Show HN: Yet another free HTML form to email for your static websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.staticforms.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys, This is something I developed to utilise knowledge of serverless architecture provided by Zeit Now ([https://zeit.co/now](https://zeit.co/now)) and AWS

You can easily integrate your HTML forms with your email following few simple steps. Currently it Supports: \- Predefined fields \- Custom fields \- Simple form submissions \- Javascript form submissions \- Honeypot field

Upcoming: \- Custom honeypot fields \- Integration with Recaptcha</comment>


Sweden Tries to Halt Its March to Total Cashlessness - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-11/sweden-tries-to-halt-total-cashlessness-with-lawmaker-proposal <comment><USER3> Here's a fun fact: I'm Swedish and have lived in Sweden my entire life, and I'm not entirely sure what my currency looks like. They changed almost all the coins and notes a few years back, after I had personally pretty much totally gone cash-less.

Without looking it up: I'm fairly certain the 1 kr coin is copper and looks sort-of like the half-krona coin used to. There's a new 2 kr coin, and they redesigned the 5 kr coin. At least one of them is, like, brass-looking, I think.

The twenty-kronor note is (I think) blue:ish and has Astrid Lindgren on it. I know Ingmar Bergman's on one one of the other notes, either the 100 kr one or the 200 kr one. I think the 200 kr one is, like, greenish. But I couldn't be sure. I don't know any of the other people on the notes, and am at best vague on what colors they are.

If you gave me a reasonably convincing fake 50 kr bank-note but with the wrong person on it, I would have no way of knowing.

<comment><USER4> This is why I like polymer money. I have yet to hear of any fake plastic notes out there. One documentary said that buying that special plastic film is harder than getting military explosives.

I did hear about people passing paper printed fake notes instead of polymer ones, but you have to be at a whole new level of carelessness to be fooled by this one.

<comment><USER5> How about bleaching low-value notes, and printing high-value designs on top of them?

<comment><USER6> In the UK, bank notes are different sizes depending on their value. So that goes a long way towards stopping that kind of thing.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it true that if a banknote is torn in two, you can go to the bank and have it replaced?

<comment><USER7> That's true in America too. (You have to have both halves in your possession, of course).

<comment><USER8> Anecdotally, you can do so without both halves, as long as the piece you have is clearly the majority of the bill.

I don't know either the relevant law or common institutional policies regarding that, though.

<comment><USER9> Banks might accept such more-than-half bills as a courtesy to their customers but ultimately it's the US Treasury that will take them and redeem them. If you have a bunch of partially destroyed notes, you should go to them.

[http://bep.gov/services/currencyredemption.html](http://bep.gov/services/currencyredemption.html)

[https://www.npr.org/2017/07/07/535920428/the-office-where- mu...](https://www.npr.org/2017/07/07/535920428/the-office-where-mutilated- money-gets-repaired)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As an expat living in Sweden, who does not have a Swedish bank account, Sweden has a few steps left to make changes if it wants to be completely cashless but still not be unfriendly to foreign visitors.

Most of the friction I run into is related to the banks themselves - <USER2> it's quite impossible to do business with them unless you have a Swedish bank card (or personal number). Examples of things I currently can't do without the above:

1\. Refill my train/bus card online or buy train/bus tickets online

2\. Use Swish, the Swedish half-answer between cash and cards. This is the bank-to-bank transfer protocol which is only supported by Swedish banks. It is quite convenient if you have it, you can enter in a 10-digit number which many storefronts display next to the register and it otherwise works very much like Apple Pay Cash (which is not supported here yet unfortunately)

3\. Have a phone plan. I have to use prepaid and cannot top-up online. I have to always go buy top-up receipts from Pressbyrån

4\. Buy from several various mom-and-pop shops that also only for some reason have card machines that support Swedish cards. They also always have a Swish number as mentioned above.

#2 and #4 are usually the most problematic. When I go out with people from Sweden and someone covers something I inevitably end up withdrawing cash as the path of least resistance.

#1 and #3 are related to a popular payment processor in Nordic countries known as DIBS, who currently likes to reject foreign cards but I suspect will eventually support them. I'm hoping Sweden's banks and other payment systems finish integrating with the rest of the world before eliminating cash entirely so as to not alienate outsiders.

<comment><USER11> > 4\. Buy from several various mom-and-pop shops that also only for some > reason have card machines that support Swedish cards.

That seems unusual to me, Swedish debit cards are AFAIK just VISA/Mastercard cards so I'd think those should be accepted. I've never had any problems with my VISA debit/credit cards in Sweden but I guess I could've been lucky.

Do you have any more information about this? Or do you have a non-VISA/MC card?

<comment><USER10> Typical American Visa credit card from HugeAmericanBank with no foreign exchange fee. I suspect it is related to the payment processor as hinted above.

It's somewhat rare and I see it only in smaller stores. Like a few days ago I was in a mom and pop kebab shop in a small town and it didn't work.

I've had similar problems on RyanAir planes in Europe (but for some reason whoever does payments for EasyJet, SAS, Norwegian, or British Airways I have no issues with)

<comment><USER11> Just realized one possible cause - maybe your card isn't chip-and-pin like Swedish and other European cards?

I guess some terminals/processors smaller places use might not be prepared to (or are configured not to) accept non-chip-and-pin cards. That would also explain why I haven't seen any issues - my cards are all chip-and-pin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I live in Puerto Rico, and the hurricane María, throw the electrical grid to the floor, literally. Yes suddenly 3 million US citizens can't use electronic payment because the hurracaine take down the whole telecommunication network.

The majors of the cities were given some satellite phones by FEMA. No traffic lights around the island ( still today some not working), the roads where blocked by electric pole on the floor. The store looting happen the first ~2 weeks. The complete island goes in ONLY CASH MODE, for around ~3 months.

But yeah, What possibly could go wrong?

I hate to use cash, I like my credit card rewards, but after María, that idea 100% cashless, u got to think about it twice.

<comment><USER13> Hopefully you won't get hit bad again this year, because the season is already coming...

Cash is also good for privacy purposes because businesses can't buy your purchase history when you use cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article has the banks moaning that handling cash will cost them kr100 million per year. Fees that will be passed on to account holders.

I'm curious if Swedish banks passed on that kr100 million savings to their account holders when they stopped taking cash in the first place.

Reminds me of when ATMs first became widespread in the U.S. in the late 70's. The banks kept saying they were the wave of the future, and would save people tons of money because tellers wouldn't be needed anymore.

And yet bank fees went up anyway. So much for saving people money!

<comment><USER15> How do you know that the fees didn't go up as much as they would have without the ATMs?

There also seems to be sufficient competition to allow for multiple banks offering free cash withdrawals around the US and/or the world and free checking accounts, in exchange for certain account balances or direct deposit minimums.

I've never paid a cent to a bank in fees, and they mail checks for free to my vendors when I ask them to, and I can schedule it, and I can instantly transfer money to whoever I want online via Zelle, or use Paypal/Venmo via ACH. Life seems better than what I saw my parents deal with.

<comment><USER14> _How do you know that the fees didn 't go up as much as they would have without the ATMs?_

I don't. I know the banks stated that fees would go down, and they didn't. Sounds like a lie to me.

<comment><USER15> My point is they could have in real terms, just not nominal, although I'm not familiar with the fees you're talking about in the first place so perhaps I can't really compare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have personally been moving to a more cash-based lifestyle after I realized that I used my card so often that my payment history could be used to construct a reasonable map of my location history.

<comment><USER17> I'm generally pretty privacy conscious, but not about my location data. What worries you about that?

<comment><USER18> It is not just your location data which is collected and profiled but also your purchase history. The combination of these two is more than enough to make a detailed profile of who you are (as in 'what your habits are', they already know your name and address etc.) and whether you have anything 'interesting' on the go (visited the hospital, went to the drug store, bought more booze than your health care insurer thinks good for their bottom line, etc.). Payment processors sell this data to the likes of Facebook and Google who use it to make a more detailed profile. If you're fine with this, no problem, just use that bank card/Swish/Apple|Google|Samsung|whatever Pay. If you're not, cash is one of the ways of limiting your exposure to these practices.

<comment><USER16> > Payment processors sell this data to the likes of Facebook and Google

Source?

<comment><USER18> [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now- tracks-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-your- credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/)

"Of course, Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren't purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with "third parties" that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand some private persons' interest in going 'cashless', other than it seems cool and high-tech. Cash is very easy to use, and there's not much to gain from cashlessness, except for businesses and those who want to track you.

More importantly, it can't be overstated that in a world where tracking of human activities has become perhaps the greatest threat to freedom (for example, in China) and to democracy (for example, in advanced democratic countries), cash provides an amazing, simple solution to tracking of your economic activities, at least the in-person transactions. For a trivial amount of effort, you eliminate a major source of information about yourself. It's much easier than using Tor or setting up a VPN, and it's more effective.

tangentially; People are struggling to develop an electronic currency that provides reliable, anonymous, universally accepted transactions using all the tools of a computer. Imagine if the new requirement was, 'now do it using a piece of paper'. Cash is an amazing technology, even if we're all very accustomed to it.

<comment><USER20> Basically, sure, cash is fairly easy to use... but cashless is _easier_. Cashless is "I waved my watch at the register".

Cash is more stuff to carry. A wallet which just contains a few cards is tiny; if you want it to contain a reasonable amount of money in bills and coins as well, it's bulky.

Making change is a hassle -- ever had trouble paying because the shop can't make change for your bill? I have.

Not disputing the privacy downsides of cashless. But for most people's day-to- day life, it's a trade-off they're happy to make.

<comment><USER21> _but cashless is easier. Cashless is "I waved my watch at the register"._

No, it's not. I keep seeing people futzing with their phone, or using some combination of affinity card, credit card, and EBT card that takes forever to process. Then there's "hosted POS in the cloud", where it takes five seconds for each transaction step as it goes out to some overloaded server. The credit card terminal and the POS terminal can get out of sync, so you get a false "Chip malfunction" message if you put in your card too soon.

Here in Silicon Valley, the contactless card thing seems to have come and gone. I see "No Apple Pay" and "No Google Pay" labels taped over the RF card reader at many retailers.

<comment><USER22> That may be the situation in Silicon Valley, but try going to somewhere like London, where you're in the minority if you're not paying with a contactless credit card (let alone Apple Pay). A table of 4 splitting their bill at a restaurant just involves each person tapping their card once when the waiter brings the card reader, and then walking out.

<comment><USER23> Must be a cheap restaurant the limit for wireless is low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am Swedish and have started to use cash as my primary way of spending money. By doing so, I've found that I am more reluctant to purchase expensive items and that it also will lower shops tracking ability.

I really _hate_ the new standard of cashless. It's so stupid and a lot of people are defending it without realizing potential consequences this can have.

If a store doesn't provide an ability to pay with cash, then I am most likely not going to purchase anything from that store.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is obviously cultural, but the very idea of a bank that refuses to handle cash somehow feels antithetical to the very purpose of personal banking. I can't imagine a bank in the US doing that, nor can I imagine hoq fast their customers would revolt!

<comment><USER15> There are quite a few online US banks that don't handle cash. Ally, Schwab are just a couple names that come to mind. They offer very competitive savings rates and perks.

<comment><USER25> Both of those banks do in fact handle cash - through ATMs. Note in the article, one of the options banks could employ for handling cash would be ATMs, indicating that not all banks do...

<comment><USER15> I meant they handle cash in the literal sense, with their hands. You have to mail them a check or money order, but either way all of their money exists on a ledger, not in notes and coins. I guess I should say I don't know for sure, but I see no reason they would want or need to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems like a reasonable proposal. And 100M Kr is about 10M €, which isn't really that much for a whole country.

</comment><comment><USER27> The handling fee for credit cards is crazy high (more than 1%!), I can't believe that handling cash is more expensive.

<comment><USER28> And a UK Mastercard used abroad (in the EU) attracts (nearly) 3% commission on purchases.

<comment><USER29> That's a foreign transaction fee. Good cards will not do this.

The actual interchange fee in the EU is closer to 0.3%.

<comment><USER27> How is the interchange fee different from the merchant fee? Can I take cards for 0.3%?

<comment><USER29> The interchange fee is what's paid between banks.

Your payment processor (Stripe, Paypal, Square, WorldPay etc) essentially act as middlemen who occasionally provide extra value.

Depending on your volume and their product offering you could get interchange + pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh right, let's go entirely to electronic payments. What could possibly go wrong? Who thought this was a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER31> I know I'm new here but I wish people wouldn't link to bloomberg and other sites (including the NYT) that only let you read X number of "free articles" per month. I know how to get around it, but it is a bother. Anyone else feel this way?

Anyways, I think the idea of cashlessness is not only scary but very impractical. What about, for instance, farmer's markets, yard sales, buying something like a newspaper or pack of gum, etc? Do people really use cards for purchases of a few cents, and do farmers and (let's just say) lemonade stands actually take charge cards? Stupid. And, needless to say to a bunch of hackers, Orwellian as f __k.

<comment><USER32> > _" I know I'm new here but I wish people wouldn't link to bloomberg and > other sites (including the NYT) that only let you read X number of "free > articles" per month. I know how to get around it, but it is a bother. Anyone > else feel this way?"_

Welcome to HN!

This is a FAQ:

> _" Are paywalls ok?"_

> _" It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."_

> _" In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other > users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off > topic."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER31> >Welcome to HN!

Thank you. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been contemplating switching to cash because it's easier to spend less, even when accounting for cash back, air miles, etc. I think this is why banks and businesses are pushing so strongly for cash less transactions only. People simply spend more this way because they are less aware of their spending. And if people use credit and don't pay things off every month, then there's interest too on top of the extra spending. Of course this is worth spending millions lobbying for, enacting, and enforcing. People are the only ones losing out on their money and privacy while companies win.

</comment><comment><USER34> Sounds good to me. I use cash a few times a year.. mostly to pay older people in my family.

I recently got rid of the need to have a wallet. Just carry a few cards in a wallet phone case and use Apple Pay about 50% of the time.

<comment><USER35> Good citizen. Now sit back while we mine all of your purchases for suspicious data in which to hang you with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ireland tried cashless in the 70s with a 6 month bank strike.

When cash ran out they survived by using undated cheques (often re-signed multiple times as they were passed around like notes), and when cheques ran out IOUs and local trust.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/we-can-all- get-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/we-can-all-get-by-quite- well-without-banks-ireland-managed-to-survive-without-them-10382975.html)

<comment><USER37> _Others take the example of the Irish bank strike as evidence that much of what banks do is a "socially useless activity"._

Presumably the author of this piece also feels that since newspapers could be replaced by bloggers they are also socially useless ...?

<comment><USER36> Perhaps. I just skimmed for coverage of the events without a care for their social and political stance. The Independent itself is pretty consistently centrist in outlook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The state bank is also looking into creating a digital currency (not necessarily crypto) that should not be controlled by the private banks.

[https://archive.li/20171221075726/https://www.ft.com/content...](https://archive.li/20171221075726/https://www.ft.com/content/0e37795c-ab33-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122)

</comment><comment><USER39> A bit similar situation in Norway. In fact I was not quite sure what our money looks like at the moment because some of our bills changed. I just had some bills as an emergency stash for a long time, that I had to check if was still valid money.

We've even started paying street sellers and beggars electronically now. Because even they realize that almost nobody is carrying cash anymore.

<comment><USER40> In some Chinese cities it's common for beggars to carry a Zhifubao/Alipay or Wechat pay QR-code

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> OT: I wonder why Bloomberg is Bloomberg LP instead of Bloomberg LLC.

<comment><USER42> I would assume to allow Bloomberg to maintain personal control over his namesake should he be forced out of the company. An LP reserves the right to dissolve the company in the event of a partner leaving.

<comment><USER43> Also, keep in mind LLCs didn't practically exist when the company was created. The Wyoming LLC-as-partnership-passthrough ruling didn't happen until 1988. Other states didn't start to pass LLC laws until 1990 onward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been in the UK about ten days, and spent less than £10 of the cash I withdrew on the same day, while having spent well in excess of £500 retail

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in the UK. Sometimes I spend less than £100/cash in a month

<comment><USER44> I forget my PIN every 8-12 months and have to wait for a letter from my bank before I can withdraw cash from an ATM

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There's been a quite generally raised awareness of the importance of civil resilience here in Sweden the past two years. The perceived threath of a Russian invasion (or perhaps more likely network-based sabotage) has been the cathalyst of this.

Being a "prepper" has gone from being seen as border-line psychotic behavior to "being a responsibile citizen". As long as you don't go over-board and try to prep for more than 4-7 days lack of electricity/water/food - then you're still seen as suspicious. Small steps.

There was also this campaign just a week or two ago - every household received a leaflet telling them to prepare for any incidents that stop public services:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/sweden- distrib...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/sweden-distributes- be-prepared-for-war-cyber-terror-attack-leaflet-to-every-home)

This stuff used to be standard operating procedure when I grew up in the 70s/80s - all this stuff was printed in the annual phone directories that everyone receieved. After Soviet collapsed we stopped doing it though.

There's also been an unusually large number of outages of networked systems in Sweden the past two years, all over the place. Things like ATC systems, banks, media/cable tv distribution systems. Perhaps the official, public explanations are true (typically some kind of "human error" or "software update problem"). I suspect there's an adversary who is not very shy.

<comment><USER46> How popular has the Norwegian series Okkupert been among Swedes? It seems war is weighing heavily on the mind of all the Scandinavian countries since about 2014 (except for Finland, of course, who have never stopped thinking of it).

<comment><USER47> The prospect of war weighs very little in Denmark, for the record. There was quite a shock in Denmark, when Sweden announced its 'war survival guide' a few days ago. There seems to be no indication that the Danish government is going to do the same, or anything similar. The argument being that Denmark is in NATO (Sweden is not).

<comment><USER48> Lol! I was interviewed about it by a Dutch TV team a few weeks ago and I had no idea what they were talking about! I got it in the mail last week, a little brochure called "What do to if war or crisis comes." I threw it in the trash and refused to take it seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Cashless societies should never exist - it would be far too easy for rogue governments to turn someone's life off

<comment><USER50> Oh come now, how do you get hold of enough cash to be immune? Keep 6 months living costs in cash in your house!?

Also, if they're turning off your bank accounts, they're turning off your utilities too... And you'll miss your car insurance payments, so you can't drive either.

<comment><USER51> > keep 6 months living costs in cash

Well, I do. Just in case, yknow. But anyway I use cards daily...</comment></comment></comment>


NY A.G. Sues Exxonmobil for Defrauding Investors about Risk of Climate Laws - <AUTHOR> https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-underwood-files-lawsuit-against-exxonmobil-defrauding-investors-regarding-financial <comment><AUTHOR> Original title was 67 char too long for HN, I did my best to keep most of it but if the mods have better ideas please change it.

This seems like an interesting and potentially legally more threatening (in the immediate future at least) route to take in responsibility for global warming. The ultimate harm will be massive but also highly distributed and long after the fact, and the law around it nebulous. Even company PR to the public isn't necessarily that binding about anything. But material financial statements to investors by public companies and risk disclosures are very well trod areas of law with significant risk for a company breaking its own promises. This suit also appears to escape any sort of argument or debate around global warming itself by going one level meta: it's just about ExxonMobile's own statements about _laws and regulations_ regarding it, which could be passed regardless of the state of the world since that's just politics. It doesn't build in all the externalities at all, nor all the risk, but requiring companies to at least be honest to investors is still a sort of low hanging fruit that would turn the screws on them just a bit.</comment>


Cory Doctorow defends Scribd - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/science-fiction-writ-1.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, this has some serious weight:

"I am a former Director of SFWA"

"SFWA has exposed itself to tremendous legal liability."

<comment><USER3> Can't tell if you're sarcastic or not :-/.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an excellent opportunity for Scribd to counterattack. I hope they're on the phone with Cory.</comment>


Show HN: How to Build Community – my 4 years research - <AUTHOR> https://flawlessapp.io/designcommunities <comment><AUTHOR> My framework is focused on 8 simple steps, which you can use for building your community:

1\. __Give the best learning opportunities for the community. __

It can be guides, e-books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Learning content not only gives you SEO-traffic. It helps to position your brand\startup as thought leaders and industry experts.

So when someone from the community has a question, you already have an answer to that. Firstly, companies nurture community via useful educational content. And you'll see that all companies in the design space do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2\. Provide (design) resources community might need

If you look at design companies, they provide handy design resources to work faster, right inside the tool. So users have no reason to leave. UI kits, icons, mockups, and fonts — all that is waiting for any user who comes to Sketch, Figma or Marvel.

That additional value keeps the community hooked inside the company brand.

<comment><AUTHOR> 3\. Invite the community to contribute.

Enable users to talk on behalf of your brand via a company blog, promo- projects, and social media.

Design companies are great in motivating the community to share design tips, articles, assets, designs, and even positive vibes. If you open the research and check visual, you'll see it :)

Some design companies focus on content, inviting opinion leaders to share their knowledge through interviews. Others run community-driven blogs, openly inviting contributors by prominently positioning "submit content" call to actions. Another tactic is to motivate the community to share more of their design work made with specific design tools. The more the community contributes to anything brand-related, the tighter the connection formed between brand and users.

<comment><AUTHOR> 4\. Empower the community to build plugins & extensions

this is something specific for the design & development industry, but can be applied to many startups as well.

Plugins enrich the tool capabilities, providing huge value by giving end users the opportunity to build the features they need. At the same time, this forms a loyal community of plugin makers, who can even build their own small businesses on top of it. The main question is how to motivate the creative community to make plugins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hey to HN community!

For the last 4 years, I've been working with community building in design & development industry while running my startup.

We used many community-building techniques by ourselves and learn from great companies in our space — from Sketch, InVision, Figma, Marvel.

Based on our learnings and things we noted form other companies, I made a community-building framework. You can see it in the research ([https://flawlessapp.io/designcommunities](https://flawlessapp.io/designcommunities)) I shared with many visual examples.

<comment><USER2> Is it expensive to build a community by a startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> it takes time, but possible to do without huge funding</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook and the New Privacy Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/facebook-and-the-new-privacy-revolution.html <comment><USER2> Facebook does targeted advertising based on the data they collect from users. It's important to collect user data with the user consent. You need to comply your site with latest GDPR regulations. If you're using a Magento based eCommerce store, checkout this extension to comply your site with the latest GDPR rules & regulations - [https://www.fmeextensions.com/gdpr-compliance- extension-mage...](https://www.fmeextensions.com/gdpr-compliance-extension- magento-2.html)</comment>


Making Arteries with an Off-The-Shelf 3D Printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-23/3d-printer-hacked-to-make-human-arteries <comment><USER2> This is exciting.

My son has a congenital heart defect, and will have Fontan surgery in a few months, an operation in which a short PTFE tube will be inserted between his vena cava and the pulmonary arteries. While PTFE is generally well tolerated, he will need to take blood thinners for his entire life to reduce the risk of embolisms.

The prospect of one day being able to print an artificial vein, from materials that do not increase the risk of embolisoms, with an optimal fluid dynamic profile, possible even one that could grow with the patient... That's a very exciting thought.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/9/e1500758](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/9/e1500758)</comment>


ENIAC Operating Manual (1946) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_univOfPennperatingManualJun46_7248165 <comment><USER2> The thing that people might find hard to understand these days is that computers - particularly mainframe or minicomputers - were really unreliable. The hardware was often/always custom built and it would often just stop and the manufacturer had to come in to work out what was wrong, and fix it which typically involved replacing boards until the problem went away.

I should note that I'm basing this experience of being involved with company in the late 1980's - not the 1940's which is the topic of this post. Although I can imagine that back then the machines would only run for a matter of hours at best before breaking down and needing debugging.

It was the same with networking which was particularly unreliable when it ran over coaxial cables like RG58 which had an array of problems that would lead to the whole company network going down and taking all the connected PCs with it.

Modern computing is incredibly reliable.

<comment><USER3> _" Modern computing is incredibly reliable"_

I sort of agree with that, though I'd say there was a peak that passed by somewhere in the 90's. There was a time when the most important compute was on high end mainframes. They were more reliable than what we have now.

<comment><USER4> That raises the question, what are the most unreliable components of a computer nowadays, beside the HDD?

<comment><USER5> What HDD?

I think the most unreliable part of most computers today is the screen that cracks when you drop it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also this work-in-progress ENIAC simulator: [https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/](https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/)

<comment><AUTHOR> An interesting fact of ENIAC is, although it was originally programmed by plugboards in 1946, it was soon retrofitted to a stored-program computer in 1948 to simplify programming, using its spare function table units as ROM, and its extra accumulators as a program counter and a pointer. I wonder if there's any project to recreate an ENIAC simulation in stored-program mode.

<comment><USER7> For anyone interested in this period, there's a book on the stored-program ENIAC: [http://eniacinaction.com/](http://eniacinaction.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just read von Neumann's biography recently. He wanted to call the ENIAC the MANIAC - because of its unreliability - but his colleagues refused.

<comment><AUTHOR> The name "MANIAC" ( _Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer or Mathematical Analyzer, Numerator, Integrator, and Computer_ , [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MANIAC_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MANIAC_I)) was eventually picked up by physicist Nicholas Metropolis to name a computer designed under his leadership, as an attempt to ridicule and stop the rash of silly acronyms for machine names, such as ENIAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> a programmer from Huntsville, Alabama started in 1963, and later worked on Burroughs equipment, and much later on MP/M, then Apple. Quite a clever fellow, many great stories.. hardware would certainly be down from time-to- time.</comment>


More Struggling Borrowers Face Pay Garnishment - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/business/economy/02garnish.html?ref=business <comment><AUTHOR> This is getting uncomfortably close to debt slavery.

In ancient times, or less ancient times in some countries, people who got into sufficiently large debt to someone had to sell themselves to them. And since credit card lenders' ideal situation is when someone can pay the interest on their debt but not the balance, if they tuned the percentage of the garnishment to do that, the debtors would end up paying them for the rest of their lives.

<comment><USER2> Debt slavery? Not even close. In America, there are numerous ways still to discharge your sins of a previously extravagent lifestyle funded on credit card. You can declare bankruptcy (the article mentions the high cost of $2000+, but there are free social services that will help reduce that cost). You can refuse payment for many years, eventually settling to pay off 10-20 cents on the dollar for debt. You can choose to work in jobs getting paid in cash, thereby having no records of salary, and pay no taxes, and eventually your debt is discharged. And so on.

Personally I would like to see people who declare bankruptcies multiple times to serve some sort of jail terms.

<comment><USER3> I would like to see the people who design business models that target the kind of people who file bankruptcies multiple times serve some sort of jail term.

<comment><USER2> Ok, let's take it to a bigger scale. Airline industries declare bankruptcies and gets bailed out time and time again, to tunes of billions. Homebuilders transfer assets to new entities, then declare bankruptcies, pocketing billions and evades creditors. Banks leverage themselves with trillions of debt, and gets bailed out by the government.

Meanwhile, regular people have to pay for the billions and trillions of mistakes, with loss of social benefits, or taxes, or inflation. When does it stop?

And you would prosecute the politican who enacts a law to incriminate, and prevent future bankruptcies (by saying NO MORE!)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When people don't pay their debts, the cost ends up going to people who do. I have no sympathy for people who tried to live beyond their means, and are now paying for it. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it.

<comment><USER3> When you pay $10,000 to address $1,000 of a $5,000 loan, you have not made things any worse for the rest of us, except to help promote a system that allows unscrupulous creditors to exploit people.

<comment><USER4> It's not the systems fault that those people took out those loans. At some point, people have to take responsibility for their actions instead of always blaming somebody else.

<comment><USER3> What does that have to do with your original argument?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Waymo disengagement report - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/waymo/the-worlds-longest-and-toughest-ongoing-driving-test-44464867865b <comment><USER2> It seems like Waymo's hitting a point of diminishing returns. The past 4 years' worth of disengagements per 1,000 miles driven were:

\- 2014 (last 3 months): 1.27 [1]

\- 2015: 0.80 [2]

\- 2016: 0.20 [2]

\- 2017: 0.18 [3]

There are two possible causes off the top of my mind:

1\. Waymo's cars are being tested in more demanding environments.

2\. There's a floor to the number of disengagements due to technology and road conditions: situations that are different/unique enough that no model could accurately detect/respond to it.

Case 2 would be definitely be a problem for the full-autonomous (i.e. zero user-input) type of car. I'd love to hear other hypotheses/feedback from those closer to this kind of work!

Also, another interesting note: total miles driven on public roads is actually down from 2016 (352k vs. 636k earlier). Perhaps Waymo's finding the simulated/private-road tests more fruitful for winnowing down the final edge cases.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/dff67186-70dd-4042...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/dff67186-70dd-4042-bc8c-d7b2a9904665/google_disengagement_report.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

[2] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

[3] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115-a72a-97f6f24b23cc/Waymofull.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

<comment><USER3> Waymo is doing a lot more testing outside California now. They've done Mountain View so thoroughly they were seeing the same situations over and over. Last year, they were rear-ended twice at the same intersection.

One disengagement every 5000 miles is a problem. It's too infrequent for humans to remain attentive, and too frequent to ignore.

<comment><USER4> The "Autopilot Valley".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here are all the CA DMV disengagement reports, not just Waymo's.[1]

Cruise is doing a lot of autonomous driving in SF.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017)

</comment><comment><USER5> There isn't much to this blog post. The actual report is at: [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115-a72a-97f6f24b23cc/Waymofull.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)</comment>


The Lost Art of C Structure Packing (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/esr/structure-packing/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: to get smaller structures, don't do stuff like this:

       struct foo {
         char a;
         int b;
         char c;
         int d;
       };

but this:

       struct foo {
         int b;  // or int b, c;
         int c;
         char a;
         char c;
       };

Basically if you sort the types by size in reverse descending order, you get optimal packing without messing with compiler-specific packing extensions that skew alignment and possibly bloat code.

The worst that you will get is padding at the end of the structure so that if two or more of them are arrayed, the first member is correctly aligned at all the array indices.

<comment><USER3> Alright this might be a stupid question, but if packing is about the order in which the fields are arranged... shouldn't the compiler optimize that? I mean, it does much more complex optimizations already doesn't it?

<comment><USER4> What if your struct is actually a memory-mapped I/O device? Far from optimizing you need to give a hard guarantee that it will NEVER be optimized by the compiler.

<comment><USER2> Suppose C didn't require order of struct members. How could we support I/O devices? Simply by wrapping them behind functions or macros which take a base address and access a specific register relative to that address using pointer arithmetic and dereferencing. You see this being done anyway!

        if ((SERIAL_STATUS_PORT(port_addr) & SERIAL_DTR) != 0) {
          /* DTR line is asserted */
        }

<comment><USER4> More likely you'd have to drop down into ASM for those bits...

You see in a lot of high performance networking code too, you just get a block of bytes off the wire, cast it to a struct and use it straight away. High risk, high reward :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also previous discussions of this article from 2014 and 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995568)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9069031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9069031)

</comment><comment><USER6> Sigh... apparently this is now enough of rocket science to be considered for posting on HN...

People using packing pragma of GCC should also beware -- an access to a field of a packed structure will be done bytewise, whether a variable happens to be actually aligned or not (I guess the compiler simplified its life by assuming no variable is ever aligned in packet structs), so memory size would go down but CPU use might grow.

At least this used to be true a few years ago, haven't reverified recently.

<comment><USER7> On x86, most memory can be accessed unaligned (and, unless you cross a cache line boundary, there's effectively no penalty. If you're on Haswell or newer, even if you cross a cache line boundary, there's no latency hit for an L1 cache hit).

The code for a struct { char a; double b; } load reference on x86-64 after -O3 is:

        movsd 1(%rdi), %xmm0

So it looks like gcc is able to condense the load on platforms with unaligned accesses. On ARM, it does look like the double is loaded byte-by-byte.

<comment><USER6> > So it looks like gcc is able to condense the load on platforms with > unaligned accesses.

It seems there are still some leftovers -- try: struct { int i:31; }; with and without __attribute__((__packed__)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice guide. I remember seeing extremely similar code when I was working with raw TCP packets and I always wondered what all the esoteric rules were for working with raw struct memory. There was no where that seemed to explain things happening on this level so it kind of just never made any sense to me. Guess now I can finally figure out what all that code meant, awesome.

<comment><USER9> A few years ago, I ran into some situations where packed structs would be useful. I ended up writing a lot of little test programs to verify struct sizes based on different element orders, packing pragmas, etc. It was certainly illuminating, but it would've been helpful having a write-up like this to work from.

It got even more complicated when I threw unions into the mix. Knowing how the data is stored at the bit level becomes important in some of those cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Although I somewhat tire of constant comparisons between Rust and C, in this case it's interesting so I'll ask:

Does Rust do struct packing any differently than C and what kinds of tradeoffs are associated with that? Most people don't even think about struct packing in the context of C++ (which is in many ways closer to Rust) because of vtables / inheritance / etc, but in this case I'd like to know if Rust does anything differently or requires something new to think about in this respect.

<comment><USER11> IIRC, Rust struct layout is undefined/unstable, _unless_ you explicitly use the #repr(C) tag on the struct definition, in which case it behaves pretty much exactly like C. You can also specify that the struct be packed, with no padding between items if necessary.

I'm not sure if unmarked Rust structs actually get layout optimized or not right now, but they've worked to keep that option available.

<comment><USER12> Unless someone's recenrly bothered to implement it, I believe Rust doesn't currently bother to optimize your struct layout. It _can_ and it surely _will_ but not yet (this is a dangerous state of affairs since people may start to rely on it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ah, yes. BUS ERROR: [http://blog.jgc.org/2007/04/debugging-solaris-bus-error- caus...](http://blog.jgc.org/2007/04/debugging-solaris-bus-error-caused- by.html)

<comment><USER14> Using a byte array and manually marshalling stuff in and out is tedious, but it does avoid alignment issues.

There's a certain amount of irony that dynamic languages (e.g. Perl) make it easier to implement something like "pack" and "unpack" to move values in and out of such a byte array, due to the variable type arguments/results of the "unpacked" values.

<comment><USER14> Otherwise, I assume that avoiding this problem is a matter of putting the larger elements at the start of the struct, and the smaller elements at the end (with the exception that for a nested array, you consider the element size, not the total array)

8 byte entries, then 4 byte entries, 2 byte entries, chars/bytes, bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Strange that he doesn't mention dwarves ([https://github.com/acmel/dwarves/](https://github.com/acmel/dwarves/) [http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2007/2007/papers/Melo.pdf](http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2007/2007/papers/Melo.pdf)).

Edit: He does mention it in passing but says he hasn't used it. Suggest that he _does_ use it because it's a really useful tool and lots of the manual stuff he's doing is better done automatically.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can sometimes save some memory in these sort of "flyweight" records by moving all the strings in a group into a string table. Make one byte-array buffer for the text from multiple records, then use a ("small") offset integer in each record to refer to the starting position of strings within the string table.

Rather than using a 64 bit pointer, or an inline array of max-size, for each string, just use perhaps a 16 bit offset into the table for each string. (or 32 bit if you expect enough data).

Of course, this also requires wrapper setter/getter type code, but it can be a good trade to save space.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this really a lost art? I feel like this is one of the main reasons people who use C still use C: you have a lot more control over how memory is handled. Honestly, if someone doesn't know about this, then they really just don't know C, because it's a pretty fundamental piece of information.

</comment><comment><USER17> The bit-field feature of C structs is underutilized. People are still writing hex constants and using AND and OR to clear and set bits. Let the compiler do that; it's more readable. As of C99, there's named structure initialization, which makes bitfield constants more readable.

<comment><USER18> C11 §188.8.131.52: "The order of allocation of bit-fields within a unit (high-order to low-order or low-order to high-order) is implementation-defined. The alignment of the addressable storage unit is unspecified."

This makes bitfields quite difficult to use correctly when portability is of interest. It's often easier to write a couple inline get/set functions and use bit indices. If portability isn't a concern, then sure, have at it.

<comment><USER17> That's an escape clause for endian issues. If you write hex constants, you still have endian issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Knowing about struct memory alignment can come in in very handy when reverse- engineering 3rd party binary protocols. Often you come across many "unknown" bytes which turned out they were just padding because of 4 byte struct alignment and could be discarded. Saved a bunch of time not having to try to figure out what they were.

</comment><comment><USER20> I compile with -Wpacked when I'm building something to serialize structs to disk. It helps. I know sizeof will return the value with the padding, but I'd rather do it myself.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish pahole got more attention since I had some great experiences with it years ago. I tried it recently and it didn't like the DWARF info that my compiler was spitting out. Perhaps I need to tweak the DWARF versioning or, _gulp_ , try and add the missing DWARF support to pahole.

EDIT: I'm starting to think my "recent" testing hasn't been too recent. It looks like development picked up again mid-2015. I'll have to give it another run!

[http://git.kernel.org/cgit/devel/pahole/pahole.git/log/](http://git.kernel.org/cgit/devel/pahole/pahole.git/log/)

</comment><comment><USER22> This can also be important for routines that treat structures as strings of bytes. e.g. void MD5( unsigned char *pStructure, size_t size );

struct foo { char a; int x; };

if I MD5( &foo, sizeof(foo) ); on two foo with the same a & x, they may not produce the same MD5 because the pad bytes might contain noise from the stack or heap.

The solution is to either zero memory on anything you will MD5 or explicitly declare all of the padding (easy if you have internalized the rules) so your code can handle it.

</comment><comment><USER23> ESR is a good programmer, and this is a handy guide for those who don't know how to pack structures. He's also insane, so don't trust anything he says.

Oh, you don't think he's insane? He thinks there's a conspiracy amongst women in open source to discredit Linus Torvalds. No, I'm not joking. I wish I was.

<comment><USER24> Offtopic. His opinions on open source politics are little matter to his technical insights. I can appreciate Hitler's paintings, etc etc.

<comment><USER23> ...Which is why despite that, I still think this article is good, and said so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> esr, brilliant as always.

However:

 _since shipping the first version of this guide I have been asked why, if reordering for minimal slop is so simple, C compilers don't do it automatically. The answer: C is a language originally designed for writing operating systems and other code close to the hardware. Automatic reordering would interfere with a systems programmer's ability to lay out structures that exactly match the byte and bit-level layout of memory-mapped device control blocks._

If the programmer wants or needs absolute control, just do not provide the reordering option to the optimizing compiler. So _why_ wouldn't compilers provide a command line _option_ to do automatic reordering?

<comment><USER23> Brilliant, but crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Last time I manually packed structures I was doing GPU programming. I forget the details, but the CPU and GPU had different alignment requirements so anything other than a manually packed structure broke in weird ways.

</comment><comment><USER27> My understanding (and i I'm wrong, tell me) is that if you try to serialize or save to disk something with a bitfield directly, you can have big problems.

<comment><USER28> Bitfields orders are "implementation defined". So you need to ask the vendor of every compiler you support what the compiler does. Once you know what the compilers you support do you can write code specific for them and everything works great. It is only when someone tried a different compiler (including an upgrade of the existing one) that you can run into problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can kind of do this is in C# with StructLayoutAttribute. One of the few high level languages you can do it with.

<comment><USER30> Ada, Modula-2, Modula-3, Eiffel, D, Rust, Turbo Pascal, Free Pascal, Delphi, ...

There are more than just a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> In chapter 4, padding outside structure. Isn't the compiler free to do whatever it wants there? There might not even be a need to reserve memory for some variables if the optimizer concludes they are irrelevant for the program?

</comment><comment><USER32> It's not lost at all - I work as a games dev, and I can assure you that a major AAA title released this year on all platforms cares a lot about C struct packing(it's actually part of our code review process!).

</comment><comment><USER33> I've heard about this at a talk 4 years ago and I'm not even a C programmer so there is hope!

</comment><comment><USER34> An article on C structure packing without any mention of __attribute__((__packed__))?? meh.

<comment><USER9> > GCC and clang have an attributepacked you can attach to individual structure > declarations; GCC has an -fpack-struct option for entire compilations.

He mentioned it in passing (and without proper syntax) in section 11.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Huh? "Lost art"?

That's, like, programming 101 grade material, not some "lost art".

Then again, i worked in telecom and HPC, and play with uCs, so perhaps i'm wearing the wrong googles...

<comment><USER23> you are. It's not exactly a lost art, but it's not known except to those inside of the secret, uninviting inner circles of C programming, which you can only enter if you memorize all the UB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> great bit! still, but how often is this going to be reposted?

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Lost%20Art%20of%20C%20St...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Lost%20Art%20of%20C%20Structure%20Packing&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER37> Every time we'd like another round of "Lost art? Why, I packed me some C structs this morning over breakfast! You young whippersnappers!" comments from crusty old C dudes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> In this thread: people who do this for a living making people who don't feel dumb.

Guys, it's called "The Lost Art of C Structure Packing" for a reason. Python and Ruby guys have no idea.

Even most C or C++ devs wouldn't know.

Take a chill pill.

<comment><USER39> That doesn't make it a lost art. I've no clue how to make wine (something to do with grapes?) but I don't describe it as a lost art.

<comment><USER38> Most programmers would have known this a few years ago. Programmers today don't. So, it is a lost art.

<comment><USER40> There are more people alive who know this in the year 2016 than at any prior point in history.

<comment><USER38> I guess</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ripple, an app for sending links to your friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.getripple.co/ <comment><USER2> I think this system infringes the Ripple trademark on computer payment systems beyond the "moron in a hurry" mark. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I didn't realise. Do you think we need to change the name?

<comment><USER3> I AM NOT A LAWYER AND KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT IM SAYING - TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ BELOW.

IANAL, but it doesn't appear that you infringe on anything. A trademark is only valid for products or services which appear to be, or are similar to, the scope of registration. This can include scope for 'natural growth' into other areas.

All their trademarks seem specifically about the exchange of currency. There is nothing there relating to sharing and discussing links with your friends, or even broader classification which they could most certainly have registered for.

That said, you should speak with someone a lot more knowledgeable than me about it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can already do this via text message. Why does there need to be an app for everything? Nice web site though.

<comment><USER5> Or via any IM app you and your group of friends are already using.

The site doesn't say a lot, so I can only guess, but the only way this could be useful or at least add something new would be to not require the receiver to use the app (receive by mail, by fb message, etc) and to add semantic (e.g. tags) and archiving (kind of social shared bookmarks?) capabilities.

Or maybe it's just an early released MVP not to be taken very seriously. I hope it's this last option, as I don't see no added value so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would like to be able to create tags and associate people with those tags, so that I can just tag a link and it will automatically be sent to those people, only if they have not already seen the link -- otherwise add me to their conversation so I can read what have already been written about it.

That way we won't have to disturb each other for being late to the party.

</comment><comment><USER7> They should hope that they don't run into troubles with their name

[https://ripple.com/currency/](https://ripple.com/currency/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for pointing this out - I didn't realise it would be a problem. What happens in these situations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> False advertising! It should be reworded to: "Ripple, an app for sending links to your friends who operate an iOS device."

</comment><comment><USER9> I've installed the app, but have not created an account yet. Every few minutes I get a push notification that "Ed sent you a link". [0]

I think you have a bit of a problem with whatever system you are using to send notifications!

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/3x7tcrc.png](http://i.imgur.com/3x7tcrc.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh oh - that's not meant to happen. Will look into it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> how can i send a link from my computer to the mobile in order to send it to friends ?

<comment><USER11> Try pushbullet.com

<comment> m-app Pushbullet does this really well. The only problem I have with it, is that when I do send a link to my cellphone and I touch it in the app, it automatically opens it in Chrome. Then I still need to select the URL there, copy it and paste it in WhatsApp. Or maybe I am missing something?

<comment><USER12> there is an option to decide what happens when a link is received. e.g. copy to clipboard

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Better description: an iPhone app for sending links to a subset of your friends which use an iPhone, don't care about privacy and install each and every stupid app just after it is released. Correct me if I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER14> An app to send links? Hadn't somebody promised us flying cars?</comment>


WannaCry – Decrypting files with WanaKiwi and Demos - <AUTHOR> https://blog.comae.io/wannacry-decrypting-files-with-wanakiwi-demo-86bafb81112d <comment><USER2> Just curious, does tools like truecrypt ensure such way of finding the key could not be used? I guess so, meaning wannacry has room for improvements besides the killswitch thingie.

</comment><comment><USER3> thanks for sharing it, WannaCry have really made us crazy recent days!</comment>


A new form of encryption could make practically unhackable code  - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/scrambled-code-keeps-software-safe/

<comment><USER2> Link to the paper: [http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/451.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/451.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> am I right in thinking that this could also allow manufacturers to make it harder for hackers to jailbreak devices they own (negative) and make it easier to design operating systems that would resist malware (positive)?</comment>


Agile Adoption Could Learn a lot from Startups - <AUTHOR> http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-adoption-could-learn-a-lot-from-startups/

<comment><USER2> Which of these concepts aren't actually a part of Agile?

<comment><AUTHOR> Remember we're talking Agile adoption -- the way your average 1,000-developer place tries to implement Agile -- not ideal Agile.

There is a focus on people over process, but startups meet an actual person, they strive to attach to a user. Most Agile shops are Scrum shops. In that case you have a Product Owner. Not the same thing.

Agile/XP has always pushed "working code" over value.

Actually, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. To do this point-by-point is just to repeat the article.</comment></comment>


Google Employees Confess The Worst Things About Working At Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2013-11 <comment><USER2> _Google may understand engineering, but not design [...list of half-baked products]_

Apple is lauded as the king of design, yet it also has a string of product failures, so it's not like having failures mean you're not good at design. Most of the rest of the list is simply the result of working at BigCo. An individual has trouble making their mark? When your employees number in the five figures, that's hardly surprising.

I guess it's still true of what the headline promises - that these are things that people don't like about working there, but I was hoping for a few more google-specific items.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was a contractor at Google years ago and hated it. In fact, it was the worst job I've ever had in tech. The Employees there are rude and very arrogant. Mediocre Management? That is an understatement. These people had no clue what they were doing.

I can also speak to the crammed cubicles. It's the only place I've ever installed 3-way Cat5 splitters. Ironic.</comment>


NY regulator approves Winklevoss bid to trade digital currency ether - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-winklevoss-ether-idUSKCN0XW1SZ <comment><USER2> OT: If NY regulators approve it, it must be a reasonably safe, non-fraudulant investment. Their track record gives me complete confidence.</comment>


Driverless Car Summit 2013 Part 1 - Fear of Google - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.4brad.com/driverless-car-summit-2013-part-1-fear-google <comment><USER2> I like this idea. When a teen with a permit drives, the guardian is still responsible for his mistakes. Keep things simple.

>During the discussion session, I put forward a different thesis. Today, there are millions of teens with learning permits. With no skill, they are allowed out on the road, often with just a parent's supervision, or sometimes under the supervision of a driving instructor, who usually has both their own backup brake pedal, and the ability to grab the wheel. Google, Continental, Audi and all the other companies who are testing on the road also work this way. The software drives, but a safety driver is sitting in the driver's seat, carefully watching and ready to use the brakes or wheel if there is a problem. I think it's not unreasonable to claim that the latest robocar prototypes are as safe as a teen taking the first try at the wheel, and this "driving instructor" approach might be a better way to look at vehicle testing. NHTSA and the states can then take on their traditional role, which is to wait, and only regulate if safety problems arise which will not be fixed without regulation.</comment>


Ask HN: How to take digital notes? - <AUTHOR> I am at that stage of my career where I'm constantly in meetings or holding discussions. I need to get better at taking digital notes but cannot find a good resource that's easy to ramp-up on. I find it hard to concentrate and type at the same time. Here are the situations that are particularly difficult for me :<p>* Doing a one-on-one with someone<p>* Summarizing a meeting / discussion that I am leading<p>* Notes around new things I discovered online or offline (through hallway conversations)<p>* Anything that was given to me in paper form few mins before the meeting<p>Some annoyances:<p>* Not all software is approved for usage<p>* Anything with online sync (outside of the company) is a no-go<p>* Paper-based notes aren't searchable (esp if you're looking back few years)<p>* Currently on a simple `.txt` file setup that I brain-dump once a day for 15 mins <comment><USER2> I've spent years trying different things. From those e-pens with little scanners in the head that scan what you write on the special grid paper (what the were those called?), to tablets, to scanning paper notes, to txt files. Any half-baked idea that came out, I tried it.

I've settled in microsoft onenote. You can organize things nicely. You can take pics of paper docs with phone scanner software and import them as PDFs and onenote will OCR them. I sync between all my devices, but I believe you don't have to do that. And it's free and works nicely on the mac. (also tried evernote - hated it)

If I'm running a meeting, I leave the voice dictation thing open and let it try to transcribe what I say. it's crude, but it captures things that I would forget. (fn key twice on the mac, dunno on other os'es)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think voice dictation talks to the microsoft home (and has been disabled for my company's one note). At this point my salary is just enough to compensate for a surface pro or surface book to take notes. I think one note + surface pro + surface pen might not be a bad option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about an internally hosted copy of "paperwork"? [https://cloudron.io/store/rocks.paperwork.cloudronapp.html](https://cloudron.io/store/rocks.paperwork.cloudronapp.html)

[https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork/tree/2](https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork/tree/2)

<comment><AUTHOR> The second link doesn't work but I was able to visit [https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork](https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork). Looks interesting, definitely will give it a try. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Welcome to The Intercept - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/welcome-intercept/

<comment><USER2> Interesting to note on the staff page: each reporter has a GPG key, they're accessible from public keyservers (as they should be), and they're at least self-signed. It'd be better if they were mutually signed, though a meet-up might have to be arranged for that. Micah Lee (former Chief Technologist for EFF) has signed Greenwald & Gallagher's keys.

Key lengths are 2048 or 4096. Greenwald, Poitras, Lee, Novack, and Gallagher have 4096 bit keys.

Wouldn't mind knowing who's trolling Micah's web of trust.

<comment><USER2> And as a followup on reddit notes: having a group signing key (say, "First Look Editors") sign each key, and the staff sign the editors key, would be a good proxy.</comment></comment>


On the Road to 7-Figure Income with the Indie Founder of DropInBlog - <AUTHOR> https://indiediary.com/indie-founder-jesse-schoberg/ <comment><AUTHOR> Jesse Schoberg, CEO & indie founder of DropInBlog, went from $1k per month, to now towards a 7-figure income. Jesse and his team currently faces the decision of "how big they want to grow".

I hope this interview provides you at least one piece of insight. Please do provide your feedback + feel free to followup on the comments in there as well.</comment>


Burned-out Silicon Valley home for $800,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article208596279.html <comment><USER2> I'd expect to pay _more_ for a 6,000sf lot in Willow Glen, especially if it's south of Coe (less traffic) and has no impediment to rebuilding (like existing tenants or a rent-controlled structure).

Bird underwent a major widening in the 1970s such that all then-extant houses were uprooted and pushed to the back of their lots. Newer construction would garner a premium, I would think.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's nothing, tear downs in shitty parts of east Vancouver go for $1.9m regularly.</comment>


The Pirate Bay's New Plan to Destroy Capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.torontostandard.com/business/the-pirate-bays-new-plan-to-destroy-capitalism/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting how the guys at the pirate bay are all about freely sharing other people's property.

Yet, start service like <http://flattr.com/> that charges a 10% service fee (which btw, is ridiculous).

If they really want to be taken seriously, they need to start a service where people voluntarily give their own IP away for free. They aren't creative, innovative, or original and anyone with a couple of servers in a foreign country could emulate their site in a couple of hours. It's amazing to me that this sort of stuff is even news on HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see nothing wrong with this. If desktop 3D printing, 3D scanners, amateur friendly CAD software and so on get good enough that this can "destroy capitalism" (at least as it pertains to certain kinds of manufactured goods), then I find it hard to comprehend how anyone would find preventing that morally justifiable. Why artificially limit how awesome the world is, just to preserve one more avenue by which the haves can further enrich themselves at the expense of the have-nots?</comment>


Review my startup Crittercism.com - <AUTHOR>

Crittercism is a lightweight feedback and support tool that mobile developers can integrate into their applications in less than 5 minutes
http://www.crittercism.com/
We originally built this for our own mobile apps because it was tough getting feedback from our users, and most of the problems users experienced (bugs/crashes/etc) were just put as bad reviews in the app store. We're still working on the support features.
I would love to hear from any mobile developers about their own experiences.
Thanks!
http://www.crittercism.com/developers/signup?code=hn <comment><USER2> It is a nice idea, but I its easier for mobile developers to just add a feature like that than make this look nice with applications.</comment>


Show HN: Flash card web application for chinese/taiwanese learning English - <AUTHOR> http://www.wordup.com.tw/about/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just launched our first version 2 weeks ago. Looking for user feedback. Sites all in Chinese.</comment>


Show HN: Infrastructure as Code (Iac) maturity model – seeking feedback - <AUTHOR> I'm seeking feedback on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and a maturity model for it.
IaC typically includes many Hacker News tools of interest (e.g. AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos) and areas (e.g. agile, devops, lean).
A maturity model is typically a simple assessment for how well an organization is doing in an area of interest.
Here's my work in progress so far-- feedback and constructive criticism is much appreciated.
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/maturity_models/blob/master/examples/infrastructure_as_code/infrastructure_as_code_maturity_model_by_joel_parker_henderson.md <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/maturity_models/blob/...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/maturity_models/blob/master/examples/infrastructure_as_code/infrastructure_as_code_maturity_model_by_joel_parker_henderson.md)</comment>


Tech Education Doesn't Happen In the Classroom - <AUTHOR> http://blog.studentrnd.org/post/34556989032/tech-education-doesnt-happen-in-the-classroom

<comment><USER3> Just in regard to the final paragraph I do not have a college degree but have worked for tech companies that say they require it. Usually the term for it now days is college degree or equivalent experience...

Side note I dropped out my senior year of college because I got tired of paying out of state tuition for what I finally saw as something useless to my computer science education. I've not regretted this decision and the experience I've gained in the field previous/in college working a normal programming job put me years ahead of any peers who graduated at the same time I dropped out.

I hate advising people to dropout or quit anything but when it comes to computer science, go start an open source project, use one of the many wonderful online learn to program resources or just hack away on a Linux machine setting up a few server services and you'll learn more real world usable computer science in a few days of doing that then you will in a year of college.

EDIT: What I wish I would have done was went in-state and got a degree in the arts or English or straight up math. The classes I took in regard to these subjects are useful to me on a daily basis. I know people like to make fun of liberal arts degrees but you learn some cool interesting stuff there, I don't think it's useful to my job but it is useful in sounding educated and communicating with people outside my field of work.

<comment><USER4> I got my degree in math and learned to program mostly on my own (1 introductory CS class in highschool and another in college). The degree has served me well both in terms of having it on resumes and in terms of the skills that I developped studying math.

<comment><USER5> If I wasn't months away from graduation I would switch over to Math. I wish I had taken more math classes in school and more programming courses online. I hope that more math courses are offered at Udacity and Coursera. More and more I see that programming is just applied proofs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is full of over-generalizations, starting with the title, which should be "Tech education can/does happen outside the classroom" (see e.g. note [5]). Here are a few other issues:

\- "nothing [except perhaps farming] - before or since - has had such a profound impact on the world as the development of computing and circuits". How about fire, flight, firearms...

\- "Demand for computer scientists, for example, is exceeded by the supply at a ratio of more than 2:1 [links to a study that is specific for Washington State]"

\- "A university computer science track can never teach this culture. [...] The unique culture at Stanford is exactly why Silicon Valley could never have developed anywhere else."

\- "There was no complex problem in the first release of Facebook." Citation needed?

<comment><AUTHOR> As to point 1, I actually changed that a long time ago, but it seems Tumblr is caching the post on the specific page. If you go to the main blog page, it shows up correctly.

Point 2, the study addresses the number I brought up for the entire US.

Point 3, as I wrote, "The smart universities have realized this, and target their admissions process to select those who have it."

Point 4, Facebook tracked text. There was no complex machine learning algorithms, no thought of scaling, no esoteric languages.

<comment><USER6> OK, so we agree on the title at least?

2) I assume you mean the graph towards the end called Annualized Job Openings vs. Annual Degrees Granted (2008-2018). That seems to indicate the opposite - job openings in Computer Science exceeding degrees by a factor of ~2.5.

3) So it is possible for some universities to foster entrepreneurial spirit, would be interesting to see what kind of factors are important for this.

4) If building Facebook were trivial, they'd have been drowned by competition before they could achieve critical user mass. Their challenges were probably more on the lines of good UI and achieving traction, so I see what you're saying that they didn't exactly need PhDs in CS to build the backend. But they did have plenty of complex problems to solve, I am sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2) "job openings in Computer Science exceeding degrees by a factor of ~2.5." is the point - there's way more demand than there is supply of CS degrees.

3) My argument is that they admit the people with the spirit already.

4) Right, I'm talking only about tech in this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part of the problem is that it's really hard for high schools to teach CS due to it being so expensive for them. It's expensive to hire qualified teachers and even harder to find them.

I'm making <http://codehs.com> to make it easy for _any_ high school to offer a CS class, even if they don't have a qualified teacher.

We made a class in a box that includes videos, in-browser exercises, student tracking tools, and teacher support from experts.

A huge part of learning to code is getting help from others and reading other people's code. That is built in to our curriculum, so students read other students code (who are just a bit behind them in the curriculum) and give personal help to that student. This allows all students to get a push when they get stuck and really improve as a coder when they get feedback.

The personal help makes CodeHS more valuable than just a tool like codecademy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks cool, I'd love to hear more about how it turns out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can drop the "Tech". Education doesn't happen in the classroom - <USER2> happens in the student, when they are inspired or driven to learn. Get kids out of the classroom more, give them something to play with that uses their skills.</comment>


Let's Get Organized and Fix Housing Affordability in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zactownsend.com/lets-get-organized-and-fix-housing-affordability-in-san-francisco/ <comment><USER2> Voting in primaries is the single most important thing anyone can do do improve the political situation not just in SF but in the country writ large.

As the article states, there's a large majority of the population in favor of relatively sensible rational policies. And where two sides disagree, there's a large majority in favor of sensible compromise. Only the most hardcore partisans and ideologues are intransigent. And yet only the most hardcore partisans and ideologues vote in primaries. In today's gerrymandered and politically segregated world, primaries are the only elections that matter in many places. Solution: everyone should vote in primaries.

TLDR: Vote in primaries or the crazies win.

</comment><comment><USER3> This really isn't rocket science or difficult. Everyone thinks this is a hard- complex problem, it is not. This is a hard simple problem. (easy-hard; simple- complex)

1\. Upzone SOMA district to 12 stories.

2\. Remove requirement that buildings over 50yrs old in SOMA need to pass the historic building committee.

<comment><USER4> Simple solutions are never simple in real life.

SF has a complicated review process that basically lets neighbors hold up permit approval indefinitely with appeals. Whether good or bad, it's there. Shadow laws are also in place and would need to be changed.

Changing a low to mid density neighborhood into a high density 12 story building neighborhood means a lot more than just removing height limits. Sufficient parks and retail/commercial space need to exist to ensure good quality of life, no one wants to live in a neighborhood full of condos & apartments and little else.

Likewise, there needs to be sufficient transit, SF Muni is already bursting at the seams, add a high density neighborhood without adding transit, and no one will be able to get out of the neighborhood.

Building high density housing is important but it's a lot harder than just removing a height limit.

<comment><USER5> Right. That's why the vote needs to be gotten out: If the rules are a problem, you need to change the rules. We live in a democracy, and there's a process for that. Get people on the council who want to change the rules and the rules will change.

<comment><USER4> But that assumes that the residents that are voting for the board of supervisors are the ones that want to change the system.

<comment><USER5> Not all, just a plurality! And getting out the vote is exactly how you do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Count me in. This will be a long struggle, one which starts with understanding the difficult territory.

One recent and significant gain in the fight is the notion that the city must measure the economic impact of underbuilding:

[http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11424532/mark-farrel- housing](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11424532/mark-farrel-housing)

</comment><comment><USER7> Just in: SF housing prices dropping.[1]

Wait until a few of the big overvalued startups tank (looking at you, Twitter) and the bubble will be over.

[1] [http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/san-francisco-housing- prices-d...](http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/san-francisco-housing-prices-drop/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Build the hyper loop between Portland and San Francisco and prices will plummet.

I bet it would be a lot cheaper than building more houses too!

<comment><USER9> You wouldn't need to go that far to have a huge impact. High speed rail or hyper loop between SF and Tracy would open up the Central Valley and its vast expanses of open land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not implement a massive property tax hike for non-owner occupied units - with exemptions for apartment complexes & other properties designed as rentals? Something along the lines of 15x the property tax for units not owner occupied for at least 2/3 of the year / ownership period (if less than a year).

<comment><USER11> Tax hikes aren't a way to lower housing costs. You don't make something cheaper by taxing it.

<comment><USER10> If the tax disincentivizes boomers from buying real estate at asinine prices and then seeking rents to pay the resulting mortgages as an alternative to the stock market, then that should make property cheaper as it reduces the demand.

<comment><USER11> In a market with limited supply, taxing homes for rent will raise rents to cover the additional taxes.

You don't solve a supply problem by adding taxes. If anything, that will reduce the supply even more.

<comment><USER12> No, you need to massively jack up taxes to increase supply, and it will work. But you don't jack up taxes on homes for rent, you jack them up on the homes that _aren 't_ for rent: houses which are just sitting unoccupied. The taxes will encourage the owners to either rent them out or simply sell them off to someone who will (or who will at least live there). That increases supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Start moving high paying jobs elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> How about we do something about it today? Instead of waiting for new apartments to be built, we make better use of existing apartments:

[https://medium.com/@TomPJacobs/what-housing- crisis-3c0568a5d...](https://medium.com/@TomPJacobs/what-housing- crisis-3c0568a5dd44)

</comment><comment><USER15> Here is an IDEA, shipping container housing, infinatley modular and to boot much cheaper, by almost half to 3 quarters the cost....i have been doing designs of these type of home for fun and you know what, i love them, not to mention the fact if i wanted i could pack em up and put them anywhere else, its not that we should seriously consider the change to the environment of San fran, for which i am sure there is merit in some cases, but why not make a location that can conform to your needs and then build how you want to build, live how you want to live, in a place that welcomes you... food for thought

<comment><USER16> It sounds cool, but it turns out it's probably not a winning idea: [http://marketurbanism.com/2016/02/02/return-to-sender- housin...](http://marketurbanism.com/2016/02/02/return-to-sender-housing- affordability-and-the-shipping-container-non-solution/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Building more housing per se is only one of the problems.

A lot of quality of life problems will crop up as density rises. With that realization, calls for a "grand unified growth plan" and the corresponding environmental impact studies will surface. And that will take ... t .. i .. m ... e ...

The whole movement hits a wall.

<comment><USER18> Re. "quality of life problems", how about not being able to afford to live in SF? Does that qualify? If you don't like density or problems that arise due to density, don't live in dense places. There are plenty of less dense places.

Here's a radical idea: build tall buildings. Tokyo sits on a fault. They manage to build tall buildings.

<comment><USER17> Not being able to afford to live in SF is a problem for people who aren't already comfortably settled there.

Under the current political system, it takes just a handful of the "comfortably settled" to lever potential quality of life problems and create a giant obstruction to pro-growth policies.

This is how it goes in other parts of California too.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that how it's supposed to work? People that live in a community have the most weight in deciding policies for that community?

If employers stop coming to SF because of the lack of affordable housing, then maybe the community will change their minds. Or maybe that's exactly what they wanted.

<comment><USER17> If I were to base my answer to that on what I've been hearing over the last decade from discussions about immigration, free trade, globalization, etc I'd say something like

"No, how it's supposed to work is that every region must remain open to growth at all costs and from all sources, especially outside sources. And if there's a policy such as a zoning policy or a density goal that stands in the way of outsiders entering a region to settle there and grow the economy, then that policy is discriminatory and ought to be removed. This applies just as much to San Francisco as it does to Arizona. Blah blah blah."

But seriously now, where do we draw this line? I have no idea anymore. The debate has gone in every direction and twisted itself into so many knots I have no idea when a local government should have control over this and when it shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can we please have a moratorium on San Francisco article submissions?

I really wish it would just slide off into the ocean at this point.

<comment><USER4> I think a large percentage of readers here live in the bay area, and there are lots of strong feelings about housing in SF and the Bay Area in general so these articles will keep coming.

<comment><USER16> It's undeniably a big issue in many parts of the US - especially the "booming" ones. Here in Oregon, we're getting tons of 'refugees' from California who, in turn, drive up prices here.

It's also a huge issue for anyone working for a startup in that area, especially for those who are no longer young and single and thus require a bit more in terms of their housing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Leave. You all work on the internet.

The main reason you moved there in the 90s is 1) because it was pretty and pleasant, and the culture was eccentric and liberal, and 2) because Willie Brown was unbelievably friendly to rezoning everything to accommodate you at the expense of the diverse people who used to be able to afford to live there. Now, astonishingly, the wealthy libertarian line is that the problem is that they won't let you continue doing it until the place looks like a giant housing project. SROs that can be slotted in by crane are hailed as a technological innovation.

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work- de...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-development- boom-began-3272818.php)

"Manhattanization" is definitely a good word for it, because Manhattan is a cultural wasteland where no one interesting can afford to live, where the wealthy moved in the 80s because it was filled with interesting people.</comment>


Make Flappy Box – DIY Game Kit - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1279973067/make-flappy-box-diy-game-kit

<comment><USER2> I'd like this better if it wasn't tied to Flappy Bird. If it were just a more generic kit for fun. I definitely like the idea of using it for workshops for kids to get into tech, etc. But blatantly Flappy Bird? Sours it a little for me.

<comment><USER3> Flappy Bird isn't even a rewarding game, so it's a weird thing to base a project around. No one I know can score higher than 5 in Flappy Bird.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you're giving enough credit to Flappy Bird. It's clearly a skill based game, but it's not something you can pick up right away and be good at. It takes at least 30 minutes to an hour to get decent. I remember when I was first playing and I finally broke through and had runs of 30, 40 then 70, all in a row. I felt pretty accomplished.

Now I still play sometimes, almost as a way of relaxing. Once you get the hang of it, it's easy, but you still have to pay attention and you can still get tripped up. I'd say it's a _very_ rewarding game.

Just yesterday I finally beat my friend's score of 171 with 203.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There seems to be a lot of negativity here, and it feels misplaced.

I think this looks fantastic, and a project I'd like to try with some of the more advanced kids in my school. The fact that its based on Flappy Bird is a bonus. My students loved making Flappy Bird in Scratch, so they'll probably love trying this as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like how the box closes down on you when you lose. Nice touch!

</comment><comment><USER7> It blatantly pulls the image of the bird, as well as the name. I'm opposed to crap like trademarking "Candy" in a game name, but "Flappy" is distinct enough that this is pretty blatant. Honestly, while it looks like a cool project, were it not completely capitalizing on Flappy Bird, it'd be another one of those Kickstarters to struggle to $200.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah def - we got the personal green light from Dong Nguyen before launching with his theme - he's awesome!

<comment><USER8> Great to hear!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Flappy Bird aside, it looks like a cool project with minimal funding requirements.

More importantly it seems like a good cause.</comment>


IBM's 'Watson' will compete on Jeopardy in February - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm%E2%80%99s-watson-will-compete-on-jeopardy-in-february

<comment><USER2> This story has been several times over the week, although it's not sparked any discussion. In case you're interested, here are some previous related submissions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003332>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003637>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003930>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004407>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004783>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2005281>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2007338>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009001>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2010251>

This much earlier submission has many comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436625>

<comment><USER3> Sheesh. How'd HN miss the exact duplicate 6 hours ago?</comment></comment>


Gamasutra: 15 iPhone Game Observations, Before and After - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JeffHangartner/20110628/7878/15_iPhone_Game_Observations_Before_and_After.php <comment><USER2> Some interesting notes:

\- Ipad is less powerful than Iphone (at least from a game developer's POV, regarding the screen is larger)

\- Usability of the app catalog sucks for browsing

But what's the most important (meta) insight for me: Games (on iOS) are fully commoditized. There are twelve a dozen games for every genre and every theme and yet more developers are looking for gold there.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is up with the seemingly random bold of the text? Also, the article lacks punctuation at parts near the end of the partially-bolded paragraphs. It was kind of difficult to read.</comment>