The Crazy Genius Behind Solar Roadways - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/25/the-crazy-genius-behind-solar-roadways/ <comment><USER2> The creators were answering questions on Reddit here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1042mm/solar_roadways_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1042mm/solar_roadways_amaa/)

The summary seems to be "we've got this awesome idea, and lots of money, now we're going to try to see if it will work."

The engineering consensus seems to be that it won't, or at best, will have extremely limited applications. Everybody would be far better off putting high-efficiency solar panels on rooftops than low-efficiency ones on the ground where they'll get dirty and broken.

Reading their literature, there seems to be a great big gap where any kind of decent engineering analysis would be.

While I can see the appeal of the idea, unicorns and hyperspace drives would also be pretty cool. I have my doubts.

<comment><USER3> The engineering consensus or the naysayers consensus? It's all too easy to tear apart ideas on the Internet, which is a shame.

<comment><USER4> Engineering consensus. The math doesn't pass the smell test, not without some incredible materials breakthroughs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Snake oil. Seriously. Melt snow in northern climes? Think about it. IF there were enough sunlight to melt snow, why didn't the sunlight just, you know, melt the snow? Are they THAT much more efficient at absorbing the sun's energy? I don't think so.

Cost to buy, cost to install, cost to maintain, ... the economics just don't make sense.

<comment><USER2> Their snow-clearing literature says that they'll pump energy into the grid when possible, and suck it out for snow melting. Clearly a net-loss for snowmelt operations.

All the other obvious problems aside, it _might_ be an interesting analysis to see if there would be sufficient yearly yield to offset snowmelting operations in winter. Snowfall is not constant, so "melt" operations might only need to run for a handful of days per year, depending on the location.

<comment><USER6> > it might be an interesting analysis to see if there would be sufficient > yearly yield to offset snowmelting operations in winter

There doesn't need to be sufficient yearly yield. This isn't just trying to pay for itself by collecting electricity on clear days to melt snow. It'd still be a great solution if it uses far more electricity than it collects because it's competing with _snow removal trucks_. If it could be cheaper and more efficient than having trucks driving around dropping salt and plowing, it'd be amazing.

Even if it's a little more costly, the ability to keep all the roads clear, all the time, would be incredible and worth some added expense. Think about how much safer the roads would be if they could remain free of snow.

<comment><USER2> The energy costs of melting snow are huge. It's done frequently for small areas (private driveways, parking lots) where cost efficiency isn't a concern (the wealthy) or where heat energy costs are very low (geothermal sources, i.e. Iceland).

To do it on a wide scale would require ridiculous amounts of energy. I guarantee that nobody would be prepared to foot the bill for that, and these solar panels are highly unlikely to produce even a tiny fraction of the amount of energy required, unless you amortize their production over a longer period and store it somehow.

Unfortunately, it's not just a "little more costly", it's massively more costly, to the point where it's just not a good idea.

[http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/snow_melting_systems...](http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/snow_melting_systems/costs.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a 'feel-good' idea but it's just a waste of resources. Why not build a good road and a good solar panel separately? Combining them like this makes for a very expensive solar road that's bad at being a road and bad at being a solar panel. It's not like we're short on space to put solar panels, and maintaining roads is already expensive enough as it is.

A waste of time and money.

<comment><USER8> Not even worth trying? It seems like a smart enough idea to at least test out.

<comment><USER2> Road engineering is a pretty mature discipline. If this idea can't pass some of the basic known challenges in a thought exercise, why bother testing it? For example, they have no explanation as to how the tiles will be adhered to the surface. Silica has poor adherence to asphalt in wet conditions, and silica can react poorly with alkyds in portland cement. Both of those are big hints that it might be impossible to stick these tiles down for their claimed 20 year lifetime.

<comment><USER8> Seems like the best way to figure those issues out would be to start actively using them to discover the areas where the feature set starts to break down.

<comment><USER9> What's your plan for when they fail, because we skipped the lab testing phase? Don't forget, a failure will likely include multiple cars in a collision on a faulty road surface (10's of thousands of dollars in damages and risk of loss of life).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I expect these will show up in parking lots long before before they end up on actual roads or other paths. It's much easier to block off a section of a parking lot for installation, repair, cleaning, etc. than it is to block a section of a road. Also, parking lots tend to be privately owned.

<comment><USER11> Honestly, the first thing to do is just to put up solar panel roofing over every exposed air parking lot. Everyone already wants the shade anyways.

It's honestly so weird that we're attracted to all of these 'crazy' schemes, while skipping out on the all sorts of far lower hanging, and sensible fruit.

From an energy generation point of view, this plan is pretty irresponsible. Solar installations have a relatively poor EROI as it is (for standard installations) for mid-latitude regions. Purposefully handicapping your solar infrastructure by putting on the road surface is particularly braindead in that respect. From a systemic view, it makes more sense to rip out the solar panels from the road way, and put it ontop of buildings, or really any where you won't get random occlusions, and ridiculous amounts of dirt.

I mean, I get the attraction of easily reconfigurable displays on your road surface, but honestly, the intelligence and power generation aspects of the idea should just be decoupled, and split out.

<comment><USER12> Just out of curiosity...

What are some of the sensible, low-hanging fruit you have in mind?

<comment><USER7> Solar panels on roofs of buildings

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's an interesting idea, for sure, but I just don't see how it makes any sense at all for roadways, where the tiles will be subject to constant stress, grime/dirt (which will reduce the already-not-great efficiency of PV cells), non-constant sun exposure, and prime opportunity for theft. We have _lots_ of not-yet-utilized solar space already that won't be subject to the downsides of this kind of technology. Frankly, it seems like a solution in search of a problem to solve. Also, they've got to be a _hell_ of a lot more expensive than asphalt.

I can _totally_ see this as a technology for building patios and sidewalks on privately-owned land. It would be really cool to have self-lighting pathways that also serve to generate power for my household, but in terms of sheer economics, it's going to be hard to make the argument for a lower-efficiency, higher-install-cost solar brick than to just slap a PV array on my roof.

<comment><USER9> > It's an interesting idea, for sure, but I just don't see how it makes any > sense at all for roadways, where the tiles will be subject to constant > stress, grime/dirt (which will reduce the already-not-great efficiency of PV > cells), non-constant sun exposure, and prime opportunity for theft.

This is the part I don't understand...do people not realize how dirty roads are? How often will street cleaning need to be performed to make sure they are collecting enough power for just the LEDs? How are they planning on handling all of the leaked oil/coolant/etc.? How many cans of spilled paint (accidental or otherwise) will it take to bankrupt a city's road budget?

People are willing to risk their lives to steal copper wire...how are they planning on securing every hexagonal foot of road in america when they're each worth $1000+?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The crazy annoyance of linkbait titles.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a frustrating paid software/service that you/your company use? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious to hear about what paid software or service is causing frustration among users - to the point that you are seriously considering alternatives.
I'll pick a random idea from here that sounds interesting, feasible, and build an alternative.
Edit: If it would be uncouth for you to name a specific software/service, even learning what it is supposed to do, why it is a frustrating experience, and the price tag would be very helpful. <comment><USER2> Honestly, Slack is so slow and resource intensive for what it does. I've been using the web app version more lately which fixes a lot of the issues but it also comes with significant limitations like not showing you as online if the tab is backgrounded.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Concur for reimburseable travel. I can't stand it. The interface is very confusing, especially when it comes to approving a travel voucher. I work at a large government agency, so change occurs at a glacial pace, but I imagine other employers face similar frustrations.

<comment><USER4> I am not currently forced to use Concur, but I did have that problem at a previous employer.

So, IMO, anything that helps kill Concur is a winner in my book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> confluence is too slow.

workday is difficult to use, doesn't allow selecting multiple positions at once.

webex, improved recently, but has usability issues.

</comment><comment><USER6> My team and I have been using JIRA a few years back. We weren´t really happy with the developer-features but the general usability for anyone else in the company (marketing etc.)was even more antagonizing. Now we use [http://zenkit.com](http://zenkit.com) and everyone´s happy!

</comment><comment><USER7> The whole MS Office suite. Their competitors are worse though.

They're very slow and tedious. It takes a while to draw a border, adjust an image. I write my business plan in Sublime instead of Word because of how much easier it is. I think this has been why so many people have adopted Markdown. It would be nice to see a Word style text editor that's as easy to modify as Markdown, or even a more user friendly version of LaTeX.

<comment><USER8> On the LaTeX part: Do you know about BaKoMa TeX[1]?

Disclosure: I've never actually _used_ it myself, but I've been thinking about buying a license to show it off (back in my masters degree, I had a couple of discussions about the merits of LaTeX vs MS Word for writing a thesis).

[1]: [http://www.bakoma-tex.com/](http://www.bakoma-tex.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Skype for Business. Much worse than the free Skype.

</comment><comment><USER10> Quickbooks enterprise! The web version of QB fries not meet out inventory needs. The desktop version sucks! But it is industry standard.

</comment><comment><USER11> Vidyo for conferencing. Constantly rotating mugshots as people join and leave. CPU hog.

I use Webex whenever I can.

</comment><comment><USER12> Any HR system - only thing that has been broken every single job I've had.

</comment><comment><USER13> Windows?

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you clarify what specifically about Windows is causing you frustration? Are you forced to write code on Windows machines, do you do business work on Windows machines, pesky management that won't let you try other options?

<comment><USER14> Few people probably use Windows for its own merits but rather because it's either required in order to be able to use a specific software or mandated by the environment you're working in. There are better alternatives (macOS and Linux being the most widely used ones) but you can't always use those.

<comment><USER15> I admit I prefer windows for home and work use. Might be because I am more used to the UI etc. and I'm not a command line animal. Although happy to use shell and vi when appropriate

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Binance, Coinbase and GDAX

</comment><comment><USER17> Sap</comment>


Lego launches 'safe' social network for under-13s - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38806540/lego-launches-safe-social-network-for-under-13s <comment><USER2> Reminds me of when Lego launched their first forum back in the day. Posts needed to be approved by moderation, which sometimes took upwards of a month. Posts would often be rejected even if they contained no inappropriate material. Still, kids came out in droves to take part in discussions that spanned months.</comment>


Film vs. digital: the most contentious debate in the film world, explained - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/1/5/10714588/film-digital-35mm-70mm-explainer <comment><USER2> ""I don't know, it looks weird. It's the picture on the TV; it just looks … too real."

To me it often rather looks like everything is fake. Would be interested to see if there were a study that could show whether peoples brains are more stimulated by one format or another. My intuitive sense is that there is something to do with information, and more to it than just random crackles and pops evoking nostalgia.</comment>


Found 10000+ BTC on my old computer. What do I have to do to liquidate this? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/3uflby/just_stumbled_upon_10000_btc_on_my_old_computer/ <comment><USER2> Decent score there</comment>


Ask HN: Where to begin when learning hardware hacking? - <AUTHOR> For someone having a decade of experience in software application development(mostly web applications) but not so much knowledge about hardware, what is the best approach to get into hardware hacking?
C was the first programming language I learned and while I was in college I did some fun projects like developing a graphics & GUI library from scratch using just BIOS interrupt calls to set video mode, read/write pixel on screen and mouse handling. Since I left college I code mostly using python, php & javascript.
What would be the best approach for a person like me to get into hardware hacking? <comment><USER2> Arduino. You are writing in C but there are plenty of examples you can use to start with. The community support around Arduino is fantastic, and is a great way to get into hardware.

Although somewhat overpriced, the Arduino starter kits that you can get are a pretty good first step. I bought one a few years ago for about $90. The premium you pay is worth it, in my opinion, for the components, instructions, and sample projects that come with it. Starting with projects from a kit like this lets you get your feet wet, while picking up bits and pieces along the way. From there, you can branch out, make modifications to the code, buy new components, and start building your own projects.

More information about what kinds of things you are interested in would help in guiding you also, although I think Arduino is probably the best starting point in any case.

<comment><USER3> I'd second the Arduino - it was designed for teaching electronics, and the Wiring IDE makes it simple for anyone with a programming background to get started. There's a huge community out there so finding support through forums, tutorials, etc, is very straightforward.

I'll add some links:

* [http://www.arduino.cc/](http://www.arduino.cc/) \- a good place to start

* [http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/](http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/) \- adafruit sells kits and stuff and has some pretty well laid out "basic electronics" stuff as well as tons of tutorials/projects (connected to things you can buy for those kits)

* [https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials) \- sparkfun also is great in the same regard

* [http://hackaday.com/](http://hackaday.com/) \- has a steady stream of neat "stuff" that's good exposure

* [https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog](https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog) \- my favorite EE vlog for clear/mostly to the point videos on specific topics. There's lots of stuff on YouTube for just about anything you might be confused about, although quality of presentation varies greatly.

* If you're a "book" person, this is the classic (what ITP uses to teach students) and covers the fundamentals: [http://www.amazon.com/Physical-Computing-Sensing-Controlling...](http://www.amazon.com/Physical-Computing-Sensing-Controlling-Computers/dp/159200346X) \- here's the associated site: [http://www.tigoe.com/pcomp/code/](http://www.tigoe.com/pcomp/code/)

I think for someone coming from a pure software background, learning basic electronics, reading schematics, etc will be the biggest challenge, but is something you should try to master w/ breadboards and low current DC before you try anything potentially dangerous.

A few tips from someone that's been making a similar journey over the past few years (I had a bit of EE background but mostly did software, but started doing more and more hardware for fun and now work over the past few years):

* You can never have too many basic components like male/female jumpers, resistors, etc - buying some bulk packs are totally worth it, otherwise you may find yourself diving in parts bins at Radio Shack, which is no fun

* Sparkfun and Adafruit can be convenient, but usually about 10x the pricing on components vs Digikey, Newark, etc, so once you know what you're doing you'll probably want to start moving there

* Similarly, Arduinos are great for learning, but they're rarely the best answer for building things and will depend on the kinds of things you like to build. There are a lot of innovation going on in the microcontroller space right now, so probably best to keep your eyes peeled.

* Picking up a decent variable DC power supply is totally worth it. I've been using a Mastech HY3005D, it's great.

Oh, and a couple random suppliers I like (interesting selections, good pricing):

* [http://yourduino.com/](http://yourduino.com/) \- dirt cheap, but everything I've gotten has worked well. Their wiki has lots of good info (despite the Comic Sans). Shipping from China

* [http://imall.iteadstudio.com/](http://imall.iteadstudio.com/) \- great prices and interesting selection of stuff. Shipping from China

* [http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/](http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/) \- huge selection of stuff from lots of little studios (most stuff not in stock, dependent on demand). Shipping from China

* [http://numato.com/](http://numato.com/) \- good prices for some really convenient, well documented relays/GPIO. Shipping from India

* [http://oshpark.com/](http://oshpark.com/) \- I just made my first PCBs in EAGLE - these guys were awesome for doing onesies cheap and w/ good turnaround. Based in PDX

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want a more structured introduction to hardware hacking, UTAustin is offering a MOOC called "Embedded Systems - Shape The World" that starts on January 23, 2014 and puts a heavy emphasis on hands-on labs. The platform used in the course is based on the Cortex M4 ARM chip and the board is made by Texas Instruments.

Course website: [http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/edX/index.html](http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/edX/index.html)

edX website: [https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx- ut-6-01x-embe...](https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx- ut-6-01x-embedded-systems-1172)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a long time HWH and SWH I actually get asked that often. The answer I always give is to find a project that interests you, and go do it. That is the best way to learn, dig in. There are a ton of resources online so just start reading up and researching your project and keep going.</comment>


Firefox 3.6.4 with Crash Protection Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/06/22/firefox-3-6-4-with-crash-protection-now-available/ <comment><USER2> Note that out-of-process plugins are not available for Mac OS X yet. (That's coming in a future release.) And Firefox does not yet have full process separation like Chrome, but that is coming via the <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis> project (which will appear this year in Fennec 2.0, and then in the next release of Firefox after version 4.0).

<comment><USER3> There are two reasons why I use chromium (not Chrome) over Firefox.

         Chromium has true process separation.
         Chromium is faster for boot/page loads/JavaScript.

Splitting up plugins like this is chipping away at the first reason why I don't use Firefox. I would really like to use Fx, but chromium is just "better" for what I want in a browser.

Come on Firefox, win me back!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not well aware about chrome process separation. So please educate me.

I thought Chrome gives a separate process per each tab. So for example if flash crashes in a given page the whole page should crash. But in Firefox way this shouldn't happen. Am I wrong?

I only started to use chrome recently so I don't have much experience with it either.

<comment><USER4> Chrome has a process per tab _and_ runs entirely separate processes for each plugin. So if flash crashes, the page does not crash. There is only one flash process serving the whole browser though, so if flash crashes, flash content on all open tabs stops working. The new Firefox plugin implementation works the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this feature works well, I think it will eliminate possibly the biggest advantage of Chrome over Firefox. I already prefer Firefox over Chrome for usability reasons, and now soon I should be able to enjoy improved stability on Linux when Flash crashes.

<comment><USER6> Sadly, while I appreciate the multi-process model of Chrome as a geek, it had almost nothing to do with why I switched: I'm a 64-bit Linux user. Firefox is, from a performance standpoint, almost unusable for me.

(On 32-bit Windows XP at work, Firefox is great, but there's value to me in a similar browsing configuration across machines.)

<comment><USER7> Try the latest nightlies. They bring Mozilla back to within an imperceptible speed difference vs Chromium on my 64-bit Linux machine: <http://nightly.mozilla.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the number 1 reason I use chrome. Flash crashes at least 10 times a day for me.

</comment><comment><USER9> How polite of them to be balanced by saying "Firefox offers crash protection for Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight".

I wonder, though, if their crash stats for Windows and Linux also match Jobs' claim for MacOS, that Flash is the biggest offender. (The assessment should be controlled for frequency-of-use, of course.)

<comment><USER10> Our public crash stats lend some support to Jobs' claim. Flash is by far the biggest cause of crashes on OS X Firefox.

It is the largest problem on Windows as well, but the proportions there are more even because a lot of Windows installations crash due to viruses, trojans, toolbars, av programs, and other crapware.

<comment><USER11> but without having stats on how many "successful" flash renderings all those users' browsers complete, the stats would be pretty skewed towards flash just due to its prevalance over quicktime and silverlight. much wider use of flash would lead to more reported crashes even if quicktime crashed more commonly.

<comment><USER10> Not skewed when compared to crashes inside Firefox itself, though. Last I checked, over 50% of OS X Firefox crashes had Flash involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like a pretty big change for a patch release?

<comment><USER2> Yes, this was an unusual release, and an experiment in shipping new features quicker than our major release cycle normally allows. Out-of-process-plugins was a good candidate for an interim release, because it is a stability enhancement and is transparent to the user (no UI changes).

<comment><USER13> Take that upvote as a "it seems to be working well in this situation" vote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> +1 firefox. I've been resisting Chrome because they don't care about script blocking API.

No chrome until noscript!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay $25 a day for dinner, laundry, and cleaning? - <AUTHOR> My company, The Happy Home Company, is considering rolling out a service that takes care of each night's dinner, weekly house cleaning, and all of your laundry, and doing it for $25 a day.
Does this sound crazy, or interesting?
Update: If you'd like to try this for free for a week, and live in the Bay Area, send me an email at doug (at) thehappyhome.co <comment><USER2> That sounds expensive. My dinner is usually $15/day for 2, my laundry is usually $20/week for 2, and done by my local laundromat door-to-door pick-up / drop-off, and I don't get my appt. cleaned, but I can get rates of about $20-30 per hr.

I feel this is highly overpriced. Maybe if $10/day or $15/day.

I feel like spending ~ 400/week on this (2 people) is excessive. $200/week could be something I'd consider.

<comment><USER3> But you are not doing this everyday, right?

I don't imagine using service like this everyday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use an overpriced laundry service, and have food delivered though an app 3+ times a week. Not sure if I would want a service like this unless it was all contracted through the same company. Ordering these services is already pretty convenient. Why pay for homejoy and washio to be booked for me?

When I lived overseas I had a maid that would come and do my laundry in my apartment. She knew that I liked to have milk/OJ/coffee in the fridge at all times. She also did light cleaning. I would pay for something like this in a heartbeat.

Someone I trusted, knew their name, but didn't have to pay them directly. Kept shit shit order so I don't have to wear a wrinkled shirt to the office and eat breakfast at Starbucks...

I would probably pay somewhere around $100+ a week. They wouldn't have to come every day. Just stop in every once and a while when I was at work. Through a load of laundry in. Put some eggs in the fridge. Make the bed then leave.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe.

I have a few questions/concerns:

\- Privacy/security/trust: Who are the people on the ground who enter your home? What assurances do we have that they are trustworthy?

\- What does "doing laundry" entail? Do they fold it? Put it away? Move it to the room with the equipment? Is it laundered at your home or externally? Who pays for cleaning products?

\- What is "dinner?" A take-out meal? Something you have to microwave? What kind of variety/choice/etc do you get?

\- Will the price increase? Is this for solo people or for a family? How does it scale with the household?

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts on your questions:

-The people on the ground would be "Home Managers" \- background checked, trained, W2 employees.

-Laundry includes wash and fold, done off site.

-Dinner - You can choose if you want delivery, or if you'd like to cook.

-You can scale up the price, or scale down in the future. This can be done for the whole family - we're thinking an additional $15 for kids, and $20 for another adult.

If you'd like to give this a try for free for a week, send me a note at doug (at) thehappyhome.co

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would really have to know what my dinner is going to be before I'd consider something like this - since Sprig and Munchery are $12 / meal, this would be a premium offering!

Also, if dinner was prepared for me I'd probably only opt for it 2 days a week since I would prefer to meet friends, cook, etc. on other days and not feel obligated to go eat the prepared food at home.

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks That sounds about as expensive as a live-in maid, without the extra services and sense of personal connection that a maid could provide.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not in the Bay Area, but that seems extremely high to me. For a couple it would be $18,250 for the year? Just for dinner and weekly cleaning / laundry? Why is it an additional $25 for the second person when the cleaning / laundry will mostly be overlapped. I think I would be more interested in just a laundry / cleaning service anyways.

</comment><comment><USER8> How do you work out the logistics for the laundry? I.e. do you pick up daily/weekly. Do you give the customers one of those large laundry duffel bags that they fill up? Do the cleaners that come once a week pick up the laundry if they find it lying around? Those sorts of questions pop up for me when thinking about this...

</comment><comment><USER9> What area are you working in, what variety of foods do you offer, who is your chef, what allergies do you cater for, do you do dry cleaning. Could you walk my dog, feed my cat, clean my fish tank. Mow my lawn, clean my pool?

In cities as a part time housekeeper that sounds plausible.

</comment><comment><USER10> How is this different than Alfred Club, the startup that won at Disrupt that coordinates all your on-demand services? What makes the Happy Home Company different than scheduling a Munchery every night, a wash.io weekly and a Homejoy once a week?

</comment><comment><USER11> Next to being expensive it also feels a bit invasive. Not to be the paranoid one, but a company basically controlling laundry, food, has access to my house or apartment sounds a bit creepy.

</comment><comment><USER12> How many people are covered by that ~$750/month? What is the advantage over doing those three things through any existing on demand or scheduled service?

<comment><AUTHOR> $25 per person, $15 for kids. You could certainly do this all yourself - however, using us, all you'd have to do is approve / edit a plan we'll send you for the week, and we handle it all from there.

The economic impact would be exactly the same - however, you'd save a lot of time and hassle with us.

<comment><USER12> I think you have a problem with bundling house cleaning and washing - you need to get a lot of value from all three services for the economic impact to be identical, and single people or people with no kids can be pretty low maintenance in those areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who provides the food ingredients and the supplies? If it's the home owners, then how will the ingredients purchase be arranged?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd learn your food preferences, allergies, etc. We'd also ask the days you'd like to get food delivered, days you'd like to cook, and then days you'd like to go out.

We'd then present a menu for the week for your approval / edit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let us take care of dinner on our own, doing laundry isn't that hard. I would pay $50 per cleaning session, twice a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can arrange that, and give you your first cleaning for free. Drop me a note at doug (at) thehappyhome.co

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a good idea, but too expensive for my area. That's a (nice) car payment!

<comment><AUTHOR> What area do you live in?

<comment><USER15> southeast of Chicago

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This sounds good to me. I'd want to know more about the meals first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Drop me a note at Doug (at) thehappyhome.co - I'll set you up with a free week, and answer any questions that you might have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do this in New York and I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would pay for this 5 days a week.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you'd like to try this out for a week for free, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment></comment>


Can we stop bad-mouthing CSS in developer talks, please? - <AUTHOR> https://www.christianheilmann.com/2016/10/05/can-we-stop-bad-mouthing-css-in-developer-talks-please/ <comment><USER2> While there is nothing inherently wrong with the language, there have traditionally been vast inconsistencies across implementations such that the whole "Peter fighting blinds" meme becomes quite relevant. Further, it's worth noting that even the amazing demo shown on the page wasn't written in CSS -- it's written is SASS, a separate language that makes up for what many people see as CSS's shortcomings. Even further, the page highlights upcoming features, such as grid layout, which WOULD be awesome IF and WHEN they are implemented in all browsers, but as we learned with CSS 3.0/3.1, implementing certain features may not go according to plan. I agree, no one should be belittled for using CSS as their "weapon of choice", and in fact, in many cases, it is the best choice, but let's acknowledge that there are real reasons to criticize it other than the fact that some think of it as "weird" language.

</comment><comment><USER3> People joke about everything. Just understand the context and don't take it so seriously.

I live and breathe containers but still get a kick out of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivpCKEiQOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivpCKEiQOQ)</comment>


Résumé Infographics  - <AUTHOR> http://theportfolio.ofmichaelanderson.com/portfolio/resume-infographics/ <comment><USER2> I hadn't thought about using infographics for a resume, but now I can see that might be pretty useful. Maybe not as a paper version, but something online. However, this particular example doesn't cut it - not enough information on what the person did at each company and the coffee/humor thing is pretty much a waste.

</comment><comment><USER3> Going the non-standard way sets really high demands for a CV. This is an interesting take, but I do feel I don't get enough data. And isn't that the goal of a good infographic? Showing a lot of data in a better way than with raw text. It's a very good start, but not quite there yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> This dark blue area that ended in '03 made me wonder what it is was and I see that the label text is "Productivity".

Okay, I thought that misinterpretation was initially funny. A picture says a 1000 words, but which they are depends on the viewer.</comment>


The End of Management (Why Managers Should Act Like Venture Capitalists) - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476104575439723695579664.html?KEYWORDS=end+of+management

<comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that this article concentrates on why they think traditional management is ending and almost nothing on what they think would be replacing it. I just did a talk on something very similar to this at FOSSLC in Ottawa (about how GitHub does not have any traditional managers) and the impression that I got is that most companies are certainly not leaning in this direction any time soon. They mention SAS but no actual anecdotes as to why they're an example. It's too bad - I would love to hear some actual examples of companies that are bucking the traditional management trend and how they are replacing it.</comment>


A potentially fatal blow against patent trolls - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3153924/technology-law-regulation/a-potentially-fatal-blow-against-patent-trolls.html <comment><USER2> This is so weird. Why does HN not notice these dupe submissions?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311737)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13353736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13353736)

<comment><USER3> Are reposts ok?

If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok.

<comment><USER2> I just assumed that dupes were automatically flagged by the system, and not by the admins.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made the most simple password generator I could think of - <AUTHOR> http://ineedapassword.com

<comment><USER2> Those are the hardest 'easy to remember' passwords ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. Good stuff. Bookmarked as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great! I've just bookmarked it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'm glad you like it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Engineers with family, how do you manage it? - <AUTHOR>

Hello all,
I'm having a new born coming up and I'm somewhat struggling to manage the new challenges coming at my family now as my wife cannot work anymore, and we are getting prepared for the new born.  With the raising housing price in SF bay area, things are getting tougher as I'm a new dad who makes a single income working in a startup in SF.
The nature of the engineering job is like that we need to spend tons and tons of time coding, learning new things, trying things out.  I'm not sure how I can manage that now with a single income, and my wife constantly need my attention.  Well, as a husband I can totally understand her frustration on missing her career for the new born too.  Things are just difficult and it seem like there's no way out and will get worse.
I know I can't be the only one in the industry to work and to have a family.  I would like to know how you guys manage time and needs in the family, yet still able to stay relevant in our rapidly changing tech industry.
I'm aware that most of us on HN are probably single, and just started their career from school. And some founders probably don't want to hire a guy who has to support his family.   I know it is difficult for most of you to understand why it is difficult for a person to be spending the time on weekend to run errands, but not hacking things with a group of friends.
I have couple things that I would like to do, but I guess I need to put them on hold now and not sure when I will have a chance to touch them again.  I love technology, I love engineering, and I love our tech culture and how it changes the world.  And I wouldn't want to leave this industry to give up my dream.
For those who has to manage a family, how do you do it? <comment><USER2> I get the sense that you're concerned you won't be able to keep up with technology trends. This is a non-issue. 95% of what you read on Hacker News is essentially froth, the ephemera of technology. You can ignore it all. The problem is that technology is both your job and your hobby.

I had my first son when I was 22 (now 31), and my career has continued to go from strength to strength. There is adequate time in the evenings, or on commutes, to read and ponder, and I find time at work to investigate technologies that will have a positive effect on the business, because that's my job. Since then I've learned three or four new languages, taught myself a whole bunch of crypo-stuff, got down with the Agile crowd, implemented machine learning and search techniques, and become a software architect.

I think you'd be surprised at how many employers would rather employ happily married young men with children, because they know that they're less likely to be job hoppers; you might be right that early-stage startups are no longer a viable choice, though, unless you're sure they're going to be around for at least a couple of years.

Having said that, I joined my current company six years ago as employee number 5. It was founded by a mid-thirties guy with a wife and kids, who re-mortgaged his house to get the capital he needed.

Having children needn't prevent you from doing meaningful and interesting things with your career, you just need to distinguish between what's important, and what's recreational. After a few months, once you and your wife have started to get a handle on this whole parenthood thing, you'll find more time to do the things you love.

Of course, you might find that you'd rather spend the time playing with your kids :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Many moons ago I've been exactly where you describe, so listen to uncle.

You are already incubating a start-up - it's your child.

Your sole task is to keep the cash register chiming bimonthly. Focus on the job that pays you, if you have extra time then work harder for your current employer. Pile up some good karma.

Run those errands, be with your spouse, speak much less than spoken to, & forget your buddies.

Also be on excellent terms with your in-laws.

<comment><USER4> Is the only solution really to give up on your own desires? (Or to force yourself to desire the things you list?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what he/she is trying to say: \- if you have to choose between your kids vs your career, pick your kids \- if you can have both great career + raise a great, loving family, then awesome!

I do have a dream to run my own startups, but I guess I'm "too old" for that now and I didn't see anyone in the age of 40+ founding their first startup in the valley.

I guess I'll have to give up my desire now

<comment><USER5> No, he's saying that you have to put your career on the back seat while you get your family off the ground. And that's a good thing; your kid will be young once, and you don't want to be one of those people who looks back and wishes you spent more time with your kid when they were young.

I haven't seen anything about what you will gain in your career from being an involved parent. You will gain perspective. You will want a better future for the world, for your own kid. That perspective can help you see things that others don't see in the tech industry.

Quick story: I am a teacher, and recently I've been inviting elders into my classroom to tell their life stories to students. I sit on the side of the room, and students drive the conversation. One question students have asked every elder: "What was the best day of your life?"

Every elder so far (n=3 and counting) has looked around at everyone in the room, smiled, and said with conviction, "The day my kid was born."

Congratulations, and enjoy this time in your life. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm 21 and my son turned 1 in February; I know what you're going through :)

If there's one thing I've learned over the past year, it's that any employer worth working for will understand and support your need to spend time with your family. No sane founder would ask their employee to put the startup above their family.

A few other tips:

\- Take 15 minutes to yourself every morning, get a cup of coffee or tea, and read HN.

\- Listen to industry podcasts on your commute. I'm a big fan of ShopTalkShow (front-end dev), This Week In Startups, and Javascript Jabber (between these three I almost always have something to listen to between work and home).

\- Twice a week (YMMV) wait for the baby and lady to go to bed, then hack for an hour or two. Don't do this more than a few times a week though - I used to never go to bed with my fiance (always working), and we started growing distant and fighting more.

\- Use time at work (especially lunch breaks) to play with new technologies

\- Help your wife with the baby wherever you can. She put her career completely aside for your child, so she'll need to see that you're making sacrifices too and giving it 100%. Your relationship with your partner is invaluable.

I'll end this list with one final piece of advice: cherish the time you spend with your family, and hold it sacred above all else.

I'm currently in SF doing some contract work with an early-stage startup, about halfway through a 1-month tour. It's been harder than I could have imagined; and while I FaceTime with my family every day, the extent to which I miss them every day has really helped remind me what's most important.

I hope this helps, and if you ever want to talk some more (or hang out, since we're both in SF for now), send me an email: address is in my profile.

<comment><USER7> Extremely good advice. You sound very balanced and mature for 21!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had my daughter when I was 27,and I was employee number two at a startup.

The most important thing you can do is spend time supporting your wife though the first one year, women can get very depressed in the early months and you being there makes a lot of difference.

The hardest part lasts around a year, and it gets easy as time passes, by the time your kid starts walking confidently, she will be too busy for you :).

Learn to sleep when your kid sleeps, she will sleep 14-18 hours a day, and plan your day around it. My kid used to sleep very late, 2 pm - around 10 am, so I convinced my boss that I will be working from 12 pm to 9 pm and I would work from home twice a week. You can also split tasks with your wife, I used to bathe the baby alternate days and we took turns changing the nappies. If you get it down to a schedule, I think you can have enough time for yourself.

On the money front, Babies dont ask for much and if you dont go around spending money on needless luxuries, then you should be fine.

Rather than getting depressed, I think you should try to cherish the experience, This time will never come again in your life.

</comment><comment><USER9> This comes up in office politics. Try to band together with the other married people in your office. Convince your (also married) boss to dump all the work on the single people on your team. Have your spouse call you at 5PM to give you cover to leave or, better yet, have them pick you up at the office so you MUST leave immediately.

Sadly, this is how many people manage a family and job.

<comment><AUTHOR> so I guess you mean a family OR a career, pick one? :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your family comes first. Let go of the idea that you can continue to put in extra time at work, do hobby projects, and learn new technologies. You will have to do those extra curriculars during the 8-9 hour work day. Home time is family time (for the most part, of course you should find a few hours a week just for yourself). Forget about programming when you get home. Babies and new moms need a lot of attention and help. That should be your #1 priority for the next year minimum. It gets easier after year 1.

There is more to life than work and programming. Don't sacrifice time with your new baby. It never comes back. You will have plenty of time to advance your career and reach career goals.

</comment><comment><USER10> Its tough man. When we had our child, tech took a back seat. I worked as I needed to, sometimes a little late but I made family come first. Your wife will need you, family first. As your little one gets older you'll get back to normal, but for now focus where you know you need to focus.

Congrats!</comment>


How Perl Saved the Human Genome Project - <AUTHOR> http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=How-Perl-Saved-the-Human-Genome-Project.html&Itemid=29

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting article, but the title could use some work. It does get around to asking "So What's Perl Got to Do With It?" which is what you're thinking throughout the article, but it doesn't do a good job of answering it. You could have dropped Perl from the entire text (minus the "Conclusion") and had a good article as well.

It also never really makes the case that the Human Genome Project was in jeopardy, much less that Perl saved it.

Interesting article, but crap headline.

</comment><comment><USER3> For reference: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioperl>

</comment><comment><USER4> CPAN: <http://search.cpan.org/~birney/bioperl-1.2.3/> CPAN rocks :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Perl also powers the daily batches in the Swedish pension system, handling billions of dollars every day.

[http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/swedishpen...](http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/swedishpension_0601.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> And this article is from 1997. I'm japh myself and I love the language, so don't take this as a knock against perl. But why the ancient perl articles today?

<comment><USER7> I think the perl users on here are experimenting with what's of wide enough interest for others to care - <http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/> is publishing lots and lots of new perl stuff but I suspect most of it isn't particularly to hacker news' taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perl saved the world many times over.

</comment><comment><USER9> Beautiful article...please more like this. I had no idea that Perl was used for something so important and on such a large scale.</comment>


Synth – A Node.js web framework designed for AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.synthjs.com/

<comment><USER2> >Easily create new RESTful API resources by just creating folders and naming functions a certain way.

I don't like that. Memorizing new naming conventions that affect functionality makes things harder instead of easier in my experience. Sure, you can create a cool demo effect by showing how "easy" and "quick" it's to create certain stuff. Once your application scales, things become more chaotic though, and maybe the convention starts to hit limitations. In addition, it becomes more difficult to learn the code base when you have these naming conventions that create functionality all over the place.

>A command-line tool for installing third party packages, using npm + bower

Why wouldn't I just use npm and bower? They have enough problems as it is, an additional wrapper just creates problems..

</comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I read a project with a marketing pitch of "Some server specifically for some client side framework!" I can't help but feel the author has lost their mind.

The browser is just a client, people. All of the frameworks for the browser are just (supposed to be) abstractions for creating dynamic browser applications. If you need to create _server_ frameworks specifically for working with a _client_ framework that should be a sign to stop and think that something might be wrong.

<comment><USER4> Synth author here. I do realize the idea is crazy. In fact I call it a crazy idea in the video embedded on the page there. I love crazy ideas. Crazier the better!

But I will disagree on the point that the browser is just a client. It can be treated like that, if you want, but you can take advantage of the fact that the client code is serveable from the same server that has access to the app's data. And that's what Synth was designed for.

<comment><USER5> >you can take advantage of the fact that the client code is serveable from the same server that has access to the app's data.

But you really shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> \- Preload html view on page load (saving another extra roundtrip!)

does this mean it serves fully formed html like rendr[1] or highbrow[2]? I'm not sure what angular does, but all client-side apps I've seen, templates are compiled into javascript and concatenated onto the app code, so they're never an extra roundtrip.

1: [https://github.com/rendrjs/rendr](https://github.com/rendrjs/rendr) 2: [https://github.com/wvl/highbrow](https://github.com/wvl/highbrow)

<comment><USER7> Depends on how you're using angular to inject views.

Vanilla angular views are requested, parsed, bindings added, and then presented. It's one request for the html, all the rest happens in browser.

angular ui views may be different, but according to my network panel on chrome its still one request for the template and whatever assets it brings with it.

I'm going to guess the guys meant they will preload the first view based on page state, which does indeed save a single round trip, but means nothing for any state changes that would occur after the fact. I would argue that an app which needs to micro optimize like this might not be built correctly from the get go, as you're really only saving 1 request and whatever small byte size of the content.

<comment><USER8> Your response to someone making an amazing optimization is if you need optimizations your app is done wrong... seriously?

You're seriously underestimating the difference this makes. If this is rendr for angular it is a breakthrough for the angular community.

<comment><USER9> That's not what he said. He said it probably _wasn 't_ rendr for angular. I'm pretty sure he's saying they preload the initial viewing template (not a prefilled template) based on app state - stuff like clientside routing and such. The browser still has to render the template, but it doesn't have to be fetched by a separate request.

<comment><USER8> That's true I don't see any examples of server side rendering though the developer says it works... [https://github.com/JonAbrams/synth/issues/35](https://github.com/JonAbrams/synth/issues/35)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't this method of including dynamic data in the index.html page prevent it being served from a CDN?

When serving a web application, I'm generally more worried about the time it takes before the user sees a response, even if the page isn't fully hydrated yet, than the total load time.

Requiring a hit to the database before the index.html is served seems like a bad idea to me, even if it is 'saving' a request to the API.

<comment><USER7> > Doesn't this method of including dynamic data in the index.html page prevent > it being served from a CDN?

if your cdn is serving static html pages then yeah probably. If it's just serving assets like images/js/css/fonts, it shouldn't be an issue since those would all be extra reqs anyway, and not "compiled" into the html.

I serve up all my angular view templates as static files (ui-router), use ng- include for dumb stuff like footer text that never changes, and rely on the API (hmac) for populating content.

Perhaps this is over opinionated, but angular seems to me to be designed so that you don't have to do ANY view templating bullshit on the server. I don't have a single angular app that hits the app server for an html template compiled by code. In fact the only thing I do serverside templating in now is drupal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure this was discussed at ng-conf and it wasn't implemented by the core team after another team in Google asked them for the same functionality.

I see service workers and web sockets (the client) dealing with the additional overhead of SPA in future. Merging the backend and frontend would just kill it for many companies as you're dictating backend for a frontend framework.

Too opinionated IMO.

<comment><USER12> > I'm pretty sure this was discussed at ng-conf and it wasn't implemented by > the core team after another team in Google asked them for the same > functionality.

What functionality are you referring to specifically?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How did Angular become synonymous with frontend JS apps? It's one of the clumsier frameworks out there.

<comment><USER14> Which smoother alternatives do you recommend? I've used Angular and Backbone in various projects and both have their benefits and warts, so something new to look at would be useful.

<comment><USER13> Take a look at Vue.js</comment></comment></comment>


A study examined coordinated care for the most expensive patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/camden-coalition-chronic-illness.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if someone has done the cost/benefit analysis of prescribing housing. What if it is just cheaper to house these at-risk patients (shelters don't count)?

(n=1) The District of Columbia provided my schizophrenic grandmother a small apartment to get her off the street. Evidently, her health dramatically improved.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article: _These individuals, frequently struggling with addiction or homelessness, have extremely complicated medical conditions. By finding them and connecting them to the right doctors and social services, dozens of costly hospital stays could be avoided. The idea has been adopted in numerous communities around the country._

So, patients who just happen to be broken in the way this country now commonly breaks people, wind-up being extremely costly to the medical system, which actually is going to ultimately add these bills to everyone's costs.

One way to deal with this is being very clever in how you treat these people. But another idea would be to not break these people in the first place. That would require some re-evaluation of where this country is going, of course.

<comment><USER4> There is absolutely so much wrong with this statement.

You are trying to assert that something about the way this country functions is uniquely causing mental illness and other suffering, and that this should be the primary vector of analysis and intervention.

There has been suffering and mental illness for as long as we know of.

Human psychological suffering empirically can not be only about access to wealth and resources because otherwise every poor American would be free of suffering while everyone in the 19th century, no matter how wealthy, would have been a schizophrenic alcoholic.

OTOH if there was something uniquely and overwhelmingly bad about the current United States versus other countries, we should be able to find that other countries have uniformly better mental health, yet look at suicide rates in Japan or Northern Europe.

Your assertion also diminishes the challenges faced by people who struggle with these things, by making it about "the system" rather than really acknowledging these problems and how pernicious they are.

And implied in your comment is disregard for human choice and how we each live a unique, sometimes extremely difficult, path through life.

<comment><USER3> The statistics showing "death from despair" as a significant cause of lowered life expectancy in the US are my "prima faci" evidence for my comment above.

The idea that the situation of addicts and the homeless is "diminished" by complaints that their condition is related to a society that has reduced the minimum wage and failed to provide sufficient well-paid, satisfying jobs is kind of double-talk.

Does talking about unaffordable rents in many major cities "diminish" the efforts of the homeless as well?

<comment><USER4> "Does talking about unaffordable rents in many major cities "diminish" the efforts of the homeless as well?"

Absolutely. This is actually a topic that I have moderate-to-substantial real world knowledge of.

Long term homelessness is not primarily caused by high rents per se.

Although in some cases rents can be a contributing factor, it is more commonly an issue of mental health, addiction, unemployability, and lack of access to a familial or similar safety net that are the proximate causes.

Usually a combination of those issues.

Pointing to homeless people sleeping on the streets and bringing up high rents is at best an uninformed opinion, and at worst using a suffering and marginalized population as rhetorical pawns in a political game.

There was a lot more in what I said that you seemed to gloss over, but I appreciate you providing the opportunity for us to discuss a concrete case.

<comment><USER3> The relationship between high rents and homeless is both common sense and reasonably well established by research [1] [2]. It should be noted that the present or absence of a safety net is also strongly influenced by the cost of survival - whether friends or family can take someone in depends their having extra-rooms, extra-food, etc.

You're citing your personal knowledge without giving references or even details of your knowledge.

The one factor confusing things is this; yes, once a person reaches hard-core homelessness or hard-core addiction, they indeed need much more than lower rents to get on their feet. But the chances of reaching that state are much higher when a person experiences incidental homelessness.

And political? Yes, homelessness is political. There's no way to talk of homelessness without talking politically.

[1] First reference: [https://www.zillow.com/research/rents-larger-homeless- popula...](https://www.zillow.com/research/rents-larger-homeless- population-16124/)

[2] Google it: [https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=cor...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=correlation+between+rents+and+homelessness&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

<comment><USER4> All I see is the Zillow study. It's correlation, there's nothing to imply causation. Obviously large cities have very high rents, and most of the homeless people. It's also Zillow. I am uncertain why they are doing these studies.

The fact that you keep saying homelessness is primarily political and keep emphasizing that aspect kinda proves my point.

I'm curious if you've worked in homeless services, or know a number of homeless people?

In my experience, there is such a thing as suffering that shouldn't be pinned on bad politics. Sometimes life is really hard, and it's not the government's fault, or corporations, or any of that.

I think ... ideally ... the default first reaction to suffering should be compassion?

<comment><USER3> _All I see is the Zillow study. It's correlation, there's nothing to imply causation._

Google can point you to several other studies. The phrase "correlation does not imply causation" basically could best broken down as "the correlation of two graphs doesn't mean much unless you have a decent model to explain why they're correlated". But in this case, we have a good model for high rents causing homelessness - people become homeless when they lose homes and can't find another house or apartment. High rents make this more likely - high rents also make it harder for someone who's working to "couch surf" until they find another place.

Being a functional, short-term homeless person makes latent substance abuse and mental illness issues more likely to appear and intensifying existing ones - sleep deprivation is a major factor. The relationship between sleep deprivation and many such problems has been studied in depth.

 _In my experience, there is such a thing as suffering that shouldn't be pinned on bad politics._

That's a pretty weird statement. Obviously, I'm politically to the left and believe that society in general and highly destructive social policies, in total is responsible for homelessness in aggregate but see below.

 _I think ... ideally ... the default first reaction to suffering should be compassion?_

My default reaction to homelessness is generally an effort to step-in and help.

I've spent thousands of dollars of my own money helping individual friends avoid homelessness (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so), I've distributed food at soup kitchens and I've protested the eviction of homeless camps. I give money directly to homeless people when I can. I've know others involved in social services. Oh, and I've been homeless for moderate periods.

Your statements seem to imply that seeing homelessness as political negates efforts to help - but instead, my individual efforts to help give me the strong impression this problem larger than my personal ability to solve, hence it is a problem of society, a political problem in the sense of how do we run our society (assuming, maybe mistakenly, some "we" exists today). I think most people involved in homeless services feel also feel this problem requires more than just the intervention of charity.

I understand that some people are so wholly dysfunctional that they aren't going to easily join society when offered a minimum wage job or even, necessarily, an ordinary apartment - mean, my original post mentioning broken people is what started this off, right? That doesn't change the way that social conditions are a large part of what creates this society.

Of those groups involved in interacting with homeless, your attitude seems closest to that of the police and others in the "justice" system who constantly claim far greater knowledge of the conditions of the homeless than all others but who's views tend be twisted, cruel and malicious through their impulse justify society's brutal dictates towards the homeless. Plus unsupported by any objective studies. "You don't really know what these people are like" is the common rhetoric.

I would mention that law enforcement sees the dysfunctional homeless primarily because anyone functional and homeless stays as far as practical away from law enforcement and any homeless service that aims to control people (ie, lots of shelters, etc).

<comment><USER4> You are creating a false binary, and then ascribing my views to the 'other' side of the binary because they aren't exactly the same as yours, therefore they must be opposite.

What I'm saying is blaming "society" and "this country" for "breaking people [...] nowadays" is wrong headed. Sure, society and our political system can be harmful and damaging, but that's not the main issue, it is a red herring.

In my view, society should very much participate in helping mitigate the effects of bad luck, bad choices, being victims of abuse, horrible circumstances, whatever bad befalls someone, regardless of the source. We very much need a robust safety net in many dimensions.

Just because we could do better... much much better ... in that regard doesn't not automatically make for evidence our country is uniquely bad for people, or that this criticism of our country is the most salient point to comment about on an article about medical treatments for high need groups.

That is where we disagree. I don't agree that the mere existence of suffering people means a political system is screwed up. I think suffering is part of existence, and people who want to try to get rid of all suffering by remaking politics have created nightmare after nightmare throughout history. And I think this idea that individual suffering is a priori a failure of the social and political system means people hijack discussions about helping people to take swipes at the system.

Edit: And if you want to know what I really think about homelessness and systemic issues, I think regulations prohibiting boarding houses are cruel, because it prevents someone who is in a tough spot from renting a cheap room somewhere while they figure out what to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how this program's performance would look if they had recruited candidate members based on a predictive model of future utilization / need rather than focusing on people who were already extremely complex / high cost.

<comment><USER6> Likely there would be little to no difference, because as it turns out, outcome risk is an awful predictor of benefit, especially among high-risk patients. Many high-risk patients will be readmitted to the hospital anyway, no matter how much preventative care you throw at them. On the other hand, there are potentially many preventable readmissions among ostensibly low-risk patients, and you can prevent more total readmissions by including them in your targeting as opposed to focusing on a tiny high-risk group.

(A big part of my current PhD research involves building predictive models for patients with complex needs, so I grapple with these issues day in and day out, and often on huge scales—millions of patients. Prediction, at least in the usual supervised ML sense, just doesn't cut it for these kinds of problems—you need causal inference.)

<comment><USER5> >Likely there would be little to no difference, because as it turns out, outcome risk is an awful predictor of benefit, especially among high-risk patients.

Wouldn't that depend on what benefit you're trying to achieve? If you want to prevent re-admissions, wouldn't it be better to focus on people at high risk if future re-admission vs people with high past complexity. (I assume there would be a lot of, but not perfect overlap)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fucking paywall again. Can I finally just stop seeing these articles? This clickbaiting practice starts to really piss me off

<comment><USER8> HN long ago decided to allow articles behind a paywall. Still, it seems legitimate for users to not have to stare at such headlines on the front page all day, so I wonder why they don't make it an option to hide submissions from the most well known paywall sites. It would also reduce the number of people commenting on an article without reading it.</comment></comment>


Android X server  - <AUTHOR> http://my20percent.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/android-x-server/ <comment><USER2> So this is implemented in pure java?

I did something similar, but ported the C X server to Android using the JNI.

If you want to compare approaches my source is at <http://github.com/tmzt/androix> and a test apk is available at <http://db.tt/UkFlvNAm>

</comment><comment><USER3> > I had assumed that all internet-enabled smartphones would be sitting behind > NAT-ing routers, both for security reasons and to conserve IPv4 addresses. > But no, on the "3″ network in Australia at least, phones all have > externally-accessible IP addresses, meaning they can run servers.

This seems like a terrible thing.

Given that data costs so much on phones, you would think just the internet background noise would cost quite a lot per month.

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

According to that article the background noise is about 20 bits per second. According to my back of the envolope calculation that is about 6.1 megabytes per month.

I get around 50 megabytes per $6 on my phone so this is costing me 73c per month!

<comment><USER4> Arguing _for_ NAT in order to compensate for a broken billing model is a terrible idea. :)

Saunalahti in Finland also have publicly routed 3G. I wish this were far more common, it feels very 22nd century to effortlessly ssh to the phone in your pocket, even if the capability existed since the 20th. Such a shame contemporary networks are usually so brain damaged

<comment><USER5> Broken billing model is anything but flatrate? Hardly practical in practice for such a scarce resource. Noone wants to pay for that, it can only exist as an option where few will use it.

How about denial of service attacks? I could easily kill your battery and drain your quota for the month with a few keystrokes - and there's not much you can do about it.

Yes, I prefer NAT for my mobile connections. Just use a VPN if you want external access.

<comment><USER4> Not sure how you arrived at flat rate being the only alternative. It's almost trivial to count ingress only for host flows to which the customer's device responds positively (say, by replying using anything except ICMP or a TCP error)

<comment><USER5> Does any ISP do that though? I've never heard of it, then again I haven't had contact with any ISP delivering external IPs to mobile connections.

The point about battery remains though. And the solution you propose can easily be exploited to allow unlimited data for say, video streaming.

<comment><USER4> In Saunalahti's case they differentiate by offering different connection speeds, all at flat rate. I'm not really sure if what I suggested is implemented anywhere, just playing devil's advocate. :) One possible solution might be to combine it with stateful filtering, dropping a unidirectional ingress flow after some number of packets if the device never responds. My point was mainly that something must be broken if the customer is getting billed due to the environment beyond their control.

In the case of power management I'm not sure it's that simple, it's at least true that the HTC Dream would not usually respond to pings while the display was off (haven't experimented with other devices). Presumably the application processor only awoke when a kernel timer fires, which only applies to client sockets the device itself created. Actually it makes sense that random inbound data traffic wouldn't wake the phone, otherwise you risk your OS getting a bad reputation because of some crappy telcos sending ARP every 1 second or something.

<comment><USER5> I agree that it is unreasonable, and is a bit shocked that there are countries where receiving an sms can cost you money... But a reasonable solution to incoming data is to enable NAT, it isn't much of a hinder for a tech savvy user and is otherwise better for the 99.99% of the users.

My phone (Nexus S) always responds to the pings I send. Which kind of makes sense, the default is to have a constant connection to google anyway (so that it can receive any push messages). Apparently google already made the decision that it is worth the battery drain. And android has already gotten plenty of bad reputation for applications misbehaving. While I'm sure some telcos are misbehaving in all ways imaginable as well it is probably nothing compared to the apps users gladly install for themselves.

<comment><USER4> > something must be broken if the customer is getting billed due to the > environment beyond their control.

This is what happens when you debate random tangential topics online while hung over.. so basically I had no point to make, and you made me realize NAT is a pragmatic solution to the imaginary problem I'm complaining about.

> Presumably the application processor only awoke when a kernel timer fires

And of course for the reasons you point out, this presumption was obvious nonsense. :) Now I'm not sure what caused the behaviour I saw on the Dream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More Android<->(non-android)Linux compatibility would be great. Given that the linux desktop is moving toward wayland, and given that android's SurfaceFlinger is a lot closer to wayland than to X, I'm not sure that X is the best way forward. It would be interesting to see how much work it would take to implement SurfaceFlinger apis in terms of wayland or vice versa.

Kind of like this work implementing the AudioFlinger api on top of pulseaudio: [http://arunraghavan.net/2012/04/pulseaudio-on-android- part-2...](http://arunraghavan.net/2012/04/pulseaudio-on-android-part-2/)

</comment><comment><USER7> So is this the first real X client on Android? I've only found VNC clients for Android in the past. Having a real X client would be amazing because that would allow the efficient use of GUIs with a chroot install of debian (or pick-your-distro)! The status quo is to use a VNC server in the chroot and a VNC client on Android to get a GUI. Not very "clean".

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not convinced this would be good for much as it is, considering the reality of input devices on Android, but it seems like something like this could have potential in aiding porting. Getting a _good_ terminal emulator ported to Android using this sort of thing to help could be an interesting endeavor for example.

<comment><USER9> Android has fantastic support for mice, touchpads and keyboards (not to mention Xbox 360 controllers, etc).

<comment><USER8> In practice nobody actually uses those things. The _reality_ of input on android is that the general public just uses touch screens.

<comment><USER10> The set of people willing to use a mouse with their phone is probably a strict superset of those who want to run X, so I wouldn't think of it as problematic.

Also, good on the OP. But X on Android? It's a jfb Hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I really want is to extend my host's desktop onto the Android device. I'd settle for something as simple as Synergy working (in the wishlist, not done yet).

There are numerous solutions for Windows and Mac (eg AirDisplay, SplashTop) but nothing to extend Linux desktops onto Android devices.

<comment><USER12> Both GTK+ (broardway) and Qt (lighthouse) have some sort of HTML5 frontend. It is the most portable solution, if not a little slow. Extending the desktop can be done with some VNC+Xinerama trickery too. But it ain't easy, I will give you that. If you want to drag and drop a window from Xorg to Android (2 server), get ready for trouble. Not that X can't support it, it does, but modern toolkit hate being redirected like that, it is a very niche X11 feature.

<comment><USER11> In other words not particularly practical :-)

I would expect the tablet to be plugged in as a virtual monitor (ie xrandr would should it as another monitor) and if you take the tablet away it should be no different than disconnecting a monitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool. Since android has great VPN capabilites being NATed doesn't necessarily present any problems.

EDIT: And why not link to the play store? [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darksid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darkside.XServer)

</comment><comment><USER13> FWIW iSSH on iOS has good X support.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is cool hack, but is there anything fun or useful I could do with it?

<comment><USER15> You can run xeyes as it was meant to be run.

<comment><USER2> Xeyes with a touchscreen doesn't work so well, you have to touch the screen before it tracks.

<comment><USER16> One could charge $1.99 for an app that allows users to poke the xeyes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CA state senator wants to eliminate constitution obstacle to low-income housing - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-may-2018-state-senator-wants-to-eliminate-1543865670-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> It's amazing how much the rich have regulatorily captured the government of CA. It'll take a long time to remove all of the unfair laws like this.</comment>


Apply HN: Jury Board – helping attorneys win cases through jury selection - <AUTHOR> Problem:  Scientific jury selection is limited to the largest firms usually making over hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  When selecting juries, attorneys of other, smaller, firms have only the information they get through asking questions to make their selection.  This can be greatly improved by providing attorneys with a tool that allows them to do data mining from social media and any other sources and aggregate it to a probability of how that juror is likely to vote.
A tool that gives an attorney more insight into jurors would be incredibly valuable to them.  If you have millions on the line, paying even a few hundred to get information about a potential jury is a bargain.
While giving one attorney a strong advantage, thereby effecting the outcome of a case, can seem questionable, the justice system designed jury selection to be in the lose/lose quadrant of possible scenarios.  Ideally a more equitable and fair jury is chosen by both attorneys eliminating those against them as best they can.  This also means though should one attorney have an effective tool selecting jurors others are highly incentivized to use that same tool.  This should produce a strong network effect for my product. <comment><USER2> How does that actually work? Do lawyers get names and addresses of potential jurors in advance? How much in advance? Assuming they do, what exactly do you do with that information?

Let's say the juror is "Joe Smith from Alabama". What is the probability that:

1\. he has a twitter account

2\. he provided his full name in the account

3\. Which of the following accounts belong to that particular Joe Smith: [https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith](https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith) ?

What other "social media" data can you provide? Facebook? (it's mostly private and not available for low-grade stalking). Tinder?

What is your addressable market? How many jury selections there are in US where "millions are on the line"? And if there really are "millions on the line", can't they afford $250/hr jury consultant?

How did you validate your idea? How many attorneys at small companies did you talk to? What is the "incredible value" of attorney knowing twitter posts of a potential juror?

<comment><AUTHOR> They actually get a decent amount of information, the shortest time frame would be a few days, usually a week or more.

A sample of information, just what I remember, I'm not looking at the list.

Name

age

education

limited previous legal experiences

Address

Employer and length of time with employer

members of household with relation and age

Criminal history, down to parking records, doesn't come with the juror info sheet, but is usually easily accessible by attorneys.

Even simple things that can be grabbed from facebook/twitter/anything would be useful. Often the halo effect or a person trying to get out of jury duty cause some degree of deception. Anything that can verify what they said in court is valuable. A jury could consist of as few as 6 people, finding that one of them is biased against you and you can strike them is great. The smallest thing can mean a great deal. Say under their favorite books they list civil disobedience, you could easily strike them from a case where one side may be some sort of conscientious objector.

True, if there are millions on the line the attorney would probably hire a consultant, but in that case I think a consultants job would still be easier with my tool than without it and should result in a sale for me, just from the consultant instead of the attorney.

As far as market, not much like this exists, but it is being asked for. There are roughly 80,000 trials per year in the US, a prosecution and defense for each, so 160,000 opportunities. This also makes it such that there are 800,000 potential jurors per year. Some pricing structures I think are reasonable could result in a revenue of under one billion per year.

I'll be honest I've not talked with many people, > 10, but the reactions I received from those I've talked to has convinced me. I've talked to a few civil and criminal lawyers, both public servants and private firms and the feedback is usually ecstatic. "incredible value" might be my words, but "invaluable" was what one lawyer kept saying. Further validation comes from a rudimentary and necessary building block of this, note taking electronically during jury selection, is immature to the point it almost doesn't exist was something I was approached by attorneys to create. The data mining and giving suggestions just seemed like a natural evolution, which so far has been received well.

I know I won't be able to provide everything on every potential juror, but if I'm consistently striking one I'm showing value. And with a pool of > 200 people I'm sure there's someone that I can dig up dirt on.

<comment><USER3> The numbers you present do not make sense. 80,000 trials would mean 960,000 jurors selected, which would suggest at least 2M potential jurors. So how how does that mean $1B? In the early days, you would be lucky to get 1%-2% of the trials.

Realistically, you might need to create a MVP with lots of manual processing to test the market. Or, find a VC who will believe your projections.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I left off a zero, 8 million people report for jury duty a year. Each potential juror is often researched by more than 4 attorneys. At $25 per juror researched you end up around a billion dollars. $25 per juror is what many attorneys pay for a criminal record check already, so this is a pricing model they are familiar with and I think if the product provides as much information as I believe it can the value could meet or exceed the value of a criminal check. A criminal record might be more indicative of a bad juror, but so few people have them compared to the number of people with other data sources I think the expected value of information evens out.

And this is just the States, there are other countries that use similar systems for jury selection.

I agree I won't make that until there is a mature product, but the question was addressable market, not expected year 1 revenue.

The mvp I'm working on now allows the sharing of information about jurors. This should allow me to gather data on how jurors vote tat can be marketed while still making profit off the sharing app alone.

<comment><USER3> Your answers to this and other comments are very good. You give the impression that you have done a lot of research already. If you haven't already come across Steve Blank's work take a look at "The Four Steps to the Epiphany".

Since it is such a huge potential market, it might be a good idea to work on getting VC funding. The only caveat being, avoid "free" anything. Very hard to convert to paying down the track. You could give early users the option of investing and getting a chunk of discounted juror research for their money as well as equity. Since you are already in contact with lawyers you should be able to find some professional advice, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would really like to talk to some VC's, unfortunately I'm based in the Midwest, it might as well be the majove as far as funding goes or so I understand. So I'm trying to get a sizable MVP and traction before spending time talking to people. No one will talk to you unless you already have the product launched with users here. Where I'm at the Ben and Jerry's model almost makes more sense because by the time you can get funding you almost don't need it anymore.

On the flip side, where I'm located the 120k from yc seed money would be a year's runway for me and a cofounder or two. That and there is more talent here than people think, or at least more good devs looking for work than hiring.

If anyone has some contacts or VCs want to get in contact with me take my username at Gmail to talk.

<comment><USER4> Hmm. Get some insight about the cities around you...

Request the Startup Ecosystem Report from here:

[http://startup-ecosystem.compass.co/ser2015/](http://startup- ecosystem.compass.co/ser2015/)

Great research. Interesting notes about Chicago in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How will you generate confidence that your product actually works at the beginning, when you have no track record?

Why should a lawyer trust the outcome of an important case with "millions on the line" to an unknown startup rather than do what they do now to select juries (go with their gut, whatever)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I replied to PJ via email earlier because I was timed out on responses, but for anyone wondering about this:

My MVP and what would likely become a free version is an app that allows for the sharing of information about jurors and taking notes about jurors during selection. The level of trust required for this is low, just don't delete their info and your good. But while using the free version I imagine that if you had a juror the attorney rated favorably and you had evidence they were an undeniable liability and you showed this to the attorney it would prove the paid tools worth and hopefully encourage them to pay to research the other potential jurors after seeing my tool prevent such a blunder.

Even if it had a low conversion rate the free version still makes sense, more users means more data to draw conclusions to give to those that are paying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you researched different jurisdictions? I am dismayed that the lawyers would be given so much information about potential jurors a week in advance. Seems to run counter to the idea that jurors are selected from "peers".

Technically, you would be doing a lot of site scraping and that would take a sizeable investment in development. Of course, assuming that you don't first need to enter the details from hardcopy. Even if you get the information in electronic form, it will probably be different for different courts, states, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes and they vary drastically. Federal courts use the same jury pool for two years, while a local court could be as little as two weeks.

Attorneys/secretaries/paralegals already do this by hand. More than scraping I'm hoping to do something useful with what they already scrape manually. By giving them a platform that make it easy to share their notes and info about jurors I should be able to start using this information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool idea. How hard would it be to process the data in a meaningful way? Are you familiar with the psychology behind it? Is it "standarized" somewhere or rules of thumb that most people agree on with jury selection?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it would be too difficult. Any question asked or note taken can be analyzed. From whose perspective? Attorneys views on selection is simple; "if they aren't favorable to me get the juror out". They really don't care how or why. It is illegal to select based on race and gender, but it doesn't stop them. (Check recent supreme Court case and batson laws) anything other than that is fair game. Seeming to emotional or smart or attentive or inattentive or rigid or conservative or liberal or religious can get you struck. A lot of it is based off feeling and simple logic.

"I have a complex case, I need smart jurors" or "my case is based off emotions, not facts, so I need emotional jurors" are common thoughts. Because of this any insight into the potential juror is useful.

There is a great deal of rules of thumb. Strategies passed from attorney to attorney, but little verified knowledge. That is what I'm hoping I can provide.

<comment><USER3> Didn't Dr Phil consult on the big court case against Oprah?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this idea. A friend of my co-founder created something similar, albeit with key differences, for politics (AppleCart). They are seeing some great success so far, you may want to reach out to them.

</comment><comment> d--b Definitely a lot of potential here. Is the jury info public at all? Or is it limited to attorneys? ie. Once an attorney sends you info about a particular jury, can you reuse that information for something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> It becomes public record and is free for use. The attorneys I've been working with locally have been able to hand me juror sheets. It's honestly kind of scary that I can be handed that much personal info on someone and their criminal record.

There are sites you can download this information from now. It is freely available, but not freely distributed by the government. Somehow a file server costs ten cents a page served, but you can access it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _aggregate it to a probability of how that juror is likely to vote._

This would require knowledge of the case and case law. Which would then require a full AI.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, nothing near it. There are tons of small details about jury selection that is common knowledge to attorneys that are based off very general, singular, facts. For example, a prosecutor will almost always strike a social worker if they get the chance because they are supposedly always driven by mitigating circumstances that make them highly unlikely to convict. Backing up, or refuting, things like this and finding more of them once you have actual data is child's play.

A probability based off a set of given facts and not every fact is still useful and doesn't require AI.

To fully replace a jury consultant, yes that would require AI, but at their going rate of >$250/hr I think an app could find a price point reflecting the diminished result that is still very attractive in comparison.

<comment><USER9> I see three qualms, one "my reckons", one empirical, one moral.

1\. If you're already going to trial, especially with "millions on the line", paying out a few thousand / tens of thousands to a consultant doesn't necessarily seem to bad.

2\. Given how much jury tuning is going on right now, I would have worries about the quality of the "actual data" and how much insight you could get from such a contaminated corpus.

3\. Prosecutors already have an incredible amount of power in jury selection, why do they need more?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I agree. I think this app could be useful to the consultants too by making their jobs easier. I think I would still see a sale, just from a consultant not the attorney. I think two separate markets would be those who can't afford or it doesnt make sense to hire consultants and the consultants themselves.

2\. The biogdaphic/demographic data is all from forms and attorneys would have no reason to lie to their own device they are using to reference juror information from. I think most of the information would be reliable.

3\. The defense cab use it too ;). But seriously, the juror selection process is designed for each attorney to be able to get rid of anyone they think is biased against then with the hope that by both attorneys doing this those left create a fair hury. Is this optimal? No. Would my tool make a suboptimal solution better? Yes I believe it will.

I think it is the programmer optimization drive in us that makes this seem crappy that it isn't being completely overhauled since it isn't optimal, but my solution does help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why would you ever seek to further rig the justice system in such a fashion?

<comment><USER11> It sounds like it levels the playing field, doesn't it?

<comment><USER10> It gives an advantage to attorneys that can afford it. The vast majority of cases that see trial probably don't have a lot of money for the defense to spend on such things, while the prosecution has access to the DA's site license or whatever.

It's hard to believe this wouldn't end up mostly used by prosecutors.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a possible outcome.

Like I said though, with courtrooms being adversarial one side is incentivized to use any useful tool against the other. If the defense can't afford it and therefore doesn't use it, it becomes less likely the prosecution will use it then too. Maybe to counteract this I have to subsidize the cost of those using it for defense.

It is far to early to say for certain, but in order to generate better juror recommendations data is needed, I want as many people using it as possible to get data.

<comment><USER10> _If the defense can 't afford it and therefore doesn't use it, it becomes less likely the prosecution will use it then too._

That's exceptionally unlikely, I think. The prosecution's job is to win, whatever the cost--that appears to be the current mode of operation in the US, anyways.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even so, I do have some benefit to having defense attorneys use it. I'll get more data on jurors.

Having people pay what they will or can isn't a new idea. If the defense can't pay an individual license may be cheap, while an office license could be exorbitant if the DA will pay through the nose.

The main point of the last post is that I gain nothing if they don't use it, but if anyone is paying for it I still gain from other free users.

As I mentioned the I think system is suboptimal, I think this can improve it though. I'm not a jerk who would screw the Justice system for a buck, I really do think this can improve things. I don't think the possibility that it might hurt is reason enough not to try.

<comment><USER10> Maybe make it free for public defenders. Lord knows they could use the help.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Couchdb Clustering - <AUTHOR> http://books.couchdb.org/relax/reference/clustering <comment><USER2> I know the CouchDB team said they were taking steps to make CouchDB _officially_ usable as a distributed system. Is this it? Or has this chapter been around for a long time?</comment>


A Path to Sub-Second, Encrypted Skin Cancer Detection - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dropoutlabs/encrypted-skin-cancer-detection-3d096d3b7237 <comment><USER2> > So we replaced the Max-Pooling layer with an Average-Pooling layer,

Why not use: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_maximum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_maximum)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the suggestion! The reason average pooling is faster than max pooling is that the former uses only addition, which is quite a bit faster than comparison in MPC. The smooth max requires both exponentiation and division, both of which are significantly more expensive than doing the comparison in ReLU or max pooling.</comment></comment>


Building the Übersquirrel (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://uebersquirrel.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> I think you just linked to an entire blog, the most recent post of which is from March 2018.</comment>


Where to start learning about servers and hosting stuff? - <AUTHOR>

I'am a programmer but I'am not really advanced in servers and hosting stuff.<p>I'am afraid if I start a big web app I will not know how to scale since I do not know anything about servers and stuff like that. so where I can start learning about this stuff ? <comment><USER2> I agree with dirkdeman, you can't start a big web app overnight - you start small and learn by doing. Try deploying on a VPS and when you get stuck, you can ask <http://serverfault.com>. Also I would recommend checking <http://debian-handbook.info/> for reference (if you're going to deploy a debian based distribution). Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> You learn by doing, reading tutorials on the internet, by asking questions on StackOverflow and by making mistakes. Start out small with some basic web hosting, or play around with a VPS. Get comfortable with using Linux. Or tinker around with Amazon Web Services (free for the first year!)But really, don't worry about scaling too much. You don't just start a big web app, even Facebook took a couple of years to get to a size where they had to worry about scaling.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just do it, + google. I can't think of any better way. If you're leaning towards Red Hat/CentOS, then an RHEL Certification book will fill in a lot of knowlege holes. Always keep a Amazon AWS micro-instance or a local Linux server to mess around on.</comment>


Booting the Nexus 4 from "scratch" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.voltagex.org/2015/08/01/booting-the-nexus-4-from-scratch/

<comment><USER2> it is funny how everyone still thinks android is open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Blame Qualcomm for this part in particular - and they're doing better. The PDF I linked is relatively recent.

Thanks for reading.

<comment><USER2> Qualcomm is actually the least worse. isn't it?

try to get anything out of samsung. or any of the newer radios. heck, most android phones have binary blobs even for the camera!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tools do YC co's use to create beautiful landing pages quickly? - <AUTHOR> Most YC companies tend to have beautifully polished landing pages by demo day [1]<p>What are some useful templates/libraries to build similarly polished landing pages (i.e. significantly better than hacking together a quick Twitter Bootstrap page) in a relatively short amount of time with limited resources?<p>[1] Look at http://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ for some examples <comment><USER2> I second this question!</comment>