How to design parabolic, hyperbolic, elliptical reflectors for 3D printing - <AUTHOR> http://stratnel.com/2016/07/28/how-to-design-parabolic-reflectors-for-3d-printing/ <comment><USER2> This is a nice tutorial, but it seems a bit kludgey (and I'm guessing part of that is due to Fusion 360's "not quite a fully finished CAD system," though they are making pretty good progress with it, and I find it's a fairly nice program, especially for the price, (free to hobbyists) and it includes CAM abilities.)

I would think OpenSCAD would be pretty decent at this, but honestly, I've never tried making parabola's or similar with it.

A quick google found this openscad script for parabolas: [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:84564](http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:84564)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you had a specific design in mind, it might actually be more satisfying to generate the STL triangles directly. You can fit your parabola in 2D (by, say, computing reflection angle to a fixed focal point), then just rotate and dump out STL.

The wiki has a nice intro to the subject:

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Alternatively, one could use the "define curve by equations" feature. Most CAD tools have it.

</comment><comment><USER5> ok for the 3d printing of the "structure" but then how to make it reflective? do you use regular allumination chamber or what technique ? which precision you can achieve to validate the prototype ?

<comment><USER6> Obviously it's for a metal 3d printer...

<comment><USER2> Most metal 3d printers simply don't have the surface finish to make this feasible, never mind cost (it'd be ridiculous).

<comment><USER6> I guess i should have added a ;-).

Although the laser sintering printer downstairs produces quite nice surface finishes. Not good enough for an optical mirror, but definitely good enough for mm-wave antennas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trader's confession: I've been dreaming for this market crash for 3 yrs [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC19fEqR5bA

<comment><USER2> It's not a confession, it's self-promotion.

<comment><USER3> where's your proof then?

<comment><USER2> Well, from about the 1:45 mark it sounds a lot like a sales pitch. "Everything's definitely going to go to shit, but if you get my advice you could come out of it rich". This is also the gist of his website, which encourages people to employ him as an advisor or public speaker. Judging by his website, facebook, twitter and myspace accounts, he has a strong interest in self promotion. Judging by [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8792829/BBC- fin...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8792829/BBC-financial- expert-Alessio-Rastani-Im-an-attention-seeker-not-a-trader.html) he's not really the elite financial insider a lot of people seem to be taking him for. He's just a dude with an internet connection, some trading software, a thirst for attention and a product to sell.

Admittedly I can't literally prove he hasn't been dreaming for this market crash for 3 yrs, but his "confession" clearly serves the purpose of letting the audience know how awesome he'd be at looking after their money in the forthcoming recession.

<comment><USER3> He didn't plug his website.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Practical RL – A course in reinforcement learning in the wild - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yandexdataschool/Practical_RL <comment><USER2> On a related note, I wonder how much did RL change things like day-trading?

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone interested in working through a class like this together?

<comment><USER4> Sure, what's your experience? I'm relatively well experienced with keras and TF so far but always looking for learning partners!

<comment><USER3> Just saw this--HN doesn't send notifications :)

Limited. I'm working through CS231n and looking for something after that. If you want to sync up my emails in my profile!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Twilert – Emails in real time when your brand is mentioned on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilert.com

<comment><USER2> That's one of the best user experiences I've seen for explaining a service to new users.

The very first thing I saw was a clear sentence explaining exactly what Twilert was and why I should care. If I were the exploring type, I could scroll through a lot more, but the big "Try it now" button was inviting, and it delivered just what it promised.

The UI for trying out a search was actually fun, and the live preview feedback was fast and confidence-building. I knew where I was and where I was going, thanks to the breadcumbs at the top, and every step delivered a clear value exchange as it led me down the funnel.

By the time I reached the point where I could authenticate with Twitter and start using the service, I'd been shown what Twilert was, how it worked, and what I could expect. You hooked me in.

Expertly done. I'm going to use this as an example for others who want to know how to lead people from awareness to engagement smoothly and quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought Twitter's API only gave you access to a small percentage of real- time tweets. Did Twilert obtain full firehose access or is another method being used?

<comment><USER4> Its probably the firehose via one of the two data providers, is why the service isn't free. Datasift is one of said providers, can't remember the name of the other.

<comment><USER5> Gnip is the other one. It was recently acquired by twitter though: [https://blog.twitter.com/2014/twitter-welcomes-gnip-to- the-f...](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/twitter-welcomes-gnip-to-the-flock)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Twilert for at least a year now, and it works fairly well.

It should be noted, though, that the basic functionality that Twilert provides -- email alerts when a particular word or phrase appears in a tweet -- is pretty trivial to roll on your own using the Twitter API.

<comment><USER7> I don't know their implementation but I can think of two workarounds for the firehose issue:

1\. Paid approach: use some authorized firehose data resellers. That's expensive, but if there are already thousands of users, that will pay off.

2\. Free approach: use poll-based solution to search for the keyword every X seconds/minutes. When new tweet appears in the search results after the last recorded tweet - that's your new tweet. This way it shouldn't miss anything and you don't need firehose. Of course, to overcome request throttling limits, you'll need to use multiple different credentials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Built one of these for Reddit. No realtime yet but its on the way [http://getredditalerts.com](http://getredditalerts.com)

<comment><USER9> What's holding you back from making it realtime? My #/twitter handle is the same as my HN name if you'd like to talk about it.

<comment><USER8> No reason except I wanted to launch as early as possible and then focus on marketing. I want to put the instant notification on a paid tier, and that'll take some time to build out. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Would be happy to talk more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mention.com do it for all Social networks, and cheaper.

<comment><USER11> Social networks and everything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm wondering if this would get out of control as your company grows.

<comment><USER13> I think it would. All this is doing is shifting data from an optimised UI to an unoptimised UI. Performing a search on Twitter and selecting all tweets, and every now and then hitting the load new tweets button is free and easy, compared with sifting through emails, and $19 a month.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps it needs to be coupled with some sentiment analysis, so that only get instant emails for more _urgent_ cases, where a user is unhappy 9 or _severely_ unhappy, depending on your preferences). As for the good tweets, they can perhaps send a summary once a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's nice, but why should i pay for this when i can write a simple bot that runs 24/7 and does the same thing for free? At least add a free plan.

</comment><comment><USER16> tried it and the results seemed random. I entered a well known brand and got a tweet for baby aylesbury ducks that have absolutely nothing to do with my search. I looked at the tweet and the whole timeline & profile for the user and failed to find the keyword anywhere!

aside from the results being random it's an interesting idea. Better still if it tracked sentiment and charted it over time for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> The UI is excellent but it's hard to justify $19 a month for this. Just have a Tweetdeck tab open, then you can reply to the tweets too.</comment>


Replace Skype with Discord for Better Audio Quality and Web-Based Interviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.macobserver.com/tips/deep-dive/podcasters-replace-skype-discord/ <comment><USER2> Wouldn't secure Wire[1] be a better replacement?

It's crypto-audited[2], open-sourced[3], has native mobile clients[4], Swiss based[5], and pretty well known[6].

[1] [https://wire.com](https://wire.com)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/10/messaging-app-wire-now- has...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/10/messaging-app-wire-now-has-an- external-audit-of-its-e2e-crypto/)

[3] [https://medium.com/@wireapp/wire-server-code-now-100-open- so...](https://medium.com/@wireapp/wire-server-code-now-100-open-source-the- journey-continues-88e24164309c)

[4] [https://github.com/wireapp](https://github.com/wireapp)

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

[6] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12148596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12148596)

<comment><USER3> I saw "request a demo" so presumably it's not free and that's a problem. Also Discord works in most browsers so the person they are interviewing doesn't need to download anything

<comment><USER2> It's free for personal use, I responded to a nearby comment. In-browser is a good feature, I guess Wire can also get there in future, since both, Discord and Wire, are electron-based apps. But I believe call quality is not quite enough to replace Skype, I demand e2e privacy as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been listening to enough poor-quality phone/Skype podcast interviews, and figured that someone should build an interview tool that will setup a real time conference, exactly like Skype, but also record the audio in high quality at all remotes and then transfer the recordings afterwards and mix them together with correct timing, so it sounds like all parties are in the same studio. Perhaps even do some magic to mix out the latency, even though there would be some weirdness to work around when participants speak over each other and go "sorry, go ahead".

<comment><USER5> This is a common way to record remote interviews (since the mid-1900s, I think), and is called a "multi-ender" (or "double-ender").[1]

They're straightforward to do manually. All parties participate in a recorded "1-2-3-clap" at the beginning and end of the call, and the claps are later used for sync.

There are also many "assisted" solutions, including Cast[2], Cleanfeed[3], Ringr[4], and Zencastr[5]. Some folks find them useful, but the additional dependency also means more things that can go wrong. Anybody using them has learned (or will learn) that they must record the live/VoIP portion of the call as well, as backup.

[1] Wikipedia calls this a "phone-sync" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone- sync](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone-sync)), which is not a term I've ever heard people actually use.

[2] [https://tryca.st/](https://tryca.st/) [3] [http://cleanfeed.net/](http://cleanfeed.net/) [4] [https://www.ringr.com/](https://www.ringr.com/) [5] [https://zencastr.com/](https://zencastr.com/)

<comment><USER4> Excellent, I'm happy (and feel validated) that this exists.

As this would replace Skype (or whatever conferencing tool you're using), it's not really an additional dependency, is it?

<comment><USER5> > _As this would replace Skype (or whatever conferencing tool you 're using), > it's not really an additional dependency, is it?_

It is in the sense that those solutions are not only replacing the realtime part of the call, but additionally must do separate source-quality call recording _and_ post-call file transfer sessions for each participant.

I've lost calls (or would have, if I hadn't recorded the realtime part) with more than one of those solutions because of unrecoverable errors on participants' sides. I'm reluctant to name them since (1) they in turn depend on browsers and their WebRTC implementations, and (2) in my experience different podcasters will swear by _and_ swear at the same solution.

Here's how I'd order the reliability of common remote recording scenarios, from most to least reliable:

(1) Landline-to-landline

(2) Landline-to-mobile or mobile-to-mobile

(3) SkypeOut-to-landline/mobile

(4) VoIP-to-VoIP — Skype, Discord, whatever.

(5) Manual multi-ender — Can be done very reliably if remote participants are reasonably comfortable with recording audio. Still requires a POTS, mobile, or VoIP call for the realtime part.

(6) Assisted multi-ender solutions — Generally way less reliable than manual multi-enders. In my experience and from talking with other podcasters, expect 1/20 calls to fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've Zoom with great results for the past two years at a few different companies

<comment><USER7> Second this. We use Zoom internally all the time. When a client's Skype/Lync system fails to work, we send out a Zoom link and everyone is like "Whoa!" every time....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> After trying every product I could get my hands on, I'm currently using Riot/Matrix for this purpose. All the same I'm still not really satisfied with latency/quality/reliability. Why is this not a solved problem? We've had videoconferencing since at least 1968[0].

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

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, to date, Matrix[1] suffers from a shortage of quality client apps. Riot.im[2][3], while the most advanced among others[4], is far from being convenient. Electron-based desktop client is subpar in terms of UX and performance, whereas the Android client is a disaster for the battery. However, I do hope Matrix will overcome these issues and take it's place as an underlying protocol for the Jabber/XMPP(/IRC) use-cases.

[1] [https://matrix.org/](https://matrix.org/)

[2] [https://riot.im/](https://riot.im/)

[3] [https://github.com/vector-im](https://github.com/vector-im)

[4] [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html)

<comment><USER9> Disagree about Riot. I find the Android client very similar to WhatsApp and just as good except for a few minor issues: confirming private keys for E2E isn't done automatically as in WhatsApp (arguably better because it's more secure), the quote feature just copies text, and media files sometimes take longer to receive and will re-download. But Riot also has some big advantages like being able to send arbitrary file types and using the system emoji.

Additionally, the desktop web app for Riot is far and away better than WhatsApp Web IMO, which is horribly non-performant, bringing my web browser to a crawl and steadily throttling up my CPU over time. I consider it almost unusable.

As far as battery usage on Android, I do not share your experience. I am seeing 8% of total usage on a phone primarily used for texting and reading emails and news. It's less than the 9% from Google Play services, and slightly more than a newsreader app at 6%. Unfortunately I can't offer a comparison to WhatsApp.

<comment><USER2> I've never used WhatsApp, can't really compare. But we—team of ten tech-savvy persons—rolled back to Telegram in three days after trying RiotIM. Manual E2E keys sharing in Riot is not perfect, but definitely better than the lack of E2E at all in Telegram, however Linux desktop and especially Android performance was dreadful. At least that was the state at the beginning of the summer of 2017. How long do you use Riot? Can you confirm there have been significant changes since 2017Q2?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The new Skype user interface is a complete abdomination. Even simple things like the "away" status has been removed.

I'm actively looking for a replacement for the company.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cleanfeed looks like a superior solution for this sort of thing: [http://cleanfeed.net/](http://cleanfeed.net/)

I haven't used it, but came across it in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890816). I haven't used Discord either.

I'm interested in actually _informed_ opinions on the matter!

<comment><USER5> This sort of "assisted multi-ender" solution is a good alternative to a pure VoIP call, and elsewhere in the thread I posted links to more of this kind of remote recording solution.

The main problem with them is that they put more of an onus on the interviewee, which often isn't an option with high-value guests.

<comment><USER12> Hi, thanks for mentioning us (here and elsewhere)

Cleanfeed isn't actually a multi-ender, it was originally developed for live radio interviews. So it aims to give the best quality live and in that regard it's different to, eg. Zencastr which does the recording each side and syncs up the better quality audio later. Each method comes with its own pros and cons; my own experience is also that anything after the interview is not always practical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone recommend a solution that's both open source and works on Linux?

<comment><USER14> Murmur and Mumble[0]. I have murmur running on a little VM and can handle thousands of gamers. It's not has happy clicky as discord, but it provides end to end voice encryption with great sound quality. You could run it on a RasPi provided you have the bandwidth. Be sure to use their 1.3.0 snapshot. Major improvements on user management, echo cancellation, game overlays, positional audio, etc.

I and many gamers have been quite happy with it.

[0] [https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page](https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page)

<comment><USER9> 2nd Mumble. I've found the voice detection and noise cancellation to be better than Skype or TeamSpeak, possibly because it's more configurable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We've been using Discord for our podcast for a while now. At this point we're only using Skype for a short video portion of the show.

</comment><comment><USER16> We stopped using Skype recently for conference calls when they issued a software update that broke merging calls. I guess they just don't care anymore now that Microsoft owns them, they're more concerned with it looking pretty.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just use Linphone and SIP; it allows to set the quality, the codec, the bandwidth, the resolution for both audio and video, while it's a native build, not electron.

<comment><USER18> SIP is a disaster. There are so many issues with configuration, firewall traversal, and general user experience that saying end users should be using it is just disconnected from reality. Skype nailed it for a reason—because all the dumb SIP stuff you need to deal with just to get it going is too much. You need to be able to install an app and just go. Especially with interviews and any time you're dealing with people outside of you controlled little environment.

SIP is successful in the telecom space because it still requires specialized knowledge and dedicated teams of people to run it, and preserving that might be the reason it's still such a pain.

<comment><USER19> I think SIP lives in Telco land for a similar reason Cisco does (or Kerberos in enterprises). Yes it's complicated, but that's just a funny way of spelling flexible. Most people just want to make calls and are happy with a locked down one-size-fits-all solution, so they just use Skype and it's good enough. Some people want to tune their own systems to get them closer to just right and aren't afraid of the complexity.

It has options for multiple stream transports, a proper SIP gateway can even allow two totally incompatible clients to talk to each other by relaying and converting the calls. There's no reason half of your call can't be webrtc to someone's browser (asterisk SIP gateway supports this out of the box) or even POTS in an emergency.

Your asterisk solution could include a webpage and webrtc, which would actually be an easier client setup than Skype. No app, just hit this URL and start talking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For audio only nothing beats mumble/murmur. If you want video stuffs, jitsi.

I refuse to use Skype, discord, or any other proprietary black box system for something so important.

<comment><USER21> No echo cancellation on Mac OS is kind of a deal breaker unless everyone with a Mac can use a headset.

<comment><USER14> This is no longer the case. Murmur / Mumble 1.3.0 have multiple forms of echo cancellation. It works great.

<comment><USER21> Oh really? There hasn't been any activity on the bug I was following, but if it has been fixed nevertheless that's awesome! _goes point Mac OS friends at the development snapshots_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wish Google would do a web version of Duo. My family has moved to using it for our family video calls at Sunday dinner and works well even with low bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER23> If discord doesn't like your browser it asks for your phone number before it will let you use it, even as a guest login. It is not acceptable for you to require your business partners and potential employees to share their personal data with a third party company you have no formal partnership with in order to contact you. Please do not use discord for professional purposes.

Either use something that asks nothing of your guest, such as appear.in, or host your own service where at least you control the data. Jitsi or Lync might be palatable to your IT department.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does Discord have screen sharing yet?

<comment><USER25> Yes but having tried it recently it provides very poor quality. The entire time the screen was blurry. Couldn't make out a single piece of text.

From what I understand before they rolled it out to everyone the system worked perfectly so it's just an issue of them scaling their backend.

No idea why they don't just use WebRTC for video&audio though.

<comment><USER26> How recently? We've made strides in screen share quality over the past few weeks.

<comment><USER25> Yesterday. We were unable to look at some code together. We had to sit and wait 2 or 3 minutes before I could start to make out text.

What kind of codec are you using? Are you using Amazon's streaming service or did you roll your own?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Teenager invents solar panel made from human hair - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1212005/Teenager-invents-23-solar-panel-solution-developing-worlds-energy-needs-human-hair.html

<comment><USER2> The science is rather sound on this; melanin has been shown to produce a photosynthesis effect with ionizing radiation. Incidentally, this likely means the solar panels would actually be able to work at near maximum efficiency on partially cloudy days, even on a lightly clouded day it should still work well.

It generally takes much less water to _deflect_ visible light and reduce the efficiency of a silicon solar panel than it takes to _absorb_ the UV that is producing power through the melanin.

What I believe is important here is the melanin. If an efficient and stable way is found to manufacture a melanin-based solar panel, it could be used in a wider range than many traditional solar panels. I suppose the ideal would be to produce a traditional solar panel that is transparent to UV, allowing it to be caught in a melanin-based solar panel. In theory you could double the power output of a solar panel and extend its power production into cloudier periods.

<comment><USER3> "It generally takes much less water to deflect visible light and reduce the efficiency of a silicon solar panel than it takes to absorb the UV that is producing power through the melanin."

I'm confused by this statement. I'll try to clarify.

Melanin's absorption spectrum can be found here: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/melanin.html> As you can see, it has high absorption from 300nm-700nm which is in the UV-Vis range.

Similarly, silicon's absorption spectrum is here: [http://www.wsi.tum.de/Research/StutzmanngroupE25/Research/Ph...](http://www.wsi.tum.de/Research/StutzmanngroupE25/Research/Photovoltaics/tabid/220/Default.aspx) So it absorbs much more in those wavelengths so that's why you're bound to get higher efficiencies.

Alternatively, water's absorption spectrum can be found here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_absorption_spectrum....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_absorption_spectrum.png) Water does not have a high absorption in this region. So clouds will not absorb wavelengths in this region.

And sorry to nitpick, but nothing _deflects_ light. Light is absorbed, transmitted, and emitted. If it is emitted in the direction from which it came, its called reflectance.

<comment><USER4> Light can scatter (Rayleigh scattering, Thompson scattering), which does not involve an absorption/emission event (unless you are talking about resonant scattering for example in the Lyman Alpha line).

That's how clouds work. The albedo of clouds is very high, so little is absorbed. Nevertheless, the small water drops scatter the light.

<comment><USER3> Sure. I was thinking more from the material perspective, but yes there are other phenomena to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Debunked here: [http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/hairsolarpanel...](http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/hairsolarpanelnepal)

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh ... Does the Daily Mail generally publish hoaxes?

<comment><USER7> I think it must be a hoax.

<comment> onreact-com Yes, it's a hoax. See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817099>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm impressed in principle, but I'll believe it when I see an article in The NY Times, The Washington Post, or The Economist. That those reporters have chosen to ignore it gives me cause for concern.

</comment><comment><USER9> It looks like just a small amount of hair on there. I wonder about the watts per area.

I bet it would take a massive amount of surface area compared to regular solar cells.

It's a very cool demonstration/proof of concept, but it's not practical for actual use. (But might have a niche in places where other sources of electricity are non-existent.)

<comment><USER10> I get the feeling a windmill and water tower might be a more durable, effective and all-around useful solution for those areas.

Anyone who found it cost effective to wind human hair around terminals by hand every few months likely has more basic needs to be met than simple electricity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The news is only as good as it's source. I am sceptical about the claim. Would love to see this news in science magazines like New Scientist or Scientific America, before buying it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Measuring when you have a florescent light so close to the wires is cheating - the ballast will induce current in them.

<comment><USER2> Hardly, they're reading DC not AC, the ballast will induce a few milliwatts (at the max) in the wires and at 50~60HZ this will likely be within the margin of error on a hand-built solar panel anyway. (Ed: The electrical meter likely wouldn't detect the interference as AC is generally self-cancelling interference on a DC line, unless diodes are in use)

Induction between two wires is exceptionally low. Unless the two copper wires share the same ferrite core, you'll get diddly squat out. Noise in an electrical signal, is very different from noise in power, which would require an actual imbalance in the AC outputs, IE a power plant running at 50HZ and one running at 55HZ will produce a very unstable power supply.

<comment><USER12> I would have thought the CFL ballast would run in the kHz range, not 50-60 Hz.

The DMM appears to be reading voltage, and its input is probably pretty high impedance, so it may very well be sensitive to the hash from the ballast (the meter's input protection circuits may be rectifying the AC).

I'm thinking hoax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The photos of his "solar panel" look incredibly suspicious:

[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546E62...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546E62000005DC-46_468x286.jpg)

[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546F9D...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546F9D000005DC-575_468x313.jpg)

Single strands of hair strung randomly around a grid? This cannot possibly be an effective approach. But there's an even easier way to prove it's a hoax -- human hair is not an electrical conductor, and doesn't produce electricity under sunlight. (This takes about fifteen seconds to test for yourself with a multimeter.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know if the science behind this is sound, so assuming that it is: According to the article the panels are expected to be manufactured for 1/4 the cost of current panels of similar wattage. But it also says the hair "...lasts a few months", which means that they are much higher maintenance than silicon based panels which last at least 5 years with current designs.

So TCO may be higher for the hair panels, especially if longer strands of hair are needed.

As far as the validity of this goes, I need more hard facts before I can make a decision. Those hair strands aren't packed in there very tightly, so getting 9v/18W out of that panel is fairly unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER15> £23 ≈ US$38. At 18W that's US$2.11 per watt. That is indeed about half the price of silicon solar panels last I checked. I have no knowledge of these properties of melanin, so I don't know if this is a hoax.

<comment><USER9> That's the price of the parts, but does not take into account the cost of labor to manufacture it, or to acquire the hair.

<comment><USER16> These guys own a big chunk of the world hair market: [http://www.zimbio.com/TTD/articles/16/Hair+offering+at+tirup...](http://www.zimbio.com/TTD/articles/16/Hair+offering+at+tirupati) . As long as superstition and India's population remain stable, at least supply shouldn't be a problem :)

<comment><USER17> Hey, hey, let's go easy on the "superstition" part, OK? :)

One man's religion is another man's superstition, I guess! And shaving off the hair is pretty harmless, as "superstitions" go -I mean, I got a lot of friends pretty non-superstitious types who shave off their hair here in the valley.

<comment><USER18> Any man's religion is superstition.

<comment><USER19> Alanzo is our Church. That's a cold, hard, simple fact and not a mere superstition of the Cult of the Least Fixed Point.

<comment><USER20> Alanzo ? Don't you mean Alonzo ?

<comment><USER19> Of course. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hmmmm... If that works and is going to be used for lighting, then combining it with a pulse width modulator of about 50pc duty cycle should double the supply duration.

</comment><comment><USER22> I posted another article on these solar panels several hours earlier: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812551>

The bottom of the article includes a link to a research paper:

[http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1312/version/1/files/...](http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1312/version/1/files/npre20071312-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> This doesn't make any sense. It costs (according to the article) $38US to produce about 18W of electricity, a little over $2/W.

I'm currently buying solar panels from China for $1.85/W US in small quantities, and they generally throw in the charge controllers as well.

The article also implies that the hair needs to be replaced at some regular interval.

Hardly newsworthy.

<comment><USER15> Where do you get your panels? <http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar- panels.html> lists prices from about US$3 to about US$10 per watt for panels in the 100-200W range and nothing below 100W, and <http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm> has this lovely graph by month up in the US$4.40 range. I see <http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm> lists some panels for US$1.85 per watt, but the discrepancy is worrying.

<comment><USER23> Direct from the manufacturers and/or their factory reps. This is for panels in the 50-100W range.

<comment><USER24> Just curious. What do you use your panels for? Personal use or do you build stuff to sell.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Return of The 40 Year Old Videogame: Pong World for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.greyreview.com/2012/11/30/the-return-of-the-40-years-old-videogame-pong-world-by-atari/#more-16100

<comment><USER2> Neat but Arkanoid's dropping of power-ups was cooler, and that was many years ago...</comment>


Ask HN: Which mobile stack to choose, for a desktop/web dev? - <AUTHOR> First mobile project, absolutely no clue about mobile dev. I'm primarily a web dev.<p>Which stack to choose (anything other than Obj-C is fine)? Any advice? <comment><USER2> I would choose Electron or NW.js. they are based on Nodejs, let the development process easy as long as you have some knowledge of HTML/CSS/JavaScript. However they don't support all of the native system features.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Signal down? - <AUTHOR> Can't send texts, colleagues reporting same thing <comment><USER3> [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal- Android/issues/7869](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/7869)

</comment><comment><USER4> US East 1: [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Mildly related, I found that Signal no longer allows exporting the message database, so I cannot escape. I have many important and cherished messages in there and I'd like to export them. Does anyone know of a solution?

<comment><USER6> May I ask what constitutes and important or cherished message?

I switch devices (phones / computers) every couple of years, and I like "starting fresh". I backup photos and videos but that's it. I tend to consider messages as ephemeral. a text message about the birth of a child or the death of a relative matters in the moment, but the real keepsakes are the experiences and memories in meatspace.

I've had bosses that wanted their text messages restored to their new phone because there was great joke someone texted them three years ago. FFS. Business reasons / legal requirements OK, but these weren't.

(Not saying you're wrong - I tend to work differently to my peers - <USER2> looking for context)

<comment><USER7> Not the parent, but I still have the text messages from when I was starting to date my now wife, 10 years ago. It's fun to look at those every few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> AWS us-east-1 is having serious EC2 issues. So many sites are having problems.

<comment><USER9> Must be region us-east-1c having issues, it's not clear from the communique. They talk about 1 AZ but don't mention which one.

<comment><USER4> The az's letters are assigned differently in each account. Your C may not be someone else's C

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I had no idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you ping textsecure-service.whispersystems.org, it points to localhost 127.0.0.1

Wonder if this is a misconfig / related to AWS error / legal action

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like it's back. If it still doesn't work, try stopping the app and clearing your DNS cache (or restarting the device).

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://outage.report/signal](https://outage.report/signal)

</comment><comment><USER12> God damnit, I uninstalled and tried to reinstall assuming it was just me. Now I have I to re-check keys with everyone :(

</comment><comment><USER13> Down for me too</comment>


Less than half of US households do not have a landline - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39807186 <comment><USER2> The title here matches neither the title nor content of the article. The article says:

        "Most US homes have ... no landline"

Quoting from the article:

        "Of the households surveyed ...
         50.8% of homes had ... no landline."

The title here on HN says:

        "Less than half of US households
         do not have a landline"

If less than half do not have a landline, then more than half _do_ have a landline. If more than half do have a landline, then that's most of them.

The title here has too many negatives.</comment>


Ask HN: Any unfinished side projects to give away? - <AUTHOR> This is a repost of a 2016 post:<p>Would anyone like to give away / sell the projects which they've started but have no time or interest to finish? <comment><USER2> I started writing a budgeting app very similar to YNAB. Had basic integration with the Plaid API, Next.js (React) with PostgREST and Postgres, Auth0, Bootstrap among some other things.

Edit: feel free to reach out via email in my profile.

<comment><USER3> Are you the one paying people for reviews? If not did you see that thread on HN?

<comment><USER2> Heh, no I'm not and yes I did see it. That was actually what made me stop working on the project.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. As someone who did something similar, not even open sourced it, I'd say it's easy to underestimate how much goes into a simple looking budget app. I reckon it's a year full time work to make a decent one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are a few marketplaces for this now. One is 1kprojects.com

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a bunch on 1kprojects.

A football odds aggregator, a celebrity exclusive club website, a auto transcription and task manager app/web

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12423281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12423281)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd be open to selling my property management app Apt. (www.aptbykhaki.com)

Built the product but never moved forward with it.

</comment><comment><USER8> anyone want to resurrect Scoreboard Guru? [https://blog.evantahler.com/goodbye-scoreboard- guru-40daaaf1...](https://blog.evantahler.com/goodbye-scoreboard- guru-40daaaf18c0d)

</comment><comment><USER9> keto.fm -- if you're interested. It's a content only site with ~1300 email subscribers. Stopped working on it a few months ago.

<comment> Max-20 How much are you looking for?</comment></comment>


Prometheus and Kubernetes up and running - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/prometheus-and-kubernetes-up-and-running.html <comment><USER2> Anyone running coreOS in production want to comment on their stack? We tried using it around a year+ ago, but etcd/fleet were too unstable and stuff like btrfs and other major features were being changed too often to get the supposed benefits.

It looks significantly more mature now, but I'm still not sure about the buy- in on all their various products.

<comment><AUTHOR> etcd has had significant improvements in lifecycle management and stability in the last year. You can learn a bit more about the upcoming etcd v3.0 release here: [https://speakerdeck.com/philips/etcd-mission-critical-key- va...](https://speakerdeck.com/philips/etcd-mission-critical-key-value-store- coreos-fest-2016)

For the most part we are recommending folks use Kubernetes for new projects over fleet. Kubernetes "completed our sentence" a few months after we started fleet and has rapidly matured. The kubernetes v1.3 release bring a number of new features as well: [https://coreos.com/blog/kubernetes-v1.3-preview.html](https://coreos.com/blog/kubernetes-v1.3-preview.html)

And on your btrfs question we moved off of btrfs onto ext4 + overlayfs as soon as overlayfs became a viable option in late 2014. You can read more about that here: [http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.coreos.devel/1952](http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.coreos.devel/1952)

As for users and maturity some of the videos from Tectonic Summit Day #1 from this blog post might be useful: [https://tectonic.com/blog/tectonic-summit- wrap-up.html](https://tectonic.com/blog/tectonic-summit-wrap-up.html)

Happy to answer any other questions on IRC or email: [https://coreos.com/community](https://coreos.com/community)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a tutorial to run Prometheus on pure CoreOS cluster?

<comment><USER4> The container guide provided by Prometheus is a good start: [https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/install/](https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/install/)

Pre-build containers are hosted on Quay.io: [https://quay.io/repository/prometheus/prometheus](https://quay.io/repository/prometheus/prometheus)</comment></comment>


In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic. - <AUTHOR> http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/977179815/in-praise-of-quitting-your-job

<comment><USER2> I just came out of a 2.5 year stint. Before that I went into consulting because I couldn't hold down a job for even a year. I figured it was boredom and thought the solution was to simply expose myself to a constant stream of new problems. Turns out it was simply _ownership_ that was the problem. I never felt in control.

By _ownership_ I mean ownership of my domain (area of involvement, etc) in the project. I don't mean ownership as in control and possession. The kind of ownership that kept me around at my last gig was the kind that let me make suggestions, criticisms, and decisions that were taken seriously. I had responsibility to back up every claim I made and that responsibility kept me highly motivated to produce software I could. It made the project feel more collaborative and kept me involved as a part of its development.

What kills that motivation is a loss of that ownership. In the final months of my last gig we brought on someone who took _total_ ownership of the project practically from design to implementation. It no longer felt collaborative. I felt like a monkey in a room of monkeys trying to type out Shakespeare; as if I could replace myself with a junior programmer at half my salary and things would still run smoothly. That's not a good feeling and such loss of ownership (or lack of it in the first place) is completely demoralizing.

I get the sense that the OP was referring to this kind of ownership. The kind that makes you feel involved and responsible.

But does that mean you should quit your job? I don't think so. Some jobs will have ups and downs. I didn't leave my job when they brought the new guy on. I was going to stick it out... just circumstance brought my tenure there shorter than anticipated. I think you can stick it out in this way as well and avoid "depression." I take pride in my work and it does affect me very personally.. but you have to keep things in perspective. Especially when you have other people relying on you to keep your job.

</comment><comment><USER3> To an extent this is a reasonable way to put it, but in all honesty, there's much more to software engineers than whether their programming muse is satisfied or not.

For example, I'm happy whenever I can make users happy. Even if I'm just writing a data loader script, if the script is fast, gets the users' data loaded correctly, I'm happy and fulfilled.

Put in a situation, where I'm unable to make users happy, maybe through clashing with company objectives like making money on a badly written contract, or bad design, I'm miserable.

Deprived of feedback from users, or stuck writing designs, I'm miserable.

If you are always miserable after 9 months, you need to have a deep think about what sort of jobs you are applying for, or whether pursuing the work at all is worth it. There are decent companies out there, that are customer focussed, and that use new technologies and development methods that stress individual creativity. Go find them.

</comment><comment><USER4> This piece struck me as very insightful. Not as advice per se, but as a window into the motivations of Creators. This part in particular: "Creation is a deeply personal and rewarding activity, which means that your Work should also be deeply personal and rewarding."

I think if you talk to founders who have left companies several years out from the company's inception, the loss of that sense of engagement and "ownership" in the creative sense is a major driver of departures. Some may stay for the financial aspects of "ownership", but once things devolve into board meetings and committees, the _spark_ is gone.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been with the same company almost 5 years now. While I occasionally have times that I'm incredibly frustrated, I can deal with that because I know that I work daily to make things better. (A co-worker would laugh at this because he thinks we don't do enough better-making. He's leaving.) I've seen this company's software turn from 'oh ---- that's crazy' to 'man, this sucks' and it's continuing to get better.

While I'm making it better, I'm also adding features and pleasing the users of the software. And despite the state of the code, it ALL works. That's very important.

For me, the key to job happiness is simply to be making things better. For guys like at this article (and my co-worker), it apparently means having everything be perfect from the start. I don't know how people can live like that, since they will always be disappointed.

<comment><USER6> Things don't have to be perfect from the start, they have to be in such a way that you are free to make things better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been in consulting for 2 years, and switching projects is like leaving a job and starting a new one. I've gone through exactly what was described, and by 9 months it was outright defeat.

I just quit that gig for a startup and couldn't be more happier with the move. This felt like reading what's deep within my subconscious.

<comment><USER8> This article struck a real chord with me too. I stayed far, far too long at my last job and it's only after finally getting bored enough to quit that I've realized how corrosive it's been to my motivation for _everything_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to change things for the better._

I found this succinct expression to be the most valuable (perhaps even the tldr summary).

A percentage of equity, as laughably small as it tends to be for non-founders, might not even serve as an alignment of financial interests.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't this person just a consultant?

There is nothing wrong with just being a sprinter, but isn't there something to be said for being able to run the marathon?

If the spark is gone after only a few months at a company, seemingly no matter what the company, maybe the problem is within and not with the companies that you're working with?

<comment><USER11> Or maybe there is no 'problem' at all. Different people work in different ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This speaks really strongly to me. This is why I stopped working in the field too. It's not impossible to find an awesome job, but it's also not easy. It's maybe as difficult to find a good job as it is to find a good programmer.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can sympathize. I've been at plenty of jobs where my ideas were uniformly ignored--not rejected, or outvoted: ignored. That's deflating. It makes work not just menial but downright demoralizing. And it causes the employee to stop thinking and stop trying, which is bad for everyone.

Now I wanna go watch Office Space.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the "Self-Determination Theory" that Cal Newport emphasizes:

"To be happy, your work must fulfill three universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness."

\-- [http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the- sci...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the-science-of- loving-what-you-do/)

</comment><comment><USER15> What a load of crap! This is some strange entitled rationalization of his friend's fear of commitment. And it's an attempt to legitimize the author's own fear of commitment.

> I've worked for a handful of companies over the course of the last 6 years. > I started all of them with a fair amount of enthusiasm, but within 5 months > of each I dipped into a depression. By 7 months the work was having a > tangible effect on my mood and outlook, and by nine months, I've quit almost > every job I've held.

Does the author _really_ think that the next job will hold something different? That somehow there's some magical workplace around the corner where reality never sets in and the inevitable drudgery of "work", creative or not, can be put off forever. Pure fantasy.

"Ownership" is missing the point. If you believe you must define your creation or contribution in terms of some neatly measured production (like code or design) you are missing the point of your own existence. If you think that there's some fixed body of work you have control and ownership over -- that you must defend and slave over -- you are missing the point.

Every second you exist at your job (and everywhere else for that matter) is an opportunity to create the world as you see it. Every second is an opportunity to be creative, to express the person that you are in see that borne out in your work and with your coworkers.

The depression and negative outlook the author points to is a failure to _be_. It's a shrinking away reality -- the reality of the opportunity and commitment that he faces each day he comes to work. He does himself and everyone around him a great disservice by shrinking and turning away like this instead of waking up to what is in front of him.

I've been at my job for 8 years and there were many times I wanted to storm out in disgust or just not show up in the morning. But then I realized that every job will be like this if I do quit, that I was bringing my own fear of being or committing with me wherever I go and _finding_ perfect opportunities to manifest it.

I stood up and took responsibility for these fears and the negativity and said "enough". I still occasionally find myself doing work that doesn't "inspire" my "muse"... but it really is only a matter of perspective. My muse can be inspired by change in attitude, but a positive conversation with a coworker, by seeing change manifest around me as it manifests _in_ me.

I'm no longer defeated by this negativity. I no longer seem my work neatly delineated -- I no longer need to defend anything or pour enormous effort into some limited creative endeavor. The opportunities in front of me are always limitless. Every second is created anew.

</comment><comment><USER16> _Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to change things for the better._

In any company it is difficult to find ownership and recognition at the lowest levels of the corporate hierarchy. If you only work for the company for less than a year, as the author proudly admits to, then you should not expect to be given substantial influence in the company.

Influence and recognition must be earned, and that takes time and hard work. The bigger and more established the company, the more time this will take. If you're impatient, then you're going to have to work at a startup or start your own company.

From my experience, the trick is to get engaged and routinely demonstrate that you care. If you begrudgingly implement or design every request that comes your way from the confines of your cubicle, of course you will burn out. If instead you ask your boss about the customer's needs or take the initiative to track down and talk to the sales person in charge of the account for some additional detail, you've effectively taken a small piece of ownership and showed some initiative. This rarely goes unnoticed, and definitely factors into decisions involved influence, ownership, and recognition in the future.

<comment><USER11> If you only work for the company for less than a year, as the author proudly admits to, then you should not expect to be given substantial influence in the company.

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

Explain VPs and midlevel execs that come in and are given substantial influence on day 1. They've not worked at the company, yet are given staff, budgets, division and respoonsibility, sometimes (often?) before it's known if a) they're really competent and b) a good corporate fit.

Seeing that sort of stuff happen can lead people like the OP to despair even more of being able to make any substantive impact.

</comment><comment><USER17> One can probably have a good discussion whether one can force the muse to speak to oneself (see Steven Pressfield - The War of Art). Still, the author has quit several companies after working for them for just 6-12 months at best and still sees the companies as being the problem, not himself or his attitude. To each his own, but it makes you wonder if his advice is valid and not an excuse.

<comment><USER18> _Depression_ isn't _attitude_

<comment><USER19> And "unhappy at work" isn't the same as "diagnosed as depressed by a professional". I have a feeling that the author wasn't using the word in the clinical sense.

<comment><USER18> Depressing response.

It is revealing how many people vote up this protestant work ethic judgmentalism masquerading as concern for correct professional diagnosis. What, his emotional concerns are not legitimate to you for some reason? How about you expound on that a bit, maybe reveal a bit more about your delightful world view.

Why even dilly-dally with that...why don't you just tell him to grow up and enjoy his cubicle already like all the rest of the poor schmucks in cubes.

Hell, maybe you could send a message to working stiffs everywhere that they should get a professional diagnosis before they _leave_ a our soul killing corporate work culture, feel better, then _encourage others to do the same_. (OMG, how would the captains of industry stay all captainy with so much free thinking!? ;)

I hate how people randomly heap shit on the plight of people. Crass. Mean- spirited. Farcical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The longest was 12 months at [Redacted], and that was only because I wanted my options to vest. I handed them my resignation on my 366th day."

This made me livid. I don't hire engineers with the intention of firing them the day before they vest, why would it be ethical to wait until the day after your cliff to quit?

[EDIT] Let me clarify. This individual seems to have decided months before that they would quit the day after their vesting cliff. Everyone here thinks that's ethical and appropriate?

I'm not questioning whether it's legal, of course it's legal. It's just not very honorable. A vesting cliff exists so that both parties -- employer and employee -- can have a chance to get to know each other before stock is granted and make sure that they're making the right decision.

<comment><USER21> Cliff vesting is _deferred compensation_. Your concern about an ethical paradox is invalid.

<comment><USER22> It's not. It's _contingent compensation_. If it was merely deferred compensation, and you quit early, the company would owe the pro rata amount that you worked (at the 1 year mark).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ownership is grand, but it comes with a price: fear.

<comment><USER24> That is not so bad. Without fear, there would be no feeling like adventurous, which is a kind of feeling when you DO overcome fear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Three elements of true motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose" Daniel Pink

</comment><comment><USER26> Its nice to be able to decide between art, ownership and equity. As my old minister used to say "We can have all the morals that we can afford".

</comment><comment><USER27> Yes.

_Your muse can only be treated as the secretary of a subcommittee for so long before she decides to pack up and look for employment elsewhere. If you aren't able to own the product and be creative, then you aren't able to do your work, and if you're not doing your work then you're negating a very real part of your personality, which is no good for anyone. No good for you and certainly no good for your employer._

That is why I quit my jobs… and consulting, period, in the end. I couldn't stand to watch people wreck my work. My heart couldn't get excited about such a compromise. And sure, I could have spent a decade learning how to really work a committee -- but to what end, exactly?

<comment><USER28> What do you do now?

<comment><USER29> So she doesn't have to stan herself out, I will. (<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stan>)

Lately... She's a Javascript/ front-end developer (co-creator of Twistori + everytimezone for example), business thought leader type (did i just say "thought leader?" Sorry.), and co-founder of the SaaS service <http://letsfreckle.com>. But none of those things would get much as much attention as they do if it weren't for the fact that she is an amazing user experience/ interface maker. These skills make the things she works on (from books to slides to web form interactions) really friendly and fun.

(I have no professional affiliation with her. But full disclosure: We are Twitter friends. #realtalk)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Workers Are Losing the War Against Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/why-workers-are-losing-the-war-against-machines/247278/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Yet another example of the "all labor is manufacturing" fallacy.

A future where machines displace most of what we currently think of as blue collar workers is a future where most of the things blue collar workers currently produce are much, much, cheaper than they are now. This author worries whether blue collar jobs will pay "subsistence" wages. They will, because the cost of subsistence [and indeed, the cost of a fairly satisfied life] will be lower.

As machines become better at manufacturing and hard labor, unskilled "work" will shift from physical to service industries. That's good! It's been happening for the past century. Unskilled physical labor is hard, especially as you get older and banged up.

A mechanized future is one where physical resources are plentiful. People will figure out a reason to trade them. Humanity will be fine.

<comment><USER3> _A future where machines displace most of what we currently think of as blue collar workers is a future where most of the things blue collar workers currently produce are much, much, cheaper than they are now. This author worries whether blue collar jobs will pay "subsistence" wages. They will, because the cost of subsistence [and indeed, the cost of a fairly satisfied life] will be lower._

This was the entire thesis of the neoliberal project. Over 30 years of implementation, it has never once come true for basic subsistence goods.

Rent is not cheaper. Health-care is not cheaper. Energy is not cheaper. Food is only slightly cheaper.

The primary good that has become massively cheaper is electronics.

<comment><USER4> >Health-care is not cheaper.

That's not a fair comparison. Modern healthcare is not cheaper, but healthcare equivalent to what was available a generation or 2 ago is.

>Food is only slightly cheaper.

Food has pretty steadily been declining as a fraction of disposable income. It would be declining even more dramatically if it weren't being offset by an increase in eating outside the home.

<comment><USER5> Well, yes, but that itself is an example of how the theory fails - it assumes that the bar for "subsistence" never moves.

By all measures we are _much_ better off than the average peasant in the Middle Ages, and their lifestyle is now incomprehensibly cheap. But that's not where the bar is at.

Ditto energy - the amount of energy a poor person can consume is astronomical compared to that of a poor person even 100 years ago - but that bar hasn't stayed still either. You don't take a horse-drawn buggy to work, and most people have an expectation of keeping warm in the winters without huddling around the stove.

I will agree on the food part - we have shown consistently that food cost, as a proportion of income, is at some of the lowest it's ever been, and a massive improvement over a century ago. This has been a clear win - but if you think about it, this is hardly a surprise. The bar for "eats well, not hungry" doesn't move very much over the decades.

<comment><USER6> Most of the housing and transport costs are due to the extreme inefficiency of working arrangements which telecommuting is disrupting.

<comment><USER7> Telecommuting requires management processes that facilitate it. Until they automate management telecommuting is not going to dominate, because the average manager doesn't perform well enough to manage remote workers effectively.

<comment><USER6> I don't think management is going to be automated per se, it is just going to continue to be a declining amount of employment, which it has been for a while, as communication gets more efficient. But also arguably the large firm is inefficient, as it is run on more dictatorial rather than market lines. Also outputs like code are creating a whole way of measuring output thats more useful than most office environments. Telecommuting in the form of outsourcing to low wage countries is efficient enough to work for many cases too. So these things might happen sooner than anyone expects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More analysis on Point #3 in this article was also covered by Paul Krugman (liberal economist columnist at the NY Times):

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/human-versus- phy...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/human-versus-physical- capital/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/technology- and-w...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/technology-and-wages- the-analytics-wonkish/)

Basically it's simple: as more wealth creation is driven by technology, the wealth shifts to whoever owns the technology or can operate it. Why is the payoff for founding a successful technology company so potentially lucrative? It's because you're basically both. If you think acqui-hires that pay something like $1 million per engineer is a lot, that's basically why.

In the US, we _should_ have two political parties mitigating this by figuring out the balance between helping low-skilled workers become high-skilled (e.g. education funding and reform) versus making sure those unemployed low-skilled workers don't get sick and starve to death on the street in the meantime (e.g. unemployment and health insurance). Instead we have two political parties arguing to the death about whether or not to raise taxes by 4.9%.

<comment><USER9> We already have a system that's supposed to help people become high skilled workers, public education. Instead of producing competent workers, it churns out compliant cogs.

<comment><USER10> It's designed to churn out compliant cogs, and through various forces has only become better at doing so. Modern western public education is based on the Prussian school system (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system>) which emphasizes compliance, uniformity, attendance, punctuality, busy work, etc. All of which are great for making functional factory workers, but that has become less and less relevant as the nature of the economy has changed due to technological disruption. More so, the increasing disempowerment of individuals and refusal to treat students as adults in training (see: closed campuses, zero tolerance policies, etc.) has merely exacerbated that impedance mismatch. Now we have high school graduates who can barely read or do algebra let alone use rules of logic to reason or communicate effectively on complex topics at a time when knowledge workers are in the greatest demand in all of human history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why on earth is this framed as a "war against machines"? That's just plain wrong. The machines serve people. If there's a war, it's between people and other people.

<comment><USER3> _If there's a war, it's between people and other people._

Because pointing out the existence of class war is politically incorrect. Most people would sooner admit to a race war than a struggle between the capitalist class and working class.

<comment><USER12> > pointing out the existence of class war is politically incorrect

Let me guess: You're not in the US. Because turning the issue into a battle of rich-versus-poor is _exactly_ what the Occupy Wall Street protests, the President's reelection rhetoric in the last election and the Democratic framing of the present "fiscal cliff" crisis are about.

On a tangential note, "fiscal cliff" is a brilliant term from a certain faction's marketing perspective -- once you describe the situation in that way, you've _already_ committed to embracing a particular conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whether or not a machine can replace me, I will still work. I enjoy work, I get great satisfaction from doing work and completing a project I set out to do. It may be an open-source project, it may be in my garden, but I will still work because I do it for me. I personally can't wait until I have a robot to do the heavy digging in the garden. I enjoy the planning part, and the smelling of the roses more than the digging part.

Also, as a small manufacturer I am forced to train the people I have to adapt to the new world order. The article implies that the uneducated worker is to be replaced with the educated worker. I can't just replace my staff with all new people. I would lose the tribal knowledge. I can't avoid automation that my competitors have; it would put me at a big disadvantage. In fact the biggest advantage I can get is to automate a process that we do manually. This is why mcmaster.com will send you a huge catalog (printed) for free. It is because the people that order from the catalog are price insensitive. I certainly am when I have a broken machine. My automatic sand blaster needed $1000 worth of bearings overnighted last month.

To make a big advantage in automation I need the help of the guy who has been doing it manually. So we work on bottlenecks in production one after the other. Every month we figure out what is slowing us down, or causing quality variations, or supplier problems and we try to come up with a way to improve things. The obvious first place to look for solutions is with the person suffering with the problem. The next obvious thing to do is to use some technology to make repetitive tasks easier. So my welder is now learning to use Arduino, and we are working on updating some old machinery with new automation. He might not do the coding, but he will certainly be the guy bolting the hardware together.

So I would say the workers are not at war with the machines. The workers are working with the machines.

</comment><comment> alok-g Alert: Newbie to economics here sharing some thoughts for feedback.

At time t -> infinity, the ideal state would not be humans not having jobs (machines taking over), but humans not "needing" jobs (machines doing everything we need to do today). This may however never be since natural resources are limited, and so the cost of goods (while reducing due to economically cheaper machines taking over) would never come to zero.

So then, as time progresses, the jobs for humans would end up being at the end of the production-possibility frontier [1] where their sole motive is to figure new things (entrepreneurship), while the machines take care of existing methods of producing.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production-possibility_frontier>

<comment><USER14> Natural resources are virtually unlimited, at least for the current size of the human race. We're only just scratching the surface of the resources available on Earth, and there's a whole solar system we have access to. The only issue is the technology required to transform these resources into something useful, and the "permission" to create and deploy such technology.

<comment><USER15> Not so.

The assumption of 'unlimited natural resources' is now at odds with modern economic theory.

By seeing natural resources as limitless and by extension free at source undervalues their net economic contribution.

Take the example of massive ocean trawlers that cast kilometer wide nets then bring back all the catch to sell at market. The trawler is not creating the value of the fish just facilitating an arbitrage for the cost of delivery.

Companies are now looking at ways they can put a financial value on the value of their natural resource inputs.

A failure in quantifying and pricing resources creates a mindset problem when resources turn out not to be limitless or indescuctuble.

The World Bank, in it's 2011 report 'The Changing Wealth of Nations', set the estimates for all the planets natural resources - its forests, rivers, wetlands, wild lands, farm and grazing lands, minerals, oil and coal, oceans, biodiversity of speciecs - at about $44 trillion dollars, with $29 trillion belonging to developing nations.

Ref: HBR Oct 2011, the sustainable economy

<comment><USER14> Those figures by "economists" are woefully, comically limited, they only consider natural resources as determined by current limits of politics and technology, but in fact the whole solar system is rich with natural resources, just waiting for people who actually have imagination (and liberty from the punks who listen to those economists) to begin to capture.

<comment><USER14> E.g., we can't even increase fish farming productivity without massive political interference:

[http://www.nature.com/news/transgenic-fish-wins-us- regulator...](http://www.nature.com/news/transgenic-fish-wins-us-regulatory- backing-1.12130)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very reminiscent of creative destruction from Joseph Schumpeter - the whaling industry was destroyed by the petroleum industry. The survivors are the ones who possess the skills that are in demand. As the demand shifts, skills need updating.

<comment><USER17> Why would new industries and job roles always spring up to replace ones which have become obsolete? I agree that historically this has happened but I see no reason that it should be a necessary consequence. We have to consider the possibility that a segment of the population will have no realistic options for producing marginal value.

<comment><USER18> Because the labor and resources freed up from automation and increased productivity allow us to pursue new things. There's always more to improve upon.

Why would this segment of the population not have realistic options for producing marginal value? Everyone is capable of learning new things.

<comment><USER17> Why would those new things necessarily be labor intensive? Lately most new profitable things require capital.

<comment><USER19> It should generally be presumed that when something has happened repeatedly and predictably in the past, it shall continue to do so.

<comment><USER17> Until it doesn't - how many draft horses do you see working now? Besides which, we've got over fifty years of history telling us that wealth concentration is happening faster and faster. If just that trend alone continues then within our lifetime most people would not be earning enough to sustain themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A couple of comments:

 _> People with little economics training intuitively grasp this point. They understand that some human workers may lose out in the race against the machine. Ironically, the best-educated economists are often the most resistant to this idea, as the standard models of economic growth implicitly assume that economic growth benefits all residents of a country._

No important model of economic growth assumes that growth or technological progress benefits everyone. What _is_ broadly assumed (and there's a lot of empirical evidence behind it) is that innovation is _the_ prime driver of economic growth, particularly in advanced capitalist economies.

Economic growth means that society is gaining wealth in aggregate. And so long as the pie is growing, it is always possible, in principle, to allocate the gains in a Pareto-efficient manner (that is, in a manner in which _everybody_ gains) through the political process. Therefore many economists consider the "distributional" question, concern about who gets what, to be of secondary importance to their field. They see their job as figuring out how to maximize the size of the pie and leave it to others to figure out how to divvy it up. (Economists do of course have a lot to say about how various ways of distributing the gains from growth affect the prospects for future growth.)

 _> Shortly after the Luddites began smashing the machinery that they thought threatened their jobs, the economist David Ricardo, who initially thought that advances in technology would benefit all, developed an abstract model that showed the possibility of technological unemployment._

What the author is eliding here is Ricardo's development of the idea of comparative advantage [0], one of the truly remarkable ideas in economics. Comparative advantage is basically the idea that even if one country (or firm, or group of people, or single person, or whatever economic unit you want to think about) is better at producing _every_ conceivable good or service, that country (firm/group/person/etc) will still gain from specializing in producing the good or service it (they/he/she/etc) is relatively best at producing, then trading with others—who will also gain by the interaction.

This insight does not mean that everyone will always gain from freer trade, or from innovation (which can be thought of as essentially similar in this regard to a relaxation of trade barriers with a country that's particularly adept at producing one good or another). But it does suggest that there is a _net gain_ to be had from these developments. And, again, economists are primarily concerned with growing the pie.

 _> At least since the followers of Ned Ludd smashed mechanized looms in 1811, workers have worried about automation destroying jobs. Economists have reassured them that new jobs would be created even as old ones were eliminated. For over 200 years, the economists were right._

And that, really, is where I would leave things. There is very little to suggest that technological progress is about to take on a fundamentally different character, or entail much different results, than it has had, and has done, throughout the course of human history. When the singularity arrives, let's have this conversation again.

0\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage>

<comment><USER19> _> There was always a wage at which all these horses could have remained employed. But that wage was so low that it did not pay for their feed._

The people of 1800 had poor reading skills, the people of 2000 are much better at reading; meanwhile the horses have not improved their literacy. Horses are not people. To suggest that low-skill workers are hopeless and cannot improve themselves is paternalistic and insulting.

<comment><USER21> Secondary school quality directly varies to the income of the school district. Secondary school is "free" and compulsory. Post-secondary school rates have massively skyrocketed. One needs loans, scholarships, and many other financial aids. If you can afford to live for years on a minimal income (working unskilled jobs) while going to school, you have a chance to graduate. Employers won't hire unless you have a degree.

When education is out of reach for many of us, yes, hopelessness does very well come into play.

<comment><USER10> Don't make the easy mistake of assuming that school spending is correlated with educational outcomes, there is plenty of evidence that that's not the case. I would suspect that the biggest reasons why educational outcomes tend to be correlated with the income of the school district have to do with culture, parental involvement, and educational levels of the parents. If you grow up in a house of educated folks you are more likely to value education and put effort into it, and you are more likely to be held to a higher standard of achievement in education, regardless of the quality of the education you get.

<comment><USER22> What are "cheap schools" today are outrageously expensive by the standards when I was young.

The issue here is not whether a second or third tier school can give a decent education, it is whether poor families see school as an option at all. When you combine skyrocketing costs with growing numbers of horror stories of people who are financially destroyed, and cannot even (as when I was young) declare bankruptcy, more and more are going to make the economic decision that they cannot afford higher education.

I am not sure that they are wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This sentence grabbed my attention, but I'm having trouble getting a clear understanding: "While efficient finance is essential to a modern economy, it appears that a significant share of returns to large human and technological investments in the past decade, such as those in sophisticated computerized program trading, were from rent redistribution rather than genuine wealth creation." In particular, modern finance as rent redistribution. The wikipedia entry on 'economic rent' is helpful, but doesn't get me all the way there. Help would be much appreciated!

<comment><USER24> If I buy logs and built rafts with them, which I then sell to people trying to cross a river, I'm creating wealth. If I own a strip of land up and down the river and charge people who want to cross it in their rafts, I'm extracting rents. If I patent the concept of raft building and require anyone building their own rafts to pay me, I'm extracting rents.

What that quotation means is that all the finance MBAs and Wall Street quants of the last decade aren't making the economic pie bigger, they're just ensuring that they get a bigger slice of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We need workers to transition to becoming owners or capitalists. Technology now allows us to control the means of production much more cheaply than ever before. Example: self-publishing

It's time our educational system reflected that.

</comment><comment><USER26> Its funny, in my Oral History exams I got a Text and had 10 min to analyze it.

The Text could easly reprinted today, maybe switch out the word 'machine' with 'robot' once in a while.

This idea has been around since more then 100 years and it has shown again an again to not be true. I have nothing against bringing up the same stuff again but if you do that you have to improve your argument not just reprint popular essays from 100 years ago with modern language.

Tell me exactly what fundamental thing has changed with todays innovations that was not true for innovations in 1920 for example.

</comment><comment><USER27> My conspiracy theorist side tells me that you don't need another War World to "clean up" the world, because eventually, most will find themselves out of job due to the raise of machines. They will be protesting on the streets, but when you broke with steam pipe in the hand its hard to protest against heavily armed LEs.

</comment><comment><USER28> The reason why the "machines are winning" is most of the humans are held back by idiotic corporate structures and processes. Take HR for example; I've yet to see an HR department deliver real value that boosted performance.

</comment><comment><USER29> " The future of work consists of learning a living " - Marshall McLuhan

</comment><comment><USER14> The root problem is that instead of being able to appropriate resources from nature and produce what we need as individuals directly, we've been corralled into a setup where we have to get permission from government to appropriate and transform raw materials. This is a completely artificial man-made problem, due to various forms of fiat property, one important class being patents, another being government-granted permission for resource extraction (but this is not exhaustive).

It wasn't always so. Early man could claim and transform resources as he needed. Now we are required, on pain of death really (if we try to disobey we will be arrested, if we don't comply with the arrest we will be shot), to either plug into the existing economic structures -- or to starve to death.

<comment><USER30> > It wasn't always so. Early man could claim and transform resources as he > needed. Now we are required, on pain of death really (if we try to disobey > we will be arrested, if we don't comply with the arrest we will be shot), to > either plug into the existing ecoIt wasn't always so. Early man could claim > and transform resources as he needed. Now we are required, on pain of death > really (if we try to disobey we will be arrested, if we don't comply with > the arrest we will be shot), to either plug into the existing economic > structures -- or to starve to death.nomic structures -- or to starve to > death.

And this is in my opinion the number one argument for socialism. We have taken people the possibility to go into self providing mode (by claiming land and producing food and shelter) because WE as a society PROFIT from it.

If some people are not able to find a job in our current system, then we have the obligation to make sure that those people still have access to our basic services (food, shelter, healthcare).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Ironically, the best-educated economists are often the most resistant to > this idea, as the standard models of economic growth implicitly assume that > economic growth benefits all residents of a country.

Because economics is not a science, its a religion devoted to making sure that those who have money and power keep it and get more.

The idea that there is a set of high-skill jobs which are immune to technological unemployment is false. It will just take a little while longer for those jobs to be replaced by artificial intelligence.

The concept of superstars v. the rest is mainly just a weak argument attempting to cover for the tendency of monopolies to form in any economy. Technology just amplifies this fundamental characteristic of our 'economic' system.

Technology directly opposes our 'economic' system because technology is the application of science to solving problems (i.e. information and resource _sharing_) whereas economics is about using proprietary information and resources to your advantage.

<comment><USER32> Economics is not scientific enough, but your statement is purely ignorant and makes ti clear you've never cracked open an economics textbook.</comment></comment>


Man vs. Machine, a Jobless Recovery - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204468004577164710231081398.html

<comment><USER2> I ask this the other day: "Over the next 50 to 100 years will the Automation Revolution and the exponential increase in worker productivity force a new form of Socialist Capitalism across the globe? If not how will global economies and governments deal with these changes? Are we already seeing the shadows of the impacts to come on today's economic hiccups? I would be interested in seeing how the readers of this forum foresee the coming changes that are certain to take place over the next 100 years."

But no one wanted to talk about it. Hopefully this article gets people talking because I am really interested in how people envision the future.

<comment><USER2> When Google releases the fully automated car how long will it be before there is subscription serves to cars. With 95% of your cars life in sitting in the driveway it is a total waste. Car serves will spring up everywhere using the car 100% of the time bring down costs substantially for users and dropping the demand for cars in the US by 50%. This is just one area automation will change the US and it may only be 5 years away.</comment></comment>


"Reiser murdered his wife and we use his fs" ESR and Meredith P on Hacker Values - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/milo-yiannopoulos-meredith-patterson-and-eric-raymond-january-6-2016 <comment><USER2> Ugh</comment>


Ask HN: Get money as an individual until a company is created - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I have been working on a personal project for a long time. I would like to maybe create a startup with it in the future, but I currently don't have the money. I wanted to know, is it possible to create a website under my name, register my gmail account with an Individual account on Adsense, put advertising on my website and get paid under my name. And then maybe in 6 months, create a startup under the name of this project and create another business Adsense account ?
Its just that I would like to see if the startup can work at all before paying all the fees for incorporating it. Currently the server price is high enough for me.
EDIT: I'm working in the US
EDIT2: And if it is not possible, can I release the application without any income, and then open my startup after the website was running for a few months.
Thank you <comment><USER2> you need to say what country you are working in - Sole Trader would work in the UK</comment>


Create your own links collection on produktfang - <AUTHOR> http://produktfang.de/en/Ci0VpE

<comment><AUTHOR> Im the developer ...

you can create a private collection or an invite only collection and you can allow other users to enhance your collection. It is a great way to share collections of products, apps, gadgets, wish lists ...</comment>