-canaanite-megalopolis-rewrites-history-books-say-archaeologists/ <comment><USER2> Megalopolis, really? At the same time, Mesopotamia's cities were much larger. Uruk's population was probably more than 30,000 people. Even outside Mesopotamia, Ebla, south of Aleppo, was a large city where nearby villages provided agricultural resources. In these regions, technology and art was apparently centuries ahead. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk_period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk_period) for some achievements before 3000 BC.

> Among the interesting artifacts revealed at the site was a cylindrical stamp > impression of a man holding his hands up in the air, as well as several > figurines of people and animals and tools imported from Egypt.

This was surprising for me. A city that cannot build tools, but imports them. And if the site was fertile and inhabited for milleniums, how come these artefacts look

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome that they got 5000 students involved in the excavation.

<comment><USER4> >A massive 5,000-year-old metropolis that housed some 6,000 residents

That's 1.2 ancient denizens per student. The size of the research is nearing the size of the ancient city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > that housed some 6,000 residents

is this article an exaggeration? a quick search shows NYC has over 8,000,000 residents

<comment><USER6> At the time, the whole world had a total population of about 5 million people. So both this city and modern-day NYC would have about 0.1% of the global population. The comparison seems apt.

<comment><USER5> it wouldn't need nearly as much infrastructure and innovation to house 6,000 compared to 8,000,000. it is not in any way comparable in scale

<comment><USER7> It's a simile, that it's a simile is obvious, and you know that that's the case. No-one is reasonably going to expect that the Canaanites literally built an NYC. Don't be persnickety.

<comment><USER8> pretty obvious he was talking about the global relevancy of the restaurant and theater scene; not like he expected ancient subways!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The GOP's Internet Tax - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gops-internet-tax-1521153858 <comment> noah-kun Capitalism, to seem like it's working, requires such theft of public property that it's even considered an inept and devious act to...

> pass an online sales tax [law].</comment>


Single Element MacBook Pro with CSS - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/joshnh/pen/JCGoF <comment><USER2> If you add .macbook {zoom:4;} you can see how the detail is done. Basically you use lots of box-shadows to give you elements to glue together. The details on the front are not actually solid lines, but a collection of circles side by side.

That's when you realise this technique is a bit flawed - you can't actually scale the element and keep the detail, you'd be better off with an image. Not to take anything away from it though. It's good work.

<comment><USER3> You could actually scale it if I had have used ems/rems instead of px. But you are right, an image is the way to go for production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, and I'm glad that someone is demonstrating a way to use CSS3 to create graphics in a way that _doesn't_ require extra markup. One of the biggest problems with CSS3 is that, in a twist of irony, it's image composition power entices developers into adding markup to hang the CSS off of. This ends up complicating the markup merely to generate an image, which is a mistake.

This technique, on the other hand, using the :before and :after selectors shows the right way to use CSS3 image composition, if you choose to do it. This example should be shouted from the hilltops to all front-end web devs.

<comment><USER5> This should be an SVG. Using box-shadows to create shapes is not only confusing but really, _really_ performance-draining.

(not to be a downer, it's incredibly impressive, but not something you should do in production code)

<comment><USER4> SVG fills me with dread. Canvas, maybe.

<comment><USER6> Why does SVG fill you with dread? (Honest question.)

<comment><USER7> Probably because of "wall-of-xml" syndrome.

Of course, SVG should be generated by tools rather than typed by hackers, but people tend to forget that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There really should be a warning on all these demos, something like: "Don't actually draw with css in the wild, you'll break the web."

<comment><USER9> How so?

<comment><USER10> Just try visiting the page on iPad and zoom. You'll know.

(Hint: browser crash)

<comment><USER11> Browser crash?

Better fire up IDA!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> <http://codepen.io/anon/pen/vyHwk>

one line difference and you have the non-glossy screen version.

<comment><USER13> That's a white MacBook for me, but still glossy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow. There have been many of these "Look what I can do in CSS" articles lately, and frankly, they are normally quite boring. However this is the first time I have ever gone "wow". Very impressive. Quite useless really, but good work.

<comment><USER15> A pure hack if there ever was one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool. Not sure why I'd ever need this, but it's impressive that it can be done. Congratulations on making something awesome.

</comment><comment><USER17> And now we've got a Macbook Air!

<http://codepen.io/anon/pen/kqALB>

<comment><USER18> Here I tried to create all MacBooks <http://codepen.io/FWeinb/pen/dEnbz>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's been well established that you can achieve just about any icon purely with CSS. Why is this getting so many upvotes?

<comment><USER20> It's been well established that you can paint just about anything with oil paints. Why do people go to art museums?

<comment><USER19> Not sure that Hacker News is comparable to an art museum. But point taken.

<comment><USER20> Legos might have been the better example :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While undoubtedly impressive, I think using css :before and :after kind of defeats the point of 'single element'

<comment><USER22> No it doesn't really, it keeps your HTML clean. Sure, there's better ways of getting a MacBook into your webpage, but this definitely shows the power of the :before and :after selectors.

<comment><USER23> It may keep your HTML clean, but it makes your CSS messy!

<comment><USER9> I'd much rather have clean, reusable HTML. CSS you can use preprocessors to abstract away the messiness.

<comment><USER24> Aren't you using templates and macros for HTML already?

<comment><USER25> Changing how the HTML macros expand likely ends up requiring CSS changes (in practice, though not necessarily in a theoretically-ideal code base). One change in two places, vs one change in one place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is the comparison between different web browsers. Note that the image does not even load in IE8, so it is not included.

<http://i.imgur.com/ibi7I.png>

</comment><comment><USER27> Impressive. While I'm generally familiar with CSS I haven't delved into the icon logo stuff yet. I'm toying with the idea of trying to create JS/CSS-based country/state maps with customizable mouseover/onclick functionality, since there aren't really any good free versions available (that I've found). This kind of stuff inspires me that it might be possible, though I have no idea how hard it would be to create geographically-shaped elements.

<comment><USER28> You should look into SVG for doing detailed graphics. There are a number of libraries for making it easier to work with, Raphael came to mind because I remembered this demo: <http://raphaeljs.com/australia.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> And because I'm a content-management geek: <http://codepen.io/anon/pen/wxytJ>

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks like it's probably even smaller than the equivalent SVG would be. Wish I had a use for it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very nice!

Add: text-align: center; line-height: 100px;

to the .macbook css, so you can add text to the screen ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> Chrome-only? Doesn't appear to work in Firefox nightly.

Edit: Somehow my fault. Works with new profile in FF14. Curiously doesn't work in my standard profile in Aurora or Nightly even with plugins disabled.

<comment><USER33> Works for me in Firefox 14.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This one has a GPS like device made of only CSS: <http://geeksigner.com/clients/egl/>

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow, this markup language that provides shapes, positions, colors, gradients, and transparency can be used to create images!

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone else think the front is too wide for that perspective? My only criticism.

<comment><USER3> I simply eyeballed an image rather than working to scale. As it is just an experiment, I'm not too fussed by the incorrect dimensions.

<comment><USER36> Dw, I think its brilliant and I upvoted. The perspective just gets to me is all :)

<comment><USER3> Here is the image I used for reference: [http://store.storeimages.cdn- apple.com/6442/as-images.apple....](http://store.storeimages.cdn- apple.com/6442/as-images.apple.com/is/image/AppleInc/mbp2012-step0-macbookpro- lh?wid=341&hei=218&fmt=png-alpha&qlt=95)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Pfft, thats not a retina display.

</comment><comment><USER38> added the macbook pro logo to top it off. hope you dont mind :D

</comment><comment><USER39> Very cool. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER40> Are you a wizard?

<comment><USER41> This is not reddit.</comment></comment>


Anonymous one-on-one chat app for the Ivy League - <AUTHOR> http://campusanonymous.com

<comment><USER2> Making this 'Ivy League' may sound good and elite and focuses the app on specific market of 'lonely souls', but what really differentiates this besides the people? One of the founders presents a moment of inspiration for the service, but how would he connect with that other 'lonely soul' via this service?</comment>


Fumbi Network? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys!
I found this startup which claims they have a secure solution for investing in cryptocurrencies. Have you ever heard about them?<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> Scam, spam, and other shenanigans

<comment><AUTHOR> How come?

<comment><AUTHOR> Okey, so I checked it for you guys. It's a small startup from slovakia. They are legit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> www.fumbi.network/en</comment>


A trivia game with Data Science concepts and history - <AUTHOR> https://gumroad.com/l/datasciencetrivia <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I am the creator of the game, I'm happy to answer any questions.

The purpose of the game is to learn theoretical concepts by playing trivia nights with your data scientists friends.

Some of the questions were created and submitted by experienced data scientist such as:

Jesse Mostipak (@kierisi): Community Advocate at Kaggle.

Goku Mohandas (@GokuMohandas): Founder of madewithml.com. AI research at Apple and Author at OReilly Media.

Rachael Tatman (@rctatman): Developer Advocate at Rasa. Kaggle Grandmaster and former Developer Advocate at Kaggle.

Alexey Grigorev (@Al_Grigor): Lead Data Scientist at OLX Group and author of Machine Learning Bookcamp.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you observed any Covid-19 related panic buying yet? - <AUTHOR> I'm based in Scotland, UK.
We haven't officially reported any infections from COVID-19 yet and currently there doesn't appear to be any panic buying.
I went to three separate retail districts:
* The first one is predominantly a discount / family retail park. Shelves were at about 80% stock in the afternoon, and staff were actively restocking.
* The second was a large supermarket (Tesco), this was in the evening and despite being busy, it was still well stocked.
* The third and final place was a town centre, with many small shops (pharmacies, kiosks and grocery convenience shops). Some were low on daily sundries (toilet paper, ready meals, milk and bread). Perhaps because it was local, its just lazy people.
So, what have you observed in your corner of the world?
When responding please try in this format, so we have useful data:
* Location
* Area type (urban, suburban, countryside, very rural)
* Shop type (bulk, megastore, supermarket, retail park, medium / small)
* Water supply - high / low
* Food supply - high / low
* Sanitary supply - high / low <comment><USER6> My wife and I run an electronics boutique.

Our entire stock of industrial non-contact IR thermometers was purchased by a single guy who said he wanted to send them back to China.

My wife explained that they were for industrial use (out about half a degree), and not accurate enough for medical use. He purchased them anyway. :-\

<comment><USER7> They're often off by more than that. I briefly thought I had a 100.5 fever from one of those laser pointer + IR sensors when it was 98.6 by a proper thermometer.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I should have noted that these were "non-stone-cutter-degrees"[1] (i.e. ºC).

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

<comment><USER7> I saw that episode when it originally ran. Hehe. Also, where I worked had Simpsons' character names as hostnames. Can you guess the industry?

PS: I'm not Homer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Paris, France

People are definitely stocking up on supplies - I wouldn't say panic, just prevention.

Went to local big hypermarket and several non-perishable food (pasta, rice, canned corn) were out of stock (which for made a pretty impressive picture - here is one I found on the net from this shop: [https://twitter.com/jeanmgodard/status/1234044230034763776](https://twitter.com/jeanmgodard/status/1234044230034763776) ). From what I hear, it was definitely not like this everywhere, but still - it's one of the bigger ones in this part of Paris suburbs.

</comment><comment><USER9> Mid-sized Edeka (mid-range grocery store) that serves a near-in suburban Nuremberg neighborhood, Saturday (shops are usually closed Sundays in Germany):

Water supply: did not note that or beer/other shelf-stable non-alcoholic bottle drinks, as it's in a different part of the store, and we had enough already and are confident in our ability to purify tap on the off-chance that becomes necessary. Wine/booze stocks in the main part of the store looked plentiful :)

Food supply: the cheaper varieties of rice, pasta, flour, tomato products (canned and paste) and cooking oil were cleared out, but the pricier stuff was still at normal Saturday stock levels. Normal levels of fresh produce, with somewhat fewer potatoes, bananas and apples. Cheaper dairy was ransacked, but like dry goods, premium options remained.

Sanitary supply: all the cheap toilet paper and paper towels were gone, but more expensive varieties were generally available.

Note: this was the day after the first public reports of COVID-19 cases in Nuremberg and Erlangen. I'm delighted to have been doing my bulk shopping in smaller amounts throughout the past two weeks, aside from a final top-up on Friday, when my rather full shopping cart at the Rewe (other mid-sized, mid- market grocery store) got some stares.

What a difference a day makes!

</comment><comment><USER10> Location: Algiers

Area type: Urban. Protests gathering million people, packed together, every friday and coming up with funny songs about Corona virus. The people here laugh about practically everything, especially themselves which they love to do.

I couldn't understand the rest of the questions. Life is just normal. Corona for people here is just like Ebola, Zika, or other "diseases": they just heard about it and the Italian guy who's got it here. Of course, people started talking in Italian to signify they have the virus. Also ordering Corona in coffee shops, trolling people pretending they have Corona, and any funny or not funny joke you can imagine. I'll spare you the obvious bar jokes.

However, I regularly have to go to Paris for work, a two hour flight, and I'm probably going this week. I usually try to keep it as short as possible (get- in-get-out-life-is-too-short-for-intercontinental-meetings-even-though-in- person-meeings-are-highly-valuable style not to disturb "Real Engineering Work (TM)") and I'm thinking of making this trip as short as a no-trip.

Then again, I'm going to present a project named ПRAVDA so who am I to judge.

</comment><comment><USER11> Vienna, Austria - Friday around noon, multiple supermarkets, urban

Water: didn't notice (tap water is perfectly fine here), but pallets of canned beer, soft drinks or energy drinks (???) in nearly every shopping cart.

Food: no "panic", but (nearly) empty shelfs for the cheaper varieties of dried pasta, rice, flour, sugar, canned chili con carne / goulash and so on. Shopping carts fuller than normal. But no shortage for almost all other products.

Sanitary: low stock on toilet paper, almost no stock on soap and sanitizer.

Supermarkets more crowded than normally at this time, shopping carts fuller than normal. People even joked when queuing at the cashier that this is just their normal weekend shopping (piling 60 rolls of toilet paper on top of the cart).

This was shortly after the Austrian government presented rules for handling COVID-19 and told people there is no reason to panic, while journalists reported on the first "Hamsterkäufe", low stock and rising prices. Half a week before Austria had no confirmed cases, now its 8 in Vienna and 14 in whole Austria, but likely to rise with new announcements on Monday.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a Bay Area resident. I went to Costco today at 9:00 AM and it was an absolute shitshow.

<comment><USER13> Isn't that a normal Sunday at most Costcos? ;@) (That's why I go on a weekday.)

Hint: Costco (COST), Clorox (CLX) and Pfizer (PFE; makes Purell) stocks seem like very short-term value-investing strategies (unless they're losing money elsewhere) because of both the market dip and they're having crazy sales numbers. It's probably a good idea to buy some stocks in general during this temporary downturn, because the odds that it will turn into a recession are very low and it will most likely bounce back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's just speak of "increased levels" of buying, please.

Depending on where you live - it is not objectively reflective of "panic" to start stocking up on some of these supplies.

</comment><comment><USER15> * Romania, Northwestern part * Urban * Megastore * Water supply - high * Food supply - high * Sanitary supply - <USER4>

I went to Auchan yesterday and they had a sign at the entrance saying that people shouldn't buy more than they need.

However, news reporting from Bucharest said that several big shops had the food supply running low. But then there were other pictures on Facebook showing how one TV channel emptied an aisle just for the pictures, so I take news reports with a big grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER16> * Location: Ireland, Dublin

* Area type (urban, suburban, countryside, very rural) -- Urban

* Shop type (bulk, megastore, supermarket, retail park, medium / small) -- Any

* Water supply - <USER4>

* Food supply - <USER4>

* Sanitary supply - <USER5>

In Dublin the only thing missing is hand sanitizer. I had to navigate 5-6 pharmacies until I found one offering "hospital grade" hand sanitizer, sold at 16 EUR per 500ml (expensive AF).

LIDL, Tesco, Aldi are all well stocked with no problems finding anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> Spanish doctor caught trying to steal 300 masks from hospital [1] [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11056572/spanish-doctor- caught...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11056572/spanish-doctor-caught- stealing-masks-costa-del-sol-hospital-coronavirus/)

</comment><comment><USER18> There were only one and a half sixpack of Corona left in the local supermarket.

</comment><comment><USER7> When the first cases were reported in China, there was panic-buying of face masks predominantly by Asian and Caucasians Americans at a Walgreens pharmacy/hypermart in Palo Alto, California.

</comment><comment><USER19> California, Urban supermarket. Food, water, and sanitary supply high.

</comment><comment><USER20> One of my buddies reads InfoWars daily and said he's been preparing, but if I didn't watch the news/read social media, I don't even think I would know about the virus

<comment><USER13> _Conspiracy level: Tin Foil Hat_

 _Pseudo-science level: Strong_

 _Overall, InfoWars /Alex Jones is a crackpot, tin foil hat level conspiracy website that also strongly promotes pseudoscience. The amount of fake news and debunked conspiracy claims, as well as extreme right wing bias, renders InfoWars a non-credible source on any level._

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/infowars-alex- jones](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/infowars-alex-jones)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My Local Cosco was packed this weekend (US-midwest). I've been there on other weekends and it's not that bad. Many disinfectant-related products were sold out.

</comment><comment><USER22> From speaking to people working in retail 4 weeks ago; a large portion of items that have "been cleared out" locally were being sent overseas to China.

</comment><comment><USER23> Dettol and other hand sanitizers sold out completely here in large (chain) supermarkets, checked 3 of them. That's just one small town though.

</comment><comment><USER24> The local Costco has significantly less bottled water than a few weeks ago, however I really need more data points to call it a negative trendline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, can you try and edit in the format I suggested.

<comment><USER25> Then use Amazon workers ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> * Munich, Germany

* Urban

* Megastore

* Water supply: high

* Food supply: high

* Sanitary supply: low

In Munich Pasta, Tomato sauce, toilet paper and sanitizer are sold out or pretty hard to get. People are prepping and buying larger units than usual.

</comment><comment><USER25> No panic buying at all :) ( Belgium)

2 female collegues are worried ( one from Canada and 1 planned to cancel her trip to Romania), 25 employees in total.

</comment><comment><USER27> Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Suburban

Megastore

Water: larger quantities starting to sell out

Food: increased purchasing but most SKUs still have stock

Sanitary: weirdly low but not sold out

</comment><comment><USER28> Brooklyn, NY

Urban

Bulk

The Costco here had an hour wait to get into the store yesterday.</comment>


Show HN: Aptible – Deployment platform to automate HIPAA compliance - <AUTHOR> https://www.aptible.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I'm Chas, one of the founders of Aptible. Frank (fancyremarker) and I have been working on this for a while. We're excited to see what you think.

We have a development tier (read: __not __HIPAA-compliant) for playing around with[0]. Fair warning, we do require a credit card.

We will be hanging out here for a few hours, answering questions and chatting.

[0] [https://dashboard.aptible.com/signup?plan=development](https://dashboard.aptible.com/signup?plan=development)

<comment><USER2> Miss you gents in NY. ☺

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi Chas,

tel mentioned this, but Amazon allows organizations to store protected health information (PHI) provided they use dedicated machines in their own VPC. I recently had to migrate our company into this model to get our BAA signed.

I like what you've built, but I think you might be missing the real pain point. I agree that it's a hassle to setup a compliant infrastructure on Amazon. But, this is a one-time process. Most serious healthcare IT companies (and startups) will undertake this responsibility themselves to have tight control over their infrastructure.

The real challenge is maintaing the system and providing access control as the system grows. We handle upwards of 50K clinical notes a day. When we encounter an issue we have to be able to track which note caused the problem and get access to it all within the confines of our system.

Our access policy requires:

1\. Connection to the dedicated VPC 2\. SSH access to specific instances

Here's what I regard as the real problem ---> Once you're SSH'd onto the instance, you can do basically anything. There's no front-end for manipulating PHI. I could scp every PHI document onto my laptop.

I could elaborate some more if you like.

<comment><USER4> We completely agree that the biggest challenge is in maintaining the system.

We help customers control access to systems storing ePHI by tying SSH and database access to the same role-based access controls used for administering the web dashboard. We also log and audit all actions taken by these authenticated users once they've established an SSH session or database connection, so identifying or disconfirming a potential breach becomes much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for having a bug bounty program, far too infrequent in healthIT.

Can you expand more on "generate all of the documentation, audit logs, and explanatory materials you need to demonstrate compliance with every aspect of HIPAA."?

Also, with QSM requirements for the vast majority of other healthcare regulations, you need to explicitly address them in documentation to be compliant. Does Aptible address this, or only HIPAA?

<comment><USER6> Aptible engineer here.

Re: documentation, a major part of our platform is our compliance dashboard, where we track your compliance status in real time, as both a high-level status report (think Travis CI for HIPAA), and as more formal (custom) documentation which you can use for sales purposes, or in case of an audit.

As for QSM requirements (and other regulatory/compliance requirements in general), we're focused on covering 100% of HIPAA's requirements, but our technology and our compliance backend support a wide array of frameworks. We can help customers with all of these specific needs. Please let me know if I can provide a more specific answer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Always nice to see something new that isn't aiming for the 20-something SF resident.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you indemnify users of the platform in the event of breaches, data loss, bugs, etc.?

<comment><USER4> Yes, we carry $10M in insurance, covering both errors and omissions we've made, and breaches.

<comment><USER9> Is it wise to specify how much insurance to the public?

<comment><USER10> Any type of insurance in healthcare is a double edged sword. Not stating how much they have isn't going to necessarily lower the number of lawsuits they may get. My family ran assisted living facilities in Florida years ago, every customer (family member of a resident) was a potential lawsuit waiting to happen. It's just the nature of being in healthcare. So, Aptibly is addressing how they're going to protect _their_ customer. In doing so, they really do need to state how much they can protect them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Chas was kind enough to call me and not only explain their product, but also to educate me on HIPAA compliance in general from a legal standpoint (his background) – answering all my questions until I had a really good grasp on it and pointing me in the right direction to learn more.

(I'm working on a product that may eventually use this – left my email on their website and Chas got in touch and we ended up on a Skype call)

</comment><comment><USER12> Great idea - a matter of execution wizardy to seize the huge opportunity.

A couple of questions - mostly about performance. While heroku offers fantastic start for early and small size startups, one of the issues off late are it's performance issues when you reach certain growth stage. I realize that you are not working directly off AWS instances but using docker. How are heroku dynos different from aptible containers?

<comment><USER4> Good question! Aptible's Docker containers are fundamentally similar to Heroku's dynos in terms of the Linux kernel features on which both are built.

Most of the performance advantage comes from 2 facts:

1\. An Aptible production customer shares NO resources with other customers, from the load balancing layer down to the app container layer. So, performance is never going to be degraded as a result of resource contention from other customers.

2\. Container CPU and RAM constraints are flexible on Aptible. While we set defaults for both of these container constraints, we can adjust them for specific customer applications that may be more CPU- or RAM-intensive.

<comment><USER13> Is Docker fundamentally allowed for Hipaa compliance ? Note that I don't particularly know the implications of my statement, but a friend once told me that Amazon had to go through a lot of auditing to get certified as PCI compliant (obviously from an infrastructure, and not application standpoint)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems a fair amount more expensive than TrueVault. Any reason for this?

<comment><USER8> Appears to be a hosting provider for the whole stack, not just the database component.

<comment><USER15> If you're looking for someone that provides the database component with the ability to upgrade to moving your entire stack to the cloud, Catalyze has both BaaS and PaaS offerings.

I think HIPAA-BaaS are great products to get storing PHI (Protected Health Information) immediately. I'm working with companies in health tech right now that are working with hospitals, but not storing patient data. BaaS, from startups like Catalyze/TrueVault/Medable, provide a quick and easy way to get started on that path and determine if it's a good long-term strategy for your company. But, once you're dealing with enough patient data crunching, the rest of your application stack will really need to be secure. That's where PaaS products like Catalyze/Aptible come in.

(Disclaimer: I work for Catalyze)

EDIT: Medable, not Medible.

<comment><USER16> Do you have a link for Medible? A quick Google search was not returning any results.

<comment><USER15> I spelled it wrong. It's right here: [https://www.medable.com/](https://www.medable.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, cool idea. Though $3,499/month is WAY above what a small company like mine can afford. We're considering paying a one-time cost of ~$10,000 for a consultation to get us there and won't have to do another one for (hopefully) quite a while.

What size/type of company is the target market?

<comment><USER18> > Though $3,499/month is WAY above what a small company like mine can afford.

In order to host a HIPAA-compliant application on Amazon, there is a $1,500/month per-zone fee. This does not even count the actual server or storage costs, let alone the costs of building (and then maintaining) a complaint server application plus managing the documentation for it.

You also have to pay this fee _again_ if you want to host the application in a second region (e.g. for failover/redundancy).

So, an extra $2000/month to forget about all of those is a signficant cost, but still a reasonable price.

<comment><USER19> Hi, very curious here: where did you get this from : "In order to host a HIPAA-compliant application on Amazon, there is a $1,500/month per-zone fee. "........As far as I understand, HIPAA compliant means that data has to be encrypted in transit and at rest ......so, for example, running a SQL Database on an EC2 with SSL and an encrypted file system should do the job and that doesn't cost 1500 per month ??

<comment><USER20> In order to get a BAA with Amazon you need to use dedicated instances. BAAs are required in order to use Amazon and be compliant with HIPAA. Running _any_ dedicated instances in a zone costs $2/hr (just for the right).

<comment><USER19> but once you have the BAA , does Amazon force you to run the dedicated instance 24/7 ? I'm very confused , just running an app on a dedicated instance, does not make it HIPAA compliant since the app needs encryption in- transit and at-rest to be HIPAA compliant. You can achieve that on a regular instance ...

<comment><USER20> The BAA only applies to the dedicated instances—in particular, you have to VPC them—you cannot achieve HIPAA compliance with a non-dedicated instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Love that you guys are addressing more than just the security rule - we found the technical parts of HIPAA the simplest to address. Are you planning on having employee training modules and customizable policies and procedures? How do you help guide companies through the Privacy components?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we agree. Most of what turns HIPAA compliance into a murky time-suck is in the administrative requirements and documentation.

We'll have a separate page on the site explaining this next week, but we break compliance management down into 5 main areas:

\- Risk Assessment

\- Policies and Procedures

\- Training

\- Ops

\- Incident Response

Conceptually, they form a cycle. Each area feeds the next, with ops/incident response feeding back into risk analysis.

We have a suite of tools to help with each stage of the cycle. Each step requires a different mix of:

1\. Automation

2\. Manual work on our part, and

3\. Manual work by our customers

Our overall goal is to __drastically __reduce #3 while helping our customers run amazing compliance programs that reduce risk and give everyone involved (devs, management, their customers, federal regulators) insight into what is going on inside their organization.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the update - look forward to seeing what you roll out.

One interesting feature to add at some point would be helping companies incorporate their BAA into their user agreement (this is how Practice Fusion does it - [http://www.practicefusion.com/pages/user- agreement.html](http://www.practicefusion.com/pages/user-agreement.html)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just a simple but potentially powerful sales Idea for you. Most of the replies are from people who "need" to be hipaa compliant. And their arguments are sound in that scenario. However, there are many situations where projects want to be compliant but don't need to be. Technically at least. Let me give you an example. I worked at at a pharma marketing company where our clients where pharma brands. We built stuff for them, apps, sites etc. These did not always have to be hippa compliant, but the pharma legal team forced them to be anyway. The point is there is a market there for you. Essentially, your targets would be the creative agencies that build digital stuff for pharma cos.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm an ehealth / mhealth scientist / developer in The Netherlands. My biggest headaches come from infrastructure issues / security, so a product like Aptible would be great for me and my associates.

Seeing as I live in The Netherlands, and my end users (patients) will be Dutch, I'm bound by Dutch law. I'm no attorney, but I think it will be problematic to store electronic health records in the US.

Seeing as scientists / developers in The Netherlands are at the forefront of ehealth / mhealth development, are The Dutch somewhere on your list Chasb?

Different scenario: me and my Dutch associates would like to launch an ehealth / mhealth product in the US. In the eyes of US law, are we allowed to do this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Matthjis, thanks for your questions!

The EU's data sovereignty laws present a special set of restrictions, and specific countries like the Netherlands add more. But challenging problems can be valuable problems to solve, so yes, the Dutch are on our list.

At the moment, however, our entire focus is on HIPAA compliance. I tell people this: I am a lawyer, but I am not _your_ lawyer and this is not legal advice. You would certainly want to consult a US attorney, and perhaps form a US subsidiary, but it is possible for a foreign organization to do business in healthcare in the United States. The example at the front of my mind is Royal Phillips and their new partnership with Salesforce[0].

Feel free to email me if you'd like to chat more!

[0] [http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press- releases/...](http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press- releases/2014/06/140626.jsp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When you state HIPPA compliance, are you saying that you've addressed NIST 800-66 with a 3rd party certification? As I'm sure you know, the word "compliance" is sort of funny and subject to interpretation.

Disclaimer: I work in a similar space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! We audit customers against an adapted version of HHS's pilot audit protocol for covered entities[0], tailored for cloud-based software business associates. HHS is starting the permanent audit program and we expect them to publish an audit protocol specifically for business associates this fall.

NIST Special Publications are great resources, and we use them where appropriate, but as I'm sure you know, they're not specific enough to just audit against a single publication and call it a day.

For example, NIST SP 800-66 Revision 1[1]:

1\. Only covers the Security Rule 2\. Consists of mostly pointers to the other, substantive NIST SPs, and 3\. Isn't as detailed as the audit protocol from HHS, which is the entity that will ultimately judge your compliance

Again, all of that said, we love NIST(!) and use their methodologies and guidance (including SP 800-66 Rev 1) extensively.

[0] [http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/enforcement/audit/](http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/enforcement/audit/)

[1] [http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-66-Rev1/SP-80...](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-66-Rev1/SP-800-66-Revision1.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really cool idea, I have a general question about the healthcare app space -- how many of these apps are written ad-hoc for each medical practice? I.E., should I expect my dentist to run a totally different software stack from my general practitioner, and do they usually run custom software or more general solutions?

Also, how much of the existing stuff is written on .NET? I have a feeling that's a pretty popular stack for a lot of small business/enterprise companies, but is harder to support via open source software.

<comment><USER26> If you're referring to what the providers use for patient documentation, billing etc, there's a slew of apps out there that unfortunately don't talk to each other in much of a meaningful way without a lot of work. Beyond the big EMR companies (Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, Siemens, etc -- what you'll see at academic centers and medium-large hospitals), there are tons of companies that have come out with medical record software for individual clinics (i.e. a couple dicots in a practice not owned by or affiliated with a major medical center) and much of it is often marketed in a niche way

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> HIPAA compliance sucks and Aptible most certainly does not. I'm so happy these guys are around, they've made our startup's life a lot easier!

</comment><comment><USER28> Congrats Chas and Frank!

I'm Travis, one of the co-founders of Catalyze - [https://catalyze.io](https://catalyze.io). We also offer a HIPAA-compliant platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Our compliant PaaS starts at $500/mo and includes dedicated, encrypted logging, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery, and encryption (at rest and in-transit). We've been through 3 3rd party audits + penetration testing (most recent audit we were 100% in compliance). We're very transparent about HIPAA and open our audits up to customers to use as part of their sales collateral. You can see how we interpret and address HIPAA requirements here - [https://catalyze.io/hipaa/](https://catalyze.io/hipaa/) \- and you can see our policies here - [https://catalyze.io/policy/](https://catalyze.io/policy/) (we're open sourcing these in the next couple weeks).

We don't provide policies or risk assessments as a service, but Accountable ([http://accountablehq.com/](http://accountablehq.com/)) does a great job with those. Using Catalyze + Accountable starts at $600/mo, about 1/6th of the starting price on the Aptible site; we also offer 60 days to terminate so don't lock you into annual contracts to get that pricing.

We've got some great production customers, with testimonials and use cases on our site, that love our service and support, and have moved over from hosting providers like AWS, Firehost, and Blue Box. I'm happy to answer questions about Catalyze and the compliant cloud space in general.

<comment><USER29> Dude, you shouldn't shill on someones product launch especially since you're not providing meaningful feedback on how your product differentiates itself from Aptible.

<comment><USER30> I thought it was an informative post. Most people upvoting this thread is probably doing so because this is really a great/unique/useful product idea. Finding out there are other products in the same space is useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems to be down ("The connection to www.aptible.com was interrupted while the page was loading."). Synopsis?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're up[0]. CloudFront requires a browser that supports SNI indication for SSL, which may not work if you're on Windows XP. We'll spring for the dedicated option soon.

Our current operational status is available at [http://status.aptible.com/](http://status.aptible.com/)

[0] [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/aptible.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/aptible.com)

<comment><USER31> I'm on Windows 7 at the moment using Firefox (is anyone _really_ using Windows XP _and_ reading Hacker News at this point? ;) ). Maybe it's because I'm behind a corporate proxy at the moment; I'll try again at home (on a Linux desktop, also with Firefox).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You use Docker, is there anything else technology wise you guys use? Do you use Deis or is it your own setup?

<comment><USER4> It's our own setup, similar in its external-facing product, but implemented a bit differently on the backend than other PaaSes like Heroku, Flynn or Deis. Specifically, we support many isolated-tenancy stacks behind a common central platform interface.

Other than Docker and AWS, there are a bunch of pieces that make the whole thing work, but most of them are custom.</comment></comment>


Project Reach: collect data with a Raspberry Pi at very high altitudes - <AUTHOR> http://cygnus-x.net/geekstuff/projects/reach/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't seem to explain how it was located for recovery? Especially given the dead battery, guesswork about probable balloon trajectory seems too inaccurate to be workable.</comment>


Show HN: Remoty – Work like you're in the same office - <AUTHOR> https://remoty.dev <comment><USER2> Please no, let's not use a bot to tell others that we're taking a 'power nap'.

"TIME TRACKING & SCRUM MADE SIMPLER AND FUN"

How on Earth could someone write this down? Making time tracking FUN? Making it frictionless, easy, simple -- okay. Fun?

(Sorry for the negativity, I've been working and leading engineers remotely for many years, and the big challenge and holy grail of remote work is finding the best way for providing context _, not tracking time.

_ providing context: lead by providing meaningful goals and context so that people can independently move towards them in an environment where communication is expensive and noise is harmful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! Really appreciate it!

So, well we wrote because a developer in my company with whom we piloted this product said "It's like playing a game, it's fun". So it just sort of started from there and we thought might sound more catchy so we went forward with it. Nonetheless point well taken!

Please excuse my ignorance but can you elaborate a bit more on "so that people can independently move towards them in an environment where communication is expensive and noise is harmful."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not really sure what problem this is solving. The value prop seems to be based around more closely emulating the in-office experience, but in what office did people need to track time spent at their desk, and announce to everyone when they were going to the bathroom or to lunch? I would hate to work in that office.

That feature seems to be aimed at paranoid managers, not "teams".

Also, the "asynchronous stand-up" feature seems at-odds with the time- tracking. A work culture that allows for asynchronous stand-up should also be one that doesn't care when someone is at their desk and when they are not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey so maybe we are not very good at umm explaining what our product does, I guess. Our vision behind emulating the in-office experience revolves around the idea that when you're working in an office, you can "see" who's in and who's not. Plus for example your colleague got off his chair and went out for of the room you'd notice that for sure (if you're friends you may even know the reason behind it as well). After covid-19 lockdowns, people started to work remote. Now that feeling of knowing what your colleagues are unto isn't anymore. If pre-lockdown you had to go and ask a colleague some help, you'd know if he's available or not but when you go remote you're not sure if he is available at that instant or not.

Plus, when a lot of teams faced a sudden transition to remote, they were only touch with the people who they were dependent on. As in your team lead, or one or two team mates. So, that feeling of being connected to other coworkers starts to fade away.

Tbh, this is the first time I have heard so many people `pissed` (can't think of a right word) at remoty. I literally have users emailing me who JUST used our product for 8 days saying that their team has already started to feel closer. I can share that screenshot as well. We never designed this workflow for paranoid managers, else it'd have some crazy features like selfie & geo- located attendance etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> And I get what you're saying about standups. But again, we designed it in a way that it allows people working in different timezones take control of their schedules.

<comment><USER4> You can do that with a plain old calendar without the tracking

<comment><AUTHOR> So you're saying that if I have to go offline for a while during my work time I should put in my calendar?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. See [https://reclaim.ai/daily-habits/](https://reclaim.ai/daily- habits/) for an example of how this is executed elegantly.

<comment><AUTHOR> reclaim ai looks like a really great tool! I just have skimmed through the landing page, but from what I understand is you still have to switch context even after using a slack integration. Teams are split in sooo many tools these days, that switching context is sometimes that big of a overhead that people may choose to avoid it. Plus most importantly, never claimed that using remoty is the ONLY way you can communicate your schedule on the fly.

<comment><USER5> Points are taken. I think you have to nail down who your audience is: colleagues or managers. How you approach the problem is going to be different for each audience, based on the expectations and workflows of those audiences. Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for this amazing feedback! Will do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not really the place ask for unbiased feedback. Most devs here want less of this sort of thing. Maybe post on reddit startups instead.

<comment><USER7> Yeah this is a product for managers who miss the warm fuzzies of seeing butts in seats.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol! you're saying that ONLY your manager is concerned whether you're in your seat or not?

<comment><USER8> What everyone is saying that NOBODY should care whether we are in our seat or not. That is not relevant to remote work, nor to autonomous team members. Remote teams do care about availability, but that little green dot next to our name in Slack completely suffices.

<comment><USER9> This is a product where some people will want it even if they don't "need" it and I think it might do well on that basis. It's for time tracking cultures and I bet a lot of development is done this way especially cheap shops selling basic sites to clients. So probably there is a demand for this kind of tool. But not for FAANGs etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would quit any job which made me do this while working remotely. I've been a very successful full-time remote engineer for over a decade and this is incompatible with my workflow and quality of life considerations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thanks for taking a look at remoty! Can you please share what's the worst thing about this tool? What makes it so incompatible?

<comment><USER4> If you don't know what's so bad about it, you shouldn't be developing software. If you know what is so objectionable about it, but are acting unawares, you most definitely should stay the fuck away from software development. Everyone has a duty to take responsibility for what they create.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the most stupidest & absurd thing I've ever heard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This just looks like a way for employers to track employees with no benefit to said employees. No one needs to know when I'm on a break at home / taking a shit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that's one way to look at it, maybe a lot of people who share your view as well but there most certainly are people who want to take shit in peace XD. They don't want those annoying calls from their team members when they are busy. We see it as giving back control the employee about his schedule. He tells everyone that he's not available to work rn (adding comment is optional so he can skip on the specifics of the break)

<comment><USER4> I'm not against status updates, it's the tracking and clocking in and out like a 1920's factory worker inside my own home that I find objectionable. Even in an office proper, this kind of tracking is a fundamental breach of trust and causes a serious imbalance of power.

I also find framing this kind of thing as somehow benefiting an employee to be so duplicitous I think it is malicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like "tracking" has a very bad connotation here at hn. As an associate product manager working remotely I would want to know if a certain software engineer has checked in for the day so that I can ask him for an update. I personally would not want to disturb him when he's off the clock. Again, its not about not trusting employees but creating a sense of transparency and closeness in a team

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey Show HN!

We'd love some feedback on remoty which helps remote teams reach their full potential with powerful time-tracking and progress update workflow in Slack.

=> What does it do?

1.Boosts your team coordination using intuitive time tracking commands.

2.Helps you save hours in meetings by organizing async daily stand-up meetings.

3.Helps you track billable hours, generate scrum logs and export CSV timesheets of your team.

=> Why'd we built it?

We devised a workflow in our company to create an essence of working in the same office by increasing visibility over availability and statuses of team members. This workflow had 2 basic steps

1\. Announce your check-in/check-out/breaks followed by two or three words to give context in a dedicated channel.

2\. Turn in your standup notes (even if we already had a team standup call) while checking in or out so as to maintain records of standup notes.

We saw a real change in our team's coordination and productivity over the period of next few weeks. We then started to think on the lines of automation so that the data that was being collected could be put to good use as well. This led to us to build remoty!

As of now we have approximately 100 users who actively use our product. All of them are following the process that we follow in our company. So far we haven't been able to pin point the EXACT user persona of remoty. We have pure technical teams, marketing/insurance teams and even research labs of universities paying for the product.

Some of our users/potential users that I talked to are requesting for a shift/leave management feature while others are looking for a more comprehensive in-slack task management solution. Would really appreciate feedback from you all on how we can improve & grow remoty!

Please headout to [[https://remoty.dev](https://remoty.dev)] to give remoty a shot!

</comment><comment><USER11> Jesus Christ this is terrible.

</comment><comment><USER12> absolute crap. should not be used by any company. yall want to make it harder to work remotely... smh

<comment><AUTHOR> I am assuming you have some problem with creating intra team transparency?

<comment><USER13> The same way many people have some problem with neighbourhood transparency by using curtains on their windows?</comment></comment></comment>


Half of America hasn't recovered from the last recession - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-america-hasnt-recovered-from-the-recession/ <comment><USER2> This seems like a somewhat unexpected result from the growth of the internet.

At first glance, it seems like the internet should allow for a more geographically distributed economy, and make it easier to get a job regardless of where you live. Instead, the internet has concentrated jobs in cities by making it easier for a few companies to sell services to 'everyone'.

Instead of going to a local store or even a local Walmart, people purchase from Amazon. Instead of doing taxes with a local accountant, more people use TurboTax. Instead of a local lawyer, there are services like legalzoom.

This centralization is likely a big part of what is causing this. This effect will probably continue unless the large internet companies move to a more geographically distributed workforce.

<comment><USER3> Well if we're waiting on a geographically distributed workforce then I can see two extremes which will force that. 1 The tech giants need to many employees/tech giant cities become too overpopulated for the move to Bay Area it similar isn't feasible even for software engineers, causing the tech giants to submit to remote work. 2 We get to a point of automation where we have way fewer jobs than people.

Don't mean to be absolutist or anything, but as long as the tech giants can afford to fly candidates on site and throw buckets of money at them to move to ever increasingly high COL areas, I only see this trend continuing. Despite the technical ability to work remotely, most companies seem like they'd rather perish (or shove their talent into tighter and tiger corrals) than have people work from their own location. And I don't see these giants trying to create new hubs in places that aren't already established, as that's a long term wager and why delay gratification like that?</comment></comment>


The difference between MIT and ITP - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/07/14/the-difference-between-mit-and-itp-les-savy-fav-vs-boston/

<comment><USER2> This author is really stupid and he doesn't know what he's talking about. MIT Rocks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Why does ITP get such a bad rap?</comment>


Show HN: Emails organized by person – with Unibox for iPhone and iPad - <AUTHOR> https://www.uniboxapp.com <comment><USER2> Unibox is the perfect email client. To me is a game changer, what I love the most of it is that the App organize my emails based in a PEOPLE CENTRIC concept,so when the user receives an email and clicks on it, he can see the email thread that he was exchanging with that specific person over the years, which is very helpful to keep everything organized. You can add accounts from different services, Gmail, iCloud, corporate emails and so on.

The new iOS app is what I was waiting for years, a clean design with a very good performance. It keeps the same concept as the Mac App, which was hard to conceptualize in a smaller screen, but the Eightloops guys made a great job for the iPhone and the iPad.

I love the app, I just hope they can add soon the Apple Watch integration. I very highly recommend it. Kudos for the Team!</comment>


Ask HN: Need (mid-life) Career Advice - <AUTHOR>

Hellow HN SmartyPants,
First of all let me get this out of the way: I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO CODE
I'm 33 y/o, making good money analyzing private jets interiors structures, bored to death and I feel like I'm working for the devil.
I want to do something new where I can find intellectual challenge, be creative and inline with my core values (humanity & the environment).
My main problem is that I have too many fields of interest and cannot seem to be able to make a decision. I've contemplated dozens of potential careers, PhDs in math, science, social science, writing books, filming documentary, acting, journalism.  I'm at cross-roads and I feel totally paralyzed.
Any advice? Any books suggestions?
I really really love this community.
Community hugs :) <comment><USER2> A few thoughts:

1) You need to focus on one or two things - no use in being a jack of all trades and master of none

2) What do you naturally do when you have free time in the evening? For any of the above mentioned activities, do you ever 'get into it' and pull up hours later after a big session? If you do, chances are it's something that really engages you... that's a good thing, follow it

3) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - you just need to start walking down a path, even if you can't see over the next hill, you need to start walking... do you know anyone who did anything for 3-5 years and still sucked at it? Probably not, so chances are if you commit to something and put in the time, you'll get great sooner than later too... but it won't happen overnight

I used all of the above lenses to focus on becoming a world class product manager and technologist... hope it helps you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your valuable advice. I did a little search about the expression "jack of all trades and master of none" and bumped into this fascinating article: [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/09/14/the- top-5-re...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/09/14/the- top-5-reasons-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes resigned? - <AUTHOR> Given the claims leveled against the company seem to be widely corroborated, how has Holmes managed to remain CEO? <comment><USER2> Maybe her cult of personality is the only thing holding the company together. Or she's prioritizing herself over the company.

</comment><comment><USER3> She controls the board, so no-one can make her resign. That's how she's managed to stay -- as for why, honestly not sure, I guess her reputation is destroyed if she leaves now, at least if she stays there's a non-zero chance that their tech can be made to work legitimately in a way that improves her credibility.</comment>


Dozen Books For You - <AUTHOR> http://dozen.softover.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is _not_ a site ad (I was trying to post a question):

Would book recommendations (even good ones) without any social/freebie/purchase fluff work, or it is just waste of CPU resources (not counting mental ticks required to make this really work)? Is anybody interested in smart book recommendations?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No replies. Perhaps I am naive, but I'd love to hear advice from anybody who is interested enough to try - what does not work?</comment>


Mass-syndication and angel financing across the Atlantic? - <AUTHOR> http://periferi.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> European startups could benefit from angel financing through mass-syndication involving angels from both sides of the Atlantic, and into some extent vice- versa.

What do you think? Would it be possible, interesting? Let the discussion flow here or on <http://periferi.co></comment>


Bitcoin: A New Wave of Bag-Holders Are Born - <AUTHOR> https://seekingalpha.com/article/4143505-bitcoin-new-wave-bagholders-born <comment><USER2> Site demands I install an app to read the full article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is a toxic website.

</comment><comment><USER4> what a negative title. people buy bitcoin because they also believe in it regardless the price and want to participate in the new economy

<comment><USER5> Yeah, right. Today, Bitcoin is the equivalent of VHS when Blu-Ray DVD is widely available.

<comment><USER6> What's the blu-ray DVD then?

<comment><USER7> Atleast in the US, Visa backed by a bank. 7 transactions per second versus 24,000 transactions per second. Banks are fdic insured and handle security for you. You might be capable of securing a private key that you actively use like a debit card number, but I'm not confortable with it and there's no way I'd let my aging parents near financial vulnerability like that with an 80 foot pole. As much as we all hate banks and all the bad they do, they provide necessary services.

<comment><USER4> if you compare centralized vs decentralized with tps you really don't get what's all the deal about no government control and immutable ledgers. downvote away and think about this comment in 10 years.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin is centralized, too: a few mining cartels, a few lead developers, a few exchanges, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JetBrains IDE's still unusably slow on many Macs with ext monitors after 3 years - <AUTHOR> https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JRE-526 <comment><USER2> It _sounds_ like a Java/Mac interation thing. There's a workaround: [https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JRE-526#focus=streamIte...](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JRE-526#focus=streamItem-27-2918658-0-0)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty much like making the window smaller. Not a good solution if you want to be productive. Less thinking for the IDE to render the graphics via OpenGL. If you look at CPU usage it still spikes, but less, so the UI is actually still very energy efficient.</comment></comment>


"Python already replaced Excel in banking" - <AUTHOR> https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/3002556/python-replaced-excel-banking <comment><USER2> Certainly seen a huge rise in Python use in private banking sector where I work. The problem is that we get people who aren't devs writing Python code against source DBs, we once had to fight off a trader who fired up some Python code with 150 simultaneous connections to a prod DB, we quickly had to instigate limitations on DB connections for normal users, something we should have done long ago.

Our company runs training courses on Python, they're not run by devs or even by the IT dept but by one of the members of the key reporting team, a good Python programmer with plenty of experience in financial modelling but zero IT dev experience. Things are changing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe in trading where information is standardized and in digital form. But for the most part actual financial advisory type banking or investments in private/public companies is still reliant on excel until frameworks for labelled financial information becomes more widely used/implemented in both public and private markets ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBRL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBRL)).</comment>


Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class - <AUTHOR> http://washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/28/texas-college-professor-tries-to-flunk-his-whole-class/ <comment><USER2> This really is a pointless article of he said, they said.

There is nothing at all to be gained in reading it.

There's no actual evidence of who was in the wrong or what the real story is.

(You could easily argue after 20 years in the game he fully knew all the students wouldn't actually get a F, even this is unknown)

<comment><USER3> Happened at the College I use to work at (Systems Librarian and in Student Life)

Whole class plagiarized their papers and it wasn't a he said she said. Clear as day guilty. Some of the papers were word for word the same (The kids forgot to change words). Professor gives the complete class a failing grade. College within a week lets all the Seniors graduate and changed their grades to C and fires the Professor.

Professor appeals and is re-hired. Than he is fired 2 years later due to complaints that his classes are to difficult. Once again appeals and is rehired. He is now the easiest professor to get a D or C as long as you don't cut three weeks (AKA 1/4 of the class). You have to do projects for different grades. D = writes out 50 words and their definitions with hand drawn pictures. C = Pass a definition test of a possible 100 words (Super Easy). B = do research and turn in a short half page synopsis of your findings with printed out web pages or copies of books. A = write one 10 page paper and get at least an 80 on the paper with his simple rubric (AKA Jr High level). Only 10% actually ever attempt an A and he has a perfect Bell Curve the past 15+ years now.

His lectures are incredible deep (Philosophy and Theology) and you can either sit there and learn very little (Most do) or you can engage him and he will give the best lecture tailored for whoever tries hard and talks during class. When my friends who were alumni would come to visit I always took them to this professor's class and they were blown away at how foolish they were to dismiss him and think of him as a easy C or B class.

So this actually happened and it caused a professor to just not engage his classes brains or challenge them academically due to fear of being fired again. Philosophy and Theology field is incredibly competitive and there would be over 150 applications for his position if it ever opened up. You also would than be a person who was fired trying to get into a field where hundreds trying for the same job.

<comment><USER4> This is a shame. When I first started college I felt that citations were always a burden. Five years later and two degrees I wouldn't even dream about writing without citing my work. If these kids want to cheat, they shouldn't be rewarded. But hey, the more the kids fluff off the less I have to worry about my field of study being over populated by people that can ACTUALLY do the job..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even though this incident sounds more personal than idealistic, it keeps bringing back up the question of the purpose of universities.

I am okay with universities being a medium of education, where one can take any courses they want, and passing and failing is irrelevant (MOOCs?)

I am okay with universities being a place to enjoy four years of camaraderie and self exploration before committing to life or career goals.

I am okay with universities being a stamp of selection, i.e you were good enough to get into harvard so you must be smart.

However, universities try to be all three and fail miserably at all of them, while leaving students in a large debt that most are unable to reconcile with what they got out of it, along with a life-long 'average gpa' that barely reflects abilities.

<comment><USER6> I think you are confusing "universities" with "USA universities", specially when it comes to debt and GPA.

<comment><USER7> Most USA-people do this, and they're aware of it: when they talk about 'universities', or '[some class of] people', or 'VC' or whatever else. I think the reasons they do it are a combination of efficiency and a feeling that the rest of the world isn't always necessary to the discussion.

Those of us outside the US may feel it's naive, but it's unlikely they'll change. The simplest thing for us to do is to assume they always mean USA-[topic].

<comment><USER8> Are you implying that there is anywhere other than the USA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Breaking News: sometimes teachers have depressive flameouts just like every other kind of person.

There's not really anything to take from this article. When this sort of thing happens, the department hands the class off to someone else, the instructor is disciplined in some way, and life goes on. The students won't receive an ideal semester's worth of instruction, but that happens sometimes. The university probably ought to find some way to let students who want to take the class over to do so at no cost, but I have no idea if that's likely. The students who would rather not take the class over shouldn't have to. One class is not going to make or break their education. Meanwhile, they've learned that sometimes spectacular flameouts happen, and they have an interesting story to tell for the rest of their lives.

<comment><USER10> I flamed out on cheaters once by telling students they could decide for themselves what their grade was. "Go ahead live the rest of your life with the false assumption you understand statistics."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I graduated from the college in question - Texas A&M University at Galveston (TAMUG). Off the bat, I don't know that professor or any of those students (I was in a different major, and had great professors).

The problem I have with this story is that someone went to the media with rather than dealing with the school administration. Based on KPRC's online video of the report, it was probably John R Shaw Jr. The video was poorly made. About half of the video is shots of the same empty classroom. Another part is where they stage John walking on the sidewalk. Due to poor editing, you can see him turn around before walking and suppressing a smile.

The only reason that I can surmise that this is in the news rather than being dealt with appropriately, is because John R Shaw Jr probably wanted 15 minutes of fame. He says he has a job offer, but after this, I can't imagine what company is going to want to hire him if he goes to the media instead of the appropriate route every time he feels slighted.

<comment><USER12> > The problem I have with this story is that someone went to the media with > rather than dealing with the school administration.

"...he added that the university wasn't responding to his complaints about their behavior, pushing him to take this drastic step."

<comment><USER13> That quote is from the professor (Horwitz). John R Shaw Jr is apparently one of the students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If this college class operates like the ones I had then I think the professor is in the wrong. On the first day I would be given a syllabus that clearly outlined the grading scale and how the grade was calculated.

I look at that like a contract. Professor presented students with a grading scale, students accept by staying in the class or withdraw from the class.

Granted I know nothing about this particular incident, but it could be an interesting case to read about if it were to go to court.

<comment><USER15> If the syllabus is a contract, cheating is a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

I'm all for failing classes pervasive cheating. There isn't enough social pressure in schools to name and shame cheaters.

<comment><USER16> > I'm all for failing classes pervasive cheating. There isn't enough social > pressure in schools to name and shame cheaters.

I'm all for failing individuals who cheat, including every single student in a class if that's the case. It's hard to tell if that's what's happened here. It kind of looks like the prof is (rightly) fed up with a bunch of things and (questionably) throwing a tantrum.

As for pressure to name and shame cheaters, note that it is usually a huge hassle to formally charge students with cheating. I know people who deal with this by giving exams that are hard to cheat on and really hard to pass without having done the assignments. The alternative involves a lot of interactions with the university bureaucracy for each case -- as it probably should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's not enough information for a fair opinion on the matter.

The professor felt devalued from class behaviour, so he "made himself scarce". After establishing credibility by telling us about his past experiences and successes, he quits for reasons we can all empathize with. _Scarsity_ , _social proof_ and _authority_ are 3 of the six principles described by Cialdini's _Influence_.

<comment><USER18> I imagine this is one of those situations where the truth will never be available. All participates have taken sides, and have skewed / omitted / shaped their own stories for their own interests.

I wish we had a black box recorder for organizational and cultural failures.

[edited tone to convey agreement]

<comment><USER19> But the article ends with a student expressing disbelief as he did decent work and getting an F before the class even ends, and the professor acknowledging that some students were fine, but that he exercised collective punishment because it was his only instrument.

That seems pretty clear cut to me, definitely a bad move. It can't be justified, solves no problems and punishes innocent students.

I'd understand why he'd fail some of his students, and I can also imagine situations where it's tricky to pinpoint and isolate the unwilling students from his class, and if made out to be a clown day in day out, lacking the proper instruments, management backing and (understandably) mental fortitude, that you'd leave the school at some point.

But how that translates to giving an F to an entire class, including students who bore no responsibility and were as powerless to keep the class going the right way as he was, is beyond me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Horwitz, who has taught management for two decades..._

What exactly did he teach? It doesn't appear he learned very much about "management".

Imagine a manager firing all 30 of his direct reports. What would you suspect was the problem, the manager or the workers? Same thing here.

Perhaps Professor Horwitz should get a real management job. Then he'd learn how easy he'd had it for the past two decades.

<comment><USER21> "What would you suspect was the problem, the manager or the workers?"

Well, "the manager's manager" is an option here too. "Mismatch of responsibility and authority" is certainly a fundamental problem that schools at all levels from kindergarten to university have been struggling with as our society goes through its social changes, as we keep loading responsibilities on to the teachers even as we strip away their authority.

Whether or not this is the case, I don't know. As others have observed, there isn't anywhere near enough info to conclude anything here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22>
        Horwitz acknowledged that "a few" of the best performers might not deserve an F. But the school wouldn't let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone and leave the course, he said.

Wow—as a teacher myself, I went to this story all prepared to root for this guy, but can't. "[T]he school wouldn't let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone"? Who knows what's going on inside the classroom that we don't know—but, whatever happened, regardless of the provocation, comments like this [0] are a stain on the profession of teaching. It is our (teachers') job to deal with our students professionally, and that professionalism on our part becomes more, not less, important when it is not demonstrated by our students.

[0] Assuming that it is an accurate representation of what he said. I was once the subject of a friendly story in my local paper, and, even with the best of intentions on the reporter's part, I was amazed at how different what she wrote was from what I meant (and, I believe, said).

<comment><USER23> I am not sure that it really is a teacher, let alone professor's professional responsibility to have to deal with the student's lack of basic human decency. I don't know what happened in that class and I also don't know if his statement about "a few" not deserving being flunked is accurate, but it does not change the fact of the matter that a teacher / professor / lecturer's only job is to teach and educate. Their job is not crowd control or behavior modification therapy.

I don't see any way how A&M is not negligent in performing their duty to assure an environment to allow him to perform his contractual obligation to teach the students that are there to learn. Especially if he requested that the disruptive students leave and / or be removed from the class, he and the affected students that were possibly not contributing to the disruption should really be suing the university for contract non-performance. If you go to a university and expect education and instruction and the school does not perform it's duty to assure that happens, they are in breach of contract. There doesn't seem to be any real difference from any other service contract.

<comment><USER22> > I am not sure that it really is a teacher, let alone professor's > professional responsibility to have to deal with the student's lack of basic > human decency.

It _is_ every professional's responsibility to deal professionally even with unprofessional behaviour. That _doesn 't_ mean tolerating or excusing the behaviour.

For example, as a teacher, if I am repeatedly provoked and harrassed by students (which has never happened!), then I am within my rights to ask them to stop, to call security, and even to refuse to return to the classroom until some assurance is made that it is a safe environment. That is a professional response to unprofessional behaviour.

What I am _not_ entitled to do is to say that there are _some_ good apples, but, because of the few (or many) bad apples, I am going to fail _everyone_. That is an unprofessional response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Slightly off topic, but I have a bachelor's degree in Management. The courses were a joke. I wish I followed my passion in college, but figured a degree in Management would get me a job. The Manaagement classes were basically business classes. I was young, and naive.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is not the first time it has happened that a professor tries to fail a whole class, but it maybe the first time a professor prematurely failed an entire class without any chance of recourse and without letting final performances materialize.

</comment><comment><USER26> There are students everywhere who are graded unfairly. Certainly punishing students who break the ethical rules of the school or terrorize the classroom with a failing grade is not the appropriate response, though many of such students probably do deserve poor grades for the actual academic performance that corresponds to such behaviour.

More interestingly, why should a single grade matter so much? Especially when it can so easily be due to the whims of the professor or to extraordinary personal circumstances of the student? Of course, it _does_ matter in practice, and that's the bigger problem that I think is showcased by stories like these.

</comment><comment><USER27> Professor here, with a viewpoint that seems to be underrepresented.

The kind of thing discussed in this article would absolutely not fly at my university. We are expected to formulate standards for grading, inform the students of these standards, and follow them when assigning grades.

A relatively standard term for grading in ways that does not follow announced standards is "capricious grading". And many -- perhaps most, perhaps all -- U.S. universities now have official policies against it. Egregious violations of such policies would be grounds for various kinds of penalities/punishment.

That is not to say that cheating is irrelevant. For example, every syllabus I write contains the line, "Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated, and will be dealt with according to [my school's] procedures."

In another comment, user hn_ says, "A syllabus is _not_ a contract." This is correct. That means that a syllabus is not enforceable in a court of law. However, _university policy_ may still dictate that a syllabus is an ironclad statement of how the course will be conducted.

So, for example, I have seen a student make a complaint against a professor and take it up the chain of command. The first question asked by each of the administrators the complaint came to was, "What does the syllabus say?" If the professor is found to be acting in accordance with the course syllabus, then the student has a much harder time making a case -- at the very least.

A related issue, which seems to be an important one in the case mentioned in the article, is that grading standards are generally to be applied individually. There is such a thing as group work, of course; in such cases we make it clear that each person in the group is judged by the performance of the group as a whole.

Now, I don't know how accurately this article is representing the actual events that occurred. But if Horwitz really is assigning individual grades based on a nebulous judgement about the class as a whole, then I would say he is clearly guilty of a violation of professional ethics. What "the class deserves" is simply irrelevant to an individual's grade.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have little doubt that (some of) the students were childish assholes. I also have little doubt that the professor handled it poorly. Probably, he treated them like children. This is incredibly insulting to the majority of students that do care, and it does not solve the problem. I have seen that play out in university classes. In the end, rather than telling the assholes to get the fuck out, he throws a temper tantrum. No one is in the right here.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've taught a graduate-level class in which I caught every single student cheating at least once (18 students), including 6 of them on the final paper (for which I set an absurdly low bar). I failed those 6, and I gave zeros for all the other individual instances. I _should_ have failed them all.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Just ridiculous, I had never had a problem in the class. I thought I had done pretty well, done pretty well on the first test and then I get an e-mail saying I am going to get an F in the class, it was overwhelming," Shaw told KPRC.

</comment><comment><USER31> I also experienced that twice during my student years. That the professor not makes a decision with his fellow profs and school organizers looks quite poor. In any conflict you must choose one side, at least I believe so, and then support that. If you fight with the students, that's okay. If you fight with your fellow professors that's also okay. But just making trouble to both groups and then running away... That can't be reasonable or achieve anything.

From the experience with the two professors I knew trying something like that, I think that guy will be surprised that students and the other profs will bond together simply to avoid more trouble and continue with the university life.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems like he just had a nervous breakdown. He should probably take some time off, recover, and maybe take a job that requires less social interaction. Being a good teacher (no matter the age of the student) is draining and requires a lot of patience and emotional intuition.

<comment><USER33> I'll agree with you with the caveat that "just a nervous breakdown" might be a little dismissive.

Does he need a sabbatical? Absolutely. It sounds like after one-too-many classes of willfully unteachable students (as in students that refuse to learn, not students that are unable to learn), enough was enough and he had had it with these motherf%$&ing students in this motherf%$&ing school.

I think a lot of us here on HN can empathize with overwork and burnout, and it sounds like this professor may have ignored the warning signs for too long. I hope he can get the help he needs.

<comment><USER34> "I hope he can get the help he needs."

That appears highly unlikely given past experience:

"Speaking with the Houston Chronicle, he added that the university wasn't responding to his complaints about their behavior"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Now that's what I call a ragequit.

</comment><comment><USER36> >Horwitz

<comment><USER37> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "being disruptive, rude and dishonest"

Sounds like a bunch of straight-shooters with middle management written all over them. ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Should I bother reserving .cc for my domain? - <AUTHOR>

Is there any chance in the future that someone might type it in by accident, like some do today with .net/.com (albeit rare) ? I have no need for it as I have the .com for my domain, just wondering how defensive to be and if it's worth the money? <comment><USER2> I think you're overthinking things. Check out <http://www.microsoft.cc/> for an indication of how much Microsoft worries about .cc domains.

(Hint: either it's not owned by Microsoft, or their web designers have _really_ gone downhill.)

<comment><USER3> This domain is not owned by Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> save your money. typos of your name like mcrosoft.com or microsof.com are more important to your brand than .cc

even those unless you're getting tons of type in traffic may not be worth the extra $7.50/yr

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd rather save the money for a .co or .cm domain :)

</comment><comment><USER5> No, you should not.</comment>


Google's Do-It-Yourself App Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/technology/12google.html <comment><USER2> " _A program by a nursing student at Indiana University enabled a phone to send an emergency message or make a call, if someone fell. It used the phone's accelerometer to sense a fall. If the person did not get up in a short period or press an onscreen button, the program automatically texted or called the person designated to receive the alert._ "

This type of simple, yet useful app sounds great. This approach to letting 'laymen' design an app to scratch their own itch opens up a whole world of possibilities IMO. Certain apps, that could easily be developed by 'pro' app developers, inevitably won't get built because the developer would tell themselves "oh that's too trivial" or "no-one will use that".

By lowering the barriers to entry, Google is allowing app development to follow the process way nature discovers the best new idea: wasting a lot of one resource (e.g. dandelions scattering their seeds to the wind / allowing amateurs to create a lot of crappy apps) to find a few gems (the small % of dandelions seeds that find a suitable patch to grow / the amateur that has great insight into a useful app, but previous lacked the technical know-how to implement it). Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks similar to MIT's Scratch <http://scratch.mit.edu/>.

<comment><USER4> agreed, looks like a great way to quickly hack a simple app</comment></comment>


Fandango Buys Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/17/fandango-buys-flixster-rotten-tomatoes/ <comment><USER2> This absolutely sucks.

From a previous HN posting about the reliability of Fandango reviews:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fandango-movies- ratings/](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fandango-movies-ratings/)</comment>