The "bicameral mind" 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes' hypothesis (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.functionalneurology.com/materiale_cic/224_XXII_1/2108_the%20bicamiral/ <comment><USER2> For anyone trying to generalize Mr. Jayne's theory from an article or set of comments - I suggest that you definitely do not. Really, don't do that with anyone's theories, but instead READ THE BOOK.

The way that Jaynes "carves up consciousness" as Daniel Dennet puts it in one review, is very different than the way that a reflexive intellectual instinct would choose to. The taxonomy that Jaynes decides upon is distinctive from our mental reflexes, and not at all the same as what nearly everyone begins with.

I feel that this "Bicameral" consciousness discussion keeps reappearing on Hacker News in part because it is crucial for us to create a proper distinction between these terms - AI is rapidly going to become conscious in exactly the way Julian Jaynes suggests we became "conscious" and that consciousness is very much different than what we think it is (or must be) for AI to become generally aware of itself.

I suggest that anyone who is working towards AGI MUST discover the distinctions that Julian Jaynes made. That does not mean that his theory regarding our consciousness is correct, but merely that his ways of describing "self-awareness" or whatever other term could be applied is crucial to getting a grip on what the true mechanism of "the self" is in the truest engineering sense. That is to say, that if the "self" is the licensed self-aware driver of a vehicle and the engine and transmission is the remainder of cognition, than the order of development was actually from "self-driving car" into human driven vehicles - metaphorically speaking.

Basically, up until recently, we just DID, and in attempting to describe WHY we were forced to invent metaphor until collectively we were able to create the language necessary to actually BE self aware. Without the language, we actually were NOT self aware. We were self-driving cars with no human drivers. The human driver only arrived after there were ways of describing "him."

<comment><USER3> Your warning is noble, but I read comments to decide whether the topic is useful. I found the negative comments convincing, so I don't mind questioning the topic further.

Self-awarenes was worked out with "I know that I don't know" and again, but in positive terms with "I think therefore I am". These are the most basic forms of reflection, a y-combinator differentiating endlessly. With literarry writing, this reflection could be stretched out over generations, yielding a national identity, but oral transmission of religious teachings had been practiced before, just with a higher rate of mutation. Such verbalization is important for stability, and similarity is important for discoverability, but if verbalization hadn't happened, the perhaps because _it goes without saying_.

PS: A single threaded cpu doesn't need to spell out distributed computing primitives, either. It still may use signals, in many cases, even if implemented completely in software.

PPS: maybe there's an interesting parallel from natural language to the progression from imperative language over object oriented or declarative, to agent based programming. Bicameral Petri Nets ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Jaynes recognizes that consciousness itself is only a small part of mental > activity and is not necessary for sensation or perception, for concept > formation, for learning, thinking or even reasoning. Thus, if major human > actions and skills can function automatically and unconsciously, then it is > conceivable that there were, at one time, human beings who did most of the > things we do – speak, understand, perceive, solve problems – but who were > without consciousness.

In the spiritual teachings & traditions the wording would be different. I think they would refer to was Jaynes call "consciousness" as "self awareness"; and then assert that "consciousness" is prior to any of that. For example in the dream state we are typically not in control, nor are we aware it's a dream.. yet when we "wake up" we remember having dreamed and having "been there".

In fact I'd argue that we DO many times of the day every day... speak and act without much self awareness. And yet, we remember afterwards and then claim those moments as something we did.

> In short, Jaynes claims that men in the age of the Iliad learned to speak, > read, and write, as well as conduct their daily lives, yet remained > nonconscious throughout their lives.

Maybe they were indeed much less "self-aware" as we are today, which again is not same as saying not conscious.

edit: it seems to me this is the main contetion in science often times people just conflate mind activity and consciousness , as an (possibly not deliberate) attempt to chuck away the "hard problem of consciousness".

pps: funny enough it is actually an hypothesis, that for human beings to recongize _consciousness_ is also something made possible through self awareness. For example, what is called "awakening" in spiritual teachings is supposed to be the natural state, hence, whatever "spiritual" state it is thought to be, is a self-refetential acknowledhgement of a change of one's perception of self and world. That is, "self awareness" allows for human beings to acknowledge consciousness (since we have to conceive of it).. whereas a dog or cat can be consciouss, and relatively free of worry, yet will never know themselves as "free of worry" (I mean in a rational / self aware way).

<comment><USER5> Jaynes addresses this critique in the revised Afterword:

> _The most common error which I did not emphasize sufficiently is to confuse > consciousness with perception... This type of confusion was at least > encouraged back in 1921 by Bertrand Russell: "We are conscious of anything > that we perceive." And as his logical atomism became fashionable in > philosophy, it became difficult to see it any other way. And in a later book > Russell uses as an example of consciousness "I see a table." But Descartes, > who gave us the modern idea of consciousness, would never have agreed. Nor > would a radical behaviorist like Watson, who in denying consciousness > existed certainly did not mean sense perception._

Earlier in the book he makes a linguistic argument, claiming that his usage of "consciousness" is the only that unifies both the subjective (I am conscious) and objective (I am conscious of X) usages.

Beyond Jaynes and more broadly, I'd consider comparing his theses with that of McLuhan in Gutenberg Galaxy, namely McLuhan's theories about mass literacy. There seems to be a unifying element in that the structure of one's experience (of one's interpretation of their sensory inputs) is strongly related to the sorts of media they consume and to the sorts of epistemological "channels" available. The structure of knowledge and its dissemination (collectively oral? Or privately read? Think about problems such as "atomization of society" and a lightbulb should go off) seems to determine our internal experience to a large degree: older writers such as Walter Benjamin have touched on "movie consciousness" (although not strictly in those words), while more contemporary authors like Sarah Perry discuss "Social Media Consciousness" ([https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/09/07/social-media- conscious...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/09/07/social-media- consciousness/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of the historical evidence (or lack thereof) for his theory, I found his book very enlightening. It really helped me understand religion, schizophrenia and the split brain, showing why it would be so important to early human society and how it could came about, biologically and culturally.

<comment><USER7> Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are _still_ speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion.

The theory can "rationally" explain how Aphrodite speaks to Paris, but it does not explain how she teleports him from the battlefield to his chamber. So you still have to accept either supernatural events or that the story contains fictional elements. In which case the gods are much easier explained than through this theory, which have no other evidence.

And the narrative style of the Iliad (describing events and actions but not thought processes and introspection) is known throughout history.

<comment><USER8> There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal.

If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a literal description of a real experience.

For me one of the biggest problems with the theory is how people's perception (whether they hear voices or not) could change en masse, presumably because of a change in culture or education, because I don't believe there can have been a biological change over that period. Therefore, if people educated in the right way could hear voices I'd expect there still to be groups of people (members of some religious sect perhaps) who hear voices. So I'd like to see a detailed description of one of those groups. Then I could perhaps believe that the phenomenon was mainstream in ancient Greece.

<comment><USER7> I actually don't reject the theory that accounts of Gods appearing and speaking to people could be actual mental processes, guided by culture. I find this more believable than it is all fiction or lies (or that Gods have physical existence outside the human mind). But I do reject the bicameral hypothesis that we either have Gods speaking _or_ we have consciousness, and that shift happened a particular point in time around the eight century.

<comment><USER9> I just finished reading the book. In it, he doesn't state that it happened at once everywhere. There was one passage that implied that the Aztecs were still mostly bicameral (or were in the immediate period after the bicameral breakdown) when the Spanish arrived in the 16th Century.

Also, the breakdown is not instantaneous, but happens over time. Once it starts, you get religion and oracles (the Oracle at Delphi for example) as the populous attempts to hear the gods' voices for direction. Oracles lasted for about a millennium after the initial breakdown in Greece, and over time, the gods' voices were head less and less.

He also states that modern remnants of the bicameral mind exist in hypnosis and schizophrenia (but in the case of hypnosis, how it works is very culturally dependent).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I first read it, I felt he was trying to find a solution for a problem that doesn't exist, that of; 'given humans are conscious and animals are not, what mechanism could bring about an incredibly sudden evolution of consciousness out of nowhere?'

The answer being that there was not a sudden evolution of consciousness out of nowhere. Human conscious states may be greatly more reflective that other animals, with a greater proportion of our neurons experiencing memory than sensory data, when compared to, say, a squirrel. However, the fundamental aspect of direct awareness is a shared trait, we are just directly aware of a far greater magnitude of internal states than the squirrel.

<comment><USER11> I think it also useful to semantically separate cognitive consciousness (i.e. Knowing and expressing the existence of your thought processes through arguably higher, more abstract thought processes - which might even go on recursively - knowing that I know that i am conscious, etc) from the externally unmeasurable 'conscious experience', (i.e qualia, the awareness of sensory or thoughts at the most essential level, 'seeing' what one sees, etc).

One could imagine a living being with one but not the other, for example qualia without cognitive consciousness (if I had to guess, I would imagine this experience to be similar to being drugged to the point of having no internal monologue, no complex thought process, but keeping your sensations and vision, etc, or being a barely-sentient animal in purely instictual mode of thought and action)

The opposite, cognitive consciousness without qualia - a.k.a the philosophical zombie - or a computer which can argue the existence of it's thoughts without feeling them is, I gather, a more controversial state of being.

What I find interesting is that in separating the two 'consciousness's, the former ends up taking almost all of the importance and the latter none - anything which can be externally measured ends up in the first category (which is a computable logic process), which leaves very little of utilitarian/evolutionary/algorithmic importance in the second. However, in much discourse about consciousness the latter takes a disproportionate role (i.e fear of losing your unmeasurable consciousness when teleporting, etc, though the cognitive consciousness, being by definition a logical and measurable process is theoretically preserved)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A nice way to look at Bicameralism is as (good) science fiction. (Wikipedia calls it a "radical hypothesis".)

<comment><USER7> It is also non-falsifiable since it is impossible to prove or disprove whether ancient people were conscious or not. Or for that matter whether a present-day schizophrenic is conscious or not in the same sense.

<comment> apk-d Can we even prove whether a _modern_ person is conscious? If so, shouldn't we be able to occasionally encounter such unconscious people, either occurring randomly by natural variation (especially given how recently the breakdown is claimed to have happened), or in people who had very little contact with language (hard but not impossible to come by)?

<comment><USER13> The recent NPC meme provides an interesting answer to this question.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that just solipsism

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Science aside, the breakdown-of-bicameral-theory has intriguing parallels to Lacan's theory of the mirror stage. In this (nonscientific - but we're learning the limits of scientific psychology) theory, infants are born unarticulated, a mass of limbs with no wholeness to them. In the mirror stage they discover they have a body which is articulated and which is subject to the gaze of others. This begins the split between the Imaginary and the Symbolic (social reality). Under bicameral conditions, men didn't see themselves as articulated and autonomous, let alone as objects of others' (or in the case of gods, the Other, who provides the law) gaze. They didn't have imaginations split from social reality.

<comment><USER16> I have early memories of a non verbal world, and in it, objects were not discrete. There were visually distinct elements, such things on the walls, and the walls themselves, but I had no concept of them being separate, or having names, or needing them, and didn't think about them. I just looked around. There was no chain of thoughts, just silent observation.

Likewise, I lacked object permanence. When my mother left the room, she ceased to exist; I did not think about her or imagine her being somewhere else.

There was no sense of time, no before or after that I can tell.I was just living in the moment.

Ironically I know now what time it was, my rough age, and even the season, because of the specifics of where my room was. It was afternoon nap time. The sunlight was streaming in my window, which happened only in fall/winter, as there was a summertime screen of trees. We later reoriented our house, so that lets me establish my age too. I was just turned two, and late to talk.

There must have been some sense of self by then, but I think that starts earlier, developing from kicking your legs and swinging your arms, and eventually realizing that you are a causation.

Talking about this memory damages it, because language and symbolism overlays the experience into an approximation. But it is very different from my other memories.

I think I held onto that memory because I had a later event that echoed it. Soon after we moved to another town, and there a whole bunch of people got the flu. People had not forgotten the Spanish Flu by the early 70s, and there was worries about another one. So they quarantined the hospital,put me in an oxygen tent, and I got to enjoy another timeless experience.

By that time I could think, though I didn't talk. During admittance, my mom was holding me while talking to a nurse, and I saw a person in an oxygen tent get pushed down a hallfway. I pointed and asked, "Can I be in one of those?" Years later when I related this to my mother, she laughed and said, "No you didn't, you were too young to talk like that."

I wasn't yet old enough to be told "you'll be here for a few days at least", or "mommy can't visit you(and she was pregnant)". The O2 tent was comprised of a yellowish, rubbery vinyl, and I remember touching it, and that it was a new experience for me. Couldn't really see anything through it, except diffuse sunlight. So I lay there facing the wall mostly, too sick to move, and spent a week with no internal narrative. I don't remember feeling lonely, scared, or bored. I remember a nurse checking on me(and probably changing my diaper), but not being awake at night.

<comment><USER17> FYI, this way of experiencing the world can be regained through meditation. This includes, from my experience:

\- The quieter inner narrative and silent observation.

\- The feeling that things not currently being experienced do not "exist" in the same way that things currently being experienced do. They exist in your imagination, and they exist in the sense that you correctly predict that if you were to observe them they would be there, but this knowledge feels ephemeral in contrast to the vivid detailed senses being experienced right now.

\- The disconnectedness of time. The past only exists in your memories. If you recall a memory, that happens in the present, and is quite unlike the experience you had that formed the memory.

\- Less of a sense of self. All your knowledge is available, but it feels third-person.

I can't relate to some of the other parts of your experience, though, like the lack of separation/names of objects, and the realization of causation.

As a caveat, I haven't been in this state of mind for a week or two, and as you say it doesn't play well with being remembered and analyzed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _In fact, the Iliad does not seem to mention any subjective thoughts or the > contents of anyone's mind. The heroes of the Iliad were not able to make > decisions, no one was introspecting or even reminiscing. Apparently, they > were noble "automata" who were not aware of what they did. Iliadic man did > not have subjectivity as we do; he had no internal mind-space to introspect > upon. Some lexical oddities in the Homeric text (such as the absence of a > single word translating "consciousness", "mind", "soul", or even "body") led > Jaynes to formulate the hypothesis that the Iliad was composed by > nonconscious minds, which automatically recorded and objectively reported > events, in a manner rather similar to the characters of the poem. The > transition to subjective and introspective writings of the conscious mind > occurred in later works, beginning with the Odyssey._

The Odyssey is not that later (for any evolutionary or great developmental force to have any effect). Plus it is strongly considered to be of the same authorship and the writing style is very much the same.

What's worse, unlike what the above excerpt claims, most of the Iliad deals with feelings of various kinds -- starting with the famous opening line: "Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus".

Does these parts seem to have any relation to the idea that "The heroes of the Iliad were not able to make decisions, no one was introspecting or even reminiscing. Apparently, they were noble "automata" who were not aware of what they did. Iliadic man did not have subjectivity as we do; he had no internal mind-space to introspect upon"?

> At this Jove was much troubled and answered, "I shall have trouble if you > set me quarrelling with Juno, for she will provoke me with her taunting > speeches; even now she is always railing at me before the other gods and > accusing me of giving aid to the Trojans. Go back now, lest she should find > out. I will consider the matter, and will bring it about as wish. See, I > incline my head that you believe me. This is the most solemn that I can give > to any god. I never recall my word, or deceive, or fail to do what I say, > when I have nodded my head."

> As he spoke the son of Saturn bowed his dark brows, and the ambrosial locks > swayed on his immortal head, till vast Olympus reeled.

> When the pair had thus laid their plans, they parted- Jove to his house, > while the goddess quitted the splendour of Olympus, and plunged into the > depths of the sea. The gods rose from their seats, before the coming of > their sire. Not one of them dared to remain sitting, but all stood up as he > came among them. There, then, he took his seat. But Juno, when she saw him, > knew that he and the old merman's daughter, silver-footed Thetis, had been > hatching mischief, so she at once began to upbraid him. "Trickster," she > cried, "which of the gods have you been taking into your counsels now? You > are always settling matters in secret behind my back, and have never yet > told me, if you could help it, one word of your intentions."

(...)

> The old man tore his grey hair as he spoke, but he moved not the heart of > Hector. His mother hard by wept and moaned aloud as she bared her bosom and > pointed to the breast which had suckled him. "Hector," she cried, weeping > bitterly the while, "Hector, my son, spurn not this breast, but have pity > upon me too: if I have ever given you comfort from my own bosom, think on it > now, dear son, and come within the wall to protect us from this man; stand > not without to meet him. Should the wretch kill you, neither I nor your > richly dowered wife shall ever weep, dear offshoot of myself, over the bed > on which you lie, for dogs will devour you at the ships of the Achaeans."

Thus did the two with many tears implore their son, but they moved not the heart of Hector, and he stood his ground awaiting huge Achilles as he drew nearer towards him. As serpent in its den upon the mountains, full fed with deadly poisons, waits for the approach of man- he is filled with fury and his eyes glare terribly as he goes writhing round his den- even so Hector leaned his shield against a tower that jutted out from the wall and stood where he was, undaunted.

</comment><comment><USER19> If it wasn't for Robert J. Sawyer's WWW trilogy I would never have heard of "the bicameral mind". The first book in particular is brimming with it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Someone's been watching the remake of Westworld :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Like the phantom time hypothesis, bicameralism is a sort of massively revisionist theory that relies on wild interpretations of historical information. And both are pretty entertaining, regardless.

<comment><USER21> Unlike the phantom time hypothesis, you can find actual non-historic evidence for the bicameral theory of mind. The strongest of which you can actually experience yourself by triggering psychotic states (through the use of psychedelics or other practices).

There were times where I fully regressed into a psychological state perfectly described by Jaynes in his book, voices and all.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, how are hallucinations evidence for the bicameral theory?

<comment><USER22> It works because the bicameral theory _is_ a hallucination. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I highly recommend anyone trying to understand this subject read the papers of Dr. Mica Endsley, former Chief Scientist of the US Air Force.

She makes a distinction between the 3 levels of Situational Awareness and Situational Understanding. Here are the 3 levels of Situational Awareness she proposed:

* Perception of Elements in Current Situation

* Comprehension of Current Situation

* Projection of Future Status

Here is a diagram: [http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/2900713433_f295107549_o....](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/2900713433_f295107549_o.jpg)

From: [http://wikiofscience.wikidot.com/quasiscience:situational- aw...](http://wikiofscience.wikidot.com/quasiscience:situational-awareness)

Probably the best place to start is: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/210198492_Endsley_M...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/210198492_Endsley_MR_Toward_a_Theory_of_Situation_Awareness_in_Dynamic_Systems_Human_Factors_Journal_371_32-64)

I think this paper, and others of hers, should be recommended reading for any AI researcher. I also think "Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" should be recommended as well.

FYSA, the research community seems split on Dr. Endsley's theories, though there seem to be a majority that view them as correct, based on my own informal experience.

From Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica_Endsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica_Endsley)):

* Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37(1), 32-64.

* Endsley, M. R. (1995). Measurement of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37(1), 65-84.

* Endsley, M. R., & Garland, D. J. (Eds.). (2000). Situation awareness analysis and measurement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

* Endsley, M. R., & Jones, W. M. (2001). A model of inter- and intrateam situation awareness: Implications for design, training and measurement. In M. McNeese, E. Salas & M. Endsley (Eds.), New trends in cooperative activities: Understanding system dynamics in complex environments (pp. 46-67). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

* Endsley, M. R. (2006). Expertise and Situation Awareness. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (pp. 633-651). New York: Cambridge University Press.

* Endsley, M. R., & Jones, D. G. (2012). Designing for situation awareness: An approach to human-centered design (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis.

</comment><comment><USER24> Better read "The Ego Tunnel"

</comment><comment><USER25> (2007)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hm.. Is Functional Neurology (the journal in which this published) related in any way to the field of functional neurology? I think the latter is a rebranding of chiropractic neurology, which some would argue purports some less than scientific ideas.</comment>


Sun Microsystems founders celebrate legacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoworld.com/article/3441927/sun-microsystems-founders-celebrate-legacy.html <comment><USER2> choice quote:

"I remember some company moved into one of our old headquarters buildings," McNealy said. "And the CEO said, we're going to leave the [Sun Microsystems] logos up because we want everybody in our company to remember what can happen to you if you don't pay attention. This company could do well to do one-one- hundredth of what we did."

<comment><USER3> This is especially relevant to me since I interned at Sun in the late 90's and just accepted a job at Facebook. The Facebook recruiter mentioned working in the old Sun HQ.

Sun definitely seemed ahead of the curve when it came to working from home. My main job as an intern was to automate the process of ensuring the ISDN modems used by people to connect to Sun's network were regularly updated. The secondary job was to keep the mini-fridge in the lab stocked with beer for the weekly team meeting.</comment></comment>


The Next Chapter of Meetup - <AUTHOR> https://www.meetup.com/blog/the-next-chapter-of-meetup/ <comment><USER2> Things at WeWork must be quite dire.

<comment><AUTHOR> WeWork bought Meetup for $200 million end of 2017. I do not think any details were disclosed this time, but I guess the consortium paid way less.

It worries me that the Pro subscriptions are growing so much. Seems Meetup wants to focus on the enterprise market. Pro subscription are much, much more expensive than normal ones and do not offer many benefits for a normal organizor. Only if you want to target your group members outside of Meetup.</comment></comment>


JetMan - <AUTHOR> http://www.jetman.com <comment><USER2> Video: [http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/9raw-rocket-man-soars- ov...](http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/9raw-rocket-man-soars-over-lake- geneva/xhaad1y)

 _Swiss inventor and pilot Yves Rossy has successfully flown a new version of his jet-powered rocket over Lake Geneva with a total flight time of 18 minutes before landing._

<comment><USER3> His youtube <http://www.youtube.com/user/jetmanofficial#p/u/1/xWIoOzrGnOU>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Step 2: FIGHT CRIME

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a prime example of dogfooding.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting a trendy javascript-instead-of-flash game. Thankfully, I was wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks pretty cool, also looks pretty dangerous. Dunno if I'd give up public transport for this.

<comment><USER8> Let's hope sometime it would be possible to make such a wing VTOL-capable and have some kind of airbag safety device for use at low altitudes. Before that happens we're left with paragliding and ultralight trikes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Few achieve <noun>man. It's inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER10> No take off, No demonstration of control and speed variations, No landing. Am sure secret prototypes at NASA or elsewhere are much better.

<comment><USER11> stop hating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Slightly disappointed he landed with a parachute, but still a marvel of human ingenuity.

How do those turbines compare to something like this? <http://www.jetcatusa.com/p200.html>

Is it really just a matter of having 30k and the balls to pull something like this off?

edit: It is those turbines exactly, it looks like.

<comment><USER13> It's nothing to do with having the 30k, it's about having the engineering chops to design this, the cold stones to put it on, and the lifetime of experience needed to know how to handle the dynamics of a dangerous vehicle that's never existed before.

Hell, if I had those 3 qualities (I don't even have one), I would drop the 30k without a question.

Jetman also helps rationalize government funding for things like space, Moon, and Mars exploration. I know that I will never have the constitution to strap on a jetpack like Jetman. But I'm able to vicariously experience a (vanishingly) small fraction of the thrill just by watching him do so, just like I'm able to experience a small fraction of the joy of walking on the Moon by watching the Apollo astronauts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the ultimate boys toy. I wonder how much of a pilot you need to be to fly this? Are there aileron, rudder and thrust controls?

<comment><USER15> Even if the controls were simple, I think you'd probably want to have experience flying just so you're practiced keeping your cool in similar but less dangerous situations. This thing looks like it's about three seconds of panic away from killing anyone.

<comment><USER16> Apparently he has a throttle but no other controls, and steers using body english. Sounds like skydiving would be slightly better training for this than piloting.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and he also said that the "controls" are very sensitive. Even slightly moving his head changes his course.

<comment><USER17> So no looking around and enjoying the scenery... if he or anyone ever builds a "two-seater" (not a seater to begin with of course) this would surely, well, take off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Error establishing a database connection

<comment><USER12> It's coming on and off. The video in the comments is what you want to see anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does he land?

Edit: Parachute. Of course.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is no limit to man's dream of flying .</comment>


Browserbite Tests Your Website Across Browsers Using Computer Vision - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/09/20/browserbite-tests-your-website-across-browsers-using-computer-vision <comment><USER2> I think they might be suffering heavy load; I don't think waiting an hour is an acceptable delay for web dev - it would make for a very slow iteration loop!

      > There are 68 other webpages queued before this request.
      > Your request should be completed in about 1 hour.

<comment><USER3> I was expecting there to be an option to upgrade to a paid account and be able to skip the queue, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if they were predicting a HN size load in this stage of their development. When I interviewed Kaspar for this article he said that they're looking for funding this fall to help scale, which looks like a good idea. I found the service interesting though, well worth a bookmark!

<comment><USER5> We ARE working on the payment module right now to give paying customers priority. For now, we just try keep our servers up to handle the load :)

Kaspar from Browserbite

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kaspar, can you talk more about how a vision algorithm is used? It sounds like it's more involved than stitching together screenshots of the whole page and diffing them.

<comment><USER5> You can write a whole PhD thesis about it. Basically it is a result of a 2+ year research project how to detect differences that are relevant to people. In fact the computers find a lot more differences when you compare pixel-by- pixel. The keywords are machine vision, artificial intelligence, machine learning.

The hardest part of working out the right balance of what to detect was to make the algorithm less picky without losing an eye for detail.

We've benchmarked the algorithm against professional layout testers and the fault detection quality is on the same level with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will I be able to run the diff against previous versions of the site? This is a huge pain point for us and I've been looking for a service that will let us automate testing for CSS breakage on deploys.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it is possible! Can you drop me an e-mail (you can find it on our site) on how do you plan to use the service for this purpose. Skype call could be best!

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I'll follow up when you're not so busy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worked pretty well for us, already spotted a couple of funny css bugs on our home page on IE7 (of course)

</comment><comment><USER9> Kaspar, do you have a general idea of what pricing will be when you start offering paid tests?

<comment><USER5> We're planning to have monthly subscription that would include 50-100 comparisons (depending on how many configurations you want to have in the package) for $99 per month. Priority processing is for all paying customers, of course.

There's also going to be Enterprise pricing that includes - scripting support, testing behind firewalls and some other extras.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: let's build a list of reasons why startups fail - <AUTHOR>

I am writing a business plan for a new idea of mine. After all the reasons why this is the best idea ever and countless industries are going to be disrupted I am now writing "what could go wrong". This is the sad part but it has to be done. I have already several reasons in my list and I'd like to ask you here for some more. In the process let's build a list useful for all of us in the future. For this reason I won't even bother you with my "great idea" so we avoid "idea specific" failure reasons. I'll start with some obvious ones in my list:<p>* Nobody (or too few) need it<p>* Somebody needs it but won't pay/pay enough for it<p>* Budget underestimated (you needed more than that and you did not know it)<p>* Unproved assumptions ("we were sure it would go viral" / "critical mass is at X")<p>* Critical mass was higher than expected<p>* Somebody else is doing that already, better than you<p>* The big players see what you do, like it, and replicate it very fast. You're out<p>...and I am sure there's many more.<p>If we build this list properly it may be quite useful! <comment><USER2> Enterprise executives can love your innovative enterprise service but inertia among managers and staff who are needed for adoption may outlast your runway

</comment><comment><USER2> Advanced technology can easily be too early from a market adoption perspective

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks, good ones! It seems I can't edit my first message to add them.

</comment><comment><USER3> internal issues. people issues. cofounders infighting.</comment>


The potential of the medical imaging industry in one bill - <AUTHOR> https://habrastorage.org/webt/bw/2i/nq/bw2inqpfac8psxkq5b51okdhbug.jpeg <comment><AUTHOR> I got into a road bike accident. Got into emergency room. Spend there a couple hours and was released after this.

I do not think that HN is not the place to discuss the limitations and advantages of the US healthcare system.

It just reminded me that there is still a big market opportunity and ways to reduce costs for machine learning in the field of medical imaging.

</comment><comment><USER2> How do people manage without insurance in the USA (I worked on work & travel for 7 months total without any insurance. Holly 20s :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was told that the system works like this:

1\. Doctors estimate how good the insurance is. 2\. If it is good they create a huge bill. 3\. Health insurance negotiates the discount and it can be big. 4\. Regardless of your insurance you pay plus/minus the same.

Why? Unclear.

About being in US for a long time and not having the insurance.

I like rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding. The chance of an accident in these sports is rather high. I would feel uncomfortable doing them without insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yep, the way US hospitals calculate prices and they way they negotiate this with insurance company looks ridiculous. It took me a few years to stop paying attention to this (assuming you have a good insurance!).

<comment><AUTHOR> I have good insurance, so my payment is not as striking as $50k in the bill.

But I am very curious, what part of the scans can cost $30k.

Requested itemized statement, but did not get it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I could buy a new apartment for this money :harold:

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not the case in San Francisco :)

But yes, it is a material sum of money that I prefer to spend on other activities.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to start with C++? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, I've been programming for about 10 years now and I decided that it's finally time. I've always wanted to learn C and C++ but never got around to it.
I've worked in Java, C#, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, the usual suspects on the web. So I'm happy to invest time in learning a language.
My main question is two-fold: * what are the best resources (books, tutorials) out there? * if you are currently working in C++, what do I absolutely have to know that might not be obvious?
Thanks so much! <comment><USER2> 1) There are so many resources. Your best bet is to find 10 or so that teach modern c++ (c++11 & c++14), and follow through with your favourite.

2) Memory management is the biggest difference from Java and C#. Try not to use pointers unless you have to, when you do try to anchor the pointers in stack data (created without new), if you have to use new try to wrap the pointers in RAII classes (smart pointers).

3) C++ is multiparadigm, don't feel required to stick religiously to OOP practices. functional and procedural techniques can be better if you know what you're doing.

4) The stl isn't as... robust as the standard libraries of other languages. You WILL need to search for third party libaries.

<comment><USER3> The STL is not that bad, cppreference ([http://en.cppreference.com/w/](http://en.cppreference.com/w/)) can be really helpful. Otherwise you can take a look at Boost ([http://www.boost.org](http://www.boost.org)) if the STL is not enough for what you want to do.

And for the language itself, cprogramming ([http://www.cprogramming.com](http://www.cprogramming.com)) is a really good aid for the latest concepts like auto and decltype

<comment><USER2> I love the stl, it's almost always the best thing to use in C++ (wrt Cost/Benefit, love me some vectors). My comment was geared to someone who does "Java, C#, Ruby, Python, [and] JavaScript" programming. The most notable omissions in the c++ stl is GUI stuff, which comes standard in C# and Java.

As an aside, TDD and refactoring also aren't as mature in C++ (vs Java, C# and Javascript).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some good C++98 books :

\- Accelerated C++: Practical Programming. A good quick tour of C++98

\- Effective C++, More Effective C++,Exceptional C++, C++ Coding Standard

Many patterns to follow or be aware of. More generally, any book by Herb Sutter.

Good recent books (msut have !!):

\- Effective Modern C++ (same as previous, but more focused on C++11 and 14)

\- Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ (A general introduction book by Stroustrup on programming using C++)

\- C++ Primer (The spiriual son of Accelerated C++, the best introduction book about C++ I know)

The textbook and more specific books :

\- The C++ Programming Language (the ultimate C++ textbook)

\- C++ Template the complete Guide (focused on templates)

\- C++ Concurrency in Action (focused on threading)

In a second time, have also a look at some libraries like boost (many specific purpose components), Qt (huge framework for making GUI), Poco.

\- Website [https://isocpp.org/](https://isocpp.org/) (the official website for the language).

\- Have a look at usenet (comp.lang.c++ and comp.lang.c++.moderated), CppCon's videos, Meeting C++ videos and Channel 9</comment>


The Pirate Bay down, forever? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-forever/

<comment><USER2> decent rant; makes sense.

My biggest gripe of visiting TPB in the past 6 or so years is just this: the inane, mostly porno, sometimes gamer-centric adverts. I don't use adbblock or whatever because I don't need to in 99.999% of my yearly transactions. But seriously wtf is up with the ads on tpb? I can only assume these are the only ad providers that are willing to work with them, which kinda makes sense but also sucks for legit users.

I wonder about the passive implication the writer presents here, that the persistent targeting and raids are related to their public relations and advert content.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would this time be forever? They've been raided before.

<comment><USER2> and it's been a long while, as the post points out - some 8 years

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's just a flesh wound!

</comment><comment><USER5> It'll be back... at least I hope so</comment>


CNN Abandons the Crawl for the Flipper - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/weekinreview/21stelter.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> Finally! The Crawl always annoyed me and distracted me the main programming. Interestingly, I think the Crawl is really a US trend (there is pretty tough cable news competition) as CNN International and BBC World, when I've seen them, employed a Flipper.

Hopefully ESPN will do something similar so I'm not distracted by off-season MLB moves while I'm trying to watch basketball.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. I've done some consulting work for one of the companies that makes TV graphics visualization software (that does the flips, the crawls, the statshots, etc...), here in Tirol:

<http://vizrt.com/></comment>


A Guy Who Saw Lincoln Get Shot Was on a TV Show in 1956 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I_iq5yzJ-Dk <comment><USER2> Here's another interesting episode of the same show (I've got a secret) - it's a 17 year old Ray Kurzweil plaing the piano. His secret is that he wrote a computer program that made the music he's playing. Pretty impressive for a 17 year old in 1965...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Neivqp2K4>

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently Atlantic is now combing Reddit for old news? Like six months ago news?

<comment><USER4> You mean combing for old game show footage on youtube? What does this have to do with reddit?

<comment><USER5> There was a post on Reddit about this a year or so ago.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/j97nn/til_an_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/j97nn/til_an_eyewitness_of_the_lincoln_assassination/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure why the article is saying this video is _now_ on YouTube. The video pages says it was uploaded in 2009.

<comment><USER7> I thought the same thing. I guess they were reflecting that the man had survived the times to find himself on a gameshow about 80 years later, and about 60 years after that, the TV show found its way to youtube...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The man's story:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_J._Seymour>

</comment><comment><USER9> $80 and pipe tobacco! What a prize

<comment><USER10> $80 in 1956 is roughly $675 dollars today as calculated by CPI: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2480%20in%201956%20in%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2480%20in%201956%20in%20present%20day%20dollars&t=crmtb01)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's somehow fitting that the YouTube user who posted this also has a number of "OUR CATS..." videos.

<comment><USER7> I'm happy they had the decency to disable comments. I've noticed youtube comments are normally distasteful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These crossovers of time are fascinating and interesting to research i.e. people who used the internet before the airplane was invented.

</comment><comment><USER13> They really got that really quickly, and it was sponsored by tobacco.</comment>


NOAA upgrades the U.S. global weather forecast model - <AUTHOR> https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-upgrades-us-global-weather-forecast-model <comment><USER2> This is about the American vs European weather model

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/02/14/eur...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/02/14/euro- vs-gfs-weather-model-wars-take-a-new-turn-in-march/#1c774f576c2b)</comment>


EFF: Say No to Online Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/pages/say-no-to-online-censorship

<comment><USER2> If we were to make decision as voters, don't you think we should have some reliable idea about what the government is doing?

What if the current administration is doing evil something behind the back of the electorate? How would we know about it?

You see, secrecy is a catch-22 proposition. If you're trying to do actual real work of tracking down terrorists, you don't want the whole world to know(at least until years later). But if you're doing something EVIL behind our back, the world have the right to know.

The cablegate? Hardly any reason to get angry over. It make the government looks good. But politicians are overreacting.

<comment><USER3> _If you're trying to do actual real work of tracking down terrorists, you don't want the whole world to know(at least until years later). But if you're doing something EVIL behind our back, the world have the right to know._

The main safeguard is rule of law. There's a whitelist of information that is allowed to be classified -- spelled out in <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526> .

        Information shall not be considered for classification
        unless its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be
        expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to
        the national security in accordance with section 1.2 of
        this order, and it pertains to one or more of the
        following:

            (a) military plans, weapons systems, or operations;

            (b) foreign government information;

            (c) intelligence activities (including covert
                action), intelligence sources or methods, or
                cryptology;

            (d) foreign relations or foreign activities of the
                United States, including confidential sources;

            (e) scientific, technological, or economic matters
                relating to the national security;

            (f) United States Government programs for
                safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities;

            (g) vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems,
                installations, infrastructures, projects,
                plans, or protection services relating to the
                national security; or

            (h) the development, production, or use of weapons
                of mass destruction.

You can't simply mark your shady activities "TOP SECRET". Not even the president has the authority to do that. That's an improper classification, and is illegal -- anyone who works with classified information should know that, and could be expected to report it.

Between rule of law, a law that outlines which categories of things the government is allowed to keep secret, and the fact that even really secret programs of any significant size have to ultimately be staffed with lots of normal citizens, I think it's actually a pretty safe and sane system.

<comment><USER4> I could drive a truck through half of those clauses. Of course you can just mark your shady activities TOP SECRET. It's national security!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just donated yesterday. You should too

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I just did and got a cool t-shirt.

<comment><USER7> I got the hat. Don't know if its cool, but I like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The issue here is not about censorship on the web (ha!), it's about confidential relationships and whether, as a society and for the betterment of it, we feel some information should be confidential and protected.

Would the same arguments be made about censorship if WikiLeaks' instead posted health records, or confidential conversations between attorneys and their clients? (which are confidential and legally protected, similar to security clearances).

The debate should be whether we want to protect communications between our politicians and diplomats, not the inevitable publication of released confidential material and the vilification of the one who does it.

This release does show, however, that once this type of information is on the internet, whether it's medical records, nuclear secrets, or what the Secretary of State said to some diplomat, no one can stop its availability, as long as there are people who support its release.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see how putting a button or a banner on your site is going to stop censorship, that seems to be pretty symbolic.

Saying 'no' to online censorship is not equivalent to some cosmetic changes, it's a fundamental thing to do and in the end of all we do is place some buttons then I doubt that would put a dent in to the plan of those that would have it differently.

Contributing directly to the EFF (I believe VISA and Mastercard are still processing donations to them, possibly even PayPal) would be one way, what other ways are there in which we could make more than just a symbolic stand here ?

<comment><USER10> Symbolic stands like this are often the first step to the more virtuous concrete actions you describe.

<comment><USER11> Indeed - it's starting a movement, and supporting the organization becomes part of your identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> wikileaks.eff.org is not resolving for me. It seems inconsistent for the EFF to talk about standing up to censorship without them hosting a mirror and encouraging others to do so.

<comment><USER13> That's the same void argument some people make when some non-artist is critising their art: "Well, you make it better then!"

Criticism does not need to be made by someone participating (I can't think of a better word, hm) to be valid.

<comment><USER14> I think it's an interesting point. If the EFF is claiming that the work of WikiLeaks is good and valid, then would they encourage someone else to mirror the leaked documents? Would they mirror they documents themselves? If not, then why not? I'd be curious to know the reasoning here.

<comment><USER15> From <http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors>:

Wikileaks is currently mirrored on 1289 sites (updated 2010-12-08 19:07 GMT)

Does the world really need a 1290th mirror site?

<comment><USER16> _From<http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors>: _

Should that perhaps read _<http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html> _?

<comment><USER17> No, the original one works fine.

<comment><USER16> Strange. The first time I tried I got a 404, and clicking the Mirrors link from the home page gave me mirrors.html. I wonder if a few of the servers behind wikileaks.ch don't have the /mirrors alias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I have sensitive (and confidential) health records about my family members and someone steals them and posts them on the web, is that freedom of speech? Do I have the right to get them taken down, or in this case shut the website down?

If my company is working on a new product containing details we consider secret, is it OK to post those on the web?

If the gov't has secrets that could compromise our national security, is that Ok to post on the web?

How do we determine where to draw the line?

<comment><USER19> Are the health records for your family members paid out of taxpayer's money? Do they have a negative impact on the lives of anyone outside your family?

Is your new product paid out of taxpayer's money? Will it do a lot of harm to people?

The line is quite clear to me.

<comment><USER18> Is the security of our citizen lives paid for by taxpayers money? Yes it is.

I'm not saying I am against the leaks of most of the cables/documents, but putting national security at risk is a different story

<comment><USER19>
         putting national security at risk is a different story

"national security" is a vague concept; and either way security by obscurity doesn't work for terrorist groups with the right resources.

If "national security" is compromised from the leaks of a couple of documents to the public, than the nation wasn't so secure in the first place. After all, if Wikileaks got a hold of those documents, how hard do you think it is for somebody with a couple of millions in cash and the right connections to do it?

But yeah, we should think of the children.

<comment><USER18> Is there any good that comes out of putting sensitive and classified documents that are meant to protect our citizens (if kept confidential) on the web? Let's assume that the strategy or communication didn't mention any illegal activity or corruption from within our gov't within these documents?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lame attempt by the EFF to get publicity and gain new members.

Instead of selling buttons or memberships, how about offering to host the documents on eff.org?

Action > words.

<comment><USER21> Thus requiring the EFF to spend all their resources defending themselves instead of needy others?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Oscillator Bank / Spectral Synthesizer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grz0zrg/fas <comment><USER2> This idea seems to strike many different people at different times. One my favorites is the ANS synthesizer [0], made with optical tone wheels. There's an android app simulating it [1] (my only relation with it is "user"). The synth presented in this github page really goes a step beyond.

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

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nightradio.vir...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nightradio.virtualans3)

<comment><USER3> The "[0]" link looks broken, should be: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although I've toyed with various synthesis and I have working experience with Faust, I must admit most of project description is way over my head.

To hijack the thread a bit, I'm interested in synthesizing sound samples from scratch. Things like footsteps, squeaking doors, wind, birds, percussions and collision sounds. I'd like to have a synth of sorts that can be configured through ~30 parameters to produce wide range of such effects. People often use SFXR and clones [0] for such purpose. Is there a model that would produce more convincing results while keeping such low number of parameters?

[0] [https://raylibtech.itch.io/rfxgen](https://raylibtech.itch.io/rfxgen)

<comment><AUTHOR> A VSTi i have used several times for birds & animals is "sounds of nature" by Xoxos, maybe you could take a look at how it is done, my guess is some fast FM modulations.

To stay in topic i have synthesized some nature sounds (birds, waters) myself using this synthesizer and a simple two oscillators FM setup with massive pitch modulations for each oscillators, you can hear it on :

[https://youtu.be/25o4Ru8kbpE?t=1111](https://youtu.be/25o4Ru8kbpE?t=1111)

And FM squeaking doors : [https://youtu.be/25o4Ru8kbpE?t=1404](https://youtu.be/25o4Ru8kbpE?t=1404)

So my guess is that some FM with pitch modulation and many oscillators may be the way to go.

Percussion can be synthesized with convincing results through resonant models (simple resonant filters with initial noise), this is called modal synthesis, you can find filters parameters for some real instruments here : [http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/MiscModalFreq.html](http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/MiscModalFreq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is really neat. I was wondering whether this is GPU optimized and not to be disappointed:

"Fragment is a collaborative cross-platform audiovisual live coding environment with pixels based real-time image-synth approach to sound synthesis, the sound synthesis is powered by pixels data produced on the graphics card by live GLSL code, everything is based on pixels!"

Now, if only there was some way to transpile existing VST/AU plugins into this platform. I've been dreaming of GPU accelerated legacy instruments and FX for a while!

<comment><AUTHOR> The sound server itself (the link) is 100% CPU and does not use the GPU at all. One of the client application however (your description) output RGBA data generated by the GPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmmm, seems very cool, but I'd need a tutorial for this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Gotta say, the docs alone are impressive

</comment><comment><USER8> very impressive work!</comment>


Why not tablets for vertical markets? - <AUTHOR>

The first flurry of tablets came out in the early nineties. The technology wasn't yet good enough to be attractive to consumers, so the talk was about vertical business markets. Insurance claim adjusters, aircraft technicians referring to manuals and diagrams, hospital staff doing the rounds, retailers taking inventory etc., basically everyone who works on their feet instead of sitting at a desk and needs some form of data processing should find tablets handier than laptops.
And the vertical markets never happened. As soon as everyone realized the technology wasn't yet good enough to be attractive to consumers, the entire nascent tablet industry just went into the recycle bin.
Tablets came back in a big way when the technology did get good enough to be attractive to consumers. Vertical markets should ride on the back of that, right?
But it doesn't seem to be happening. All the news is about stores clogged with hundreds of thousands of ADD-inducing entertainment "apps"; the use of tablets for domain specific business software is never mentioned, and it's hard to see how it would even be possible if everything has to go through the "app store".
So - why not? The logic still seems sound; tablets should be ideal for vertical markets; why isn't it happening? Or is it happening and we just don't hear about it? <comment><USER2> Verticle markets were a hypothesis about how to get people to pay. Tablets were actually used in the 1990's in specialist/niche applications. The combination of enterprise customers with special needs would fork out $$$ for special-needs units. This actually did happen -- look at pictures of the NYSE trading floor from the time. People with a lot of money (and more to be made) underwrote secial-use tablets (complete with wireless 28.8 modems, etc)

Today, an iPad likely does not need modification to do most tasks, that were the placeholders discussed in the 1990's. It would have to be 10x better than the iPad, to be compelling to a vertical market player today. But, I don't think there is an order of magnitude opportunity on the sidewalk. The main constrains seem to be power/weight. As soon as you get to 2x Ipad4 you are looking at something like an 11-in MBAir, but that's already on the market for 1.5x the iPad cost.

So a speciailst unit would need to be something like the size of the iPad mini but with the power of a MB air. All in some kind of form factor (hardened/waterproof/secure) that was unique to a specialist application. I do think there are opportunities for that, but I'm inclined to think AAPL might be better to have a go at them. They would need an OSX competitive operating system, something like 512GB of flash memory, and some unique specialist application SW to be written.

That seems like a lot for a new entrant to pursue, and its unlear the market is large enough for a new entrant. Where the consumer/global market is now 1 billion middle-class professionals, gov'ts, and schoolkids, etc. The issue with pricing these things at $4-6K is that the depreciation would probably be huge.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because the enterprises think the iPad is good for everything, so they don't need to pay for any other one. Panasonic has been trying this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJLxZx_3zBc></comment>


The Subscription Addiction: The New, New Thing in Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21739944-companies-face-fresh-set-difficulties-locking-their-customers <comment><USER2> I've clicked on the link and it asked me to subscribe.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love those paywalls.</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't software have credits screens anymore? - <AUTHOR> In the olden days, desktop apps shipped with credits screens  with the names of individual contributors (sometimes in the splash screen, sometimes in the About panel, sometimes hidden in Easter eggs).
Then they went away! I don't know if it was IP concerns, the fact that it gave headhunters a hitlist of people to poach, or just got unwieldy.
Sometimes SaaS apps have a friendly "Team" page on their site with headshots and bio blurbs, which is the closest I think I see nowadays.
Are any of you shipping credits screens in your desktop, mobile, or SaaS apps? If so, why and how? If not, why not? Should it be revived? <comment><USER2> Firefox, for example, has an extensive list at [https://www.mozilla.org/credits/](https://www.mozilla.org/credits/) ...

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. I think I don't do it because I want a separate life from the product. I don't really want to encourage people to think they have access to "me". I have a "support" page for that. I value my privacy.

2\. Software is rarely written by "one guy" anymore. Its a really complicated thing that might involve contractors, 3rd party libraries, and maybe we don't want to reveal our sources anymore. Credit is a thing that goes far beyond the company's creation of the product. For one product I sell, I do have an Acknowledgments section included in the documentation.

3\. Listing developers on the website is fine, that can be changed as staff come and go. But embedding "John Doe" within the About page (desktop app) may not reflect the real people behind the application five years from now. Yes, in some markets, it can last that long before an upgrade.

Maybe it would improve things, maybe it wouldn't, whatever, but that's my reasoning. If something won't improve sales, then I'm not inclined to do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lots of things conspired to kill credit screens.

>The job market for tech went insane, providing companies a disincentive to give developers tools to transfer prestige between companies

>Source control and code review processes improved, making it much harder to hide screens

>Companies are much more security minded, and what seems like a funny joke credits screen someone might add as a prank may be the code surface that gets you or your customers hacked, causing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

>Modern metrics tracking incentivizes devs to focus on their work objectives rather than working on unrequested bonus features like a credits screen

I'd love to see them return, but the deck seems stacked against.

</comment><comment><USER5> To some extent it's self-perpuating: you don't do it, because if you look around, it's not the done thing.

There were other mainstays such as borderless splash-screens and tip-of-the- day navigators.

</comment><comment><USER6> LineageOS ( Android ) :

Settings > About phone > Contributors</comment>


Legion of Tech Volunteers Lead a Charge for Bernie Sanders - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-presidential-campaign-tech-supporters.html?ref=technology

<comment><USER2> (Reposting this comment from when I posted this article earlier today.)

This article is primarily about the CodersForSanders organization ([https://coders.forsanders.com/](https://coders.forsanders.com/)), which started on reddit at /r/CodersForSanders and uses Slack to coordinate efforts among over 150 developers, designers, and digital/content folks. I am a member; I built the donation app mentioned in the article (an iPad app for volunteers to collect donations at campaign events using Square readers) and a few other projects.

Regardless of your political leanings, I've found CodersForSanders to be a fascinating experiment at the intersection of grassroots political organization and remote development/tech work. We have worked on projects that campaigns would normally only entrust to expensive consulting firms, but both out of financial necessity and a commitment to grassroots support we have taken on a lot of that work. I wonder if this can be a new model for political organizing in the 21st century.

<comment><USER3> Can you list a couple interesting apps or services that are being worked on at the moment?

<comment><USER2> In addition to the stuff Kyle mentioned, you can see some of the projects we've shipped at [https://coders.forsanders.com/projects/](https://coders.forsanders.com/projects/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (reposting my comment as well)

Best thing I've ever put my tech startup skillz to use for! If you haven't already checked out [http://feelthebern.org](http://feelthebern.org), please do so and share widely. We built it to make clear where Bernie Sanders stands on every issue... TL;DR for 50+ years he's been consistent and on the right side of history no matter the political cost.

Before this I'd never found (or even tried to find) common ground with, say, Republicans, libertarians or even mainline Democrats. I'd also never really known people in active military service, or who were formerly homeless — but these are some of the amazing humans who I've been working with for 7 weeks now.

Most Americans care about the same things, and if we can move past the broken two-party system and the theatrics that play out in the media, we can actually start solving problems together. Feel grateful that thanks to this candidate and his issues-based campaign, my world's a little bigger.

Join us, we have mobile apps and social apps and so much more coming out. We need great devs, designers, writers & more. :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> During the Presidential Election of Sri Lanka (2015, January), there was a huge Volunteer supporter base on social media for Maithreepala Sirisena (The candidate who won the election defeating the previous president). This was mainly due to the fact there was no media freedom and the traditional media was hugely biased towards one side.

It was quite interesting since the official tech teams of the candidates are there as nominal roles. They were just using online advertising and maintaining FB pages, etc - nothing more.

This blog explains in more detail : [http://groundviews.org/2015/01/13/was- prespollsl-2015-sri-la...](http://groundviews.org/2015/01/13/was- prespollsl-2015-sri-lankas-first-cyber-election/)

</comment><comment><USER6> OK, full disclosure : I'm not American, I don't know Sanders much, and I didn't read the article.

But seriously, how many times can people be deceived by a promising politician that builds hope and then continue the same politic than his predecessors ?

Even if this one is sincere, do you really think one man is going to resist the combined pressures of all the interest groups that are in place ?

<comment><USER7> > Even if this one is sincere, do you really think one man is going to resist > the combined pressures of all the interest groups that are in place ?

In the real world you have to compromise, while he may perhaps resist interest groups his constituents may not and he will have to compromise with them and by proxy may be influenced.

But I believe he's the best so far, out of all of them, in term of his views and mines.

I don't expect any president to be perfect they're only human. And I don't expect his views to be exactly like mine, if I wanted that then I would be running really.

But I believe he's an honest man like Jimmy Carter.

I hope he win but if not at least he's pushing Democrats toward the left more so and stopping the march toward center.

<comment><USER8> I'd much rather Slick Willy's mid 90s economy and his less than consistent commitment to the truth than Carter's honesty & stagflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It will be interesting to see how this largely volunteer organization will fare compared to the highly organized tech teams that Obama had and Clinton has as well.

<comment><USER10> Arguably, Clinton's tech team is what has left her so vulnerable in the first place.

<comment><USER11> Would like to know how so? There seem to be pretty good people on the team.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mousetrap: Keyboard shortcuts in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://craig.is/killing/mice <comment><USER2> I can't get "$" or "* a" to activate on my Swedish keyboard, where they're typed option-4 and shift-', respectively.

Dealing with keyboard-shortcuts and international keyboard is _hard_ , I don't think I've ever gotten an app using ctrl-[ to work right.

edit: $ highlights when I type shift-4, while that's actually supposed to produce €

<comment><USER3> On chrome, 'ctrl-[' triggers a key event with .which, .keyCode, and .charCode all set to 27. 27 is DOM_VK_ESCAPE [1]. On firefox, 'esc' sets .keyCode to 27 [2]. Firefox's 'ctrl-[' sets .which and .charCode to 91 (codepoint for '['), but .keyCode to 0. On both firefox and chrome, plain '[' sets .charCode to 91, as does firefox's 'alt-['. But not 'ctrl-[' on chrome.

       (which,keyCode,charCode)

               chrome     firefox
       [       91 91 91   91 0 91
       alt-[   ?          91 0 91
       ctrl-[  27 27 27   91 0 91
       esc     ?          0 27 0

It's one example out of many, but how do you distinguish such cases, short of enumerating the behavior of every browser (and I guess keyboard layout too)?

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/KeyboardEvent#Virtual_k...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/KeyboardEvent#Virtual_key_codes)

[2] I don't know what chrome does, I couldn't convince it to capture an 'esc' or 'alt-['.

<comment><USER2> And on my Swedish keyboard you type "[" with alt-8, so when I press ctrl- alt-8, all bets are off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is why I love the JavaScript community. Tight little library, great API, brilliant project page. Excellent, shiny, hard. work.

<comment><USER5> They have a big advantage, you know! When you create a jQuery plugin, you can show everyone - instantly. I feel like desktop applications (and even websites, to a degree) don't have that luxury.

<comment><USER6> Just in case anyone is confused by this comment, though, this isn't a jQuery plugin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't do modifier key event generation correctly. On a US keyboard, hold down shift and 4 (i.e. type "$"). The second item highlights. Now release shift. The first item highlights, incorrectly, because the library apparently generated a keydown event for "4" when the shift key was released. That's wrong by all standard conventions. Modifier key releases should never synthesize presses.

<comment><USER8> What browser are you using? It works correctly for me using Chrome on Mac. Could you make a ticket on Github?

<comment><USER7> Chrome 20 on linux. Bug submitted: <https://github.com/ccampbell/mousetrap/issues/3>

<comment><USER8> Thank you.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if this is related to <https://github.com/ccampbell/mousetrap/issues/6>

In which case it should be a pretty painless fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One small suggestion is to return Mousetrap from the various methods, so method calls can be chained.

Also, +1 for a reset() command. I recently patched radio.js to do this, and I think it's something many Ajax-style apps need. However, I'm seeing there might be a need to whitelist some bindings as being durable (survive a reset).

<comment><USER8> Please make tickets at <https://github.com/ccampbell/mousetrap/issues>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really hate pages that take control of the keyboard like this.

Your website isn't so special to completely change how I use my browser.

It might be okay for a game, but in every other case, if my regular bindings don't work, I leave.

<comment><USER11> But I think that's the right solution.

For most websites, I will leave. But for web "apps" like Google Docs, or GMail, or my company's internal apps, I want to use application-style keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+S and Ctrl+T and Ctrl+N. I want Ctrl+N to create a new document inside my application, not a new browser window.

The best solution would be to ask users to give permission to a webpage to overwrite native keyboard shortcuts for their own uses.

<comment><USER4> Agree, probably the best example where it's okay to offer 'tip' type dialogs on opening the app "We've setup keyboard shortcuts for you, would you like to use them? (examples)". (Saving preferences for future visits).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice, but could do with a bit of preventDefault love, at least for the examples. Firefox on Linux has Ctrl+Shift+K as Web Console, Ctrl+K as (seemingly) Goto Google.

<comment><USER13> It's been a while since I last used Firefox, but if I remember correctly, Ctrl/Command-K is a shortcut for your homepage.

<comment><USER14> On my Firefox, Ctrl-K puts the cursor in the search box. (And on Chromium it puts it in the omnibar with a ? prefilled.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dear Asana, Evernote and all other text editing web apps: Can you please use this library to add ctrl + s = save support. I hit it so frequently during writing out of habit and every time I do so Chrome asks me to save the website out as a html file. Thanks! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks like it's doing basically the same thing that keymaster has already been doing, with an almost identical API:

<https://github.com/madrobby/keymaster>

<comment><USER8> This offers a few additional things such as supporting Gmail style key sequences, binding keyup events, supporting keys that require the shift modifier using their key name "?", triggering key commands programmatically, etc.

<comment><USER17> Awesome! I'm super excited about this. I've been using keymaster for my Chrome extension for custom key bindings [1] but it's suffering from two issues:

\- Lack of "key-sequences" ala Gmail

\- Bug where focusing on a page having already pushed down a modifier doesn't tell keymaster that the modifier is pushed. For example if you ctrl+tab to a page and keep the control key pushed, then hit an action key (say "f"), then what you really want is to trigger ctrl+f but keymaster doesn't recognize it because it doesn't see ctrl as having been pressed since it was already held down before the page had focus.

Looks like Mousetrap fixes both of these issues. Thanks a ton!

1: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/logpjaacgmcbpdkdch...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/logpjaacgmcbpdkdchjiaagddngobkck)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like the doma.in/name/choice

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't have noticed it - thanks, made me smile. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know if this is on purpose, but the "Cmd+Shift+K" binding is not activated by "Ctrl+Shift+K" or "Alt+Shift+K" on non-Macs. Seems to work great otherwise, though.

<comment><USER8> Thanks! Command is bound to e.metaKey so whatever that works out to on PC, but you can specify multiple keys like in the next example, by passing an array.

<comment><USER21> You might consider trying an "accel" alias modifier, so that you don't have to specify both Ctrl and Cmd. That's what Mozilla does: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_Tutorial/Keyboard_Short...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_Tutorial/Keyboard_Shortcuts)

If you really do want fine-grained control, for example, so that Cmd works on OS X, but it maps to something else entirely on other platforms, you can still use Ctrl and Cmd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks very similar to a library I created/am working on: <http://keithcirkel.co.uk/jwerty/>

</comment><comment><USER23> This might make more sense as a object model rather than class model. There is a lot of state behind the scenes (bind, trigger, reset), which would be natural for an object. Instead it is dumped into global state.

The use case might be to support multiple sets of key bindings, e.g., default, user specific, app specific, view specific. When you don't need one set anymore you just "reset" that set instead of resetting everything.

</comment><comment><USER24> You know a library (or whatever) is awesome when you're initial reaction is "I can't believe this didn't exist already". I'll definitely be using this!

<comment><USER25> John Resig's jquery.hotkeys do almost all of it (and it is stable enough, as it is 2 years old): <https://github.com/jeresig/jquery.hotkeys>

<comment><USER26> I checked out of curiosity: jquery.hotkeys is about 1.4kb minified, coincidentally the same size as this library. Of course you'd have to add jquery itself to get the total size, if you weren't already using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very nice. I was about to hand roll my own implementation of this, but this just saved me some time :-)

I like how there's a working demo right there on the page - it's nothing groundbreaking but it definitely adds a bit more polish.

Something I'm wondering about - would it pay to have some sort of "variable" key binding whose value would differ depending on the user's OS (if this is even possible)? For example, instead of binding both command+k and ctrl+k, I would bind one combination that would work both on Mac and Windows systems. This isn't a deal breaker or major issue by any means, but I'd be interested to know if it can be done.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very nice! Wrote something like this one too many times in the past, definitely delighted to replace it with a library in the future, thanks! :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Hi craigc, I'd be interested in using this, but (and yeah, this is terrible) I need some sort of "scoping", i.e. hotkeys would dispatch differently based on what element is highlighted.

I realize I could achieve this by making my bound function aware of the scoping, but it would be much nicer to have first class library support (in a library with an already kickass-ly simple API). Any thoughts on this?

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if I want to support this or not. Please make a ticket over at <https://github.com/ccampbell/mousetrap>

<comment><USER30> Perhaps some documentation on how to handle scoping with the callbacks is adequate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks really useful, and the API looks simple.

Just a quick reminder for those using any library like this; screenreader users (typically blind people) rely heavily on the keyboard to use their web browser. Adding your own shortcuts can really screw them over. It's usually best to make your custom shortcuts a feature that the user opts in to, off by default.

</comment><comment><USER32> If anyone is looking for a way to let users enter keycombos which you could then use with Mousetrap, I wrote this: <http://suan.github.com/jquery- keycombinator/>

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice hack -- I've been going this as inside of backbone.js app. I have a asset management app that uses keyboard shortcuts to quickly tag, choose, and manage photos.

Had I know about this I might have used it rather than bundling it into my views.

Nice work!

<comment><USER34> I'd love to see this integrated into Backbone. Bindings could be specified in a keyboard_events hash similar to how the existing events hash is run.

<comment><USER34> Ok, so I just did it: <https://github.com/shiftb/backbone-mousetrap>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> +1 for the url to the project

</comment><comment><USER36> Now there's no excuse to not have a Konami code easter egg on your sites.

</comment><comment><USER37> Works. Simple and effective with an easy bar for entry. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER38> The funny thing is that with my keymap (cs_CZ) the 4 and $ keybindings are reversed.

<comment><USER39> Ditto here on fr_bepo mapping, with chrome 20.0.1132.47.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Sweet! I can now non-metaphorically dare someone to build a better Mousetrap.

</comment><comment><USER41> Shouldn't it be download it and throw away your mouse? ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is awesome library. Thumbs up for the post.

</comment><comment><USER43> I love you. I really do. This is amazing work.

</comment><comment><USER44> it needs gmail like 'help' screen

</comment><comment><USER45> awesome!

</comment><comment><USER46> > For modifier keys you can use shift, ctrl, alt, option, meta, and command.

No. Just don't. Ever. Unless you are doing a standalone, web based app.</comment>


Show HN: Photish, a simple multithreaded static photo portfolio generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/henrylawson/photish <comment><AUTHOR> A demo site is here [https://foinq.com/photish- montage/index.html](https://foinq.com/photish-montage/index.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created Photish as most of the static website generators I came across and used were text focused. The tooling, patterns and structure were geared towards sites with lots of text based content.

Photish is focused on photo based websites. Using a collection of albums in a folder, some templates defined in the language of your choice and some (optional) accompanying metadata in a YAML file, Photish will transcode your images into your desired formats (using ImageMagick) and parse and render the templates against your photo collection.

Transcoding large photo collections can take time, Photish does it's best to speed up this process by creating multiple threads to allow ImageMagick transcodes to run in parallel. It also caches all transcodes to avoid regeneration as you develop your site locally.

Try it out, let me know what you think! The project is in it's early days but it is in a working and performant state. Happy to take feature requests and or pull requests.

<comment><USER2> Have you tried Sigal? [http://sigal.saimon.org/en/latest/](http://sigal.saimon.org/en/latest/)

I use Jekyll for static sites but for photo galleries Sigal is my go-to solution as it is fast and stable and works very well for generating a static photo gallery.

Nice work on the demo, too.

<comment><USER3> Expose looks very impressive, and was posted here 74 days ago:

[https://github.com/Jack000/Expose](https://github.com/Jack000/Expose)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10376468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10376468)

<comment><AUTHOR> Expose is great, I came across that too when it was shared here. The author has created some beautiful themes and the example sites look great.

I was keen to contribute to it (to try add other template engines, caching, etc.) however it is written in bash and the script is over 900 lines and doesn't have a test suite yet. Not being too proficient in bash I was a bit anxious about diving in and contributing.

<comment><USER4> author here. I wouldn't call myself proficient in bash either :]

I think I'd like for expose to remain a simple(ish) script that you don't have to think too much about. For something more fully-featured with actual templating, caching, plugins etc bash is not quite the right tool imo.

I'm glad there are more options in the "photo-oriented SSG" space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Command line screenshots isn't really helping for a visual tool. With no screenshots or an online demo this requires a lot of work to just decide if it's useful or not.

Also, I haven't looked at the code but the first thing I do when looking at Ruby projects is look for test/spec directory. Kudos for having it and testing your library

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree, it is a place holder until I've put together my own site which I'll ideally demo there. I've spent all my time tweaking and improving Photish that I haven't had time to start the site that I wanted to create before I made the tool!

A demo is available running "photish init --example && photish host", the design is kinda embarrassing though so I wouldn't want people misjudging the possibilities of what you can create with my poor example site design :)

Thanks for poking around, testing is important to me too. There are also feature tests with cucumber/aruba in the /features directory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could we get screenshot examples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, it is on my to do. However for now, Photish itself is probably best showcased by running it and checking it out. After it is installed, an example/demo is provided by running:

photish init --example && photish host

Once I put together a nice template and some example sites I they would better showcase my HTML/CSS/JavaSCript and design skills rather then what Photish can do. Theoretically any design could be created using Photish as the templates and assets are completely up to you. The tool just takes care of the generation.</comment></comment>


Why do Nigerian scammers say they're from Nigeria? (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ <comment><USER2> I mean, there's a very practical reason for this. Back when the scam was popular, they asked you to send a Western Union transfer to Nigeria. I had a girl I was chatting with ask me to donate money to needy kids in Africa, which happened to be in Nigeria. Now they want iTunes gift cards so they can resell them. It's not game theory, it's just regular old money laundering.

<comment><USER3> _Now they want iTunes gift cards so they can resell them._

Interestingly, when I bought an iTunes gift card at the Apple Store last week for a Christmas present, the Apple guy ringing me up required me to sign a document stating that I wasn't trying to pay someone with them. Some kind of scam prevention mechanism. I wonder how well it works.

<comment><USER4> They required you to sign a form that you wouldn't trade it for goods or services? Did you sign it? That part feels like the scam.

<comment><USER3> No, they asked me to sign a form (on an iPhone, FWIW) stating that I knew that strangers calling out of the blue and asking for payment in iTunes cards was a scam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The spelling is (believed to be) attrocious for similar reasons.

There is significant overlap between people that can't spell to save their lives and people who know very little about real world finances ("We need you to send us 10k for fees to unlock the 50 million").

<comment><USER6> Misspeling "atrocious" was a nice touch.

<comment><USER5> Let's just pretend that was intentional...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better)

</comment><comment><USER8> The article feels generated

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always loved this rationale.</comment>


Ask HN: What iPhone or App Store data/analysis would be interesting? - <AUTHOR>

When we (Bump, YCS09/Sequoia) started out developing on iPhone it was really frustrating how little information there was on some aspects of iPhone development and the App Store.  The companies with the most data seem to be the least willing to share it.  Although a bunch of the smaller developers shared lots of helpful data and great analysis.  We have a lot of interesting data from the last 9 months and 8 million downloads and are happy to share a lot of it with the community (there will be some proprietary stuff we can't share but will try to err on the side of sharing).<p>One of the things we are willing to share that most others don't seem to be is our download stats.  I have a couple ideas on analysis, like tying downloads to PR.  But I want to make sure any research we do is useful. So let us know what you would like to see and we will try to accommodate. <comment><USER2> A graph charting downloads v time with PR events or advertising milestones noted, or some more sophisticated analytic for which milestone drove traffic. I'm terribly interested in understanding the relationship between PR and downloads, how much "inertia" is there? Does the old "8 views" advertising axiom that action requires multiple exposures still hold?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing the data!

I'd love to see correlation between age groups->downloads, obviously what you mentioned; PR->downloads and any other vertical data for the specific campaign... avi@</comment>


Please Review: Yogda enables you to modify the running code in Flash apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.yogda.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all

We produced Yogda, a development tool which provides a set of low level functions for AVM2 and Adobe© Flash platform.

Yogda enables you to modify the running code in Adobe© Flash applications

Please see the instructions and tutorials at <http://www.yogda.com>

Best,

Erhan Erdogan</comment>


Fixed gear bicycles for the road - <AUTHOR> http://www.sheldonbrown.com/fixed.html <comment><USER2> If you like fixed wheeled cycles, great! But this piece uses statements that depend on a survivor bias. Eg, those who stick with a fixed wheeled cycle will be stronger than those who do not. Perhaps it's true - it gives no real evidence - but what of all those who would give up cycling if not for gears?

It makes the the unsubstantiated claim made that "Keeping your legs in motion keeps the muscles supple, and promotes good circulation." On my long trips I'll often stop to read roadside sign or historical marker, or look at something interesting. Are my frequent stops also unhealthy?

If taking a break from pedaling is so unhealthy and leads to unsupple legs and bad circulation, then maybe I shouldn't bike at all, and stay home?

Because fixed wheel or not, the fun for me is to see what's out on the road, not "feel a closer communion with [my] bike and with the road".

<comment><USER3> _It makes the the unsubstantiated claim made that "Keeping your legs in motion keeps the muscles supple, and promotes good circulation."_

That sounds like it was ripped straight from a pamphlet from 1920 touting the benefits of Dr. Snakeoil's Mysterious Healing Elixir.

I've heard various benefits of fixies over the years, not a damned one of which was backed by anything but cargo cult or wishful thinking. I say this as one with several fixies, including the original fixie: an 1886 high wheeler.

They are fun to ride, though, which is reason enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author should consider the continuous gearing system, the Nuvinci hub, developed by Fallbrook Technologies. No loss of power whilst shifting gear.

[http://www.nuvincicycling.com/en/home.html](http://www.nuvincicycling.com/en/home.html)</comment>