KiTTY – A fork of PuTTY 0.67 with many additional features - <AUTHOR> http://www.9bis.net/kitty/ <comment><USER2> Fun fact: The ssh-agent equivalent for Windows that ships with PuTTY (pageant) has a limited amount of memory reserved to store the actual keys (8kb) which causes it to stop responding when more than 25 keys or so are used. Because they have no GitHub, no easy way to collaborate on the source, and the developers don't reply emails, this has gone unfixed for years, and even though PuTTY is open source and you can fix it yourself and use your build (which we did), the worst is that we quickly found out that almost every independent tool on Windows that relays on SSH copy pasted the source of PuTTY almost verbatim, since we found this bug in many places afterwards, including closed source applications.

Bottom line, set your workflow on Linux or at least bash for Windows if you manage or plan to manage many machines.

<comment><USER3> I very rarely use Windows but one particular client has a VPN that only works in Windows so I recently switched from Kitty to Cygwin and am much happier.

Configured mintty with solarized colors, source code pro font and it's as good as it gets on Windows.

<comment><USER4> Love mintty with solarized!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coming from Linux/macOS, PuTTY was one of the things that always drove me bonkers. So much clicking to change settings. So many times I was uncertain about whether I'd edited or saved the right session.

I'm trying out Windows again, and the whole environment seems to have massively improved in the four years since I last played with it: after installing bash for windows and docker for windows and openssh through scoop, I can open a command line and use native ssh, or type "bash" and use the usual Linux version, or "docker run ..." and use whatever I'm used to there. Given all these great options, it's not clear to me why anyone would go back to a separate GUI tool?

<comment><USER6> > Given all these great options, it's not clear to me why anyone would go back > to a separate GUI tool?

You're clearly a Linux person. Or at least a command line person. I am too. Quite a few programmers at my work have never used anything but Windows and barely touch any servers. So they don't really use the command line at all, ever.

They also insist on using graphical clients for Git. This is of course horribly inefficient and leads to plenty of problems (mostly due to their choice of the Eclipse Git Client, which seems to have a lot of bugs). But they think the command line is scary and too difficult to understand.

So, my point is, there are a lot of people who have used GUIs their entire life and are used to be able to figure things out by just staring at the GUI and spending 30 minutes aimlessly clicking about. Then when they use a CLI program they have no idea what to do, and get frustrated. Because they're not used to RTFM.

<comment><USER7> We wanted to switch to Git from Mercurial because we wanted something like Gitlab. The only reason we didn't was that there wasn't any app for Git which was as user-friendly as TortoiseHg.

<comment><USER8> There is TortoiseGit!

<comment><USER9> Which pales in comparison to the multi-platform goodness of TortoiseHg since it is an independent creation designed from the ground up for the distributed workflow rather than a reworked TortoiseSVN. I wish someone would do a Git conversion of THG.

<comment><USER8> Besides not being cross platform, how does it pale in comparison?

I've been using it for over five years and I can't imagine what it could possibly be missing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been a very happy user of MobaXTerm for many years. Generates keys, has inbuilt sftp, and X11 forwarding.

[http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/)

<comment><USER11> Totally agree, I don't know why there's such a blind spot for MobaXTerm. You can run up multiple copies of the free version to get around most of the limitations (I even do that with my paid for edition because I get better session tab management) .

<comment><USER12> i'd not heard of it before; it does look like it has some very nice features. wonder why it didn't come up when i was searching for a windows sftp client recently.

<comment><USER11> It was Sam Saffron, one of the ex Stack Overflow and now Discourse developers that turned me on to it:

[https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/05/03/eliminating-my- tri...](https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/05/03/eliminating-my-trivial- inconveniences#comment-4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honestly, the #1 terminal program is SecureCRT and its worth paying for. The only reason: There are two great and efficient ways of managing logins and session information. I wish there way an open copy of SecureCRT but I've yet to find one and SCRT is cheap enough to where I just stick with it. Kitty is interesting but I wish session management was scrt style.

<comment><USER14> Try mRemoteNG. It's not quite SecureCRT, but I switched long ago and haven't regretted the move. It has a nice tabbed UI and supports many protocols (ssh, RDP, VNC, etc.). It has recently returned to active development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't `ssh` the best SSH client in the world, despite the KiTTY's claim? Not to mention, that I'd describe PuTTY/KiTTY more like 'only usable ssh client on windows platform' rather than what they're claiming on their website ;)

<comment><USER16> There are several ports of OpenSSH for Windows if you prefer that.

<comment><USER17> Microsoft is porting it officially too now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've always preferred this build:

[https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/](https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> IMO just abandon the crutch provided by PuTTY and use Cygwin + Console2/ConsoleZ/Conemu. You'll get the "official" SSH, with support for normal SSH keys, a rather complete and solid Unix tools setup plus a decent terminal wrapping the Windows console. You'll also be able to switch between Cygwin / cmd / Powershell with ease.

</comment><comment><USER20> For everyone who works with multiple sessions, there's this tabbed putty version out as well: [https://github.com/jimradford/superputty](https://github.com/jimradford/superputty)

<comment><USER21> I've always had issues with these wrappers around Putty, in that they never seem to deal with focus correctly.

My biggest issue with KiTTY was that it saved the username for subsequent windows - which was really hard to deal with when i'd mistyped the name! Anybody know a keyboard shortcut to forget which user was entered?

<comment> joatmon-snoo I think this may actually be a PuTTY bug itself. I use PuTTY Tray on a regular basis and see this whenever I switch machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good work!

Could you replace the url with an HTTPS one? [https://www.9bis.net/kitty/](https://www.9bis.net/kitty/) seems working.

It seems a no brainer, but I 'm just surprised that putty.org is http only.

<comment><USER23> That's because putty.org isn't the official site for PuTTY. Think of it like "friendly" domain squatting, then despair at the security implications.

See [https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software- saf...](https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-safely-is- nearly-impossible/) (but many of the points have been resolved)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Kitty is quite great, but there's better ones like xshell

<comment><USER25> I seem to have stuck with mRemoteNG due to its tabbed interface support for ssh, VNC, RDP and other protcols

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I sometimes think the lack of password saving in putty did more to promulgate the use of ssh keys than anything else.

Kitty has a bunch of useful features , I'll give it a go.

<comment><USER27> The ability to leak and reuse passwords in general did more to promulgate the use of ssh keys than anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you are on windows and want nice console, I like Cmder: [http://cmder.net/](http://cmder.net/)

</comment><comment><USER29> It is a pitty that tty is not natively ported to Windows. Jupyter terminal is not available due to this:

[https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/172](https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/172)

<comment><USER30> TTYs are a kernel feature which aren't present at all in Windows. It's not clear how one could "port" them, short of writing a driver (which I'm not sure is even possible).

<comment><USER29> Although winpty is not feature-complete and requires 2 tool-chains for building, still it is not a kernel driver:

[https://github.com/rprichard/winpty](https://github.com/rprichard/winpty)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of the most annoying things about PuTTY is that the black default background is too dark to see. For example, I always have to change it to light background because I can't see my VIM buffer very easily. It also handle the alt arrow keys.

</comment><comment><USER32> "KiTTY is a fork from version 0.67 of PuTTY, the best telnet / SSH client in the world."

Wow - if PuTTY is "the best client in the world" then this must be, by definition, an inferior product.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there a link to the source code?

Edit: found it on the downloads page [http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=Download](http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=Download)

</comment><comment><USER34> And if you want to stay updated with new versions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12938269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12938269)

;-)

</comment><comment><USER35> The best is Teraterm [http://ttssh2.osdn.jp](http://ttssh2.osdn.jp)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm happy with bash/ssh in Ubuntu on Windows 10 - finally a clean, full- featured SSH client.

<comment><USER37> But if all you need is SSH, I'm sure Kitty is smaller than Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is an officially maintained port (by microsoft) of openssh for PowerShell. There's also full ssh support in the Bash for Windows support.

Maybe someone can explain to me what's valuable about PuTTY or KiTTY given this?

<comment><USER39> I only see one release on GitHub: v.0.0.3.0.

The first line of the release notes is the following sentence: "This is a pre- release (non-production ready)".

Microsoft's implementation includes the full sshd. While I'm happy they're finally onboard with that (could have used it 10 years ago), that's overkill compared to PuTTY/KiTTY.

<comment><USER38> Why?

Most people will never run it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love KiTTY, the little additions makes Windows use smarter and easier.

</comment><comment><USER41> How does it compare to SmarTTY? (other than its awesome name!)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is cool.. The pscp integration alone is worth me trying.

</comment><comment><USER43> I like putty... It suffices for my needs

<comment><USER37> Yeah, there are a few things that annoy me about Putty but not enough to actually switch. Granted, Putty is pre-installed on every machine I touch that doesn't have ssh natively installed, but for the most part it just works. All the problems I have with it disappear as soon as I'm logged into a remote server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> After fighting with Putty to managed saved sessions between computers, I end up using cmder and the ssh CLI.

</comment><comment><USER45> Where's the Github/Gitlab repo?

</comment><comment><USER46> How is it possible in this day and age that both [http://www.9bis.net/kitty/](http://www.9bis.net/kitty/) and [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) are not HTTPS?

<comment><USER47> How is it possible in this day that Microsoft is not able to provide a decent SSH client for Windows?

<comment><USER18> They do... both native and via subsystem for linux.

<comment><USER47> If that's so why are we still using PuTYY / KiTTY (serious question)?

<comment><USER18> Well, I would guess first and foremost: why change? People that already use putty probably have no desire to switch just to switch. If the alternative isn't SIGNIFICANTLY better, most people aren't going to switch just to switch.

Second: not everyone is on Windows 10 which is a requirement for the Linux subsystem.

I guess last but not least: in both cases they require installing software. Some corporate users have no control over their own laptops. Putty has a portable version that you don't have to install anything to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)</comment>


Austrian court blocks Uber in Vienna - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-austria/austrian-court-blocks-uber-in-vienna-taxi-group-idUSKBN1HW1VE <comment><AUTHOR> The TLDR is that uber operatesas prebooked car service im Vienna to avoid having to use and charge with a taxi meter. Those are required to return to a registered location and not roam.</comment>


Ask HN: If you could automate anything, what would you automate? - <AUTHOR> Try to ignore the cost of creating it. You can assume automation is free, money and time wise. <comment><USER2> Teaching. All education politics aside, in my experience teaching is hard because you have to juggle and be responsive to so many people at the same time. Teaching is hard to scale. Everyone complains that schools are so regimented and conformist, but when YOU are the one in front of a group of two dozen (or three dozen!) kids who don't want to be there and are distracted by everything and you only have 90 minutes to get them through a lesson, you realize how hard it is to convey information.

Especially since in every class there will be one or two kids who take up like 40% of your energy, and you end up completely ignoring self-disciplined kids.

If there was a way we could provide automated teaching, that would be huge. And I mean teaching, not just making resources available. Stack Overflow and Wikipedia and Khan Academy are great, but they won't replace schools and teachers. An AI system that could motivate, answer questions, pose questions, encourage learning without judging failure, etc. would be wonderful.

<comment><USER3> As a dev with constant pressure to learn new stuff I'd prefer the flip side: learning / acquiring relevant skills for my career. The perfect future AI- driven tutor that presents me exactly what I need to study and at the exact level of difficulty so that learning becomes fun and seemingly effortless (btw something I try to solve)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Laundry and dishes. Put them onto a little conveyor belt that goes somewhere. Everything gets cleaned, sanitized, pressed, dry cleaned, etc. The next day, everything appears back in my closet & cabinets.

<comment><USER5> Strongly recommend you watch Hans Rosling's TED talk on washing machines to realize how automated it already is: [https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine)

That said, I do still understand your point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This probably puts me in the "not a people person" camp but "Starting and maintaining business relationships." Most great human interactions I've had simply have nothing to do with business. Yet relationships are so important to most businesses around the world, and simultaneously most of the motions seem really mundane and dull compared to family time, dating, or even sitting at a bar with a random stranger.

Oh, and web infrastructure security and identity management including derivatives like ssh configurations. I have to do it every dang job I go to and despite it having surprisingly little deviance in terms of requirements in most places, nobody has the same setup. Ever. It drives me up the wall every time and it makes me somewhat dread starting new companies because it's such a time sink yet so important.

</comment><comment><USER7> Applying to jobs. So many jobs corporate jobs require re-entering information ad infinitum already on a CV. My ideal world would be uploading a resume to one service and then having one-click applications that would give you a text field to write a cover letter or whatever non-CV info you want to give the hiring managers.

<comment><USER8> LinkedIn aims to provide an experience like the one you've mentioned.

It's been hit or miss and it gives them a little too much leverage, but it's been effective to some degree.

<comment><USER9> The process is still very broken. I've applied for multiple jobs where I've been forced to use a site called successfactors.eu, and the interface leads you to think it's integrated with Linkedin ("apply with Linkedin" button), in reality you're forced to re-enter your CV data multiple times, or the data is all over the place after being imported. I'd much rather send my CV attached as a PDF along with a cover letter directly to a recruiter or HR person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Laundry. Collect it, wash it, dry it, fold it, steam/iron it (if necessary), put it away. I don't want to cummicate, coordinate, deliver, or pick-up. Just make it happen once a week and I'd pay a few hundred dollars a month.

<comment><USER11> Believe it or not there already is a laundry folding robot: [https://foldimate.com](https://foldimate.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, wondering what's the input. Pieces one by one or (hopefully) just a blob of dry laundry

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Executive class job operations. Imagine how much better the world would be if instead of having a half dozen executives breaking the companies back with absurd compensation packages, there was just an automated system that replaced their functionality. Employee increases in productivity could actually result in greater employee earnings! It would be like living before 1980 again!

<comment><USER13> It really seems like one of those jobs that ought to become a human being for "social stuff", largely assisted by, or even taking directions from, a machine learning system. Well, that, or an electorate of the company's workers. After all, in established firms, there often isn't a really clear relationship between executive compensation, executive hiring, and firm performance. Every position needs to pay for itself, these days, so if executives can't point to the revenue they've created...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Physical exercise.

<comment><USER15> The irony in your comment is awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Deployment of open source applications that are time consuming and painful to install and configure. I've started a project to automate this already => [https://serviceshop.io](https://serviceshop.io)

<comment><USER17> Kudos on launching your startup.

It looks like a great service. I went to it at first thinking it didn't add any value over just launching the service in a Docker swarm (most open source apps have pre-built containers now) but I see the enterprise options as a good value add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Life is 80% maintenance" so I would automate that. (Have I read this on Spielberg's Taken, episode 5?)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd automate automating things (aka strong AI)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. What would you have this AI do for you? Examples please

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The lab. too much human error from temporary unmotivated young workers.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I have to do something twice, I would look to automate it. The best thing so far is my stock market trading robots, been doing it for years with a great results. e.g. making more money on average compared to 6 digits salary... Too bad I love my job too much or I would have retired already...

<comment><USER22> Very cool to hear that you've found success doing this. Any resources you'd recommend for someone just getting started? What tools / platforms / APIs do you use?

<comment><USER21> I don't want to go into too much details (for security reasons), but I am using my brokers API, the coding is done in python and everything is hosted on a few VPS in different location around the planet for redundancy... I would recommend starting with Interactive Brokers API - it is free, small linux VPS, some data for back testing and off you go, for around $100 you can start + a lot of time of course... Start by testing any trading strategy you can fin on the net for free, they will fail, but you'll observe why and one day you will find your own edge...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everything to do with rubbish: putting it out, collecting it, processing/separating it, dumping it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Time tracking. No matter how many fancy time tracking apps you use, it's still painfully manual. I want a robot that watches me and quietly makes intelligent decisions about what I'm really doing, and tracks that.

<comment><USER19> That's kind of easy to do these days. If you add one more requirement, "and doesn't spy on you" \- the task becomes impossible

<comment><USER25> Our automatic time tracking app doesn't spy on you: [https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/](https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/)

Though there's no mobile version because it stores everything locally.

<comment><USER26> I, too, wanted to start tracking this a bit but

a) didn't want stuff to be uploaded anywhere

b) didn't want to test a lot of apps

c) am always up for a challenge

So 2 weeks ago I dug out my long-forgotten knowledge about WINAPI and wrote something in Rust. It's an MVP - it queries the active window every second and writes a bit of info to a logfile in JSON format. Then I can run a python script on the daily log and analyze it. It's been fun, but you instantly notice a few things:

a) using a "window changed" hook would be better, but mine's good enough for now, but this prepared

b) idle times are important. Don't leave the computer and then wonder about off times. Current workaround: focus the media player window that's usually not really active

c) dual monitors are really hard. There's 2 windows open - one on each monitor, only one will be tracked.

d) Everything is hard, when I'm listening to a podcast during some other task that doesn't need much concentration, this won't be tracked.

e) actual quality of the data. On the one hand I'm simply not interested in adding all my browser history to this via window titles. On the other hand, maybe you want finer-grained tracking. Same with songs played, videos watched for example. Mayyybeee it could make sense tracking source code files in your editor, but I think that's too finegrained. browser vs editor is good enough for me right now

<comment><USER25> Yes, tracking multiple activities at the same time is too hard. I just stick to tracking the focused window.

On macOS I use accessibility API to read content on the screen, including address bars in browsers. But a browser extension sending URLs to your app on localhost can work too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Acquisition and administration of public housing projects. The world needs more publicly housing for people of all economic statuses. It seems incredibly time consuming to build or convert private housing due to vast amounts of paperwork and groups that must be involved to finance and manage these projects. Automation can help to find a business plan, search for funding, help run governance, and do accounting for the on-going operations.

</comment><comment><USER28> Cleaning my 22 year old's play area (which is basically the entire apt). And the entire laundry and dish process.

My expenses for work.

Telling people on the internet that they are wrong.

</comment><comment><USER29> Food. Millions and millions of hours are wasted everyday by people as they scramble to prepare dinner. So many hours would be freed, so much health improved if all we had to do was grap a tasty, nutritiounes brick, that also filled us.

I mean if you want to make food, that is great, but just like making your own furniture or sewing your own clothing it would be something most people didn't have to do.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've mentioned this on HN before, but: calorie and nutrition intake monitoring.

Imagine an app that tells you how many calories you've consumed and the nutrition you've consumed in real time, with reasonable accuracy, without you having to manually input the food you've consumed. Like hands free MyFitnessPal. Couple that with what's already available in activity monitoring...

<comment><USER29> I tried to figure out how make that some time ago - although my goto solution was cheap Indians rather than AI, but the problem boils down to the same thing anyone who has tried to diet this way finds: judging portions is really, really difficult. In matters a lot whether you put one or two teaspons of creamer in the coffee, and how much, if any, oil is over your salad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> De-cluttering my home and office space. The ability to take pictures of my entire living space, with every item in its place, to show a robot which then puts everything back into position every night. Maybe with the ability to add avoidance areas so my active work projects don't get disturbed.

</comment><comment><USER32> Buying groceries, and I'm even willing to pick it up myself.

I just want a smarphone app where I click "refill", and everything that is not in my fridge and shelves but should be, is ordered. I then go pick it up the next day.

Nice extra: buys extra stock when discounted (taking expiration into account)

<comment><USER17> Like [https://www.peapod.com/](https://www.peapod.com/) but the items are chosen for you without you having to manually select each one?

<comment><USER32> Yes. I need some sort of smart fridge and shelves that know what is still there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cooking. I cook my own meals in order to eat healthy, but the cooking itself is incredibly tedious.

<comment><USER34> I'd take this one step further. I love cooking, but not for every meal. Some way of automating the entire calorie delivery process with the correct amount of macro/micronutrients. Similar to Soylent - except tailored for me personally.

I'd still cook a few meals a week and I'd still go out to dinner, but it would be a rare occasion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Difficult:

\- Learning/Teaching

\- My money, not earning it (although that would be nice) but if there was some way to automate investing/saving/budgeting

\- Cleaning

Less Difficult:

\- Transportation

\- Setting up new programming projects (depending what language you're using this has been done)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd automate cleaning.

Dishes, laundry, cars, floors, walls, furniture, windows, lawns, roofs, pets, any of it and all of it. We have tools for making these tasks easier, but even with the latest technology the amount of human labor hours spent cleaning one individual and their environment is staggering.

The benefits include not only a reduction in labor, but health and wellness benefits as well. In addition, cleaning automation has a history of being widely adopted. Almost everyone in the US uses dish washers and laundry machines. Roombas and automatic car washes are also widely distributed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Automate automation.

</comment><comment><USER38> CO2 footprint management and transparency.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'd automate growth and blossom of nature

</comment><comment><USER40> Human Gestation.

</comment><comment><USER41> end to end certificate renewal and deployment. We're about 80% there, but the last 20% is a PITA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought Let's Encrypt with ACME did this. What's the 20% you talk about. I'm interested.

<comment><USER42> \- Appliances that have no scripting API and force you to install a certificate in the GUI (I have a lot of these) \- Some Microsoft services that will only take a new certificate after a restart, causing downtime. You can automate it, but not every 90 days without upsetting people. \- Political issues

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Income taxes.

</comment><comment><USER44> Bathing

</comment><comment><USER45> Anything people do in majority out of necessity and without enjoyment. Take your pick.

</comment><comment><USER46> Cleaning spam e-mail.

</comment><comment><USER47> Time sheets.

</comment><comment><USER48> UI design and implementation.

</comment><comment><USER49> Income

</comment><comment><USER50> Meetings.

</comment><comment><USER51> Everything

</comment><comment><USER52> Everything. If you do something twice, you are doing it wrong.

<comment><USER17> Relevant XKCD you need to read [https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

<comment><USER23> The question asks us to ignore time and cost!

<comment><USER17> I know you're getting down voted but you make a very valid point about the way the question is phrased. Perhaps you shouldn't have been down voted so harshly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nuclear Effects Calculator - <AUTHOR> http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/2012/02/03/presenting-nukemap/ <comment><USER2> Very sobering.

This reminds me of a story back from 2003 called "Villages in Germany are three kilotons apart." It puts an even more sobering perspective on the bombs.

[http://everything2.com/title/Villages+in+Germany+are+three+k...](http://everything2.com/title/Villages+in+Germany+are+three+kilotons+apart)

<comment><USER3> Nice read, but I must say: Having every second word be a link is really distracting. Ended up pasting it in a text editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's really interesting that the "Davy Crockett" (smallest bomb) will only level three city blocks and spread radiation for six. Not sure why you would not just use conventional weapons if you need a blast that small?

On the opposite end, it's really scary to see the effects of a Tsar Bomba 100mt Bomb. It basically takes out the entire New York metropolitan area :(

<comment><USER5> The 100 megaton version of Tsar Bomba was only a design. The biggest one tested was 50 megatons, because anything more powerful would have been too large and/or too heavy to carry, and the pilots would not have had enough time to get to a safe distance before detonation.

"The bomb, weighing 27 tonnes, was so large (8 metres (26 ft) long by 2 metres (6.6 ft) in diameter) that the Tu-95V had to have its bomb bay doors and fuselage fuel tanks removed. The bomb was attached to an 800 kilogram parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 kilometres (28 mi) away from ground zero. The fireball reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane and was seen almost 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from ground zero. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres (40 mi) high (nearly eight times the height of Mount Everest). The base of the cloud was 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide. All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 kilometres (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were completely destroyed."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba>

<comment><USER6> Just to add a little on to what you wrote, seems like there's also a part where anything much over 50 MT just blows the rest of the energy out into space, so there seems to be a cap on how big one can be?

<comment><USER7> Big bombs are extremely inefficient at directing damage at targets. Their main benefit is that they don't have to be aimed accurately. If you lob a 10 MT bomb at a capital city, metropolis, or military base and you miss by a mile you will still almost certainly destroy it.

The advent of accurately targeted MIRVed weapons makes big bombs obsolete. Instead of lobbing one 10 MT bomb near a target you attack a lot of smaller targets with smaller bombs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'd be really cool to add some "equivalences" to compare what an asteroid hitting Earth would do, in terms of Mt.

<comment><USER9> E.g.

* Annual impact -- 5-20 kt (~Hiroshima)

* Indonesia superbolide (2009) -- 50 kt

* Tunguska (Siberia 1908) -- 10-15 Mt (~large hydrogen bomb)

* K-T extinction (65 MYA) -- 10^14 t = 100,000,000 Mt (complete detonation of ~2 million tons fusion fuel)

I'm not sure how far you can compare these figures -- issues like (i) how much energy is released as an atmospheric shock wave vs. infrared radiation vs. heat; (ii) what altitude the explosion is at.

[http://www.nature.com/news/2002/021121/full/news021118-7.htm...](http://www.nature.com/news/2002/021121/full/news021118-7.html)

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6913/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6913/full/nature01238.html)

<http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_ext...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event#Impact_event)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I first found one of these it changed nukes for me, properly permanently. Before that I had always assume that if terrorists gets their hands on nukes then it was goodbye world, maybe a few people survive the slaughter but you can kiss the city goodbye.

But the kind of yields they would get are so low that they wouldn't do much damage unless you were within a few blocks.

<comment><USER11> That's 2/3rd's the kilo tonnage of Hiroshima. I wouldn't call that 'low yield'. See: Hiroshima.

<comment><USER12> They're doing fine these days!

(we got Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they got Detroit and Pittsburgh... fair trade)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article introduced me to the term "Megadeath". I've never really thought of that in terms of SI units. The scale of destruction that we have the potential to cause is simply horrifying. When you see pictures of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and then scale up to an H bomb and realise that those were simply _tiny_ in comparison it's really rather sobering.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is this sobering? I find it fearmongering. Or is there any meaning behind this other than "The humankind has powerful weapons to destroy itself and you are not safe"?

<comment><USER11> ....perhaps we shouldn't have these weapons...

<comment><USER15> You're right. Please put the cat back in the bag, and refill Pandora's box on your way out.</comment></comment></comment>


Cool New Google Maps Feature Lets You 'Helicopter' Preview Routes - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/240953/cool_new_google_maps_feature_lets_you_helicopter_preview_routes.html

<comment><USER2> Works for me in the SF bay area on Safari 5.1, OSX Lion. I believe you need to have the Google Earth browser plugin installed: <http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/plugin.html>

That plugin is not available for Linux, sadly.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! The Google Earth plugin was the missing piece of the puzzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not seeing this, in latest Safari or Chrome. Anybody else?

<comment><USER5> Chrome 14 on OS X works for me. You have to hit "Get Directions" after choosing your two locations.

<comment><USER6> Also Chrome 14 on OS X, and can't see it.

<comment><USER7> OS X and Chrome 14, in Canada, can't see it. I'm thinking location might have something to do with that...

<comment><USER8> Don't see it in Northern California either, on Lion under Chrome 14 or Safari 5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What has happened to Google's LatLong blog (linked in the story)?

[http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/09/helicopter- view-o...](http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/09/helicopter-view-of-your- driving.html)

Zero visible content with NoScript enabled. I have to enable not just blogspot.com but also something from blogblog.com . That's just [explicative] annoying.

EDIT: After enabling scripts from those domains and viewing the content, when I disable scripts and refresh, the content remains visible. In case anyone tries blocking scripts and finds "it works for me".</comment>


Show HN: PlateJoy (YC S15) – Algorithmic meal planner with integrated delivery - <AUTHOR> http://platejoy.com/try <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

I lost 50 pounds a few years ago and realized that the options for healthy eating are limited to frozen meal delivery services or nutrition apps that never worked for me. So I started PlateJoy, which uses data about your lifestyle, preferences, and goals to help you plan what to buy and cook each week. We send customized shopping lists and recipes that match your preferences with optional grocery delivery of your shopping list through Instacart. Support for lots of eating styles including: paleo, vegan, whole30, weight loss, kid-friendly, ketogenic, quick & easy, etc.

A few things that make us different:

1\. We care a lot about personalization. You start off by taking a lifestyle quiz about foods you love, avoid, recipe complexity, time constraints, preferences and more. You can also add a starting weight and goal weight and we'll adjust your portions accordingly.

2\. We don't want you to have to deal with waste, so we've created a Digital Pantry of your kitchen which takes inventory of what you have, only replenishing things like cinnamon or olive oil when you need it. We also pair recipes together that use up the same ingredients to prevent food waste.

3\. We plan your leftovers, too.

4\. You can shop for yourself or use our integration with Instacart to send your shopping list to them for same day delivery. (No dry ice or breaking down Fed Ex boxes, because ingredients come fresh from your local grocer.) This is a new feature that people have been liking a lot.

Our biggest technical challenges have been taking so many preferences into account when creating a menu (takes a few seconds!), and synergistically pairing meals to reduce food waste while also making sure there's ample variety in plans.

Hope you'll check it out - just set up a free trial for everyone today - feedback and questions welcome!

<comment><USER2> This looks remarkably awesome. I have been looking for / contemplating building something where I can put in some recipes and have it figure out the most efficient, least wasteful shopping list for me. This seems like a fairly complex problem to solve (in fact, it sounds like a linear programming problem). It would be really nice if I could put in a monthly budget amount as well, so that my meal options are also customized to what I expect to spend. One nice potential side effect of doing this is that I might even be able to reduce my current grocery budget by some amount -- and seeing what that amount is could make the value of the service _real_ obvious.

Is there any way I can customize my plan even further for "meals good for kids" and/or "easy to eat / no unusual textures"? Some of these recipes look delicious, but my 18-month-old will refuse edamame outright. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! The waste reduction algorithms we use definitely help cut costs (on the back end, we can see the waste savings in $ over time -- though it's not visible to users yet, it's pretty remarkable.)

There's a question in our personalization quiz that asks about whether you want more familiar family flavors, so definitely check that box. Beyond that, you can hit "remove" on anything in your meal queue that looks like it might be unappetizing for your toddler. If there are specific foods you know are no- gos, you can also add any ingredient as an exclusion ingredient in the quiz (in the "other" field).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, especially around optimizing resource usage for items you already have.

I'd like to see more transparency around cost up front - I should not have to dig into the second question of the FAQ page to see that a plan would start at $48+

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words and feedback. We do have a free trial set up for everyone today (no cc required) if you want to check it out without paying anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We tried Platejoy for 6 months. We found it was useful, but found a few caveats:

It was very easy to back ourselves into a corner with food preferences such that you see the same set of 20 or so recipes recycled from week to week. This is probably our fault more than Platejoy's, but we are not especially picky eaters.

Some recipes required ingredients that we just couldn't source. We live in the midwest and the closest major city is 1.5 hours away. Try finding tahini paste at your local midwest walmart or smalltown grocer. In these cases I'd have loved substitution suggestions.

We don't have particular dietary restrictions. We also preferred old fashioned pen and paper tracking of our grocery list/pantry, so that feature wasn't something we used. We didn't really harness Platejoy's unique features. So for our particular situation Platejoy ended up being little more than a recipe suggestion tool.

I'd definitely suggest platejoy for people with dietary restrictions who don't want to think about or go through the hassle of finding recipes.

<comment><USER5> I order pretty much all of the obscure food/ingredients I use from Amazon - looks like Tahini Paste is widely available there. I'm not sure how much notice PlateJoy gives you to shop before you make the recipe, but it has to be less than Amazon's shipping?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea! You can create your new menu whenever you'd like (a few days in advance) so this idea will work fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the first startup in a while I've been excited to spend money on. It looks great, and it looks like it already has a very mature feature set. The one thing I didn't see was the pricing on the delivery options. Is that live yet? Or is that a future feature?

<comment><USER7> Thank you! This is Daniel (from PlateJoy). Delivery happens via Instacart. They charge between $4 and $7 per delivery, depending on area. If you sign up for PlateJoy, and you don't see the Instacart button on your shopping list, let us know and we can activate it for you. (They are constantly adding zip codes, so sometimes we don't know that a zip code is available for delivery.)

<comment><USER6> Awesome! It wasn't readily apparent that delivery is handled by a third party before signing up. I've used Instacart before, so it's cool that it's just an integration, but I wasn't sure if it was an addon I was missing somewhere that had to be added to my subscription before I checked out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was all on board for grocery delivery with a customized shopping list, but you lost me at $59 sign up fee... You may want to rethink that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! It comes out to around $8-$10/month depending on what plan you choose. I hesitate to say this because I don't want to come across as too sales-y, but a customer told us last week that it's "the best money they've spent all year." There's a free trial today if you want to try it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "What people are saying" section. Those photos have got to be stock or models, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha, they are truly not! But we will tell them you asked :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> @cbognet: I love the concept and have signed up for the trial with the hope of sticking with it going forward.

My question -- I don't know how representative my household is from others, but we've got a few different sets of dietary restrictions to consider.

Do you have any plans to offer a way to set up variations that allow for, say, gluten-free (non-vegetarian) dining for one member of the family, while the rest are vegetarian (no gluten restrictions)?

It's certainly more work on my end to buy, prep, and cook for, but it's work that I'm already doing and would love to benefit from the programmatic menu and shopping list that PlateJoy generates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello + thank you! It's something we're working on tackling programmatically, but right now this is really where our nutrition coaching comes into play. You'll get an email from yours in a few days, and they'll make suggestions for ingredients you'd like to substitute, or can find the best plan that can meet everyone's needs. Personally, I'd recommend going more restrictive (like our gluten-free, vegetarian plan) and supplementing it if necessary with non-GF pasta and simple meat/poultry/fish in place of veg protein - often everyone finds something to like even with the restrictions, and you don't have to be a short-order cook :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great. It seems that I can't select multiple dietary requirements though (like vegetarian and clean eating). On Firefox mobile. Is that intentional or are some of the dietary requirement s non-compatible?

Also, is there any way to specify I'd like to meal prep more than just sharing a dinner with the next day's leftovers? E.g. Make a weeks worth of meals at once by scaling a particular recipe? I suppose I could do that myself buy having the software advise my grocery list would be awesome.

<comment><USER7> Hi! Some of the dietary preferences can't be combined because we don't have enough recipes to support the combination (at least not yet!). We're working on batch cooking, so that should help. Currently, it takes hacks to achieve that kind of thing (like adding more family members, e.g., Daniel, Daniel Leftovers, and Daniel Leftovers 2). If you have a slow cooker, you could select that in the appliances section and then just make sure that under time constraints, you select "more than 50 minutes" for dinners. Slow cooker recipes scale up well if you do that multiple family members trick. I hope that helps!

<comment><USER11> I tried simulating this by checking Clean Eating and either checking off the pre-populated meats or searching for meats I could think of and selecting all results and plenty of recipes came up, so it seems like these two dietary restrictions should be allowed to be chosen at the same time.

Also, I checked off the pre-populated "Beef" option and a recipe came up for breakfast involving sausage and another came up for dinner involving Filet Mignon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We like to make sure we have enough new recipes for many months of using the service before allowing two categories to be combined, but you're welcome to hack it that way for now. Filet mignon was a glitch (we just fixed it) but the sausage is made of pork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks awesome so far! I wanted to give a thumbs up for adding the "seasonal" option. It is much appreciated and often overlooked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! It wasn't something we had initially but came up very often in customer requests. The hard part there is knowing what's seasonal in different geographies but we think we've got a good system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, this looks really great. It's both bittersweet and exciting when you come across an idea of your own executed very well ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the feeling ;) Thank you for the kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this the same as a business described in "The Lean Startup"? Kinda funny.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can imagine my dismay at reading that book after I started this company, lol. ;) Good thing it's all about execution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can the meal planner take into account the capabilities of my kitchen? Say for example that I only have a microwave and George Foreman grill.

How is recipe complexity managed? Can I select recipes that optimize for fewest dirty dishes?

<comment><USER7> Hi, this is Daniel (Christina's co-founder). You can specify appliances on the personalization page (though stovetop can't currently be unselected because it is necessary for many dinners). Lunches—with the "pack something quick" option—only use a microwave, so that can serve as a sort of work-around for people who don't have a range / hot-plate.

Complexity is handled by time preferences, which can be specified for each course (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks/dessert). Shorter times are less complex recipes.

Sorry, no "fewest dirty dishes" options, but great idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love this. I plan on signing up when I get home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who are the "On-demand advice from our nutrition-focused personal chefs" and how as a user would I gain access to this advice?

<comment><USER7> Someone from the PlateJoy nutrition team emails new customers during their first week to give tips and to be available as a point of contact. There are also follow-up check-ins if people don't have specific questions right away. Some people really get into it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyway to export meals to myfitnesspal?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can sync with JawBone & FitBit, but not MFP (they're not accepting API requests this year). We do give you a full breakdown of nutritional info for each meal though, so you can always enter the macros in manually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, amazing!</comment>


Crown shyness - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness <comment><USER2> Another crown phenomenon [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krummholz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krummholz)

And something that prevents many trees from being grown indoors [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wood](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wood)

Trees will lead you down a glorious wikipedia black hole.

<comment><USER3> What does reaction wood have to do with growing plants indoors?

<comment><USER4> There's typically no wind indoors.

[http://awesci.com/the-role-of-wind-in-a-trees-life/](http://awesci.com/the- role-of-wind-in-a-trees-life/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is super interesting. This is the kind of thing I enjoy on HN most, oddly.

<comment><USER6> You might want to check out "The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate" by Peter Wohlleben. It's an enjoyable book that covers similar topics, also available as an audiobook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps somebody else here listens to the Slate politics podcast, where John Dickerson this week spent 4 minutes describing this phenomenon.

<comment><USER8> There was a bunch of popular posts about it on reddit yesterday. I would bet that is probably the most direct source of this post. Perhaps the podcast inspired the original reddit posters.

<comment><USER7> That's kind of even cooler, the idea that a 4 minute bit Dickerson did about tree growth patterns could spread so virulently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Plants are able to sense the proximity of neighbors by sensing backscattered far-red (FR)

Plants can _see_? I had no idea.

<comment><USER10> They also can "scream" by giving off a pulse (that humans can't hear) when attacked and can "talk" to each other by giving off chemicals when attacked by insects, thereby warning neighboring relatives to start creating protective chemicals to defend themselves.

<comment><USER11> > They also can "scream" by giving off a pulse (that humans can't hear) when > attacked...

Do you have a source for the 'scream' phenomenon?

I am aware of (and was myself misled by) several pop-science books which confusingly tried to compare plants giving off chemicals when attacked with animals screaming. The result was that a skim read would have given one the impression that plants could make sounds inaudible to humans, which was not what was meant.

<comment><USER12> Trees who suffer from drought apparently give off ultrasound when their dried cells are destroyed, but it seems to _attract_ pests who then finish off the tree: [https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pop+chirp+bite+crunch+chew%3a...](https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pop+chirp+bite+crunch+chew%3a+the+ultrasonic+din+of+dying+trees...-a0184482336)

<comment><USER11> But that's the sound of the tree decaying/dying, not communicating as the GP seemed to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow! The gaps look extraordinary. What a weird thing to learn about today!

<comment><USER14> Looks cool, but didn't you learn that we don't know?

<comment><USER15> He didn't say anything to the contrary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What an interesting phenomenon! Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not sure why but this phenomenon is extremely pronounced while tripping on LSD.

<comment><USER18> An easy answer would be that everything is more pronounced while tripping on LSD

<comment><USER19> the absence of the phenomenon is not more pronounced.</comment></comment></comment>


Set Operations in the Unix Shell - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/set-operations-in-unix-shell/ <comment><USER2> I found this very interesting. Specifically, I've never worked through implementing all the set operations in shell myself. You can see these as functional programming, and you often represent sets and multi-sets as lists in fp. In shell, your elements just can't contain '\n'.

Regarding the value of this, I see two main points:

1\. When you're shell scripting (see next point ;-), you'll need some of these, and the situation might prefer not calling other programming languages.

2\. The shell commands as used here are a fairly compact and convenient base for expressing these and many other computations. Many other environments would have a hard time representing computations processing more data than can fit RAM. Something comparable might be RDBMS-backed LINQ.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool, though not something a decent unixadmin can't do :)

Note before you think this is "old crap" this approach scales to multi-core and multi-processor and can handle quite large sets. For really large sets you might need to play a bit with sort flags and perhaps do those steps it in two phases.

Hardcore unixadmins often freak out developers when their month long projects on handling some files in production could be replaced with some scripting and in fact run it orders of magnitude faster. Multiprocessor means multiple L1 and L2 caches, less I/O blocking, etc. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> as a math nerd: i approve.

as a pragmatist?

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey look! If we call a "set" a text file with one number per line, Unix can do "set" operations!

Never would have guessed Unix commands worked well with text files...</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to reduce/manage information overload? - <AUTHOR>

What do you do to reduce/manage information overload? <comment><USER2> Turn off the computer for a while.</comment>


As Walmart turns to robots, it's the human workers who feel like machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/06/walmart-turns-robots-its-human-workers-who-feel-like-machines/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here are videos of some of the robots at work:

Bossa Nova makes the inventory scanning robots shown in the WP article. Here is a video of it working in a Wal-Mart during a 2018 pilot: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJV1SPYpIE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJV1SPYpIE)

TechCrunch had a brief sit-down with the Bossa Nova CTO: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXEaCZ4KzL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXEaCZ4KzL8)

This article follows an earlier one from WP talking more specifically about the floor-cleaning bots mentioned here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/04/walmart...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/04/walmarts- latest-hire-robotic-janitors-that-clean-floors-collect-data/)

Video about the floor scrubbers here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=rcMCFe6XVC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=rcMCFe6XVC0)

</comment><comment><USER2> For those who don't have a subscription to the Washington Post, you can access the article here: [https://business.financialpost.com/technology/walmart-has- un...](https://business.financialpost.com/technology/walmart-has-unleashed-an- army-of-robots-in-its-stores-and-workers-arent-exactly-thrilled-about-it)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is so impressively close to the early stages of automation in the novella _Manna_ by Marshall Brain [1] that it almost seems like Wal-Mart executives used it as a playbook...

[1] [https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe Walmart can stop its health insurance scheme with this and those people can do work elsewhere. There are plenty of customer service jobs.</comment>


Amazon destroyed my business - <AUTHOR> https://abdurrahmanraja.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/amazon-destroyed-my-business-account-blocked-without-warning/ <comment><USER3> He needs to stop ruminating about getting "more info".

The issue was escalated and investigated. Amazon won't budge.

What does he expect? A dinner invitation from Jeff Bezos?

There are final decisions in the world. A Supreme Court ruling. A girl you're infatuated with saying she wants you to leave her alone. And this support ticket resolution.

Proceed at own risk. No good thing will ever come out of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Okay so I invested 15 minutes of my life into reading your post, you mention "account" 23 times and yet you haven't said even once actually what you were selling, so that anyone can give you any hint (to be honest, I think there is good reason you are not revealing what was your product; otherwise most likely the whole post wouldn't make sense).

> I was losing potential sales and my eyes were permanently fixed on my email > app, waiting for the email from the account specialist.

You have to put yourself in Amazon's shoes:

 _As a legitimate selling platform, every day they were losing credibility offering your product on their OWN platform under their OWN brand._

> "Your desired use of Amazon Payments MAY BE in violation of our Acceptable > Use Policy or User Agreement"

Its an oldest trick in a book: they cannot deny they cannot confirm. Its a lawyers talk in case you didn't notice. Speaking of...

> Since I used FBA, my stock is now stuck in Amazon FBA warehouses. The email > did not mention how to retrieve my stock or when I would get the funds in my > Amazon account.

If you don't get yours back in 6 months, find a lawyer.

> They say don't put your eggs in one basket.

Yepp, you nailed it. Same thing happened to me when we hit the wall with Sendgrid (currently only offers spamming services to those who can payout - seriously I receive plenty of spam from Sendgrid and they always "investigate" but never get anywhere). We were sending out 10,000 legitimate double opts a day and were banned out by.. one user clicking spam complaint 3 times. No joke. By the time the dev switched and implemented new email engine, I had to let go 6 people to stay financially afloat. It sucks, certainly I feel your pain.

> You need to work on multiple revenue channels so if an issue happens on one > you can stay afloat.

Great advice but ask yourself honestly - would you ever sell as much as you did without Amazon?? The good advice would be get customers from amazon but collect their emails and steer them off to your website for a tiny bit of savings. This way you could depart from Amazon at any given point - <USER2> out of your free will, or like you did - forced out.

> Really do not know where to go from here...

You are stubborn which is a good trait, but maybe the best way at this point is to.. move on. Ask yourself do you really need Amazon to fulfill your business. If you do and they don't want you (As a private company they had a right to deny anyone), its time to move on to the next big thing on your list.

<comment><USER5> >>> Okay so I invested 15 minutes of my life into reading your post, you mention "account" 23 times and yet you haven't said even once actually what you were selling

I came here to write this. Probably the most important bit of information is missing on purpose. Would be great to know.</comment></comment>


Marissa Mayer Makes First Yahoo Acquisition: Stamped - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/10/25/yahoo-acquires-stamped/

<comment><USER2> Great. Hiring your buddies by acquihiring their failing iPhone app startup.

<comment><USER3> Way to add to the conversation.

Hiring your "buddies" is WAY lower risk that acqui-hiring strangers. They are a known quantity AND they have enough loyalty that they probably won't bolt the instant they are able. They'll also probably work harder for you than the average acquihire.

This is how the world works-- and it makes sense. It isn't just bullshit "who you know rather than what you know". Moral of the story is that you should kick ass, work hard, and make friends with executives-- it'll give you an alternative to startup-death when YOUR startup fails.

<comment><USER4> All you say is correct, even down to the "it's who you know line", but I disagree that we should exploit it or even tolerate it. It's just Cronyism (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism>) and my personal moral compass rejects it.

<comment><USER3> If you were looking for a job, would you call up the people you know or dive into the classifieds? When you hire a contractor, would you go with someone you know or a stranger? Relationships and social proof make the world go round. There's certainly a spectrum here-- but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER4> You miss my point. Cronyism is being hired for who you are, not what you know.

In answer to your question I would call up the people I know but I would expect them to only hire me if I brought the right skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stamp's blog post about the deal: <http://stamped.com/learn-more>

</comment><comment><USER6> Wondering why a talented group of developers that left one large Silicon Valley-based search company to form a startup would work for another large Silicon Valley search/media company.

</comment><comment><USER7> Stamped was a very well-designed, well-thought-out app, but its failure to take off proves no one has cracked the "anti-yelp" recommendation app yet. Someone's going to figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stamped was an awesome (and beautiful) product. Sad to see it go.

<comment><USER9> As an alternative, I created wishtunes.com plus iOS app a few years ago back in 2009. Check it out. Happy to provide coupons so you don't have to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's great they are putting mobile at the forefront of their strategic direction.

I don't think Yahoo's web presence can be salvaged - they have just fallen too far behind Google, Facebook, and the multitude of other leading social platforms.

But mobile is a chance for Yahoo to reset it's identity, it's brand, it's UI, it's relationship to users. It has a chance to become cool again.

<comment><USER11> That doesn't have to be true. It's still quite possible to build a website that grows to be huge. Although I would agree it's unlikely someone will build a portal-style site that displaces a Facebook or Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations to the Stamped team and good luck to Yahoo.

On another topic, has anyone else noticed Marissa's hands in that photo?

<comment><USER13> > " _On another topic, has anyone else noticed Marissa's hands in that photo?_ > "

WHAT THE. Here is a zoomed in screenshot: <http://bluetide.pro/j6ch> \- What the heck is going on there? Bad Photoshop?

<comment><USER14> The screwed up fingers are probably bad photoshopping/artifacts around the rings she wears on her left hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's up with this infatuation with Marissa Mayer? I don't remember reading about "Mark Zuckerberg acquiring Instagram" or "Steve Ballmer buying Yammer". Sheesh.

EDIT: Wow that was quick, three downvotes in less than five minutes. Must have missed the memo that she's the new Steve Jobs, or something.

<comment><USER16> Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Ballmer didn't take the helm at dying companies with the expectation that they alone would lead a significant change. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have always been fairly synonymous. Yahoo and Marissa Meyer - not so.

<comment><USER17> Dying company? How so?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Real Time Football Fan Map Using Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://map.boutline.com

<comment><USER2> Sorry but as I said on twitter, if you're going to ask me to sign up to tag myself, then I'll keep my data to myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to see you go imdsm, Would love to discuss sports and javascript with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> waited for 2 mins to see whats the real time component here and still not able figure out.

<comment><AUTHOR> a couple of more users signing up and you will see the magic happen. The positions of teams will keep switching, points increase and markers appear in real time.

<comment><USER4> What technologies are you using on the backend for this? Nice look and feel for the UI btw. Should try Meteor for the front-end sometime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Meteor, Node, MongoDB that's it. Yeah, you should give Meteor a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting coming soon page. Would have been great if the signup window had less fields to fill in.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool UI. You guys should probably mention why I need to sign up. Apart from reserving a username :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks kvprashant, we plan to build a lot of engagement modules around this. You should get an email from us sometime next week with updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very very very cool. I waited for such a tool for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time

<comment><AUTHOR> You seem to be an ardent football fan. We should have a discussion soon about what you would like to see in a sports app thats missing now. Any leads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what's the point here? To find other fans of my favorite club so we can meet up?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is similar to the Represent.la project for startups, except for Football fans. You can deduce a lot of interesting things. Which team is popular in which city and country, who is the nearest fan to you, spotting friends nearby, favorite hangouts for each team's supporters. Can also be extended to fan club meetups, cheers during the match etc.

<comment><USER8> So I posted my location, but there's nothing beyond that I guess? If this is an MVP, what are you trying to find out from this experiment?

<comment><USER2> This is a system without data, and data collection isn't going to work because they want you to sign up.

<comment><USER9> Agree, asking for a sign up is a strenuous process.But this looked interesting to me and i signed up . They have my location and team preference, Enough data for them to start with I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks interesting! :)

</comment><comment><USER11> awesome

</comment><comment><USER12> nice! Looks good!</comment>


Hacker News Chrome Extension To Track Your Karma Today - <AUTHOR> http://n8.tumblr.com/post/11616121698/hacker-news-google-chrome-extension

<comment><USER2> Very cool. Thanks!</comment>


Russia plans Linux-based mobile operating system to rival Android and iOS - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/05/russia-plans-linux-based-mobile-operating-system-to-rival-android-and-ios/

<comment><USER2> This seems kind of insane, Android is open source already. Just some modifications and any organization with enough funding can have a viable replacement to the Android that Google ships (if in doubt ask the Chinese). I don't see this getting too far. And doesn't Yandex already have a mobile OS of their own?[1] If they want to rival anything, they should try to rival Windows and promote Linux use within Russia.

[1][https://kit.yandex.com/](https://kit.yandex.com/)

<comment><USER3> Don't buy the "Android is open source" whitewashing. They just do code drops of some parts as open source where it suits them, but keep large parts as closed source when profitable/convenient. And the open source parts aren't useful on their own, because the proprietary parts are essential parts of the system's value. And then of course come the services and the platform's tight coupling to them. The services are even more closed - unnecessarily.

Real open source systems have outside contributors and stakeholders, and developer communities. Android mostly just has app developers and a "hacking" scene (xda etc).

Yes there's a small band of Quixotic guys trying to make an open source fork limp along but it's comparable in size (and odds of success) to Amiga users/developers. It's an unusable tech experiment that only runs on a couple of antiquated phones and has no services, not the Android that people know.

The only openness-related reason to prefer Android over iOS is that they still let you install what apps you like on it (sideloading) and the app store policies are slightly less draconian than Apple's.

<comment><USER4> What about CyanogenMod?

<comment><USER5> Nothing. Fully open CyanogenMod is called Replicant, and just take a look at its support list. That's how open and free Android platforms really are.

[http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican...](http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/ReplicantStatus)

<comment><USER4> Those look like it's just missing drivers? Android itself doesn't have much to do with that.

<comment><USER5> Notice that it's still based on 4.2, there are not so many of devices it can run on and even with fully documented and open platforms like GTA04 it's still a lot of work to make it run.

Plus there's absolutely no way to upstream their work, so it's a massive maintenance burden (one of the reasons they're still on 4.2)

AOSP is just what zurn said above - a code drop. If Android was really an open platform, Replicant either wouldn't be needed or Replicant devs would have much less work to do. Openness of Android is great for Chinese vendors making cheap tablets, so they have a ready system to put on them for almost free - but it's not so good as an open _platform_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If they want to take surveillance to the next level, leapfrogging the other surveillance states, they could go with a text-based UI that leans heavily on AI - like Wolfram Alpha as an OS. Would save on having to keep up with UI trends and still be bleeding edge.

      User: "Open interwebs"
      Machine: "What internet site would you like to go to?"
      User: "One with email"
      Machine: "Opening email application...you have a message from Mary."
      User: "Say hello to Mary for me."
      Machine: "Reply sent."
      User: "What's on at the movies?"
      Machine: "Based on your location and love of Dear Leader, I recommend X."
      User: "Sounds expensive, how much money do I have?"
      Machine: "You have X in your account, however a Gazprom bill for X will be arriving soon."
      User: "What is the average velocity of an unladen swallow?"

That way your system is always acting as a layer between the user and the content, ensuring you not only know what they're doing, but influence it as well. It would also work on cheaper handsets.

</comment><comment><USER7> New tanks in the age of unmaned drones and high precision veapons, state sponsored ressurection of dogmatic religions, as if last 3 hundted years of philosophy and sciences never happened, rapid transformation of the ruins of Soviet Union into an olygarhic Orwellian state.. We are still so deep in the past century, ignoring and distorting the objective reality in which we are losers who ma aged to ruin themselves due to greed and ignorance..

There are not a sigle chance of making a successful rival to Android, simply because it requires much more than a huge pile of dumb money and based on self-delusion arrogance.

<comment><USER8> > self-delusion arrogance

What else do you expect from a country lead by a guy who rides bare chested on a horse in his campaign promos? I might be biased and all, being originally from Ukraine, but this effort is clearly grandstanding and nothing else. Remember, this is the same country where one of the main news anchors goes on TV regularly, and announces how Russia is the only country in the world with with will and the technology to wipe the United States off the face of the planet. Even the politburo back in the USSR days wasn't stupid enough to say something like that, not because it isn't true, but because they understood how mutually assured destruction works. The scary part is, it's possible that the leadership in Russia really is stupid enough to do it.

<comment><USER9> > The scary part is, it's possible that the leadership in Russia really is > stupid enough to do it.

Putin is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

<comment><USER8> You are right, he is far from stupid, but he is rather self delusional and who knows if he is all there. Stalin wasn't stupid either, but the man was certifiably insane.

Overall, it makes me so sad, because I think Russia could be such a grate country if it wasn't for their leadership. There many people inside Russia who think the same way, unfortunately they are oppressed and exterminated on regular bases. It's ironic that a country that requires bloggers to register with the government of face jail time is trying to make an open alternative phone operating system to safeguard the users data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> it will pair nicely with the fastest CPU in the world (Elbrus XXX) and the bridge to Crimea... Everything (including the bridge) will be developed in the innovation center slash nano-City - Skolkovo (built by the nano-President Medvedev (Putin's "mini-me" built using Russian nanotechnologies)) ... All while space missions continue to fall from the sky like summer night meteor shower - second in mere weeks failure - this time it was Mexican satellite - after the recent International Station cargo delivery fiasko... Russia is rising... and falling again flat on the face drunk almost to death on corruption money (and there is no other money there by the way)

<comment><USER11> the listing of your submissions is remarkable ([https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=trhway](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=trhway)):

\- Failed body armour test by pro-Russian rebels

\- Rebels using RC drone for fire correction in the fight for Donetsk airport

\- "Sea Launch" mothballed due to termination of "Zenit" launches

\- "Wikipedia" refused to delete the article on cocaine at request by Roskomnadzor

\- The Fish Matrix: this gigantic deep ocean sphere will raise 1,000 tons of tuna

What exactly are trying to achieve here?

<comment><USER10> com'n, man! I never even disclosed the top secret Russian program of special ops and combat crane training in response to western drone programs : [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir- putin-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir-putin-cranes- hang-glider)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They are just wanna steal government money like always.

<comment><USER13> Can't agree more. This has nothing to do with "reducing Russian reliance on foreign technology," but rather with plain old corruption and theft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maemo/Meego/Jolla rises for the umpteenth time. It would be cool to see Jolla on the dual-screen Yota 2, which has raised over $100K in less than a day, for the North American version, [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yotaphone-2-world-s- first...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yotaphone-2-world-s-first-dual- screen-smartphone)

</comment><comment><USER15> So the USP is that it'll contain Russian backdoors instead of 5EYES ones...

</comment><comment><USER16> China has tried this twice. There was Red Flag Linux [1](2000-2014) and the China Operating System.(2014-?)[2]. Neither appeared on mass produced devices. Still, I expect that eventually Shentzen will dump US-based OSs for something else.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COS_%28operating_system%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COS_%28operating_system%29)

<comment><USER17> Tizen, since Samsung's all over it like a cheap suit. And South Korea is a lot closer than the USA and far more easily controllable/nuke-able if they misbehave and put backdoors into Tizen. I could definitely see Tizen becoming China's next mobile OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Haha, by new operating system I'm guessing they'll be taking jolla and forking it. If not forking it they'll definitely adopt the same way jolla is controlling its hardware. If the honestly attempt to build a new OS, with s manufacture it will probably fail. I'm excited to see if they do create a new OS. It could be the next breakthrough we've been waiting for in mobile technology.

</comment><comment><USER19> According to this article and others I found on the subject, it is going to be Sailfish based (thus, heritage includes Linux, Mer, MeeGo, Maemo, Moblin, and whatever other names it had before; And still shares a lot with Tizen.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a non starter. Unless device makers push the OS and there is a minimum viable eco system of application, OS doesn't have much legs to travel. See, it is not so easy pushing the Windows OS on Mircorsoft devices.

<comment><USER21> Or... you can simply mandate all phones in the country be sold with this OS on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> They're also planning to get to Mars before US or anyone else does.

<comment><USER23> Plans are like ideas, they're worth next to nothing, execution is king.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The key idea behind deciding whether to fork or not comes from the licenses, patents, and legal bindings. Although android is open source, there are so many patent and licensing issues. Only way to avert it is to go "China", ignore patents inside your own territory. Or, be a good dog and pay for all the claims. Samsung is the only exception who are playing push back and forth all along.

<comment><USER25> USSR was very famous for reverse engineering western tech and not paying anything for that.

<comment><USER24> Surely they were famous for reverse engineering key technologies from the West. Unfortunately it seems, they have lost that edge with digital technology. China on the other hand is making huge fotune out of its cloning and reverse engineering business. Their policy? "First make money by cloning and copying, then buy the original product maker once you are ready to expand internationally." Example- copycat company Geely bought one of the most creative automakers Volvo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Back in Nokia times, there were lots of Russian engineers working on Maemo and other Linux-based OSes for Nokia phones.

It's natural that Jolla kept some of these people on board and that they used their cultural ties to look for Russian state money.

</comment><comment><USER27> They actually considered four projects (AOSP, FirefoxOS, Tizen and SailfishOS), but first two are maintained by US-based corporations and apparently Samsung is also not reliable partner in their eyes.

</comment><comment><USER24> When public data is sensitive for each country, every country should have their own system, as long as they can afford it. At least that's what I have learned in post Snowden era. It's much secured for each government, people bound by their own country's law, and even if they are monitored, they will be monitored by their own government. After all, nobody is ever trying to stop NSA from spying on rest of the world! It's only US citizens they are altering policies for. So, why shouldn't Russia or any EU country should have their own OS?

<comment><USER28> Why do you assume that if country has it's own OS other it will be more secure and safe from spying by other countries?

<comment><USER24> When each country will have their own OS, 1\. NSA won't be able to ask Microsoft to use their master key to spy on people of other countries. They will have to find a way to do that.

2\. Policy wise people of each country will enjoy their own privacy and security. Their security won't have to rely on the US senate approval.

3\. OS build by each country will work like virtual regional borders for their people. It will be the responsibility of the developers of respective countries on how they manage the security and privacy of their own OS. So, their would be a competitive advantage for public in general.

4\. Economically, a lot of required technical work will create more job opportunities. Governments and local businesses will get to bite the share of big, centralized companies.

<comment><USER9> > Policy wise people of each country will enjoy their own privacy and > security.

By "privacy" you mean that only their own government and the foreign intelligence services they have agreement with will be privy to their communications?

<comment><USER24> Right. We can't stop government agencies in any country snooping and sniffing around. So, why not make that tranparent instead? Once a government actively participates in digital policy making for their own people, people will have their say in it based on how much democratic that country is.

It may not affect the authoritarian regimes much, but will significantly empower netizens of the well developed democracies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> FirefoxOS?</comment>


Why Yieldbot chose Cascalog over Pig for Hadoop processing - <AUTHOR> http://tech.backtype.com/52456836

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I feel like we are living in a game of Mad Libs.

Why ______ chose _____ over ______ for _____.

And then some 5 year old is making up words to fill in the gaps.

</comment><comment><USER3> while my experience with cascalog is limited to "hello world", even that served to show how game-changing a REPL is for interacting with hadoop, let alone all of the other features which i am surely failing to appreciate. i would not want to be in direct competition with backtype.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a key observation is that working with a REPL just makes dev feel so light and quick.

I love it and have found it to be a big part of the joy of programming.</comment>


Ask HN: Can Theranos recover from this point onwards? - <AUTHOR> After WSJ debacle, can theranos really recover? This just sounds so bad after its $9 billion valuation looking like all smoke! <comment><USER2> At the minimum they'd have to change their name and probably do a huge down round if they need to raise more money.. Also, is the CEO really going to want to run a traditional lab that has little competitive advantage over their competitors? Doesn't really fit into her ideal of making the world a better place. Are any of the board members going to want to stay on and take responsibility for this train wreck? People like Kissinger, Schultz, etc have everything to lose and little to gain from being on the boards of controversial companies. They are mostly concerned about their brand and legacy above all else. I don't think it looks good for them

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing has changed at Theranos. They're still the same business they were before. Either they have a valuable product or they don't. The only thing that's changed is public perception, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with attracting investors.

<comment><USER4> Public perception could make it a lot harder to hire talent but $400 million gives you a lot of ammo and runway. Unless the investors start piling on lawsuits then it could get interesting ...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Programming test for I/O Ventures? - <AUTHOR>

Don't want to go into a lot of detail, but I have concerns now.
I applied to I/O Ventures after reading a recent HN post. Got an email today that I made it to the 2nd round and that I or one of the members of my team needs to finish a programming test.
I'm curious about this. I've applied to YC a few times and gotten the interview once. Paul and the gang never requested we complete a programming test like we were interviewing for a job.
I'm trying to build a company. Either we're building an interesting product that a prospective investor finds interesting, or we aren't. I personally fail to see how a programming test helps in their decision or not.
Am I off base here, or is this something that's ok to expect from a program like I/O Ventures? <comment><USER2> Are you pre-product ? - if so they're probably looking for some evidence that you're actually capable of producing the product.</comment>


Apple - Supplier Responsibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps in response to the article: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/foxconn- apple-crime-journal...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/foxconn-apple-crime- journalist- attack/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader)

discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1133843></comment>