Autonomous Ships - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-16/autonomous-ships-will-be-great <comment><USER2> I spent two years working on autonomous ships at NASA JPL, primary on developing deep learning algorithms for ship detection and classification to obey maritime traffic rules (COLREGS), avoid obstacles, help with decision making, etc.

Regarding piracy, autonomy would cut down on costs a lot. Based on my understanding, besides cutting down on life-support costs and having extra room for more cargo, the ships would also be able to eliminate the cost of the armed guards that many have kept on their ships since the rise of piracy. That's one of the main reasons why we don't hear about piracy anymore [0]. With no controls on the ship, pirates wouldn't be able to take control.

Note also that Rolls Royce is looking into drone ships (rather than full autonomy): [https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press- releases/yr-2016/pr-...](https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press- releases/yr-2016/pr-2016-03-22-rr-reveals-future-shore-control-centre.aspx)

[0] [http://www.marineinsight.com/marine-piracy-marine/18-anti- pi...](http://www.marineinsight.com/marine-piracy-marine/18-anti-piracy- weapons-for-ships-to-fight-pirates/)

<comment><USER3> What would stop heists on the high seas? For example, I could imagine someone breaking into a container with "valuable" goods (remember a lot of these pirates come from impoverished backgrounds, so being able to flip cargo still net a nice profit).

<comment><USER4> Possible, but unloading cargo would be more involved. Also, without access to electronic manifests, I am not sure there's any easy way to know what's in a container, not to mention many of them would be stacked in such a way as to inaccessible. All of which is a lot harder than ransoming a crew. I suppose it might be possible for pirates just to threaten to sink the ship.

<comment><USER5> One would simply disable propulsion and communications, and then haul the ship elsewhere for classification and sale of its cargo.

With no humans on board, then there is no incentive not to use deadly force for disabling critical subsystems.

<comment><USER6> equivalently, there's no real incentive to not use deadly force to clean the ships of pirates as a deterrence and take the write off on any damages.

I suspect with drone ships and the lack of crew liability, there will arise contract security companies with pre-positioned ex-seal teams in hotspots to deal with piracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Former Marine Engineer here, I know there's at least one other HN users that's an ME. You might be able to automate navigation, but never maintenance. Something small that doesn't get fixed underway could cause a lot more damage than whatever crew costs would have been saved.

Things break and leak all the time, even on new ships. Automatic valves get stuck and things get clogged. I'm an air traffic controller now, and my break is over, but I'll try to expand more later.

Edit: I have a few minutes. A lot of people are talking about pirates only boarding ships to hold the crews hostage, and not to steal cargo. How about this: a pirate demands a crypto currency payment within X number of hours, or they sink the ship. It's very easy to sink a ship once you're inside.

<comment><USER8> You could fly a helicopter out to any ship that isn't crossing the pacific or atlantic, but that would be $100,000-$300,000 per incident and it would very quickly not be worth it. There isn't much in-between for reducing crew since a couple people alone on a boat together will probably be homicidal in short order.

I'm curious, what breaks on a ship? I have no experience with anything over a few dozen feet. I imagine hydraulic systems could break and lead to Consequences, but I can't imagine there are many big systems that can be fixed at sea, even with a crane onboard. What kind of things get fixed at sea?

<comment><USER9> You might as well ask what _doesn 't_ break on a ship. Salt water corrosion, thermal stress, vibration, residue accumulation, and hull flexing due to large swells are really hard on equipment. Here's a good case study on the type of repairs that a merchant ship crew might have to perform in the middle of the ocean.

[http://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-engines- machinery...](http://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-engines- machinery/91635-breakdown-and-repair-of-ships-main-diesel-engine-at-sea/)

Ocean going merchant ships spend much of their time outside of practical helicopter range. And even when close to shore, winching a repair technician down to a disabled autonomous vessel that can't even keep its bow into the weather would be a dangerous affair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _By one consultant 's estimate, moreover, carrying sailors accounts for 44 percent of a ship's costs._

I find this hard to believe even if autonomous ships can be done without a bridge. The Emma Maersk has 15,000 TEU and a crew of 13 [http://www.emma- maersk.com/specification/](http://www.emma-maersk.com/specification/)

<comment><USER8> "Crew costs of $3,299 a day account for about 44 percent of total operating expenses for a large container ship, according to Moore Stephens LLP, an industry accountant and consultant."[1]

The Maersk triple E's have a crew of 13 and consume ~136 tonnes/day of bunker fuel[2] which costs currently ~$315/tonne[3], for a daily fuel cost of $42,840. So right off the bat that number is very suspect. Even for other ships like the CSCL Globe with a crew of 31, that's a 12x difference.

I don't understand how that estimate can possibly be true. Ship captains and engineers make ~80k annual and crewmen make under 40k. For a crew of 20-30, $3,299 would be basically bang on for a daily crew cost but there's no fucking way fuel and depreciation only cost $4,200 a day. Even a 4000 TEU ship (tiny) at 17 knots (snail) burns $15,000+ a day.[4]

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-25/rolls- roy...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-25/rolls-royce-drone- ships-challenge-375-billion-industry-freight)

[2] [http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/13-09-12-1.php?cid=7401](http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/13-09-12-1.php?cid=7401)

[3] [http://www.tsacarriers.org/calc_bunker.html](http://www.tsacarriers.org/calc_bunker.html)

[4] [https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_c...](https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_consumption_containerships.html)

<comment><USER11> While I agree with your analysis, one counter-argument I can think of: Is the ship always using that much fuel?

I know a lot of ships spend days waiting to enter the panama canal, or days in port. Crew is certainly paid for those days as well. What percentage of the time is the ship fully underway and using fuel?

That 44% figure might be more reasonable if you're only burning fuel 1/3 of the time.

<comment><USER8> I did think of that, and also that you may need other shifts on retainer, and the normal food/insurance/fees/overhead of employing people across borders. Still though, for the triple E the expected fuel cost is 30x the expected crew cost.

The stretches to explain that gap would be ludicrous eg 3 shifts, each costing the company 3x more than their actual salary, and the engine being turned off 70% of the time. Even still that requires you to disregard depreciation, which for the triple E is at _least_ $17,000 a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As far as my knowledge goes about the shipping industry: ships are already 90% automated (since they simply go straight forward for days/weeks). There is not much to do for a captain/officer whilst in the middle of an ocean.

AFAIK most of the humans on board of a vessel are there to perform maintenance (most of which can be done during transit).

Yes, we can automate the last 10% to make the ship sail itself, but we'd still need humans on board to perform maintenance.

<comment><USER13> Maybe fully autonomous ships should have maintenance performing robots then?

<comment><USER14> That is a way harder problem than automated sailing.

Also a way harder problem than just designing in longer service intervals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't get it. What will they do when an autonomous ship loses power or steering in the middle of the ocean outside of helicopter range? It can't just pull over to the side of the road and stop.

Ships require constant maintenance to not fall apart. That maintenance can't be automated with anything like current technology. If the crew doesn't do maintenance en route then it will have to be done at the dock, thus taking the ship out of service and costing more money.

<comment><USER15> Why's it need to pull over? It's in the middle of the ocean. Unless you're a spaceship it's hard to get any more out of the way.

Presumably you send out a repair crew by boat.

<comment><USER9> No that's not how it works. Disabled ships don't just sit there. The wind and currents eventually push them into rocks. Disabled ships also present a hazard to other vessels. Repair boats don't move fast enough to get there in time, especially in rough weather.

<comment><USER15> How does it work currently? So much redundancy that there's never an unfixable failure that would stop the ship?

<comment><USER9> Unfixable failures are very rare in critical systems. Usually the crew is able to catch incipient failures and take preventative action, or else repair the failure at least well enough to get close to a port. Ships engineers are good at jury rigging temporary solutions.

There are a few incidents every year where large merchant vessels lose power and drift onto rocks, or break apart and sink in a storm.

<comment><USER16> There are about ten major shipwrecks annually -- call it one per month:

[http://www.outsideonline.com/1922111/monsterwellen](http://www.outsideonline.com/1922111/monsterwellen)

I'd initially turned up that fact whilst considering the implications of nuclear propulsion for merchant shipping. I'm considering it not particularly attractive.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shippin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shipping_and_safety_the_nuclear_option/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that human error accounts for up to 96 percent of all marine casualties."

But if we somehow manage to account for 90% of all eventualities when programming, how are we going to be safer?

</comment><comment><USER18> Prior HN coverage: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315036)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm interested in taking a shot creating a SaaS business related to the freight forwarders / containers shipping logistic or similar.

Does anybody here works on that sector and is willing to share some of the troubles they perceive on the industry that can be solved with software / machine learning?

<comment><USER20> Look into flexport.com they already do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would love to work on this kind of software.

It's exactly the type of things I find interesting, it's a shame I didn't make different career choices when I was younger but it is what it is I guess.

<comment><USER22> What makes you think you can't work on this type of software?

<comment><USER21> I'm 37, I have few academic qualifications so to transition would require 4-5 years more education and then I'd be a 42-43 year old competing against guys coming straight out of university with a background in desktop and web application development.

Practicalities really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As guess this would qualify as great news for sea-faring pirates.

<comment><USER24> Pirates are after hostages, not cargo, generally. It's very hard to crack the cargo anyways - it's usually stored in a solid steel 20-to-40 foot shipping container with solid steel lashings bolting everything together. You'd need to be able to cut through a lot of steel, but then moving the actual cargo itself would require, well, a large vessel. Selling it would be a very involved process. All of this puts sea piracy of drone vessels well outside of the scope of a group of armed men in a motorboat.

Potentially you could also establish measures that make it hard for a human to get aboard the ship, such as no walkable spaces, or tall fences, now that you no longer need to accommodate human crew.

<comment><USER25> _It 's very hard to crack the cargo anyways - it's usually stored in a solid steel 20-to-40 foot shipping container with solid steel lashings bolting everything together._

The other plan would be go on board and reprogram the ship to go elsewhere, the nearest deserted coast say, maybe carry the ship's beacons a ways away in a different direction before dumping them in the sea.

I'm sure if you crash a whole container ship on the coast of Somalia, your confederates could manage to get money out of the contents.

Edit: Also I recall stories of pirates who hacked container companies to actually find where the valuable stuff was. And containers are steel but they aren't designed for any real security.

<comment><USER26> Ships are trackable by satellite. Photos, I mean; they show up on photos. Totally passive.

So if you have successfully hijacked a Pacific container ship full of automobiles bound for Los Angeles... where are you going to dock it? Who does the offloading? And where do you sell 5500 sedans at once that makes all this risk worthwhile?

I think that planting remotely controlled explosives and extorting payment against sinking the cargo is the way to go.

<comment><USER16> It is suprisingly easy to lose track of things in the ocean. Even big things. Ships. Aircraft.

If the transponders are headed to X whilst the ship is headed to Y, it may take you a while before you realise that the ship isn't _also_ headed to X. At which point you now have the problem of determinging which of those fuzzy, cloud-obscured smudges is your ship, and which is someone else's.

Radar can pick up ships, but it also detects, say, rogue shipping containers, of which there are a suprisingly large number.

Existing tracking systems rely on AIS transponders:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-28372461](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28372461)

Yes, Google can track ships at sea. But it's _also_ relying on AIS, rather than imagery:

[http://breakingdefense.com/2012/05/google-satellites-can- tra...](http://breakingdefense.com/2012/05/google-satellites-can-track-every- ship-at-sea-including-us-na/)

LA-bound cars might be hard. A shipment bound for the Philippines, or India, or elswhere along the Indian or South China seas, quite possibly much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lets call the sailors mechanics and the ships frail tech in harsh environment. Suddenly not a good idea.</comment>


How to write a PhD thesis your committee will not approve - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextscientist.com/write-a-phd-thesis/ <comment><USER2> The best way to write a PhD thesis is to not write one.

Instead, spend your time writing articles and getting them into journals. You should be able to produce roughly one published article a year [0]. When you have 3-4 published or near published articles, take them and put them together into a dissertation.

Most universities will allow this and it's the approach to developing a dissertation that minimizes your risk (you don't bet everything on one experiment, you minimize the risk of last minute critiques and requests for changes, etc...).

[0] This might seem intimidating when you start out, but if you want a promising future in academia you will eventually need to be producing 5, 10 or more articles a year (with admittedly a lot of collaboration and assistance from other). Setting a strict goal of one article a year as a grad student should be obtainable in most fields and get you on the right track. It will also force you to be disciplined and to produce. When of the biggest risk for grad students is trying to be too perfect or too "big" in their work.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this, but I also feel torn by it. A PhD is one of the few opportunities in academia to do true, unconstrained, open ended research. With no hard deadline, no constant "publish or perish" pressure, students can take a bit more risk and look a bit further over the event horizon than other researchers who have to make every bit of research count towards a publication.

Students don't realise it because they are so focused on getting through, but this opportunity doesn't come again. You are suggesting they should jump straight on to the slavish publication treadmill that academics already spend their lives on. In a pragmatic sense it's good advice, but it's also failing to make the most of the opportunity presented by a PhD.

Maybe I'm just idealistic.

<comment><USER4> All of the PhD students I know are constantly under "publish or perish" pressure, _in addition_ to the open-ended research work--which usually is only as open as their advisor's pedigree and experience will allow.

Industry seems to be much easier to get crazy ideas done in.

<comment><USER5> And this is why academics are busy stomping out 3% speedups in arcane bullshit nobody cares about while startups and BigCorps are getting actual research done and pushing computing in new, exciting directions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't a bad list, but it's hard to over-emphasize the amount of pushing that supervisors and committee members typically need to clarify their beliefs about what is an acceptable dissertation. It's not too strong to say that most academics will flat-out lie to students about what they need do. Although this "lying" is frequently the result of inattention of misunderstanding its effects are indistinguishable from malice.

So don't be shy about getting very concrete and specific with your committee, including the kind of analysis you want to do, the theoretical framework you want to apply, etc. This is all easier in the sciences--humanities PhD programs are basically abuse factories ([http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1588)--but](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1588\)--but) even in the sciences it is all too common to see students get misled by their supervisor and/or committee, who give guidance in one direction one month and a completely different direction the next.

One further piece of advice with regard to a clear thesis question: I've often found it useful to ask students "What's the title of your dissertation?" This just a more concrete way of asking about their thesis question, but it's much harder to fool yourself about. "Well, I"m investigating blah blah blah..." may look like an answer to the question "What's your thesis question?" but it frequently can't be reduced to "Experimental Investigation of Blah Using Blah Models and Blah Theories".

Finally, it isn't just your own perfectionism you have to watch out for. My iron rule for when a dissertation is finished is: the very first time your advisor tells you to change A to B in draft N, and then tells you to change B back to A in draft M > N, you are done. Your resistance to making further changes should go up factorially at that point, because your advisor has stopped paying attention or has become obsessed with minutia, and if given a free rein will continue to fiddle around indefinitely. I've seen students waste a year on this kind of nonsense, when they had a perfectly acceptable dissertation to begin with.

<comment><USER7> One thing that served me incredibly well (finished from BS to Ph.D. in 4.5 years) was to very early on write a proposal that clearly stated exactly what question I would work on, and stating clearly what the approach and work product would be.

This all but eliminated feature creep, and I could then go back and say "you agreed that investigating this was sufficient." Then it was just a matter of doing what I said I would do, and be done.

It helped focus my attention, because anything that didn't address the thing in my proposal was more obviously tangential. It focused my entire course of research and kept me from spending too much time on side projects. But most importantly, it established in writing exactly what question I was going to answer and roughly how.

I didn't say "I'm going to prove that <foo> does <bar>." I said "I'm going to test to see if <foo> does <bar>." If I do the tests, and show the relationship between <foo> and <bar> I've done science. The goal is to create an experimental plan that tests a theory, not to build the best whatever possible. The job of a Ph.D. student is to demonstrate that they can carry out research, not to build the best widget. If you can, great, but that's not what a Ph.D. means.

I saw endless examples of people who waited until they had better data to put together a proposal. The problem with this approach is that it raises the bar by removing risk from the project. If you spend five years demonstrating the <foo> results in <bar> then your adviser will ask for you to spend another two years doing an actual project extending that result. If you clearly elucidate early on that it's not clear that <foo> results in <bar> then simply seeing if that's the case or not is often sufficient.

Formal proposals are like a contract between yourself and your committee establishing the scope of project that is sufficient to graduate. Doing this as early as possible can only help you, and in my experience any work prior to establishing the scope merely results in a larger scope later.

<comment><USER8> A formal proposal was required for me to enter the PhD program.

For better worse, my proposed project failed, and I was extremely lucky that a Plan B emerged at the right moment.

<comment><USER7> Not to assume, but if it's possible for the project to fail, you need to define it differently. Unless you mean it ran out of funding, or a collaborator left or something. "I will use these techniques to test <foo> to see what the impact is on <bar>." I suppose you might find it impossible to do the measurement? Although I guess that's analogous to running out of funding.

<comment><USER8> That's fair. My project was a case where I had to build apparatus A to produce B in order to measure C. After spending a fair amount of time getting A working, I was able to observe B, barely above the noise, but could not sustain it at a level needed to even consider trying to measure C.

It was an ambitious experiment, i.e., it would have earned me genuine recognition within my specialty. I admit a high likelihood that the project was over my head.

Oddly enough a fellow student dreamed up a project for me that used much of my existing equipment and my equipment hacking skills. It produced one minor publication, but opened up a new experimental technique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you can get past the broken modal dialog (I had to use Reader view in Safari), and the inane image macros, and the listicle-style writing, this post is crammed with _excellent_ advice for science PhD candidates in their 3rd year or beyond (much of it is applicable to postdocs as well).

Discusses how to define a clear scientific question and maintain focus on it in the face of (sometimes subtle) forces that make both of these things difficult.

<comment><USER10> I didn't see any of that. Why? Because I never allowed Javascript from that site. The content is there; just don't let their scripts bugger it up.

<comment><USER11> Disabling Javascript removed the image macros and changed the writing style? Wow!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 2\. Is bullshit. Stapler thesis are totally acceptable. In fact many people think they are better than a traditional thesis since they are based on work that is of enough quality to already have been published in other venues.

<comment><USER13> Only in _some_ places.

<comment><USER12> Places that are self aware enough to realise that no one really cares about your thesis anymore. It's all about your publication list.

<comment><USER14> True, but your thesis is your best opportunity to express yourself in long form writing, a chance you might not ever get again unless you decide to write a book. You should at least care about your thesis.

<comment><USER15> No-one will read it. If you want to do it as a personal exercise in self expression that's fine, but it's a mistake to view it as a career goal. Any time you spend in grad school writing something other than a draft paper is (in purely career terms) time wasted.

(Probably no-one will read your papers either, but you can at least list them on your CV.)

<comment><USER14> Writing is often part of the journey, not the destination. But you should always write to with the hope of being read.

Building a career in academia is vacuous, it's not the only thing that can be done with a phd.

<comment><USER15> It's a really bad idea to do a PhD if you don't want a career in academia. If you have a different goal there will always be a better way to spend five years.

<comment><USER14> 8 years actually. One could work in an industrial research lab; I like it. There are plenty of dev jobs that work well for PhDs (look at Google).

<comment><USER15> In a few fields. In my field there is no career option other than academia, and that is very much the rule rather than the exception as far as PhDs go. To encourage people who are ambivalent about an academic career to do a PhD is terrible terrible life advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This would be a lot easier to take seriously without the idiotic image macros.

</comment><comment><USER8> Something nobody mentions is the idea of meeting with your committee on a regular basis during your dissertation research. In theory, this is supposed to be happening, and the committee should be keeping an eye on your progress as a sort of check and balance. But because it doesn't occur regularly, it falls on the student's shoulders to call such a meeting, and they might be too timid to do it, especially if they are having problems.

Instead, the first time your committee knows that you exist is when you plop your dissertation on their desk a few weeks before your defense. And they say, "what the hell is this?"

Perhaps if it were "forced" to occur regularly, it would be harder for students to spiral into the black hole. I think that the committee should actually be serving in a supervisory role.

<comment><USER17> It probably depends on the country, but I'm from France and the member of the committee were known when I was almost done with the writing of my dissertation. I don't see how they were supposed to meet with during the process then.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure it does depend on the country, discipline and maybe even the specific university. I studied physics at a second tier research university in the US. After finishing my coursework, I had to pass a comprehensive exam, and present my thesis proposal to a committee. Generally speaking, your proposal committee became your defense committee, and they were supposed to keep an eye on your progress, but usually didn't.

In addition, the process evolved to make it extremely difficult to flunk your thesis defense. First of all, your advisor had to sign a form saying that he believed the thesis to be defensible. Then the committee had to sign the same form before a defense could be scheduled. The defense was expected to be practically a formality. For these reasons, a student flunking their defense would actually reflect extremely poorly on the advisor. Now the committee members might make it hot for the student, for instance demanding some additional work or analysis before allowing the defense to proceed.

In some disciplines, it may have served as a final check to make sure the student had actually done the work themselves. There were stories floating around of students who faked their thesis and were not caught until the defense stage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm already getting dragged in atleast one of these directions and I'm less than 2 months into my PhD. As mine is partially CASE studentship sponsored (industry partner provides additional funding). I have the company requesting me attend meetings a few hours down the country and requesting I complete small jobs beneficial to the company, all barely related to my research. This travelling tends to lose me a couple of days alone and I can see it easily becoming worse if I don't get a handle on it soon.

<comment><USER19> I'm a CASE student, but in my case the extra work has largely been put upon me by my supervisor, and really you have to start saying NO. Be very wary of becoming a dependency for a side project. This is particularly dangerous if you're good at something that nobody else in your group can do.

I've lost around 6 months to these kind of shenanigans and ultimately my supervisor agreed that it could be part of my thesis so that it wasn't wasted time. Took a long time to get that acknowledgement though.

Ultimately a CASE studentship should give you an idea of what it's like to work in industry. This almost certainly means you'll do some non-PhD work, but if you feel that it's becoming a big distraction then you should speak out. It really depends on your supervisor and the company you work for. By contract you are obliged to spend 9 months there over the course your PhD (at least with mine). I tend to go over when I need to. I've helped out on things that are both directly PhD related, kinda-PhD related and stuff that isn't at all PhD related.

Talk to your supervisor first and let him/her know what's going on - at 2 months in they have better negotiating power and could be more subtle (e.g. "I notice X has been spending a lot of time away from the lab, is this work related to his PhD?"). Be honest with the company, tell them that you feel that it's a big commitment and you're struggling to keep up with your PhD work. They're not going to chastise you - if they do then you know you don't want to work for them in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am shocked at how all the focus in the article and in this thread are about getting the degree with little regards for doing good science.

Pushing yourself to publish every year creates noise in the scientific literature and often leads to data cherry picking and massaging which is not just "questionable" as the article claims but completely invalidates everything a researcher does and makes him or her a fraud. The fact that it is tolerated makes it really hard to trust the research coming out of universities nowadays.

<comment><USER7> Lots of good science is never published because they get a null or negative result from a utility perspective. That's just part of the scientific method. And the job of a PhD student is to get their PhD, which requires them to demonstrate a good understanding of how to do science, but shouldn't require them to publish in a top-tier journal or make a seminal discovery. That's for your postdoc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> See Olin Shiver's advice here: [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/diss- advice.html](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/diss-advice.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The premise is, honestly, not very good. Like with a movie, there are infinitely many ways to do it wrong. Listing them is futile. Better to cut down to what you should do (this would be a much smaller article).

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't imagine doing this for 8 years, even though I love science, and I'm a published scientist. Even conservatively it would cost me 1.5-2 million dollars of opportunity cost to do that.

If you're doing this for science, then don't complain. If you want a career, there are better options than slaving for 8 years, 80 hours a week.

</comment><comment><USER24> The phd needs to be extinct. I have one and lined up a tenure track job at a premier university and even I know the whole enterprise is doomed. Looking for other opportunities STAT.

<comment><USER9> What do you propose as possible alternate models for training scientists (honest question)?

<comment><USER25> I think publishing multiple good articles should be encouraged over a traditional PhD thesis. It's obviously possible to get a PhD from publishing articles these days but at least here (Germany) it's the exception, not the rule.

I wouldn't mind removing the PhD thesis all together and relying on articles instead. It's more agile to borrow from software engineering. Article, feedback, improve on your works beats working on a monograph as a general setup in my opinion.

It's not as rosy as this though, the journal/conference industry is pretty broken but in an ideal world with excellently peer reviewed open access everywhere breaking your research into smaller chunks than a PhD is better imho.

It should also be noted that even if you go the traditional PhD thesis route you'll usually publish articles as well and most good PhD programs will make sure you communicate your PhD work regularly. But I think there's too many cases of scientists basically locking themselves away to write the thesis and only turning in the final product, mostly talking to their advisor.

<comment><USER26> The Cathedral and the Bazaar strikes again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GoDaddy Acquires Uniregistry - <AUTHOR> https://uniregistry.com/blog/post/better-together <comment><USER2> I recently saw an article ( [https://hostingchecker.com/research/the-most- crowded-ipv4-ad...](https://hostingchecker.com/research/the-most-crowded- ipv4-addresses-on-the-internet/) ) where Uni was mentioned and it had more than 1,370k domains pointing to the IP. Wondering what happend to those? I guess they are clients domains, but do they stay with Uni ot they go to GoDaddy. Unclear from the pressrelease.

<comment><USER3> Speaking for some of those domains, we start finding a new place to put our portfolio.</comment></comment>


Apps sending users' data to Facebook without their consent - <AUTHOR> https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/apps-sending-users-data-to-facebook-without-their-consent-1.3744617 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788658)

</comment><comment><USER3> According to the 35c3 talk[0] by the authors, both SkyScanner and The Weather Channel updated their apps to stop the tracking after the authors told them it was happening.

[0] [https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...](https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_android/)

</comment><comment><USER4> When do we expect the first GDPR challenges to land on Facebook?

The law was clearly designed to deal with them. They continue to violate its principles. GDPR delivered tremendous collateral damage to raise these gates. But where is the pay-off? Is there preliminary footwork deploying? Or is Europe distracted by Italy _et al_?

<comment><USER5> Facebook tries to offload the responsibility to developers. This is shady at best and I hope the law catch up.

But there is also the problem of developers that just don't care. Or, developers that think they care but can't even be bothered to research what a library they include in an application actually does. This is is something that the death of facebook will not solve.

GDPR has already been paid off, every day for every user both in the online and offline world is a victory, and examples of it was shown in the talk as well. How GDPR pushed developers to discover this issue and demand solutions for their own apps. How facebook improved the ability for developers to be privacy conscious etc. (hardly by choice, but even they didn't think they could get away with less)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple needs to ban these SDKs from being included in apps. No one reads the privacy policies and they leak data to another party that the user doesn't have a relationship with.

Provide first party services, intermediate between apps and ad networks and/or white list a handful of companies to provide these services that are audited and have separate contractual relationships with Apple.

I think a good idea would be to stipulate to Facebook, Google, and every purveyor of "analytics" SDKs that they need to serve iOS app developers and their users from EU subsidiaries that are subject to GDPR.

<comment><USER7> The article doesn't mention Apple. Do these apps also do this on iOS?

<comment><USER8> Apple has a policy that apps (and their SDKs) must comply with IDFA, so if a user doesn't want to be tracked across the apps they use they can go to settings -> privacy -> advertising to turn off the tracking.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't solve the issue of device fingerprinting. There are a lot of data points that can be used to create a near-unique fingerprint of a device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Simple question: We have firewall capability on every computer.

I am surprised that we don't have a FW on a phone - or an app that can be installed which I can force all traffic from the phone to pass through, with source-app and destination IP/App/Service - and choose to block the traffic we would like.

Are the devices capable of this?

<comment><USER11> Check out NetGuard: [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/)

<comment><USER12> Too bad it works by creating a local VPN - I'm already using "Block This!" to block ads on my device which also works via a VPN, so you can't use both at the same time.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if it's possible to create an app that creates a local VPN that routes through the other VPNs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So let's see here. There are apps that people download which, in a way, replicate themselves by enticing other people to download them often using some form of psychological engineering. These apps then compromise the person's data by streaming it to a server.

The word "app" is frequently used, but these sound more like computer viruses with a friendly UI, no?

<comment><USER14> _The word "app" is frequently used, but these sound more like computer viruses with a friendly UI, no?_

I think that's a pretty profound way to look at it, but under a broader rubric -- perhaps "User-friendly malware" would be a better euphemism. It's also an ideal way to describe things like Windows Update.

It's easy to imagine some of history's most notorious virus authors going straight, working for Facebook and Microsoft. More money, more respect, and the retirement plan beats going to prison.

<comment><USER15> The established name for this sort of "phishing" malware is "Trojan horse malware" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_\(computing\)) \- a malicious computer program which is designed to appear non-suspicious and mislead users wrt. its malicious activity. The irony is that the complex "app- specific privileges and permissions" system featured on mobile OSs was _specifically_ intended to prevent mobile "apps" being used as dangerous trojan-horses, as was - to a lesser extent - the model of centralized "app store" repositories. It's not working very well.

In this case, we're specifically dealing with spyware - a common sort of malware where the malicious activity is invading the user's privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can add Agoda to that list.

I find it insane how I can visit Agoda in a private tab. Search for hotels. Visit 2 of the hotels. Then switch to Facebook and almost immediately get adverts for exactly those 2 hotels...</comment>


New algorithm can dramatically streamline solutions to the 'max flow' problem - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/new-algorithm-can-dramatically-streamline-solutions-to-the-max-flow-problem-0107.html <comment><USER2> For those (like me) who clicked because algorithms are fun but don't know the max flow problem specifically: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_flow_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_flow_problem)

TL;DR: what's the fastest way to transport a large amount of data over a mesh of many small pipes

As someone who knows little about this problem or the laws of physics, I wonder if it could be solved using physics -- set up a series of physical pipes, pump water from A to B, measure the flow at each point? If that would work, how complicated would the mesh need to be that solving it with physics is faster than brute-force computation?

<comment><USER3> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use a physical model." Now they have two problems.

(The new problem is dealing with fluid dynamics.)

Water-based computation has already been done of course: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer)

<comment><USER4> The Soap Film: An Analogue Computer

[http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/the-soap- fil...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/the-soap-film-an- analogue-computer-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could it be?

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2338](http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2338)

<comment><USER6> Yes. Downloaded that too. Here is more: [http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/publications.html](http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/publications.html)

I cant wait to see the C99 code for that! _(maybe I should try that myself)_

<comment><USER7> i'm kinda hoping to have some time to hack out a haskell implementation of the SDD solver next month (not sure if i'll have the time then, but I hope to)

<comment><USER6> that's cool! I've not seen any use of a SDD, what do you intent to use this for, or could you tell how it could be used?

<comment><USER7> excellent question! Basically you could use the SDD solver [http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/Publications/Docs/1301.6628v1.pd...](http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/Publications/Docs/1301.6628v1.pdf) in any context where you'd use an SVD (pseudo inverse / least squares) solver, and your matrix is symmetric and diagonally dominant.

The key bit however, is that the SDD solver as above, has really nice asymptotics for sparse matrices.

theres a few fancy algorithms that need to be engineered along the way, and theres also the question about how the constant factors work out in practice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An Almost-Linear-Time Algorithm for Approximate Max Flow in Undirected Graphs, and its Multicommodity Generalizations:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.2338v2.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.2338v2.pdf)

<comment><USER9> The paper also mentions someone else who also recently found a near linear time approximation for maximum flow: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.2077v1](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.2077v1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The abstract talks about ϵ-approximation for m edges in O(m^(1+o(1))ϵ^−2). If this algorithm is practical that would be quite a speed up!

</comment><comment><USER11> This could be quite useful for Ripple, which is basically solving a max-flow min-cost problem over a credit lines graph.

<comment><USER12> Ripple is actually a generalized network flow problem, in which the flow through an edge can be multiplied by an exchange rate when converting between currencies. As a result, regular network flow algorithms don't apply. There's also another issue with using a minimum cost criterion, since the costs are in different currencies and it's not clear how to put them on the same footing.

<comment><USER11> If you make cost the log of the conversion rate plus the log of the %age fee, and treat each node as a distinct node for each currency, you do get max flow min cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kelner was my advisor as an undergraduate - I loved listening to him talk about graph problems. He always seemed to have a novel way of looking at something like this. I'm glad to see him get some excellent new results!

</comment><comment><USER14> This sounds really cool. Are there any links to the paper / presentation anywhere? I would love to learn more.

<comment><USER15> Kelner's web site has the link (and confirms that it corresponds to what will be discussed at the ACM-SIAM symposium):

[http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/publications.html](http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/publications.html)

[http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/Publications/Docs/1304.2338v2.pd...](http://math.mit.edu/~kelner/Publications/Docs/1304.2338v2.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Was the theoretical lower bound of this `max-flow' algo known? Just curious.

Also, are there a class of algorithms where the current practical state of the art differs greatly from the theoretical or how would I go about finding out the answer to this question? Much obliged.

I kind of thought a lot of these routing problems were worked out or known not to be work-out-able. Just shows what I know :/ * sigh _

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm always wary of these kinds of research papers because they are often not using comparative benchmarks sanely.

However, that said, there are all kinds of interesting max flow problems, so hopefully it pans out in practice. Heck, even some profile based compiler optimizations can be formulated as max-flow problems.

<comment><USER18> These papers improve time complexity, not actual running time. I'm not sure it ever makes sense to do comparative benchmarking, since you can't test on arbitrarily large inputs (which is what's important when looking at algorithm complexity). For smaller inputs (for example, N in the 1000-1 million range), constant factors impact running time significantly. To compensate, you'd have to run a benchmark of size 10^10,000,000.

EDIT: For an example, let's say the current best algorithm for some problem takes O(N^2), with a small constant (let's say 100 * N^2 operations). Then someone comes up with a O(N^1.9), but with a larger constant (let's say it takes 1,000,000 * N^1.9). The newer algorithm will practically be slower for any reasonably-sized input you can throw at it, even though it's a major theoretical breakthrough.

<comment><USER9> As you are talking about reasonably sized input, your constant examples should also be reasonable. 10000 times difference in the constant is not reasonable. You wouldn't even get that from going from all data in the level 1 cache to random memory access with 10 times more instructions.

And "these papers" often do care about running time and will say whether it is possible to implement the algorithm efficiently, if you're lucky they'll even have done an implementation and you can see at what dataset sizes they are faster in practice.

And even if it were slower in practice, research like this is very useful, because it helps gives other researchers inspiration, ever since someone thought of looking at these problems like electrical flow in 2010, there have been ever faster approximations for it, while others will find ways to implement the algorithm efficiently, just in case a naive implementation of the offered algorithm isn't efficient enough.

Dismissing such research without having found any actual extreme inefficiencies in the proposed algorithm is not an attitude suited to anyone who wants to see progress.

And finally, the actual speed increase in the past decades hasn't been from O(N^2) to O(N^1.9) but from O(V _E^2) to O(V_ E), which obviously does have a real impact, and even with a non-realistic 10000 times bigger constant it would still be far faster in any graph with more 10000 edges. And graphs with billions of edges aren't unusual anymore.

<comment><USER18> > And even if it were slower in practice, research like this is very useful, > because it helps gives other researchers inspiration, ever since someone > thought of looking at these problems like electrical flow in 2010, there > have been ever faster approximations for it, while others will find ways to > implement the algorithm efficiently, just in case a naive implementation of > the offered algorithm isn't efficient enough.

> Dismissing such research without having found any actual extreme > inefficiencies in the proposed algorithm is not an attitude suited to anyone > who wants to see progress.

I never dismissed this research or said it's not useful; on the contrary, it's very interesting. I was just arguing against the usefulness of benchmarking results for such algorithms, when the main improvement is the lower complexity.

EDIT:

> And finally, the actual speed increase in the past decades hasn't been from > O(N^2) to O(N^1.9) but from O(VE^2) to O(VE), which obviously does have a > real impact, and even with a non-realistic 10000 times bigger constant it > would still be far faster in any graph with more 10000 edges. And graphs > with billions of edges aren't unusual anymore.

One concrete example I had in mind is Strassen's algorithm, which reduces matrix multiplication from O(N^3) to O(N^2.8) or O(N^log 7). It doesn't seem to be worth it to use Strassen over the simple algorithm for relatively small matrices.

There are other examples of algorithms and data structures that offer an O(N log log N) time, where the previous algorithm needed O(N log N) to solve the same problem. You need a very large data set to justify using the former, especially if the latter are much simpler to implement.

> As you are talking about reasonably sized input, your constant examples > should also be reasonable. 10000 times difference in the constant is not > reasonable. You wouldn't even get that from going from all data in the level > 1 cache to random memory access with 10 times more instructions.

10000 was just an example, I guess it was unrealistic. In practice, I think an 100x slowdown from an algorithm that has bad cache behavior makes some sense. [1] says that an L3 cache hit has a latency of 1-300 cycles, as opposed to a L1 hit that is only 4 cycles. That's almost an 100x difference, so theoretically a cache-friendly algorithm can be that much faster (and that's just the difference between L3 and L1, main memory takes even longer to access).

1 - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4087280/approximate- cost-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4087280/approximate-cost-to- access-various-caches-and-main-memory)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just skimmed through the paper thinking maybe I can grab one thing or two. What I've found there is completely black magic.

<comment><USER20> Your method of learnings is flawed. The specific lesson to be learned here is that they changed their view on the solution for a max-flow problem from a serial probing algorithm to a parallel electrical probing solution and lowered the time-complexity. The general lesson to be learned here is that they changed their view on the solution for a massive parallel multiple choice problem from a serial probing algorithm to a parallel probing solution and lowered the time-complexity.

The actual implementation is uninteresting and will always vary according to domain and optimization, but the intuition lesson is always a valid tool that we now have. And in hindsight this was a really obvious solution, carouse one should try all the routes and identify the bottlenecks.

Food for thought, single cpu core vs GPGPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It looks like this means we can now redirect traffic on highways to avoid congestion. I know current gps' do this now. But in future, they could suggest different paths for different users, even though they are travelling to the same approximate destination.

<comment><USER22> That sort of thing seems like a real possibility for self-driving cars and drones too. Swarm navigation sounds like a really interesting area actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just a thought that , could use of Drones for transportation make this problem less useful ?

I admire solution presented here however just saying.

<comment><USER24> Optimizing the distribution of goods through a network of highways is just one of the, literally, hundreds of applications where this could (and probably will) be useful.

<comment><USER25> You are very correct. Max-flow/min-cut reduces to tons of other problems where this algorithm will be optimized.

Here's a nice little introduction I found with some reductions on the first couple slides: [http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr04/cos226/lec...](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr04/cos226/lectures/maxflow.4up.pdf)

I just finished my algorithms undergrad class last semester; one of the questions on the final was 'you are a terrorist looking to cut off supplies to your enemy, which 3 nodes must you destroy to cut off the supply network?' And there was a complicated graph with probably 10 nodes and twice as many edges (very difficult to brute force in the allotted time), and we had to find the min-cut which would severe the flow. Some really cool problems reduce to max- flow.

<comment><USER22> Our lecturer told us that the problem was initially considered simultaneously by Russians trying to optimise the rail transport of stuff from USSR back to Russia and Americans trying to work out the cheapest way to destroy that network. Not sure if it's true, but it helps me think about the problem a lot.

Edit: I clicked the link, he used them exact slides. That set of slides comes up a lot, they're great.

<comment><USER25> You are right! Edmonds-karp was developed (really just a modified Ford- Faulkerson approach with a BFS as opposed to a random augmenting path...but we'll give it to him), yielding an O(ve^2) algorithm. A russian (soviet) mathematician named Dinic nearly simultaneously, and independently, developed an O(ev^2) algorithm which we can see beats Edmonds-karp as edge density grows.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Day the Mesozoic Died: How the story of the dinosaurs' demise was uncovered - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/the-day-the-mesozoic-died <comment><USER2> >It now appears that the largest Deccan eruptions occurred very close to the time of the impact.

It's quite interesting if you ever go to Goa, most of the hills, going on for hundreds of km, are the remains of the Deccan lava flow.

<comment><USER3> From a Wiki page[1]:

 _The location of the Deccan Traps, for example, would have been close to the antipodal point of Chicxulub in the late Cretaceous; a sufficiently large asteroid impact might have sent shock waves around the planet sufficient to trigger an effect on weakened crust on the other side of the globe._

A while ago IIRC I read in a Scientific American article that it took some 800,000 years from the Chicxulub impactor to the Deccan Traps. Some of these things take a _long time_!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kt_boundary#Multiple_causes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kt_boundary#Multiple_causes)

<comment><USER2> There seems quite a lot of uncertainty to the timing so they may have happened at the same time. I'm not sure how they date it but if its based on the position in 75 million years of sediment then a few 100,000 years may not be a big difference?</comment></comment></comment>


The promising results of Stockton's basic income experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-promising-results-of-a-citywide-basic-income-experiment <comment><USER2> I realize there's no data on this, but do these localized experiments translate into actual UBI at all? I only skimmed the article but it seems to me that giving 125 people 500$/Month, which come from a donation to research UBI, has basically no relation to actual UBI.

They found that giving those 125 people an unconditional monthly allowance helps them survive and has a positive effect on their life.

They did not seem to research at all how to actually fund it, what kind of effect a higher tax to fund it would have, or what would happen to the government employees currently working in social welfare if they'd lose their job.

<comment><USER3> > They did not seem to research at all how to actually fund it

And this is really the most profound part. There isn't an argument to be made against "if people have more money to buy stuff they will be better off". Nobody can argue against that, it is true.

The _entire_ case against that sort of social spending is "but we need normal people to create more than they consume or the resources won't be available" and "this isn't fair on the people who have to support them" argued at varying levels of complexity and indirection.

If you ignore the negative outcomes then any plan is a good plan and only has positive outcomes. Duh.

<comment><USER4> The aim of UBI is not to make people better off, but to ensure that everyone has enough money to live on. It's intended to replace means-tested social security.

With UBI, nobody falls through the safety net and ends up with nothing to live on; you don't need an army of people assessing claimants' financial circumstances; and when someone finds a low-paid or part-time job they still keep their UBI, so there's no disincentive to work.

If you argue it's unfair that people pay for UBI, how is that different from arguing that it's unfair that people pay for means-tested social security (or poor people's medical bills)?

<comment><USER5> > If you argue it's unfair that people pay for UBI, how is that different from > arguing that it's unfair that people pay for means-tested social security > (or poor people's medical bills)?

There's a big difference between a welfare state designed as a form of social insurance to protect people from adverse circumstances and old age, and one designed on the assumption that those who want to work owe those who don't a living, and that the only circumstance that should affect how much people receive is whether they have the right citizenship.

Aside from the fundamental ethical rationale changing from contribution based social insurance to citizenship based entitlement, UBI would also represent a much larger bill, and a lower payout to the neediest.

<comment><USER6> Lots of loaded words in there, and not really fairly.

Nobody 'owes' anybody a living. The situation is, we can give most folks a living, without everyone working. And those that continue to work, of course are better off because they earn money for that. No unfairness at all.

I think its the old Protestant work ethic, this attitude of "folks not working are immoral". We have to get past this, to make UBI a thing.

<comment><USER5> > Nobody 'owes' anybody a living

The literal purpose of UBI is to ensure that taxpayers do owe each citizen a fixed amount set at an average living. Making that a social obligation based on birthright rather than a potential future entitlement based on need is how it's different from social insurance schemes. The assumption if you're able to work and not interested in looking for it you probably don't need the money as much as other people certainly isn't what's wrong with current welfare states.

You don't have to believe that "folks not working are immoral" to believe that helping those fortunate enough to be able to choose not to work at the expense of those that aren't [whether by reduced benefits or higher taxes] isn't what welfare states were for.

<comment><USER7> _The literal purpose of UBI is to ensure that taxpayers do owe each citizen a fixed amount set at an average living._

Not _average_. It's _Basic_. It's just enough to get by. That's the incentive to work: most people want to do more than just get by. Anyone who doesn't want that would be a drag on _any_ system, so that's a separate problem to deal with. But there are a lot of people who can't get ahead with the current system who would do better in a UBI system, and we'd all be better off if we could get those people productive and happy.

<comment><USER5> my bad, that was supposed to be average living _wage_ , with living wage being the concept of a just-above-subsistence income. The 'average' part of that phrase is important because a basic living in one region can be quite a comfortable living in another, or for someone not needing to factor rent into their cost of living, but it helps if I don't miss the other key word out :)

<comment><USER7> I would imagine that if a national UBI program were implemented, the amount would have to depend on the local cost of living, probably with caps. How they'd work that out, I don't know.

If that's not done, then UBI would encourage migration from higher cost-of- living areas to lower cost-of-living areas. That might not be a terrible outcome; it would probably lead to balancing the cost-of-living across regions as the populations change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't a basic income experiment. It's a grant-based income subsidy.

What a real basic income experiment would look like:

\- Take a nominally populated county.

\- Calculate a baseline income requirement necessary to live in the county.

\- Completely gut all of the economic service programs (carefully without breaking federal law).

\- Pool all that extra money together and divide it by the population.

\- Add some sort of VAT to county sales to cover the difference between what UBI should be and how much money is in the kitty.

\- Do a test run of at least 18-24 months.

Things to pay attention to:

\- County sales tax receipts.

\- School attendance.

\- Employment, especially seasonal employment.

\- Crime.

\- Costs of groceries, restaurants, contractor services, etc.

\- Mean age of retirement.

\- Employment of those 18-25.

\- Rent prices

Things to consider:

\- Are state pensions on the chopping block?

\- Are you going to implement basic income as UBI + earned income or the greater of the two?

\- Is there any opportunity to debit federally mandated economic support from the UBI totals?

Hurdles:

\- Without buy in at the state level, how are you going to prevent people from buying their groceries across county lines, or doing most of their retail online?

\- Unless you pick the county properly (a proper mix of employment + age demographics), you'll have large problems on your hand.

\- Serious local, national, and possibly international pressure to derail the program.

<comment><USER6> That's certainly one way to do it. Maybe the best way. But there's all sorts of things to study, and it may be valuable to try and study them in isolation.

<comment><USER8> The psychological and resultant behavioral impact on tax base whales and the liquidity of labor are the most important things to study. I can't reasonably think of a means to study those outside of an academic scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are a lot of people going to use the UBI to better themselves? A large number will probably end up hanging out. Or work a few years to save for a downpayment, then end up hanging out.

It will prob speed up automation. Like some 40 year old with no skills is gonna suddenly re-skill and being a computer programmer? Lol.

Just gonna be a bunch of people chilling on the taxpayers dime. Reproducing, taking up space, etc.

Everything is going to be a sharp bimodal distribution. Those that are productive, get paid a ton. Those who aren't productive and just chill all day on UBI.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am concerned that UBI as a whole will make the divorce between economy and productivity, just like artificial pumping by the government divorces stock market from the economy.

An individual will have this illusion of they are fine in life, as long as UBI coming in, even though they are not productive at all.

Stability of a government is never guaranteed. What if one day, for whatever reason, whether the government go rogue, or the government has no more money or assets, decide to stop UBI. A lot of people will suddenly be unprepared to come to terms with the actual reality, that they don't have the needed marketable skills to survive in the world because they have been living off UBI all these times without cultivating themselves.

<comment><USER11> I agree with you completely that it's a problem when society as a whole doesn't have a good idea of what it means to be "productive" but I think that in your second sentence, you could just as easily replace "UBI" with "wages" and the truthfulness of it doesn't change at all. I think working for wages doesn't allow most people to do what I would consider "cultivating themselves," and possessing "marketable" skills is not the same thing as possessing useful skills.

Obviously we all have our own definitions of "productive" (I actually like to think of it more as useful rather than profitable) but my own personal opinion is that what is useful and what people get paid for have as little overlap as they've ever had, so the risk of replacing certain jobs with UBI isn't actually as much of a threat to productivity as it might seem like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think UBI is an essential concept and believe will be no way around it in some fashion.

That said, "AB testing" it is really hard. The real idea behind UBI (for most advocates) is that it is a living wage granted for a very long time (something like lifetimes). $500/mo for a few months or years means that people need to still plan around that loss of income, and are unlikely to act too differently.

I like research, but I don't really see much benefit here. I think you justify UBI on these grounds: 1) administration costs are much higher for welfare states than UBI (the US spends more on anti poverty programs than it would take to distribute funds and make nobody below the US poverty line). This should appeal to fiscal conservatives. Our anti poverty programs have failed not due to resources, but rather due to centralized, command and control techniques a la ISSUE. 2) the number of people that are completely unemployable (they are not able to outcompete machines/AI at any narrow job function) will increase.

Number (2) is more speculative for most people, but having automated away many jobs myself, I can see that the only reason things are not more automated is the will of leaders to automate. Most people lack the will, but that won't stop it in the long run, only slow it.

<comment><USER5> The big problem with (1) is that it's unambiguously falsified by widely available data.

Approximately 75 million working age US citizens are 'economically inactive' in normal times - i.e. they're not working or paying income/payroll taxes, and in most cases are ineligible for any other type of benefit. The US poverty line is 12k.

You're not finding all that extra money from admin costs

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Non paywalled:

[https://outline.com/2dA7jj](https://outline.com/2dA7jj)

</comment><comment><USER14> Not real UBI. I want to see an end to food stamps and housing subsidies and Medicare taxes before you call it UBI.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey, don't worry; we are just taxing the negative externalities of your existence.

This is an authoritarian dream, and it's why cash has a big target on it.

Got a fine? Deduct it. Putting people on the take gives government significantly more leverage over them.

Next up is to incrementally pair it with a social credit score. The concept is fundamentally against free expression; it's the same old model used keep large fractions of social classes from becoming independent.

Real solutions involve decentralization and less tax on _time_, the power players want cheap labor, so they were allowed to import it. That scam is well known now, so onto plan B.

This is really a proposal for extreme centralization via hidden tax on value producers. It's a deliberate problem; hence the Hegel soluton.

<comment><USER16> > Next up is to incrementally pair it with a social credit score

Which part of "unconditional" do you not understand?

<comment><USER17> Policies have a habit of changing over time.

<comment><USER16> By this logic we should never ever make any new policies lest they evolve into something undesirable.

<comment><USER18> I think all libertanians would agree with that logic :)

In theory you should be able to come up with some minimal necessary set of laws and policies, pass apropriate parlimentary bills once, and after that parliament becomes unncecessary, or maybe it just gathers in session once a year, to evaluate the need for new laws.

Also, to encourage long-term thinking it should be written into Constitution that any new law passed can only take effect 10 years after it was passed, not sooner.

<comment><USER19> Just like software development then?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to decide if blockchain is right for your project - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/932649133256597505 <comment><USER2> I didn't quite get it. Why the disdain towards using a new technology? As with any new technology, people will use it where it is not needed. But even then we will know what are its practical use cases and what are not.

<comment><USER3> For people who have spent their work lives learning how to build and maintain centralized systems, blockchain/decentralized systems can appear as an existential threat. There is also just generally a lot of hype around blockchain which many find frustrating.</comment></comment>


Deutsche Bank Executives' Conduct Faulted in Agency Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/18/business/dealbook/deutsche-bank-executives-conduct-faulted-in-agency-report.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The most clear evidence that Jain was involved or encouraged the rate fixing.

> The report also said that in 2009, Mr. Jain pushed for bonuses worth tens of > millions of dollars for traders later said to be at the center of the rate- > fixing scandal.</comment>


Tools for 3D "browsing" of a file system? - <AUTHOR>

Can you point to software that gives user a 3D visualization of a file system? Any tools which you like and can suggest to others?
If done well it can be incredibly cool. Unfortunately all the projects I found are old and not maintained any more.
xCruiser seems to be the best of the bunch - http://xcruiser.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> Some of the projects that are old and unmaintained may still _work_. Have you tried running them at least?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did. That's why I mentioned xCruiser - it definitely looks old but works nicely. But being old it also lacks the usability and polish that a more modern app might have.

Some more of old goodies are mentioned towards the end of this thread: <http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-163664.html></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Minimum Viable Security Checklist for Web Apps - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hartleybrody.com/startup-security/ <comment><USER2> Make sure any session/auth cookies are httpOnly too!</comment>


SharePics Accepted by Apple after a quick redesign - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brianlane.com/2009/12/17/sharepics-accepted-by-apple/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an update to my previous post about being rejected for looking like a Polaroid - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974784></comment>


WWDC selling out fast =  WWDC is broken - <AUTHOR> http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-wwdc-now-being.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm... HN's post page changed the != to an = in the post title, which totally misrepresents the content...

Time to use "ne" in the future...

</comment><comment><USER2> Maybe have WWDC twice a year, and maybe hold that event outside California — the east coast, europe or asia to let others join the party!

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Google I/O broken for selling out in hours?</comment>


Lessons from Chile's transition to free college - <AUTHOR> https://www.brookings.edu/research/lessons-from-chiles-transition-to-free-college/ <comment><AUTHOR> Discussion from four years ago when it was announced:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9514404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9514404)</comment>


C64 OS: A Commodore 64 OS with Modern Concepts - <AUTHOR> http://c64os.com/c64os <comment><USER2> Here's a video of a classic Mac OS style UI running on 1.79MHz Atari 8-bit computers. I find this to be a very very impressive feat.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T14dL9MeMHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T14dL9MeMHE)

Speed-wise this appear to me to be about the same speed 8MHz 68000 Mac SE did run it's graphics.

<comment><USER3> I've been searching high and low for a Linux port of GEM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At which point have you just replaced so much hardware that you've just got a modern PC on your desk?

<comment><USER5> Especially when you start adding modern peripheral hardware that contains more general-purpose processing power than the C64's CPU itself.

<comment><USER6> Nothing special, this game already started when you replaced your datasette with the floppy drive back in the days.

<comment><USER7> I assume this is an allusion to the fact that the standard Commodore 64 disk drive had an identical CPU, lol. A legitimate computer all to itself. You could even expand the default 2KB of RAM up to 48KB. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541#Hardware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541#Hardware)

<comment><USER8> You could also use it as a home-brew multiprocessor. I did that as a science fair project.

<comment><USER9> That's kind of amazing. How did you communicate between the onboard CPU and the CPU in the floppy drive(s)?

<comment><USER8> Through the serial port. It turns out that if you really dig into the 1541 docs, it's possibly to push assembly code into RAM using existing 1541 commands over the serial port. And the 1541 has a command buffer. So I pushed assembly to perform parallel calculations to it, and then pushed two commands into the buffer, one to execute the code and the next one to resume normal serial ops after it ret'urned. The data from the calculations was placed into the data buffer prior to returning, and the 1541 just sent it out the port as a regular data packet, just as if it had been read off a floppy. Or so I recall; this was in 1986. My memory's a little fuzzy.

It worked with N drives, too, although the C64 sort of had to act as the bus master to avoid serial packet conflicts.

That was a long time ago and I've certainly forgotten many of the details. But it won me a trip to the International Science Fair (this was before Intel started sponsoring it).

<comment><USER9> That's a fascinating technique. Did the commodore operating system itself push 6502 code to the floppy drives to move the heads, initiate data transfer, etc?

<comment><USER8> No, the basic floppy control software resided in ROM on the 1541. But as mentioned below, you could (and people did) essentially reprogram much of that stuff to enable copy protection, increase serial throughput speeds, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to read about pull-down menus being useful as I suffer from their removal on current GTK apps.

<comment><USER11> I was just thinking about DOS apps, specifically how nice it was when keyboard shortcuts pertinent to your current mode were helpfully displayed at the bottom of the screen.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Remember the cardboard cutouts that sat over the F-keys and listed what each did? Used by ex. Wordperfect.

<comment><USER11> Yes, unfortunately. "Reveal Codes" FTW :)

<comment><USER12> alt-f3 is burned into my brain forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd like to see a comparison of this against Contiki.

<comment><USER14> Contiki is an RTOS and ipv6/lowpan library, intended for modern rf-capable microcontrollers with no UI.

This OS on the other hand is a desktop OS for an ancient 8-bit processor (far less capable than modern microcontrollers) and oriented around the user interface.

So... not much to compare really, they're completely different beasts.

<comment><USER15> Contiki used to run on the Commodore 64 and have a desktop UI. Someone even used it to make a Twitter client for the C64, called Breadbox64.

[http://www.c-64.org/pics/os/contiki1.html](http://www.c-64.org/pics/os/contiki1.html)

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Contiki-C64.png](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Contiki-C64.png)

[https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Contiki](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Contiki)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of KnightOS, a project in a similar vein. [https://github.com/KnightOS/KnightOS](https://github.com/KnightOS/KnightOS)

</comment><comment><USER17> I had a 300 baud modem and text wouldn't even download close to reading speed. I need to see if this will work on my old C64 machine. Would be fun to go through a few BBS that are still around.

<comment><USER18> Even in the 90s BBS experience on a C64 was pretty dismal. Everybody was running 80x24 screens and the operators had to assume it was safe.

Shame too, because ANSI artists could have done some even more impressive works with the PETSCII character set but the world had already moved on by that point.

<comment><USER19> The BBS scene is still alive. These days, people "dial in" via telnet via WiFi modems (among other ways) using their old 8-bit and 16/32-bit hardware (e.g. Amiga). And, as long as you set your stuff to 9600 baud, it's absolutely fast enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So... like GEOS. But, with more awesome?

<comment><USER20> Worth mentioning that GEOS itself has been completely reverse engineered and the fully commented 6502 assembler source is up on github: [https://github.com/mist64/geos](https://github.com/mist64/geos)

In theory quite portable to other 'new' 6502/816 systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can it run some programming language like turbo pascal?

<comment><USER22> I still have my C-64 pascal compiler from Abacus software. Apparently it can now be downloaded online.</comment></comment>


The 2015 Salary Guides Are Here - <AUTHOR> http://blog.roberthalf.com/the-2015-salary-guides-are-here <comment><USER2> Compare US numbers in RH guide to the wages listed on the Department of Labor website, Wages By Occupation. Across the board, the _lowest_ RH number matches the _average_ DOL number. For example, salaries for _non-senior_ web developers are listed at $65k-$95k per RH and at $67k on average for _all_ web developers per DOL ([http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151134.htm](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151134.htm)).

RH numbers track what I see out in the field much more closely (being a developer myself, hiring other developers, and sharing compensation information within my professional circle). I've always been curious as to how DOL comes by their numbers, they just seem so low.</comment>


Fresh evidence links Saudi government to 9/11 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3549402/Fresh-evidence-links-Saudi-government-9-11-Flight-certificate-bomber-embassy-envelope-buried-underground.html <comment><USER2> A British friend told me to mostly ignore articles from The Daily Mail because they were British equivalent of US tabloids like National Enquirier. Worth keeping in mind here.

<comment><USER3> This website gives a good overview of the quality of its articles [http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/](http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/)

<comment><USER2> Oh... my... God... It's worse than I thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just to make it clear to everyone: The US has done a really good job of (I assume deliberately) screwing the Saudis over the last couple of years. Firstly the Iran agreement has shown them nothing is off the table, secondly the US shale oil has given the US maneuvering room by crashing the oil market, and finally this set of "leaks" is showing the Saudis that they had better fall in line.

Exactly what the US wants isn't clear to me though. Maybe cutting off funds to ISIS?

<comment><USER5> You could be right, but it's a familial monarchy in ownership of a country. One that behaves pretty badly as well. So if it is a screwing, it seems the very very least that they deserve.

<comment><USER6> The family is going through internal conflict at the moment as well. Looking at today's world the Chinese curse comes to my mind may you live in interesting times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the envelope part unconvincing. I am just as likely to re use an old envelope myself for random documents.

<comment><USER8> Seriously. For all we know, this envelope originally contained a "happy birthday" letter, or a notice of tax delinquency or something. Unless there's more to it, this no more indicates a link to the Saudi government than a letter from the IRS to me indicates my activities are linked to the US government.

And then these guys manage to write how many paragraphs about this? Sheesh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I never thought I would see a Daily Mail article on Hacker News

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems a little fishy. I would expect a greater level of operational security from a Saudi Arabian official in the position to be involved here. If you knew the long term plan why would you ever hand someone a key piece of evidence in an envelope bearing your own information? Even if you didn't personally know the long term plan, ensuring the certificate is untraceable in all forms seems like something you'd of been made to understand.

<comment><USER11> You'd be really surprised. In a theocracy such as Saudi Arabia where individuals are born into power, the hubris is overwhelming. They believe they are above all consequences (which has shown to be true thus far), and have little concern for operational security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is mail sent from foreign embassies within the U.S. protected in any way, similar to the contents of a diplomatic bag? Does it make any sense that someone associated with the Saudi Embassy in D.C. would use an official letter to exfil sensitive documents like the pilot certificate? Sure doesn't seem like a wise move, but some sort of legal protections might make the scenario more plausible.

<comment><USER11> Embassies worldwide often mail letters (party invitations, a check to pay for power, etc) using the postal services of host countries.

The vast majority transmit anything sensitive by diplomatic courier.

I suspect in this case the document was simply placed in an envelope and not actually mailed, while the individual responsible didn't realize the consequences of using an branded envelope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just watch this: [https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71/videos/10154130107...](https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71/videos/10154130107166171/)

</comment><comment><USER14> The daily mail strike again !

</comment><comment><USER15> building 7

united 93, no plane debris

"plane" strikes exact area where pentagon was doing audit of $2.3 trillion, noted missing the day before by Rumsfield... also debris don't resemble plane crash

explosions in the bottom floor of WTC

perfect implosion of towers

Saudi govt had nothing to do with all that, real enemy is likely closer to home

</comment><comment><USER16> This is blocked behind a paywall.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was not the first time I viewed it, but it seems to be now, apologies.

There is a non-paywall version available via Google. I tried to link to it here, but it throws the paywall up.

<comment><USER17> For future reference, that's what the tiny 'web' link does at the top of this page - it will search Google for the article title, so you can clickthrough from Google.

The Australian's article title (before the link was changed) was "Saudi diplomats linked to September 11 terror plot".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> daily mail version of the story: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3549402/Fresh- eviden...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3549402/Fresh-evidence- links-Saudi-government-9-11-Flight-certificate-bomber-embassy-envelope-buried- underground.html)

<comment><USER19> Since the submitted URL ([http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the- times/saudi-d...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/saudi- diplomats-linked-to-september-11-terror-plot/news- story/66592c608fb4b63e577c9a3a086c3b43)) is blocked, we've switched to this one for the time being. I tremble, because any Daily Mail article provokes a storm on HN, let alone one about 9-11. But the article appears to be substantive and to contain new information, and those are our criteria. So let's see what happens. If anyone finds a more substantive article we can change the URL again.

<comment><USER20> Here is the original blog post they are quoting/paraphrasing: [https://28pages.org/2016/04/19/exclusive-a-buried- envelope-b...](https://28pages.org/2016/04/19/exclusive-a-buried-envelope- buried-questions-your-first-look-inside-declassified-document-17/)

<comment><USER4> Whilst the address of this site made me assume it's a conspiracy theory site, it seems pretty level headed and I think it is worth reading.

<comment><USER19> It looks like you're right, but my spidey sense is that it won't go over on HN, even god help us by comparison with the Daily Mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Victims' families have been pushing Congress for the right to sue Saudi > Arabia over the death of their loved ones

God bless America. The default response to everything is to sue.

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with this? If SA was indeed responsible for these attacks, shouldn't they be held liable for compensation to the victims' families?

<comment><USER22> Wouldn't this be a slippery slope, for example leading citizens in Afghanistan and Iraq sue the US government for compensation?

<comment><USER23> Sounds good.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Australian police: exploding 3D printed gun will kill you and your victim - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/24/australian-police-3d-printed-gun <comment><USER2> Well, they would say that, wouldn't they.</comment>


Removing epsilon productions from context free grammars - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2010/02/08/removing-epsilon-productions-from-context-free-grammars/ <comment><USER2> This is not a new or innovative algorithm. This person is performing one step of the conversion of a CFG to Chomsky Normal Form. Please see Sipser's "Theory of Computation," page 107.

<comment><USER3> See also, "preliminary step a of part 2 of my senior compiler project."

Aren't compilers classes common in undergraduate CS programs? Don't they all do this?

E: In case you were curious, "part 2" of the project was implementing a LL(1) recursive descent parser, so you had to juggle the grammar to work with that kind of parser.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I automatically turn Internet off on mc os x? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm doing an experiment[1] where I want to disable internet after 8pm and before 9am. I'm working on mac os x and I was thinking of editing /etc/hosts or something like that, but I couldn't find much info so I'm asking for help. How do I disable internet connection on mac os x via terminal or apple script? Thanks in advance.<p>[1] http://freestylemind.com/productivity-experiment-internet-diet <comment><USER2> [http://atmac.org/freedom-turn-off-the-internet-and-get- some-...](http://atmac.org/freedom-turn-off-the-internet-and-get-some-work- done/)

Freedom does this, apparently pretty well. Not CLI, though, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER3> turn the router off, or get one of those timer switches for $5 or put this in /etc/crontab

It checks every minute so you still have a window :)

        */1 0 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 1 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 2 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 3 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 4 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 5 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 6 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 7 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 8 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 9 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 10 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 11 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 12 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 13 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 14 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 15 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 16 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 17 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 18 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 19 * * * root ifconfig en0 up
        */1 20 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 21 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 22 * * * root ifconfig en0 down
        */1 23 * * * root ifconfig en0 down

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will probably use this as I don't want to limit access for other computers.

<comment><USER3> check that your interface is actually en0 by typing : ifconfig

of course you'll also lose all network, not just the internet

I suppose the other way is changing /etc/resolv.conf from

        nameserver 184.108.40.206

to

        nameserver 127.0.0.1

220.127.116.11 is google's speedy dns</comment></comment></comment>


Google Trips app to be discontinued on August 5 - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/travel/answer/9337634 <comment><USER2> Definitely sucks that the app is being discontinued, it was really handy when I had a layover and wanted to do some quick exploration.

However, it looks like most of the functionality is being relocated to the Google Travel webpage (unless they pull an Inbox and only partially port things).

[https://www.google.com/travel](https://www.google.com/travel)

<comment><USER3> On Google.com/travel, are the previous trips scraped from my gmail inbox or what is going on there?

<comment><USER4> In short, yes. It's parsing all the travel content it can find from your inbox and then inferring flight and accomodation bookings. Seems to be the same content in the app as /travel for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is anyone building any dependencies on google's ancillary apps at this point?

Seems like their whole purpose lately is to just create buzz on a launch, create a small dependent user base and then retire it when they realize they it doesn't contribute to their advertising base.

<comment><USER6> While that frequently seems to be the case, just reading their informational page about it seems to show that the functionality of this app is simply being moved to their other apps, namely Google Maps. This could be argued to be bloating up Maps, but this will also mean those features will probably be used by a lot more people now (and thus they'll make even more money in advertising).

Honestly, I don't see the problem here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the offline-available reservation feature of Google Trips, TripIt.com is a pretty good replacement. Some parts of TripIt are super outdated (I think Google Trips was originally a clone of some parts of TripIt), but it gets the job done well still.

</comment><comment><USER8> Shocker, another discontinued app from Google

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a big "dangit!" from me. I LOVED using this app on my recent trips. Any replacements?

<comment><USER10> [https://google.com/travel](https://google.com/travel). The functionality of the app is either already there or will be rolled into it.

<comment><USER11> IIRC Trips allowed the info to be offline, which is a big plus when travelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had never heard of that app until this moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was really convenient for traveling, especially now that Inbox trip bundles are discontinued. Put all your reservations in one handy place, available offline. The suggested itineraries were pretty good too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Loved the concept but like most all of these new apps from Google, got no love, and lacked many basic features. Google continues to released half baked products don't give them love they fail because of it and then they kill them. Rather then devoting to continuous updates to make it something everyone uses. And these days I personally avoid most of the new apps, because there is such a high chance they will be killed off once you start using it.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a shame. App loads much faster than Maps. Maps is doggedly slow to load within the last year and seems to be getting worse.

<comment><USER6> Well they keep adding more stuff to it, including (according to the linked google page about this issue) functionality from the now-discontinued Google Trips app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was my favorite app for traveling and such an easy way to automatically see all my trip related reservations all together without having to do anything. It was also a great way to see all my previous trips

</comment><comment><USER16> I was thinking about switching over to it since Roadtrippers keeps cranking down the number of legs you can have in a trip for the free version. I guess I won't, now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Google Maps is a travel powerhouse. Makes sense to have things in one place.

I'm traveling Europe right now and I live out of Google Maps.

</comment><comment><USER18> Used it a bunch and I'll add this to the Google products which they cancelled on me. I'm getting tired of this...

I've been slowly moving off of anything Google.

<comment><USER10> Most of the functionality can already be found at google.com/travel and additional functionality from the app is scheduled to be added there and at Google Maps.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you regret building your own software as a non-technical company? - <AUTHOR> I've already seen several internal tools becoming a burden for the company that has created them. Development is costly and the resulting product is often buggy, unreliable and demands constant work and attention.<p>Is that a common thing? Is it a bad idea by default for a non-technical non-SaaS company to hire developers and build anything custom? <comment><USER2> I would say this is even common in technical companies. Many tech companies suffer from NIH syndrome, and needlessly re-invent things that already exist elsewhere, or are not part of their core business. I've witnessed it many times. I would say this is especially common when the company has too much cash on hand and can squander it...

</comment><comment><USER3> Without any data you will not get any proper advice. Everything is matter of scale, rate and how dynamic your domain is. Sometimes choosing 3rd party is better sometimes creation of own IT.</comment>


Cool new way to update your facebook from twitter - <AUTHOR> http://sociaholic.com/

<comment><USER2> How is this new? My twitter-using facebook friends used to get on my nerves with "Just bought some bananas"-style updates from a twitter-to-facebook thingie years ago, until they discovered the "selective twitter" thing and/or got more reasonable.

Here's what I think is the "selective twitter" app: <http://www.facebook.com/selectivetwitter>

<comment><USER3> i agree, and the links come alive on facebook crap wtf thats facebook not these people!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you post a link in your tweet to Facebook from Twitter App, the links and @replies just come plain and blank.

Btw, there is a broken Facebook to generate links (Links.preview) and it hardly works, I know this cause our competitor uses this.

The whole reason behind creating sociaholic is to make some thing that works better and faster than what is out there.

We wrote our own parsers from scratch and also will be open-sourcing the code soon.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Google take client-side screenshots? - <AUTHOR> On most of Google pages they allow to give feedback that also takes a screenshot of your active screen to help the feedback, but how do they take a screenshot without using UserMedia.
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/
You have to give 3 stars or less to get a prompt to give feedback and then you can click either and it takes a screenshot. <comment><USER2> stackoverflow discussion: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4912092/using- html5-canva...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4912092/using-html5-canvas- javascript-to-take-screenshots)

slides from a member of the feedback team: [https://www.elliottsprehn.com/preso/fluentconf/](https://www.elliottsprehn.com/preso/fluentconf/)

relevant JS library: [https://github.com/niklasvh/feedback.js](https://github.com/niklasvh/feedback.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for linking to the slides from the feedback team! Have not seen that.

The problem however is that the stackoverflow discussion and the relevant JS library uses html2canvas and it generates unuseable screenshots containing more errors than probrably the original screen and therefore does not help on the problem the user has.

Here is a screen of google cloud docs, logo messed up etc. [http://i.imgur.com/8Ayy5XL.png](http://i.imgur.com/8Ayy5XL.png)</comment></comment>