Vision Kit – An image recognition device that can see and identify objects - <AUTHOR> https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/vision <comment><USER2> I've been ruminating over how to use Tensorflow to recongize squirrels on my birdfeeder on a Raspberry Pi, and hook up something to activate a squirt gun. Now the squirrels don't stand a chance.

<comment><USER3> Makes me wonder what the military is doing with these technologies. And a bit afraid to think about their versions of "squirrel" and "squirt gun"

<comment><USER4> Why people think that AI with a gun more scarier than a soldier with a gun, I would never understand.

Remember a video where helicopter shot reporters because their cameras looked like an RPG? A soldier with a gun, when facing an uncertain situation with where he or his friends risk death, will weigh heavily on the "caution" side, shooting on everything that moves. AI with a gun, however, can accept it's death as an acceptable outcome in a similar situation.

<comment><USER5> Sure both can happen. I think the real fear is an army of AI bots gone wrong. I don't think we've had an army of humans turn on each other.

Humans will always make mistakes, and not that two humans can't make the same mistake, but each mistake is individual. A bunch bots stamped with the same code using the same hardware will be capable of making the same mistake for each bot due to the same bug.

<comment><USER4> > A bunch bots stamped with the same code using the same hardware will be > capable of making the same mistake for each bot due to the same bug.

It's only true for the current, logic-style programming. I don't think it will hold for neural network-based decision systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks promising, but seems to sneakily require that you have already soldered on a 40pin header onto your RPi Zero W (I have gotten lots of practice doing it by now, but that doesn't mean I really love to...), which doesn't seem to be included in the parts list.

<comment><USER7> My Adabox 5 came with a Pi Zero and the Pimoroni Hammer Headers [1]. Not cheap, but it doesn't get one out of soldering a lot of pins.

[1] [https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/gpio-hammer- header](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/gpio-hammer-header)

<comment><USER8> Nice, thank you, this is a US option: [https://www.adafruit.com/product/3413](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3413) I've never soldered, but I can use a hammer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi, I'm the co-founder of [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai), we are building a 100% on-device Voice AI platform which runs on Raspberry Pi, if you are looking to add voice interaction to your cool image recognition, you can use it for free!

We plan to open-source it over time

<comment><USER10> looks amazing; I am super interested in learning the technologies required behind building something like that. what would you suggest where I should start from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is something I've been looking into working on.

My focus is on capturing the health of plants and extracting meaning using a Deep Learning Video Camera.

Anyone know have any information on where to start? Such as if there's a database that I can feed into the ML engine on different diseases in a plant?

<comment><USER12> NDVI is a direction a lot of drone people are going, and probably a good place to start to get a sense of techniques and work being done in plant monitoring:

[https://agribotix.com/blog/2014/06/10/misconceptions- about-u...](https://agribotix.com/blog/2014/06/10/misconceptions-about-uav- collected-ndvi-imagery-and-the-agribotix-experience-in-ground-truthing-these- images-for-agriculture/)

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

More ideas: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600171/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600171/)

<comment><USER11> Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lots more technical info available here: [https://blog.hackster.io/announcing- the-aiy-projects-vision-...](https://blog.hackster.io/announcing-the-aiy- projects-vision-kit-234505bc6eef)

<comment><USER14> One have to be skeptical about the motivation behind the timing of this release specially coming so soon after AWS releasing Deeplens yesterday in reinvent 2017.

[https://aws.amazon.com/deeplens/](https://aws.amazon.com/deeplens/)

<comment><USER15> Actually, there's an upcoming AI/ML specific Google conference coming up next week or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to play with something similar, but at a different level of abstraction (software, interfacing with the Google Cloud Vision API in a way that's accessible to non-technical folks -- e.g., teachers are using this pattern to create "scavenger hunts" in their classrooms [0]), check out how it's being done in Metaverse[1].

[0] - [https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=metaverse%20app](https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=metaverse%20app)

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWuZVM46qa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWuZVM46qa0)

</comment><comment><USER17> I see this uses a VisionBonnet board based on a Movidius chip... I wonder if such an accelerator is really needed. Could someone elaborate on the resources needed for _applying_ (as opposed to training) a typical deep neural network? I am only familiar with "old school" neural nets, which are relatively cheap to evaluate. What is the bottleneck, memory, or the parallel computation? I would think that you could use GPU shaders to some extent, but the mixing after each layer and the number of weights you have to save would make it hard on a RPi, right?

<comment><USER18> Neural Net accuracy scales with the amount of compute you have available at inference time, and for vision models it is largely the amount of compute you need (NLP models often require a lot of memory too), so while you could probably squeeze something onto a raspberry pi, you would probably have to sacrifice frames per second and overall performance.

I think for a hobby project bundling an accelerator is the right choice so that hobbyists don't have to worry so much about performance.

The same way that a raspberry pi really is overkill for almost everything people do with them since you could do the same with a microcontroller with no OS, someone could probably squeeze something onto a raspberry pi without the accelerator, but that's going to be far harder than just getting started with the high level APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one who finds it difficult to figure out what this device actually does?

What are the inputs, and outputs?

How do you train it?

I only see a hardware assembly guide, but nothing on the software.

EDIT: found more information here: [https://developers.googleblog.com/2017/11/introducing-aiy- vi...](https://developers.googleblog.com/2017/11/introducing-aiy-vision-kit- add-computer.html)

<comment><USER20> No you aren't the only one.

SD image - coming soon

Android app - coming soon

SDK - no links or search hits

It's an unfinished project that's been rushed to the press with little documentation.

<comment><USER21> A bit more info from another site[1]:

"It's called the AIY Vision Kit, and it's up for pre-order from Micro Center for $45, with an expected ship date of December 31st."

[1] [https://liliputing.com/2017/11/google-introduces-45-aiy- visi...](https://liliputing.com/2017/11/google-introduces-45-aiy-vision-kit- diy-computer-vision-hardware-projects.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this a response/competitor against AWS DeepLens?

</comment><comment><USER23> That is a lot of steps to setup a little camera without giving you the core software that powers the whole shebang. If you don't know tensorflow or how to set it up, that seems to be a bit of the most important part. Unless of course, someone knows of a good starting place for setting it up yourself.

</comment><comment><USER24> Crazy how different the approach here is from AWS Deeplens!

<comment><USER25> Karl Marx vs Adam Smith

<comment><USER26> The communist vs. the guy that warned against the political power of the business-owning class?

Not sure that's the contrast you are looking for...

<comment><USER25> Communist vs capitalist

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any word on what the daughterboard does? I presume it's a TPU? Will it work on a full-size RPi? Given that Pi Zeros are still really hard to get hold of (especially outside the US)...

<comment><USER28> If you look closely at the screenshots, it comes with a Movidius Chip on the VisionBonnet board.

I'm guessing this VisionBonnet accessory is simply another spin on the Intel "Movidius Neural Compute Stick" with the Movidius Chip wired directly to the CSI Camera port and the GPIOs on the Zero used to talk with it. So you probably develop on it using the same Movidius Toolchain you use for the Neural Stick: [http://developer.movidius.com](http://developer.movidius.com)

Their SDK recently had a major release with TensorFlow support included, which I bet drives this. (Even with Tensorflow Lite optimizations, the RPi zero is probably just too weak to drive inferences for any non-toy model.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For awhile I've wanted to build a hat that automatically takes a picture of every dog that I see. This looks like it could be a great start for that project.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can we source the parts for one of these now? The pre-order page states they will be available on Dec 31st. Is there an equivalent?

<comment><USER31> The one new looking item is the VisionBonnet (with a low power Intel Movidius chip [1]). I've been pounding away on a low power / low cost NN vision device and now in the last two days we got Amazon DeepLens and this Google AIY Vision kit. Exciting and frustrating at the same time.

[1] [https://www.movidius.com/solutions/vision-processing- unit](https://www.movidius.com/solutions/vision-processing-unit)

<comment><USER32> I'll go with exciting. I'm looking at doing some computer vision (at least background segmentation for motion detection) as part of a security camera NVR project. I was eyeing the Hexagon DSP 680 included in the newest Qualcomm SoCs but couldn't find a cheap SBC that included it. At first glance, the VisionBonnet seems to do similar things as part of a $45 kit. As a bonus, they say it's supported by TensorFlow. That will be helpful if I ever actually get into machine learning...

<comment><USER32> On second glance, I think it's a pretty different device than the Hexagon DSP 680 I mentioned.

For one thing, this board in particular apparently has a direct connection to the camera. I'm not sure if you can do anything but live video from the directly-connected camera (in my case, I want prerecorded video / video from IP cameras). Maybe it can but it's not immediately obvious anyway.

The $75 "Movidius Neural Compute Stick" uses the same chip and does everything via USB so that's more promising. But it's a binary-only API that's totally focused on neural networks (and only available for Ubuntu/x86_64 and Raspbian/arm7). In contrast, I believe you can easily send Hexagon arbitrary code. Its assembly format is documented and upstream llvm appears to support it. So if I want to do background subtraction via more old-school approaches, the Hexagon is probably useful where the Movidius stuff is not. And I have yet to learn anything about neural networks so that's a significant factor for me at least.

Really neat hardware but I wish it were more open.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I was going to do some embedded image processing I would choose a Tegra. You can get a Shield TV for not too much money, and although I haven't done it myself it looks pretty hackable with both Android and Ubuntu (and if you don't want to hack it you can just buy the devkit). CUDA is a decent toolkit and of course NVIDIA's support for neural networks is by far better than anyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like Google's own Google Clips -- [https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips?hl=en- US](https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips?hl=en-US)

</comment><comment><USER34> That the free Android app is "coming soon" does seem to suggest that this was rushed out as a response to Amazon's DeepLens. That said, I'd say it's a pretty good response.

</comment><comment><USER35> How is this better than using a typical smartphone?

<comment><USER36> It can be left in a specific location, for one thing.

Security and game cameras are a massively-unsolved problem, for instance. I'd like to capture footage of bears, coyotes, and other wildlife as it travels through my back yard, not to mention keeping an eye out for larger bipedal visitors. But it's almost impossible to convince the naive motion detection algorithms in my surveillance cameras not to respond to trees swaying back and forth in the wind, or to the resulting rapid movement of patches of dappled sunlight. Or to spiders crawling back and forth in front of the lens, building a web. Or to moths that seem to be attracted to the IR illuminator at dusk. Or to any number of other things that any human would instantly recognize as a false alert, but that are very difficult for software to reject without frequent mistakes in sensitivity, specificity or both.

It's hard to believe that anyone with an outdoor security camera hasn't had to deal with similar hassles. I'm sure there are other applications for a camera like this, but if I were an investor, I'd be very interested in the intersection of ML and security in general. I'm definitely interested as a homeowner.

<comment><USER27> OTOH an 2 year old smartphone has a decent camera, CPU, and an inbuilt battery. Powering the things is probably the trickiest part for remote surveillance (even home surveillance if you don't want to rewire your house); a battery helps with that.

<comment><USER36> Compared to smartphones, outdoor cameras need to be built to very different specifications and standards. I don't think my iPhone would last very long duct-taped to the side of my house.

Of course, neither would a camera that's made out of cardboard and runs on a Raspberry Pi. But for prototyping, this seems like it could offer a good start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Where's the deep learning/tensorflow part? It shows how to assemble the box with the components only.

<comment><USER27> I can only that's the daughterboard; might be a TPU.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a Movidius Myriad 2 computer vision chip, model MA2450. This chip can accelerate TensorFlow neural net models.

[https://uploads.movidius.com/1463156689-2016-04-29_VPU_Produ...](https://uploads.movidius.com/1463156689-2016-04-29_VPU_ProductBrief.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is the VPU on the Vision Bonnet the same as the one on the Intel Neural Stick we saw earlier this year?

</comment><comment><USER39> Had anyone else noticed the "privacy LED"? What it is for, how does it work?

<comment><USER40> Pretty sure it just is on when the camera is on, as an indicator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is really neat, I like the open hardware and software approach.

</comment><comment><USER42> There's no YouTube demo link? Didn't find it...

</comment><comment><USER43> That lens mount looks super dodgy.</comment>


Does Time Flow? New Clues Come from a Century-Old Approach to Math - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407/ <comment><USER2> Excellent insight! Time, itself, is slowed as motion is limited to only 1 dimension as you approach the speed of light. It's all related. I think few understand the significance of this: [https://youtu.be/A-2XQQDD6QQ](https://youtu.be/A-2XQQDD6QQ)</comment>


As devs how can we do more for the pandemic than just quarantine? - <AUTHOR> I feel like all our brain power isn't being put to good use here. <comment><USER2> Use the time to change careers to medicine. The bulk of that brainpower was aimed mostly at extracting clicks and advertising money so it isn't as though it was well used before.

</comment><comment><USER3> MIT is hosting a COVID19 virtual hackathon: [https://covid19challenge.mit.edu/](https://covid19challenge.mit.edu/)</comment>


Why I Told CBS Corporation To Sue Me Without Wearing A Shirt - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=1293 <comment><USER2> I just watched the video at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhVJl-OBEY4>. It's an extended rant directed at his agent.

Summary: It seems he pissed off his publisher and his agent recommended he find another publisher and pay back what the publisher forwarded him. He doesn't think he'll be able to find another publisher or sell that many books, so he took off his shirt and made a long video in which he continually chastises his agent, rips up some of his money and rants about how the industry is crumbling and the internet will destroy them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Incorrect.

Correct summary: I think the publishing industry is a cartel that abuses their editors, copy-editors, writers, authors, and so on. They're anti-modern, treat people bad, and threaten them. I'm taking a principled stand against them, and already walked away from $50,000 to do it.

If you disagree, just say so instead of being passive aggressive. Then real dialog happens.

Edit: This has been upvoted, and then downvoted. Hold on a second - this guy mis-summarizes in a snarky way instead of just saying what he thinks. He could write, "He's arrogant" (perhaps) or "I disagree with his style" (your call) or "I think publishing is awesome and in the right here" (you're crazy if you think so) - but instead, he mis-summarizes what's going on. That's basically the definition of passive-aggressive: Not saying what you really think, and being hostile anyways.

I say, "Hey, say what you think and get a dialog going" (I addressed some thoughtful points below, and answered them all) - and you upvote him with his petty snark, and not the guy saying "Hey, if you disagree, say it and we can discuss"? Wouldn't you like a more honest world? No?

<comment><USER2> Could you hold off on the calling me petty, snarky and passive-aggressive and just explain which part of my two sentence summary was "incorrect"?

I don't know exactly what you were alluding to with your claim that I wasn't saying what I really think, but I really was attempting to report what happened in the video and summarize it. Here is what my summary said:

1) It seems he pissed off his publisher

2) His agent recommended he find another publisher and pay back what the publisher forwarded him.

3) He doesn't think he'll be able to find another publisher or sell that many books

4) He took off his shirt and made a long video in which he continually chastises his agent

5) He rips up some of his money

6) He rants about how the industry is crumbling and will be destroyed by the internet

I really did believe all six of those things happened in the video. Which was I incorrect about, and what do you think I "really" believe but wouldn't write?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Could you hold off on the calling me petty, snarky and passive-aggressive

Well, I read it as petty, snarky, and passive-aggressive...

> and just explain which part of my two sentence summary was "incorrect"?

See, that's it. You could just say "My summary was accurate" if you thought so - but it wasn't. You're getting caught up in trivial details, and leaving the biggest parts out. And then you say, "Show me what's not true!!"

Again, it's just not a good style. You could do better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow. So I read through his post, watched the video, and read the letter he wrote to S&S. All the while, I couldn't help but feel I recognized/knew/ or had read this guy's stuff before.

Somewhere around his mention of accomplishing super-human feats and cyclothymia, I connected him to the "Stop Being a Fucking Joker" rant.

I look forward to reading additional commentary about op's post and Mr. Marshall; but, I can't help but feel a distaste for his seemingly common use of public shaming. Perhaps a more effective and less aggressive form of communication would allow him to avoid these public spats. Then again, perhaps it is all part of a very effective pr campaign. After all, I now know who this guy is and am able to identify his writing.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are great points, I'd like to address all of them -

First, yes.

Second, I've never released contact info or identifying details of anyone on my side - an employee, investor, or partner. _Ever_. It's always obfuscated pretty well - you have to protect people.

Third, everyone in an organization or the specific people will know, but that's what you get with me. Radical honesty/transparency... it's awesome, it's so liberating, and people are thoroughly informed that that's how it goes with me. It's not for everyone, that's for sure

Fourth, I'm gentler/nicer to people who are quiet, etc - you obviously don't hear about that... I try to communicate in a person's desired style, which is aggressive for driver-type people, but I'm more creative/relaxed with creatives, and very calm with calm people.

Fifth, the publishing industry's bullshit needs to end, and I need to air this out publicly. It's the only leverage anyone has. Merlin Mann's "Cranking" essay is what gave me confidence to stand up publicly, take a lot of abuse, and look to improve things.

Thank you for sharing your honest thoughts here.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your response. One thing I love about Hacker News is the frequency that you get to engage in actual discussions with the authors. I am somewhat weary/apprehensive of your style, but I must confess I find it rather intoxicating.

I certainly plan to read through more of your postings and archives.

Most of all, I am glad to hear you adjust the message to the audience. I would expect nothing less from a marketing savvy individual but it is still comforting to read.

Good luck with your fight, it is unfortunate that so many industries continue to cling to outdated business practices and models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really hard to judge this without seeing the letter the author was sent. If "repayment... more money than you even got" means pay back the advance plus interest because the book is being cancelled, this seems entirely reasonable. If it's "pay back the advance plus a million dollars because we feel like being unreasonable", that's a completely different story of course.

But it's definitely pegging my crazyometer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read for yourself -

[http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon- and...](http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and- schuester-ceo-carolyn-reidy)

I think it was raw, honest, and necessary. Maybe too mean? But again, it was 100% true.

> If it's "pay back the advance plus a million dollars because we feel like > being unreasonable", that's a completely different story of course.

Ah, you missed the context. My agent was telling me that if I don't shut up and agree to terms immediately, I have to pay back _his_ share of the advance to the publishing house. And I negotiated him up after he signed me from the standard 15% to 25% because I like people to be well-played. He didn't address when things were bad, forced bad terms in the contract to go through, didn't negotiate in my favor, and now threatened me... the whole industry is scummed up, man. People need to know what really happens - there's lots of stories like this, but most get hushed up.

> But it's definitely pegging my crazyometer.

Yeah, mine too. But don't you have to be a little crazy to walk away from a guaranteed $42,900 and fight a multi-billion dollar corporation with a massive legal team?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazing, absolutely amazing. The world needs more people like this. I don't even care if you agree or disagree with his fundamental position, or any specific details of what he's talking about.... but I admire the man for the willingness to do his own thing, to essentially tell a $MEGACORP to go fuck themselves, and to spit in the eye of the haters.

A little less political correctness, a little more uninhibited behavior and a healthy splash of controversy are always welcome, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, that delivery doesn't "work" for everybody, but some people need a little shock-value to capture their attention. And some people are inspired by seeing others show the willingness to step outside the perceived boundaries of their world.

Go Sebastian!

<comment><USER6> You know that "uninhibited behaviour" is a result of a serious mental health problem (bipolar), right? Being mentally ill isn't really a lifestyle choice.

<comment><USER7> He said "a little more". There's a difference between being knowingly irrational from time to time and killing people on a whim.

<comment><USER6> But people with bipolar don't get to choose whether it's a little more or a lot more. That's the nature of the illness. You start with an exciting, powerful, bit of extra oomph, which is narrowly balanced between useful extra capacity to get stuff done on one side and out of control mania on the other. This can last months or years. Sometimes followed by a crash; and the crashes are nasty. (Obviously there are different forms of bipolar, and not all forms follow that pattern.)

(Also, I don't get why you chose to link violent behaviour with mental health problems. People with mental health problems are much more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More like "Why I told CBS Corporation to sue me while not wearing a shirt".

When I read the title, I thought he wanted _them_ not to wear shirts when they sued him!

Edit: changed "you" to "him" and "he" after zbowler pointed out that the author is not the one who posted on HN

<comment><USER9> He is just the author, not the editor.

<comment><USER9> in reply to your edit, actually I was referring to the fact that he is an author, and editors usually catch mistakes like that and not to the person that posted to HN (although reading his twitter, timing would lead me to be believe they are the same person).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I started reading the previous rant from the author - the letter to the CBS president - and stopped at the point where he goes ballistic because his 'immediate' payment took six weeks. For a giant corporation to cut a check six weeks sounds pretty immediate to me.

I feel sorry for his agent.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here is a direct link to the youtube video. The video in page on Marshall's site wouldn't load for me:

<http://youtu.be/hhVJl-OBEY4>

</comment><comment><USER6> We need cstross to explain what "the cartel" does - trawl through slush piles, work with authors to produce manuscripts, edit, typeset, print, and distribute books.

ebooks should make a lot of this easier and better and more efficient, but the workflow and tools don't appear to be there yet. And Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is bullshit) is skewed to 98% with self-publishing.

It's interesting to note that Sebastian had this revelation after taking $65,000 of Simon & Schuester's money in advance for a 50,000 - 60,000 word book that he has not given them. (Weirdly, he's written 180,000 words, so why he doesn't just send that and get it edited down to 50k is confusing.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I only got paid the first 1/3rd, and walked away from the second 2/3rds after we were almost complete. Writing that honest letter cost me $42,900.

Maybe I'm a jerk, maybe you want to defend how badly traditional publishing treats their authors and staff (do you really think they can't do better? _much_ better?) - but yeah, I walked away from around $50k here, and the writing was already agreed by agent and editor to be excellent at that point.

Principled stand, man. Most people don't get it, can't get it. But I think things need to improve, so I'm going to try to force things to improve.

<comment><USER4> Quitting a job you hate is not "taking a principled stand". Taking a principled stand would be if you said "I love working with you, but I can't do it if you're going to continue to (print books on paper made from unsustainable forestry practices | allow the Chinese government to censor books | do other random evil stuff)".

The fact that you wrote a multi-page rant about how much you hate working with them demonstrates that you're quitting for your own sake, not because of any "principles".

<comment><AUTHOR> > Quitting a job you hate is not "taking a principled stand".

I disagree. How much would the world change if everyone started doing it tomorrow?

> you're quitting for your own sake, not because of any "principles".

We're already written. I told them they need to improve how they treat people, audit and remove bureaucracy, and do better for _everyone_ to keep working with me.

I didn't ask for any terms for myself. Just doing better in general, modernizing, and treating everyone better. I probably could have gotten my personal goals met easily with a personal letter, instead I'm in a public fight.

You can be as cynical as you want, but I walked away from $50k, a solid credential, and a lot of open doors to try to improve an important-but-badly- flawed-industry.

Anyways. Keep your cynicism and skepticism. I admire it, actually, and the open dialog. But if you change your mind later, will you write it publicly? A lot more is going to happen going forwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> YouTube seems to be hating on this video. He only tears up about ~$60 that I can tell. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhVJl-OBEY4#t=861s>

<comment><AUTHOR> $50 USD, $70 USD worth of yen, $30 USD of euros, $16 USD of yuan, and I'm not sure the exchange rates on Singapore or UAE.

It was well-spent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thank you for doing this.

Not that I give a damn, quite frankly, about the publishing industry. (I probably should, but I don't.) But the "shut up or we'll threaten to sue you - and just the threat will ruin you for a decade" meme is popping up all over the place (patent trolls, illegitimate MAFIAA takedowns taking years to resolve, and so on), and too often people go the logical route, sit down, and try to piece together their new life from under the boot. Every batshit-crazy shirtless nut we have is one more good role model for how to deal with this brand of thuggery.

So thanks, and keep it up.

<comment><USER6> > _"shut up or we'll threaten to sue you - and just the threat will ruin you > for a decade"_

That's not what's happening here. Perhaps you could point me to what's been said that makes you think it is what's happening?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand, what would agents like Jim do if there was no "publishing cartel"? What are they currently doing that they would continue doing?

I think not wearing a shirt makes it: -less likely I will share it -harder to assign credibility (even though I have already read your work and know your smart) -harder to focus on what your saying and finish video

These shirted videos are awesome <http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/my- approach-to-business>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure they have drugs for that now.

The manic part, not the douchebag part (I"m pretty sure you're beyond help on that one).</comment>


Ask HN: What arguments are there for native mobile development in 2020? - <AUTHOR> I'm wondering what arguments are there to defend the use of native development for either of the current popular mobile platforms.<p>I've heard from quite a few folks about how native development allowed applications to have a more platform-specific feeling, although nowadays frameworks seem to have a plethora of options to customize the app based on the platform, while allowing a much quicker development. Is there any point in developing native apps nowadays outside of some niche case?<p>(Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for frameworks or anything like that. I'm actually a native developer myself.) <comment><USER2> I work on social media. We use lots of lower level stuff - cameras (modifying EXIF data/crop/zoom/edit), voice calls, chat. Some things which require quick pop ups and approve. Everything involving native share, and some new things too. It's all doable on hybrid, but 3 times the work.

The more layers you have, the more you have that _may_ not work or work _unexpectedly_ , poorly documented (EXIF data on iOS is interesting). You have to check every one of these layers to see what is going wrong when it does. Sometimes I cut out a small test sample to see if it works this way, then if it does, copy out that code in several places, on plugins and so on. Also build times are slower on anything that isn't native and that adds up to a lot on a complex codebase.

According to my data, a small fix (understood bug) takes about 2 hours on hybrid, 1 hour on native. Double as much if we don't know the source and need lots of testing.

But if you're making a CRUD app, by all means, use frameworks.</comment>


Perl in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://dg.cx/jsperl/

<comment><USER2> I've seem similar result with Perlito here <http://perlito.org/> But it's very exciting that you're building perl with LLVM!</comment>


The WhatsApp Architecture Facebook Bought for $19B (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-architecture-facebook-bought-for-19-billion.html <comment><AUTHOR> There's an article at the front page about WhatsApp and how they manage to do a lot with a little. Unfortunately, it doesn't go into much technical detail. I figured this article is more appropriate for the HN audience.

This is also a good article with a slightly different focus: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp- grew-...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-grew-to- nearly-500-million-users-11000-cores-an.html)</comment>


Etacts Adds Contact Info, Social Networking, and Handy Statistics to Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5491683/etacts-adds-contact-info-social-networking-and-handy-statistics-to-your-gmail-sidebar

<comment><USER2> This is pretty much exactly what Rapportive had just released except this has some added functionality. They imitated it very quickly unless they had plans to do this all along..

Xobni also had indicated it wanted to get into Google Apps and Gmail at some point in the near future. I wonder if this is the new model for building services on top of Gmail..

<comment><USER3> it has more features but a much poorer ui than rapportive.

for one thing their logo (etacts) is larger than the name of the person the email is from in the side bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Unfortunately only Etacts has access to Gmail's new oAuth APIs as far as I can tell..

In all fairness, I do hope Google gets around to releasing those APIs to the rest of us soon...

<comment><USER4> are you sure this is still private?

I haven't tried this, but <http://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/Home/oauthimap> doesn't at all look private to me. In fact, when I found that, I was very happy to see this ingenious combination of SASL and OAuth.

<comment><USER2> nice find. Thanks! Currently experimental but hopefully this is what they intend to officially release soon as rumored..

ps.. Does this work with Google Apps?? Anyone?

<comment><USER5> You certainly can't run it in conjunction - i.e. gmail in one tab and google apps in the other - it only handles one acct (unlike Rapportive). I didn't try just a google apps account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool Timing! Looks like "Go Test It" may live another day!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think their website is down...

<comment><AUTHOR> should be quick again, sorry for the blip</comment></comment>


When will it be possible to use IGP and discrete GPUs simultaneously? - a-fried-egg I read articles about people chasing "holy-grails" in hardware, but what about something as simple as using an IGP and discrete graphics card simultaneously or in-conjunction with one another? <comment><AUTHOR> If you care about performance, you're probably using a GPU that's 10x faster than any IGP. So at best, adding the IGP can only speed things up 10%. And the communication overhead from dividing up the computation probably eats that 10%.</comment>


Robots Are the Next Revolution, So Why Isn't Anyone Acting Like It? - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/robots-are-the-next-revolution-so-why-isnt-anyone-acting-like-it <comment><USER4> I agree its a pretty weak article but its a blog, not a paper, so I would not expect it to rise to the level of rigor for something intended for one of the IEEE journals.

That being said, if you've ever heard of 'charity burnout' there is something similar called 'robotics burnout.' You discover it, you engage in excitement, but nothing happens, you can only be excited (or charitable it seems) so long before you need to take a break. But lets start at the beginning shall we?

So in 1985 the Homebrew Computer Club was waning, it had been the center of attention between 75 and 85 but with people like IBM in the game and Apple going much more 'corporate' it was more of a users group than the folks who were changing the world.

One of the special interest groups from that meeting was the Robotics SIG. A guy named Dick Prather who was active in that SIG decided that even if the computer group was dying, robotics was just getting started and so he did the SIG equivalent of a setsid(2) call and made the Homebrew Robotics Club an independent organization. It has met continuously since then (yes 26 years).

One of the things about 'robots' that most people don't get, is that fundamentally a robot is any machine that has some level of program-ability that does one or more tasks while adapting to its environment. Your dishwasher is a good robot, it washes the dishes for you, or the pots and pans, or the stem ware, it uses a variety of sensors to decide if the dishes are clean yet and it dries them afterwards. If you didn't have it you would be getting a sore back moving dishes from the counter-top to the sink, to the drying rack.

Folks have argued that to be a robot it would have to do it like humans do, but that is an angels-on-pins sort of argument. Generally robots are the expression of automation, and they have (as a market) been growing where ever it makes economic sense. As processors get cheaper and more powerful more and more things make economic sense.

Of course for things that are really expensive or really dangerous its really easy to justify the cost. So for things like disarming bombs, or hunting people down in a country you are not technically at war with and killing them are both easily justified costs if you can automate them.

ISRobotics, the guys who make the Roomba, make most of their money selling robots for things like mine clearing and recon, and yes shooting people. Founded in 1990 they were making $1M/yr in 1996 with 16 employees[1], that wasn't particularly sustainable but in 2001, with 9/11 they demonstrated the value of their packbots. And now at $401M/yr they are doing quite well except that over 60% of their revenue is "G&I" which is code for "Government and Industrial".

Now that isn't all bad, its just that instead of comparing the robotics revolution to the 'PC' revolution you have to compare it to the 'computer' revolution, which is to say that a whole lot of investment and development is focused on corporate and government use until the the industry can supply enough automation to slake their thirst and to give some time to 'regular' folks.

So in the 80's we had companies like Androbot and Heathkit approaching mobile robotics as gimmicks/educational, in the 90's we had a lot of toys and the start of robot (really armored R/C vehicles with minimal automation) combat. And now in the second decade of the 21st century we're seeing prototype self driving cars, a number of walking designs, and energy systems that can sustain things for more than a couple of minutes.

Bottom line, things are going along, and getting better, and in many ways getting better faster now than they have in the past, but there is so much eco-system that has to develop around building mobile robotics that can do useful work that the rate of change feels much more evolutionary than revolutionary.

When we look at robotics startups today, places like Willow Garage and Anybot you can get a good feel for how cool things _could_ be and how far we are from seeing the kind of uptake like we did with personal computers.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/07/08/214354/index.htm)

[2] [http://investor.irobot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=193096&p=irol...](http://investor.irobot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=193096&p=irol- newsArticle&ID=1527102&highlight=)

<comment><USER5> War and toys, the best drivers of technology.

<comment><USER6> Sex too: VCRs and AOL definitely benefitted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a weak article. First, it ignores the existence of commodity robots. Something like 4 million Roombas have been sold. They are easy to use commodity robots that sell in volume from Best Buy.

Second, many people, going back to the early 20th century, have imagined buying cheap general purpose robots, just as they have imagined buying jet packs and holidaying on space stations. Just because I imagine it doesn't make it feasible. The reason there aren't many autonomous-robot startups is that no one knows how to do the AI. It may make sense to you that you ought to be able to put together robots like you put together a spreadsheet, but that's not how it turned out to be. The article admits this, describing day to day tasks as "incredibly complex". Yet then asks us to imagine the cheap, capable robot.

Third, the "mysterious" capital behind Willow Garage is Scott Hassan, an early and thus very rich Googler. It says so on the WG web page [<http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us/history>].

Fourth, Microsoft has Robotics Studio, a package that competes with ROS in many respects. It is exactly a "robot operating system" on top of Windows. Researchers pretty much ignore Robot Studio, but why does this journalist do so when he says that "what we need Microsoft [...] to do is build an operating system....". It has been trying for years. Thanks for the advice, though.

A low-quality piece for Spectrum, picked up from a blog.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that they have been the next revolution since Karel Čapek gave us the term in 1920. If you haven't read R.U.R. you should. It feels like it belongs in last weeks Wired.

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

<comment><USER9> After reading R.U.R., it's amazing how many themes of the subsequent 90 years' worth of dystopic literature it predicts! Robot rebellion, androids, human fertility crisis - it's all there, and more.

It's also kind of ironic that the same piece of literature that introduced the concept of the robot also introduced the perennial concept of the coming robot rebellion.

<comment><USER10> It's not actually that ironic. Robots tend to be symbols for an oppressed underclass - their masters have (or think they have) a high degree of control over their every thought and action, they're often tasked with menial or dangerous labor, and frequently considered 'other' and 'less' than their squishy human overlords. And what's every slave driver's worst fear?

As literary devices, robots don't have much to do _besides_ rebel. If they just did what we told them to do, there wouldn't be much story to tell. (Note that that's part of why _I, Robot_ was so mind blowing - a lot of it was about things going wrong when the robots did _exactly_ what we told them.)

<comment><USER9> I think it had more to do with Čapek subscribing to Marxist theories about historical inevitability and such. His robots are in fact a mental abstraction, a caricature of early 20th century proletariat that was supposedly bound to revolt, sooner or later. Čapek is taking this to extremes, purporting to show that even a race that was bred especially for labor would inevitably revolt, if only they were afforded the modicum of intelligence that was needed for that labor.

Of course, we now know that Marx's inflexible theories were wrong, and proletarian revolution is by no means inevitable. We are, however, still stuck with a half-baked idea of the inevitable robot revolution, which tinges the whole field of robotics research, at least as seen from the outside, with a subconscious bitterness of fear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you were thinking multipurpose C3P0 style robots, then the revolution has been 5 years in the future for the last 30 years.

However single-purpose robots have become part of the fabric of most industries. Heck, most people don't even think of them as robots. So the revolution happened, it is now the new normal.

<comment><USER12> I had a similar thought the other day while using an automated paper towel dispenser. "Isn't this primitive robot?" Yet, I'd never really thought to apply the term "robot." It'll be interesting to watch the evolution from dumb/single-purpose robots to smarter/multi-purpose ones.

<comment><USER13> If that's a primitive robot, we've had primitive robots since the first push- button elevator or automatic door, many decades ago.

It's like the defining-down of AI. Proponents promised strong AI Real Soon Now for decades; now they say that we're just being unfair if we don't count email filters as "AI".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two xeon server class machines in the robot? 16 cores?! That's a lot of horsepower to carry around.

Amazon Robot Brain anyone? $0.25 per robot hour.

Or cheat the system with Mechturk?

<comment><USER15> A mechanical turk powered "machine" sounds like an absolutely fascinating experiment.

The tricky bit would be designing an interface for turkers to manipulate the robot.

The other complicated bit is making sure the turkers can't cause serious harm. (We don't want turkers controlling UAVs...)

<comment><USER16> That is actually something I have been thinking about recently. People spend hours upon hours playing games that resemble, to some degree, real jobs. (Think FarmVille, CafeWorld, etc.)

If you could craft the game in such a way to provide the control to the robots for things that are not easily automated, people's entertainment would provide the labour required to control the operation for free. A capitalistic dream.

<comment><USER8> Sorting recycling comes to mind. The manual labor version of it involves standing over a slow moving belt of stinky trash and picking out the valuable recyclables.

Seems like a Fanuc with a suction gripper and a hires web cam is all it might take to get a little "trashville" going. Give the housewives who collect the most alu while the kids are away at school day passes to local spas as prizes and you've got a win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Because there's much lower hanging fruit.

Extracting information and optimizing actions based on it via purchasing/timing decisions. Requires much less capital commitment and potentially much higher ROI.

</comment><comment><USER18> FTA: "Buzzing you in when you get locked out, signing for a package, taking that frozen chicken out of the freezer while you're at work, feeding your pet, and of course the veritable classic of robo-problems: getting you a beer." - imho these are terrible examples of what a robot could do... there are much simpler solutions for most of these problems than buying this: <http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/pr2/overview>

<comment><USER19> I thought that was so cool, until I got the price - $400,000 Something makes me think they're aiming for the useless academic toy market.

<comment><USER20> Once the software gets better the hardware can be made far less robust - <USER2> therefore cheaper. PR2 is a good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking for general purpose robots misses the evolution in home robotics already in progress. I've used a iRobot Roomba for vacuuming our home for about two years now, it works great. I expect future versions will be able to do more tasks.

Consider the progression of the iPod as a music player to a general purpose touch computer (running iOS apps of all kinds) that is is today -- this is perhaps a good picture of how home robotics may progress from single purpose to multi-purpose household machines.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a group aiming to be the Arduino of robotics with a $1000 iRobot, ROS and Kinect based robot platform:

<http://www.bilibot.com/about>

I guess this still goes into the 'Homebrew Computer Club' category, but now all we need is a Wozniak-Jobs-like pair to take it to the next level.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's the term robot. For most people that means human like machines. Making human like machines is a terrible waste of energy compared to just making the form of a machine match it's tasks.

If you instead say machine automation rather than robot, well then you see that we probably are in that revolution.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been working on a theory on this one. In the most abstract sense, computers are an extension of the human self. Cave Paintings, Papyrus scrolls, Guitars, Printing Presses, Pens, Televisions, Computers are all an evolution of this. You can think of a mobile phone as a inanimate (non-sentient) robot that lacks the ability to self-ambulate. There is a distinction between sentience which has not yet been achieved, and partial autonomy. There simply is not a mass market use case that makes small scale robots like the finch popular enough. Instead, I believe that mobile devices will continue adding new and interesting features. NFC will be the big thing next. After that, some new pathways will be: printing from mobiles, and possibly some of them will have movable parts that developers can program.

Eventually, the mass market appeal of mobile devices will combine with the usefulness of a physical manifestion of our ideas into reality. You need to make a cheap robot USEFUL.

Ultimately, it is the person that controls the robot that will get the most use out of it. Just like a master craftsperson can use his or her tools far more effectively than any random person.

So...in one idea, the reason robots are not really here is that there is no mass market appeal to justify the hundreds or thousands of dollars that they cost.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have been thinking about this a lot lately. All the parts are laying around, and I just need to start putting them together..literally, I have steppers and servos, and some DSP test boards. I am getting de ja vu all over again. When I was finishing up school, i commented that if I had a little more sense i would just quit, and make web pages. Here it is 15 years later, and about time to close up the pottery shop. Zafka Robotics does have a nice ring to it.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's _is_ a very successful consume robotics product that everyone knows about. I have one, and it's fantastic. It's called Roomba.

<comment><USER27> iRobot is amazingly successful not just in home robots but also in the military and public sectors. I love my Roomba and I'll be purchasing the Scooba 230 too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The phenomenon that the articles title refers to is caused by something simple.

The tech world got into media, and since then media related technologies get a sizable chunk of the attention.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are very real technical limitations that make the kinds of robots available limited. Tele-operation is ok for the military, but interfaces aren't good enough yet to, say, enable a human size robot to open a door quickly. Automated driving is up and coming, but still a few years away from being a real product.

This is a combination of perception and manipulation problems. There is only so much that can be done by a robot moving from point a to point b, and we're seeing products that leverage that. Roomba, toys, packbot, grand challenge bots - none of them really see, touch, and grab things. This isn't a matter of some discoveries in a university that are waiting to be productized. No one has found the right answer.

I left a job in robotics to work on more interesting products, but I hope to return when the tech is real.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there a HN-like community for Robotics/Satellite stuff?

<comment><USER31> There's a Robotics subreddit. It's not super-busy but it seems to get a couple of submissions per day.

<http://www.reddit.com/r/robotics/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nobody ever acts like the next revolution is the next revolution. If they did, it would be the current revolution, or at least the current fad.

</comment><comment><USER33> I almost got a Roomba but I went with a Dyson instead because all reviews said you still need to vacuum. I'll probably get the next generation, which should be out in a year or so.

Moore's Law is a bit flat at the beginning. For example, only 1% of the human DNA was sequenced at the first half of the project and the other 99% during the second half, if I remember the story correctly. We need a few more 18 month periods before robots start to become more useful in a non-controlled environment. My money is on 2015-2018.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's all about price points. The crux of the problem is glanced in the last paragraph of the article "Imagine a robot that you could buy at Best Buy for somewhere between $2k and $4k." Right now, that just isn't feasible. For autonomous mobility you need components that qualify the following criteria: fast, quiet, safe, and precise. Unfortunately, such components just aren't affordable yet.

The revolution frenzy won't hit until your upper middle class income family can afford it.

</comment><comment><USER35> It seems to me the problem is that there is so much variation in the underlying robotics hardware that it will be difficult to come up with a 'one- size-fits-all' OS.

<comment><USER36> the hardware, as usually, is abstractable into drivers.

Take for example hand movement - you may have the model of the robot's hand including actuators' input/output abstractions, length/weight of the arms, etc... It is common for all the robots with arms and very mathematically- mechanically complicated task to calculate the dynamic of the hand from current position, at current speed to another position with another speed, including recoil on the rest of the body, ... Mathematically it is a complicated smooth manifold in the high dimension space and various analyses and optimizations on such objects have been a very fruitful source of many Ph.D.s and articles :) Though on practice any "good" suboptimal solution would do. The 3D orientation and environment sensing is also abstractable - <USER3> again the calculation and effective algorithms (which are really hardware independent - for example stereo analysis is dependent basically on the resolution and the speed of the input sensors and teh CPU power and effective algorithm - sounds familiar?) is the heavy part. The [speech] command processing - has been also abstracted into input devices and processing core algorithms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> One big reason robots aren't very good is because actuators are not very good. There are no good artificial muscles. Motors are great to power wheels and propellers but not much else. On the sensor side, robots can see, hear and even touch quite effectively. I think the software is slowly making progress, as is the # of computations we can do per watt. But lack of actuator progress severely hampers the future of robotics IMO.

<comment><USER38> Hydraulics and pneumatics work pretty good, but they are really tedious to work with, especially for people used to electronics. Their biggest problems are cost and seals, especially seal durability. And of course the cost in energy to keep them powered - when I get around to it, I expect to need to use a IC powered version out in the garage. But then energy budget is a problem with all mobile robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I figured robots haven't gained momentum at anywhere the same rate as personal or distributed computing since robust sensing and interaction of the physical world is still mostly an unsolved problem. Robots are useful in carefully physically constrained areas like industrial assembly lines and can be finicky toys that are too limited to do much anything useful, and there are things like Roombas that are somewhere in between the two.

A solution to the robust physical interaction thing sounds like something that would be pretty much AI-complete and would imply a lot bigger changes than housecleaning robots. This would just get you the science fiction humanoid robot that can walk into a house and start cleaning up and renovating the walls, but given the amount of flexible smarts and learning ability a general solution for being able to pull that off involves, it could probably start doing your job for you as well.

I'd guess there is also a less scary technology branch, where the current limited scope robots become somewhat more feasible with better manufacturing, materials, computing and communication technology, taking use of things like human telepresence and heavy duty data mining that have become easier due to just plain Moore's Law instead of groundbreaking AI research. These kind of robots are going to require environments tailored to their limitations, like the existing assembly line robots, as well as doing the R&D on figuring out just what kind of robot and environment combinations are going to do useful stuff, so it's not going to be the sort of lightning-fast development we saw with personal computers. More like the gradual development from 19th century homes to late 20th century homes full of electrical household appliances.

In fact, electrical household appliance probably is the metaphor for thinking about these sorts of robots, not a metal man walking about and enslaving humankind. That might explain why people aren't vastly enthused about them, even though there's probably a market for them.

</comment><comment><USER40> Robots are the next revolution, but not because of the examples listed in the articles. I don't get that excited to hear about robots getting my packages, cooking my dinner, talking to my (future)wife, etc...I think the real revolution is with robots that can provide oxygen to people in burning buildings, locate/extract people under debris after a natural disaster, and find my lost car keys.

As for the robot in every home, I think a cheap, easy-to-program home automation processor that connects wirelessly to custom hardware is more appealing. That way I could set my bird-feeder, alarm system, and central- heating to "vacation-mode" and leave with peace-of-mind.

</comment><comment><USER41> Robots don't have true intelligence, that's why.

However, if someone could create a general way to power robots with intelligence, i.e. plug a robot into the intelligence grid and there it goes, they'd be billionaires.

Anyone figure it out?

</comment><comment><USER42> Comparing the software revolution with a robot revolution is just unfair. The hardware part that fueled the software revolution was multi-purpose, so there was a fixed initial cost while the cost to develop the subsequent (amateur) programs was negligible.

The develop-test-debug cycle is also much faster in the software industry.

But I do dream of a world where Lego Mindstorms are widely available and used as any other toy.

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems to me that until we have robots that collect energy and resources and build other robots - or alternatively, some kind of programmably reconfigurable substratum like a low-tech T-1000 (Terminator 2) - the capital costs are hard to overcome.

<comment><USER44> Exactly! that is why I am so interested in Self-reconfiguring modular robotics, there are several companies that are starting to offer modules to the general public, although all but one are for manually reconfigured system. But I see a lot of movement in both business and research over the last years. I think that it is likely that you will be able to buy reasonably priced Self- reconfiguring systems in 5-15 years. and in the meantime you can play with cublets :-) <http://www.modrobotics.com/blog/?p=187> more on SRCMR [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- reconfiguring_modular_robo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- reconfiguring_modular_robot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> what about the robots in people's pockets. iPhones and Androids can do so many things and have so many sensors. These are robots, just not in the shape we imagined they will take. And they are not yet in the autonomous decision level we imagined they will be.

Disclaimer: I'm a masters student in robotics and don't use iPhone or Android (yet)

<comment><USER46> How are phones robots? Doesn't robot imply that it has actuators as well as sensors?

<comment><USER45> Actuators in phones include - playing sound, displaying images, connecting to networks and other appliances, vibrating... etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Standards-compliant hardware and software platforms. Community documentation. Publicity of successes.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish someone would revive the cyberpunk-prophesied revolution from the '80s: Virtual Reality.

</comment><comment><USER49> Because robots have been the next revolution for at least 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER50> I am :)

</comment><comment><USER51> They are! but the ones who are, are looking for way to kill you with that robot.

</comment><comment><USER52> Really interesting idea. While I know nothing about robotics, this makes me wish I did.

Does anyone know the startup costs of building a robot vs. making a computer in the 70s? My guess is the cost and complexity of building a robot far exceeds that of building your own computer (even from just a # of required parts perspective). Then again, a walking robot like the one Honda has dumped millions into may just be the wrong way of thinking about it. Perhaps a rumba- esque creature is a better indicator of what the first PR (personal robot) will look like.</comment>


Using Petri-Nets to Construct Zero Knowledge Proofs - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/stackdump/d56ef906cb9a9e55724bb417f4039e13 <comment><AUTHOR> Help Wanted: Still looking for feedback for this linked Gist.

It seems like this approach using a Linear Algebra Solver offers guaranteed privacy and security, but more results are needed to offer proof of this claim.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added another example to the repo based on this work

[https://github.com/FactomProject/ptnet- zkp/blob/master/examp...](https://github.com/FactomProject/ptnet- zkp/blob/master/examples/auction.ipynb)</comment></comment>


Similarities of Great Sites - <AUTHOR> https://tractific.com/blog/high-converting-landing-page <comment><USER2> An excellent look at why design matters when building webpages! For start-up companies, these recommendations can matter more than you would expect, since this is how you make a great first impression on your potential customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely!</comment></comment>


Creating a bird sanctuary by feeding migratory birds every year for 40 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebetterindia.com/4946/tbi-travel-the-bird-man-of-kheechan/ <comment><USER2> For those reading who are not familiar with English as used in India, a "lakh", as in "astromical 1 lakh kilos annually", is 10E5. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh) .</comment>


Whistled Language - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language

<comment><AUTHOR> Also see here for a number of sound samples of Whistled Turkish: [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-whistled- language...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-whistled-language-of- northern-turkey)</comment>


Cash Flow and Destiny - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2013/10/08/cash-flow-and-destiny/ <comment><USER2> Cash means controlling your own destiny.

This is as important in your personal finances as it is in business. With enough cash, you can decide for yourself what you want to do and when you want to do it.

I call it buying my time, but in reality, you are buying your freedom to choose. For both people and businesses, it is about getting to the point where your income, assets, and liabilities are in line such that you have a safe surplus.

If you look at the most successful companies or people, they tend to have a significant reserve and that allows them to make choices. Without that reserve, many choices go away. With no reserve, choice almost entirely disappears.

If your goal is freedom, you need to buy that freedom.

<comment><USER3> "If your goal is freedom, you need to buy that freedom." nailed it!

I couldn't agree more with you. The timing couldn't be better because I just finished a spreadsheet for a new family budget. Once I got past the scary big numbers, I realised that in a couple years we could be completely debt free. The next thing that crossed my mind was what we could then be able to do: save, travel more, be more selective in jobs, etc. When you have cash, you have freedom.

<comment><USER4> The problem with that approach is that for most people their lifestyle is adjusted upwards as they get closer to being debt free or having some money. In the end this is a discipline problem, if you commit to some budget now and stick to the plan for the next couple of years you'll be fine, beware of the temptation to change your lifestyle when you reach your goal because it will put you back where you started pretty quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why it always feels funky to me for companies to raise money at insanely large valuations. To me it should only be enough money to cover expenses (employees, office space if necessary, business deals, salary for the founders, r&d costs) for just long enough to where you can afford those things without outside money after. For instance, if you do everything by the business plan, and your business plan says you'll be profitable by the end of the year, and that profitability is enough to cover the monthly costs plus some - then don't raise after that year. You're good, right? This is why I think it's good to sell something if you're a business, and not just give free and then bank on ads or an exit later (which then means ads get placed on your product, or it starts being for sale and some other company gets the money for those sales).

Tell me I am or am not crazy in this philosophy.

<comment><USER6> I think you are conflating two separate, but related issues: 1) Raising large sums of money, when is it right? 2) Having a business model.

For the business model, yes, you should have one and you should put considerable thought into it. You should always test it's validity given the market at that moment in time or in the foreseeable future. That said, if you are Twitter, you are affecting fundamental changes in communication and your impact is evident on the societal level. At that level of impact, you have the luxury and duty to take time to really work out the kinks from your business model.

Now, if you are not Twitter, raising money during a bubble or looser years and using it wisely could be the difference between life or death (or layoffs) during not so good years.

Having money in the bank is powerful, whether you are putting it there or your investors are. Just be careful not to have such a high burn rate that you cannot hope to cover it with your own revenues should push come to shove.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A 2009 study, "Why Do U.S. Firms Hold So Much More Cash than They Used To" [1], investigated the doubling of U.S. cash-to-asset ratios between 1980 and 2006.

Similar to Ben, they find that "firms hold cash to better cope with adverse shocks when access to capital markets is costly. Consistent with this perspective, OPSW find that firms with riskier cash flows and poor access to external capital hold more cash. The precautionary motive also suggests that firms with better investment opportunities hold more cash because adverse shocks and financial distress are more costly for them."

Tech moves quickly. This means tech firms are more (1) ephemeral and (2) dependent on properly timing bold moves. (1) makes markets, and thus capital availability, more jittery in the face of adverse information. (2) makes firms less tolerant of aforementioned jitteriness. Hence Apple's $150 billion cash balance.

[1] [http://220.127.116.11/ejurnal/journal%20of%20finance%202009_v...](http://22.214.171.124/ejurnal/journal%20of%20finance%202009_vol%2064%20no5.pdf#page=6) _Bates, Kahle and Stulz (2009)_

</comment><comment><USER8> "Happiness is positive cash flow" read the bumper sticker on the back of a customers custom truck. It was twenty years ago, but the rules are still the same. Positive cash flow puts you on a different footing than negative cash flow. I have had to run my manufacturing business through both and the positive years were much more fun.

The article also speaks of the headache of layoffs. Neither employees or bosses like the experience, and managing of cash flow can help you avoid that. Many people look at their P&L but ignore the Statement of Cash Flows. It can be a fatal mistake to find out you have assets but no cash, and the walls come crumbling in. Money coming in 90 days doesn't pay your bills today.

</comment><comment><USER9> As so many things do, this reminds me of one of the more insightful books I've ever read: [http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation-Economy- Sp...](http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation-Economy- Speculation/dp/1107031257)

Among many other things, the author, Bill Janeway, stresses that in his decades of experience in the venture investment world the only reliable rule he knows in that world is that cash and control are the only hedges against the inherent uncertainty of new ventures.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would flip this question around and ask: why should it be hard for a startup to reach a cash flow positive state? We are lucky enough to live in a world where the fixed costs of starting a technology company are virtually zero, while the willingness for large enterprises to work with startups is at an all-time high.

I'm a firm believer that a core team of smart, hungry engineers is all you need to create a profitable, growing company today. Venture capital helps you get there faster, but it shouldn't be a crutch.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thank you mh_10 for this great article.

It reminds me of the presentation that Sequoia Capital gave to its portfolio company CEO's back in Oct 2008 with the title "RIP Good Times" found here: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/73886447/R-I-P-Good- Times-10-7-08-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/73886447/R-I-P-Good- Times-10-7-08-Final)

At the time the slides were shocking to me and completely altered how I think about building my start-up.

For starters the economic analysis at the start of the presentation made me aware that 'best practice', aka what Sequoia Capital does, is to track and analyse the wider macro and micro global economic forces. Since then I've learnt a lot more about economics and I track key economic indicators.

The other takeaway was the the two slides titled "Survival" and "Survival of the Quickest".

The "Survival" slide had the following bullet points:

* Must-Have Product * Established Revenue Model * Understanding of Market Uptake * Customer's Abilities to Pay * Assessment vs. Competitors * Cash is King * Need for Profitability

...which is pretty much the criteria I'm constantly assessing myself on.

And lastly the "Survival of the Quickest" side was making the point that unless a massive cut in costs was made right at the beginning of the recession your company would die in a Death Spiral. I can't stress how freaked out I was when I saw that Death Spiral diagram.

I know those slides are 5 years old but even now for my own start-up I keep those slides in the back of my mind as I pursue growth from my balance sheet and keep my burn rate as low as I can.

</comment><comment><USER12> This whole idea of investors being able to dictate your work even though they have no idea what you do is something that I loathe. I used to work in Government and let me tell you the people in charge are most of the time the most clueless about everything.

I suppose sometimes you have to suck it up to attain the finances but it's still an issue that needs to be addressed as an investee.

Guy Kawasaki says it best about this "VC are not your friends so don't treat them like one." [http://www.wamda.com/2013/10/guy-kawasaki-11-mistakes- entrep...](http://www.wamda.com/2013/10/guy-kawasaki-11-mistakes- entrepreneurs)

</comment><comment><USER13> There are actually many opinions to this.

Another supplementary reading to this has been covered by Mark Suster: [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/12/27/should- startup...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/12/27/should-startups- focus-on-profitability-or-not/)

In that article, Mark Suster cover a counter example where instead of pushing to become profitable when revenue is almost overtaking cost, companies that are in a fast growing market should consider forsaking profit today for higher growth tomorrow.

Obviously, that depends entirely on the investment climate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Implied here are the feelings of obligation and the guilt that can come with it that are often incredibly influential and stressful factors in the decisions we make, whether it's obligation felt to an investor whose money you're living off of or to a friend who stood up for you.

</comment><comment><USER15> What does this post mean for His portfolio companies? That VCs are sharks and you should find a way to not need them asap?

A part of me really liked this post; another chuckles at the irony that his own firm is famous for making some of the largest bets with the least proven companies(ie. lyft).

<comment><USER16> "What does this post mean for His portfolio companies? That VCs are sharks and you should find a way to not need them asap?" I think it means that as an entrepeneur in their portfolio, you need to understand your position on cash flow...as you are beholden to not simply yourselves any more.

"another chuckles at the irony that his own firm is famous for making some of the largest bets with the least proven companies(ie. lyft)." Sure..that fits with Ben's (and Marc's) philosophy of investing. They like things that, on the outside, look crazy. In general, they look at the team, the market, the idea(s) <\- the s is important, and the business model. They realize that not every original idea is what will actually be successful for that company. A LOT of successful companies original intents were something different. Paypal was a mobile to mobile payment system, GOOG was enterprisey search, etc.

I think the best hyperbolic quote about it is "We invest in college dropouts with insane ideas going after tiny markets with no way to monetize". Will they have misses? Absolutely, but from a macro perspective, they will have hits that will far outweigh those misses (skype, nicira, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Kanye quotes made me laugh, as it seems the two have been hanging out lately ([https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jeremycastillo/9499335800/](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jeremycastillo/9499335800/))</comment>


Obamacare enrollments got off to very slow start, documents show [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57610328/obamacare-enrollments-got-off-to-very-slow-start-documents-show/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if those figures are based on a round trip from the insurers, because it's official per the fix-it czar that their getting bad 834 EDI transactions is the site's #1 problem.

The "Experian doing a credit check" has popped up again. What gives?

" _Direct enrollment (signing up directly on an insurer 's website) is not working for any issuers._"

I wonder exactly what this means. We know the federal site is intertwingled with the state ones, but I think we would have heard if _nobody_ was able to sign up for Obamacare compliant insurance, especially with the millions who have gotten and are getting notice their old coverage was not grandfathered.

<comment><USER3> > "Direct enrollment (signing up directly on an insurer's website) is not > working for any issuers."

> I wonder exactly what this means.

Probably exactly what it says: for the plans available through the federally- run exchanges (the ones that the federal site serves), enrollment through the insurer's own sites (which presumably still includes links back to the exchange) were not working.

> We know the federal site is intertwingled with the state ones

The federal site serves _only_ the states that didn't set up their own exchanges (for the states that did set up their exchanges, the marketplace just redirects to the state site, they aren't "intertwingled" any more than by a hyperlink.)

<comment><USER2> We know for an absolute fact that if the Federal system is off-line, as happened when Verizon recently goofed, the state exchanges can't function.

In addition to who knows what else, the Federal system is the only one allowed to do subsidy calculations, which makes sense because if a policy is bought with them, that results in a draw on the Federal fisc. So the state exchanges use it for that purpose, and in theory someday insurers will be able to use it so you can buy directly from them and take advantage of any subsidy due you (that's obviously a very low priority for the Federal site).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> super-serial I haven't had health insurance for about 7 years now.

The only way I would ever get health insurance was if the fee for not complying was greater than the cost of paying for insurance.

Even then the worst they could do is take the fee out of my tax refund. The refund is far in the future... whereas right now I need money to pay bills, so why would I pay anything for insurance now? I'll just let them take my refund. I'm sure other part-timers will think similarly.</comment>


PostRank plugin for Google Search - <AUTHOR> http://blog.postrank.com/2011/02/integrating-social-search-postrank-plugin-for-google-search/ <comment><USER2> Oh, have mercy. Do not want.

I can't imagine cluttering up my Google search result page with a Nascar-like line of logos and data. This is really interesting information but that's a pretty noisy presentation of it. At least make me click somewhere to see that much detail.

Ilya, you're a bona-fide genius, so I don't mean this personally. But please, how about a metascore? Varied-size colored dots? A sparkline-like bar graph? Something... less.

<comment><USER3> Heh, I hear ya. Let us take a crack at it.. can definitely do a better job of it!</comment></comment>