Ask HN: Rate my essay, please: On thinking - <AUTHOR> http://frederickcook.posterous.com/

<comment><USER3> I realise it is probably rude to ask this, but how old are you?

The reason I ask, is that you comment that this is a symptom of your generation's upbringing, but the reality is that there is also a simple age component in this.

When I was young, I used to devour books while commuting on public transport. Occasionally I would glance up at the older commuters and see them sitting there, staring into nothing, and would think "Gee how can they just stand there doing NOTHING". Now I am one of those people - given 5 minutes with nobody fighting for my attention I just sit there and grab the opportunity to think.

In other words as life starts throwing more things at you, the necessity of defending some thinking space becomes more apparent, irrespective of which generation you belong to.

<comment><USER4> I agree. An essay is only good if it produces a change in at least one person's thinking. But because you are writing about something that is essentially a part of cognitive development, and because each reader is going to be in a different formative stage of their life, it's not really possible to write about a topic like this in a way that creates value for everyone.

For me personally, this essay would have been more useful if you had taken into account the fact that the words 'thinking' and 'ideas' have various definitions. For example, an idea can be a plan, e.g. a business idea. But an idea can also be used to mean a schema. You use the word in both senses interchangeably, and your use of the word thinking itself is also muddled. The essay would be more actionable if you enumerated the different types of thinking, when to do each, how to do each, how each creates value, etc.

But I would imagine there are other people for who would get a lot out of this the way it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Next time you read a blog, stop afterwards and think about it"

Great... Now I'm stuck in an infinite recursion, thinking about your blog about thinking about blogs...

</comment><comment><USER6> _In Dijksterhuis 2004:

George Spencer Brown has famously said about Sir Isaac Newton that "to arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is that one needs to know."_

– _The Black Swan_ by Nassim Taleb

I purposefully don't listen to music when I walk places. I enjoy thinking and taking in my surroundings. However, I probably still don't think enough. Thanks for this article!

Side note: Please don't justify the text if you don't have to, it makes it harder to read. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you enjoyed, and I had a huge smile reading that quote. I'll have to go dig through my copy of The Black Swan to find that.

Sorry about the justification; I'll check to see if I did that or if Posterous did that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent. I found that when I started working from home that I felt like I had less time to think than when I would daily commute to my job. I became frustrated more easily. Then I finally decided to force myself to take time and just think.

Full writeup here: <http://bootstrapd.me/?p=534>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, I definitely enjoyed the read. Same idea for sure. It reminds me of another Mixergy interview with the founder of Twitpic, who said he goes for a drive almost every night to clear his mind.

<comment><USER8> For me a drive wouldn't help a lot, unless I guess you live in a quiet area. I prefer walking where I don't have to devote any thought to avoiding other cars and following road rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Asa-Nisse The essay is a little bit on the light side. For starters I dont think you bring the reader in with your opening paragraph.

I would start with the second paragraph instead. It's much more interesting.

Since you dont reveal how old you are I'm assuming you are < 25\. Speaking as someone thats older than that I would say that I have been feeling the same as you do from time to time in regards to the "I must be doing something". And I agree its a problem if you dont know how to "turn it off".

If its any comfort I do know that excellence and aspiring to great things are a universal truth however. There is no such thing as a lost generation or losing the ability to think. You might look up to great individuals that seems like they are towering now, but trust me, in years to come you'll realise they are just as human with weaknesses and flaws like everyone else.

It's what you do at your best that counts.

</comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of the movie/book 'The Peaceful Warrior' by Dan Miller (... _there's never _nothing_ going on!_ )

There are two distinct 'incubation' type behaviors that I have observed - <USER2> is the internal thinking that you describe in this essay (showers, running, walks, yoga, or just sitting on the edge of a cliff and looking at the world).

The second type of incubation behavior is a type of 'prattling on'. Doodling, drawing mind maps, morning pages, stream of consciousness, etc.

Mind you - mind maps can be used very constructively, but sometimes it's just a type of brain dump.

I find that the second type of processing is useful when my mind is so full that I get stuck in an idle loop: nothing useful coming out at all; a cross between analysis paralysis and broken record.

</comment><comment><USER10> The second part, about running and thinking, is good stuff.

The first three paragraphs are a turn-off because they're about you and not your topic. They feel tacked-on.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe when you got the idea for this essay you didn't quite know how to lead into it?

</comment><comment><USER11> I found the same thing through yoga, meditation, and showers. I didn't think all that much while actually doing yoga, but there was a certain clarity of mind that made it easy to go sit on a park bench and think out my problems much easier. At the pace my life is currently going, I have given up yoga and meditation. Thank you for giving me a gentle push to pick it up again (even if yoga, specifically, isn't what you were suggesting).

<comment><AUTHOR> At the risk of this becoming one of those annoying discussions between two people who really love yoga talking about how much they love yoga, I too find a certain clarity of mind through yoga. However, I do agree that it is a different kind of mental clarity, and that I do not find that I get the kind of insights from it that I describe in the essay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting essay. Kind of distracting how every sentence is followed by two spaces, though.

Should listening to music necessarily be considered "consuming"? I go running all the time while listening to instrumentals, and it helps me concentrate.

I too have a significant portion of my epiphanies while running or biking, or just walking away from what I was doing, staring at the ceiling, and thinking it over. Gazing into a computer screen seems to promote the narrowing down of ideas rather than the conception of new ones (if that).

Also, has anyone else found showers extraordinarily easy to concentrate in? I'm not sure what it is (white noise?), but I often find that when I take a shower my stresses fade away and whatever problem I was having folds out with an obvious-in-hindsight solution. (I also take notoriously long showers, for this reason.) I really wish I could replicate this experience somewhere else; the only other time I've had it is occasionally when falling asleep (which also, incidentally, causes me to take much too long to fall asleep — not exactly an ideal combination).

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that a standard, one space after sentences? I haven't been in an English class in a while, and haven't heard someone make that comment before.

For music, good call, I listen to quite a bit of classical while working. If there are lyrics, I'll get distracted and think about those instead.

It's kind of funny, but I often find myself stepping out of the shower and not being able to remember if I had shampooed my hair or not, my mind having been somewhere far off.

<comment><USER13> Apparently, two spaces after a period was used in the typewriter days to help readability. Kerning (especially on web pages) helps obviate the need for this today.

However, there are still people who advocate its use. I do it out of habit, but can probably turn it off now that I think of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Overall, very nice essay. I think you probably could have trimmed it down just a touch more. imho, there are multiple things going on here : reviewing a speech or revising an essay, even just in your head, is actual productive work and should be treated as such and I also tend to do this while occupied with other things like transit or exercise. There's another side too, though - relaxation or recreation. I feel like our mind like our muscles can't always be tensing and growing stronger, but that it also must take time to rest and grow stronger.

</comment><comment><USER15> You extracted the best point made during the Mixergy interview with Seth Goodin, and I'm glad you are expanding around it.

I think however your attempt to separate rumination from production is not valid. Ideas need to start somewhere, but their creation will be much more efficient if one actively attempts to find one than hoping one pops up from a walk in the park. Perhaps the distinction you are trying to making is better demonstrated by comparing research and labor, or as Edison put it, inspiration and perspiration.

<comment><AUTHOR> I absolutely agree that ideas need to start somewhere, but I think that truly innovative, original ideas won't come directly from consuming something. The same way any web application must process an input in some way to add value to it, for me anyway, I need to process things in order to add value to them.

<comment><USER15> We agree about consumption, and the essay does a very good job of exploring this, but perhaps I was not clear in the point.

In academics, I often see students continuously consume books and papers believing that they are doing research. While integral in the effort, this is the easiest step in research. What too many do not do is take the next step, which is the creation and evaluation of ideas. In mathematics, one can think of it as depth first search through the space of knowns in hopes of finding a proof of an interesting statement. To be continually successful, one must look at this proof discovery activity as a production step.

But the essay does not look at this as such, instead saying that inspiration does not come from producing. By stating:

 _It wasn't until I started running that I realized the value of doing neither [consumption nor production], but instead of processing the things I consumed._

It excludes mental rumination from production. It is this distinction that I don't think is valid. And the essay would be sharper by speaking only of consumption instead of combining consumption and production.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point. Mental rumination is, indeed, a form of production, and when I get home from my run, I reproduce that which I produced in my head into a paper or speech or discussion or whatnot. The essay is indeed weak in that it does not establish this.

Perhaps I should be more explicit by stating that producing through the act of thinking, excluding any other mental engagement, is for me somehow a deeper or more efficient form of production.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I liked this. Good advice, I, too always feel like I must be either producing or consuming, but I never think about...thinking.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminded me of <http://www.paulgraham.com/island.html>

I thought it was good, and I've had a similar experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I had read that a while back.

"And of course there's another kind of thinking, when you're starting something new, that requires complete quiet. You never know when this will strike."

Thinking about this now, I don't necessarily know that time spent just thinking will yield anything useful, let alone completely innovative. I went running today and all I thought about was different ways I could have written this essay. I've just realized that when I do have these moments, this kind of thinking, it isn't by accident, or when working on something else. It happens during a specific time I set aside for it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone for reading. As @nedwin says below, the quality and quantity of the responses here demonstrate the quality of this community.

</comment><comment><USER18> The quality and quantity of feedback on this essay is a good signifier of a great HN community.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have way more ideas for stuff to work on than time and energy to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> If they can be considered ideas worth working on (intellectually stimulating and/or financially rewarding), and you have the required expertise to make it worth following through with them, then that is an enviable position to be in.</comment></comment>


Kulisha.com aggregate and pin social feeds, with a Pinterest like design. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kulisha.com Released a beta version today, would like to get feedback. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Please remove the annoying hovering splash screen - why would I sign up this service with Twitter/Facebook before I have even tried it out?

This method of 'forced signup before viewing content' is something I find incredibly obnoxious and irritating in web apps. My default position on these is that I don't sign up unless I believe the site will offer me some value. If you want my personal info, I must feel like I am getting something in return. Another Pinterest clone does not, IMHO, provide enough value to make me sign up, especially when I am not allowed to view the site's content until I have signed up. If I was going to clone Pinterest, I would be sure to clone their key feature - anonymous users can see all of the content.

"Yes sir, entry is just $10. Don't worry, we'll show you what's inside after you have paid your entrance fee, but trust us, it's great."

I'm sure the site is fantastic, and what I have seen of the design is very nice. But as I'm sure you guessed, forcing people to sign up before showing the content is a personal bugbear of mine!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response!

We must have been very unclear, or it might be our bad English :)

The thing is that nothing on Kulisha is really Public, since it combines your own personal feeds from Twitter and Facebook.

One thing we could do, to make the site better, might be to post a screenshot or make a promo video, how does that sound?

Thanks again.

<comment><USER2> Just after I posted, I realised that the content on the site is entirely populated by your Facebook/Twitter connection, so I withdraw my righteous indignation ;-)

A promo video would help showing potential users where the value is. Or how about adding some public data for an example user? E.g. when an anonymous user views the homepage, they see the content for this example user. Then the Call To Action could be 'see your personalised content by connecting with FB/Twitter'. This would let new users get some value out of the site (or at least see how it could be valuable) before signing up.</comment></comment></comment>


WhatsApp Phone Numbers Pop Up in Google Search Results - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-phone-numbers-google-search-results/156141/ <comment><USER2> Apparently, the phone numbers only get indexed if a website owner includes a "Click to Chat" widget on their website - effectively publishing the number anyway. The only difference is that "Click to chat" only displays a QR code which visitors scan. They are then redirected to the WhatsApp chat of the website owner, where the number is public anyway.

Maybe WhatsApp should make clear that the "Click to chat" widget allows anyone to see your phone number. But I don't really see any other mistake on their part.

<comment><USER3> In fact, Click to Chat links are not QR codes but URLs that are manually constructed from a phone number.

[https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-use-click- to-c...](https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-use-click-to-chat/)

Of course, you can generate a QR code from this URL using third-party tools, which I think is what's happening here.

Click to Chat's stated purpose is to allow you to chat to someone whose phone number you know, but you don't want to add them to your address book.

Clearly, some people are using it for a different purpose – to make it easier for other people to send them WhatsApp message.

Maybe WhatsApp should be clearer about the dangers of sharing a URL containing your phone number, but it seems like a useful feature when used for their intended purpose.

<comment><USER4> You can just check if someone has WhatsApp by going to wa.me/+(countrycode)(number)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title seems to imply that this affects all WhatsApp users, when it really only affects those putting a link with their phone number online.

Feels like clickbait.

[https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-use-click- to-c...](https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-use-click-to-chat/)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the article:

      "My phone number is public on the web. No need to implicate WhatsApp,"
      one user told Threatpost, explaining that Click to Chat was convenient
      and made it easy for his site visitors. "I did it to make it easy for
      people to contact me. Surprisingly, I get very few spam calls," he said.

      However, others were unaware their numbers were public.

      "No I didn't mean to make my number public at all," one user told
      Threatpost. "I set up WhatsApp for my business so people should
      text directly without getting my number."

I think this illustrates the underlying problem nicely, which is imho that people misunderstand how the "Click to chat" button works.

<comment><USER7> As a tangential aside, please don't use code blocks to make "quotes", they're practically unusable on mobile devices. Code blocks don't get automatic wrapping and you have to scroll back and forth for each line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I mean they could have used at least some kind of ID or hash instead of the actual number for the URL.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter much because once you are in whatsapp the primary key is the phone number.

It would be really nice if you could share a revocable identifier that could be used instead of a phone number, but I guess this would require a lot more code changes.

<comment><USER10> And a big benefit of a phone number is that if I want to contact the same person on Snapchat, or some other service, I can.

Per service identifiers just build walled gardens and in the end hurt users.

Phone numbers are the perfect identifier because the default is 1 per person, but you can easily get a few more if you want to be anonymous, split business from home, have two personalities, etc.

<comment><USER9> I'm not arguing that using phone numbers doesn't have benefits. I'm just saying that WhatsApp intrinsically shares your number so obfuscating the URL will provide little benefit.

At the end of the day if you want to allow people to contact you _without_ sharing your number you would need something like that I proposed. And in that case you would explicitly be trying to isolate from your other contact methods so your "benefits" become drawbacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Publishing phone number on the internet leads to it being indexed by Google

How is this news?

<comment><USER12> Girl drops out because of ubuntu (it came pre-installed on her laptop).

[https://youtu.be/5Qj8p-PEwbI](https://youtu.be/5Qj8p-PEwbI)</comment></comment>


Dear Silicon Valley: A sous-vide is not a crockpot - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/dear-silicon-valley-a-sous-vide-is-not-a-slow-cooker/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've had an Anova for about a year. We use it a couple times a week. I've had a hard time getting fish and lamb chops cooked correctly, and this makes it easy. I also use it for steaks and chicken breasts. I buy them in bulk, and divide them up with seasoning into individual sized portions. Roast some veggies for the size, and it's great for a busy weeknight. I've also found meatballs to be excellent with sauce, so I freeze it as well and then just have to boil noodles.</comment>


Why is the US taxing expats 39.6% who are living abroad? - <AUTHOR>

Why are the US and Eritrea the only countries in the world taxing expats living abroad? Although 39.6% is the top federal tax rate that expat Americans have to pay, I am still genuinely curious.<p>I knew about this from an American friend who has been living abroad for many years. But while reading http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-17/appalling-practice-used-only-two-nations-which-us-one I started getting seriously curious of why the US (and Eritrea) has this policy and the rest of the world does not. <comment><USER2> I can tell you the justifications I've heard. They include

\- it's a sort of insurance, in case things go sour and the US needs to rescue its citizens from a war zone / plague / etc.

\- it pays for overseas embassy operations for citizens living overseas, including registration of overseas births and renewal of a passport while overseas

\- it's the price to pay for having one of the most widely accepted passports

\- Americans living overseas were educated in the US, by the US taxpayers, so they shouldn't have the right to steal all that free education and live somewhere else.

\- Paying taxes is quite simply an obligation of citizenship.

None of these (except the last) make sense to me, and feel instead like post- hoc justification. For example, if the first couple were true then we would also be charging overseas tourists for their trips abroad, should they need to be rescued.

For another example, if you are born in the UK, though with a US mother, then by US law you are a US citizen, and consequently are subject to US taxes - even if you have never stepped foot in the US. Yet the UK passport is more widely accepted (visa-free) than the US passport, and the US paid for none of your education.

(Should someone in that not-that-hypothetical case want to get rid of US citizenship, the renunciation fee is currently $2350, and likely subject to an exit tax unless that person had been reporting/paying taxes the previous 5 years.)</comment>


Ask HN: How are VCs doing this times? - <AUTHOR> We just started a company with very good prospects of being investible ( have product(s), have customers, B2B only ).
However with the current situation, we do not know what investors are doing, what are they looking for, or simply doing nothing and waiting for better times.
What are your experiences? Has any investor pulled the plug in investing? Have they put the process on hold?
Thank you for your precious info. <comment><USER2> There was an article posted earlier today that talked about problems that startups are currently facing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22750457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22750457)

A quote from that article:

> _Bill Gurley, an investor at the venture capital firm Benchmark, said that > over the past 10 years of the start-up boom, investors had taken on more and > more risk. That has changed, leaving many of the riskiest start-ups exposed.

> "'Risk on' happens slowly," he said. "'Risk off' happens overnight."_</comment>


Sunk: How Hollywood Lost the PR Battle Over SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/19/idUS398428468720120119

<comment><USER2> _Why didn't anyone call Will Ferrell and Adam McKay to post a hilarious, viral video that would make the point?_

I dunno, maybe someone tried, but they couldn't convince Ferrell and/or McKay to do such a self-defeating thing? That is, the article assumes that the MPAA has it's artists' best interests at heart, when it demonstrably doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was hoping for a Lonely Island SOPA/PIPA song ([http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2012/01/the-lonely-i...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2012/01/the-lonely-island-gets-off-its-boat-to-oppose-sopa.ars))</comment>


Show HN: Content Reporting as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.flagspam.com/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, not quite what I thought it would be. It's just a javascript widget that let's users report content to your own team.

I know that Facebook (and I assume the other big players) run teams (from what I read not excellently paid and without enough psychological support ) that actually review/filter objectionable content and I am guessing they're throwing their automatic detection systems at it as well.

Anyone aware of a company offering the actual filtering system AAS ?

<comment><USER3> Not a company, but I run [https://blogspam.net/](https://blogspam.net/) which is a real-time API for testing comment-submissions for spam.

It uses a bunch of (naive) rules to classify content, and also allows (re)training.</comment></comment>


Hiroshi Ishiguro: The Man Who Made a Copy of Himself - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/humanoids/hiroshi-ishiguro-the-man-who-made-a-copy-of-himself/0 <comment><USER2> The most interesting part of the article in my opinion:

 _Then a boy pokes the android's face. "Yahh, don't touch to my face," Ishiguro yells. The kids laugh. But what just happened was quite profound. Ishiguro says that when the kid poked the robot's face, he felt a tingle on his cheek—even though nothing was attached to his face. For an instant, Ishiguro's brain mistook his body for another—in Austria. Ishiguro has experienced this many times in different settings, all with the same result: He feels as though the touch were real. He believes the phenomenon stems in part from observing the synchronization of the android's head and lips with his own. When Ishiguro uses the Geminoid, he sees video from external cameras that show the robot's field of view and also its face. Because he is watching the robot's lips move as he speaks and seeing its head move when he turns his own neck, Ishiguro's brain starts to treat the robot as an extension of his own body._

<comment><USER3> This is an amazingly easy illusion to experience. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mind/note_nf6.html> and [http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/08/induced_outofbody_.htm...](http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/08/induced_outofbody_.html) describe three experiments you can set up yielding similar effects.

<comment><USER4> The illusions you linked to are different from the one Mr. Ishiguro describes. In those illusions, the person is actually being touched at the same time as seeing something being touched. In Mr. Ishiguro's case, he wasn't being touched at all, he only saw the touch happen.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I forgot to double-check the specific links I posted. There is another step which they left out. I'll just describe the whole thing:

1\. Hide your hand from yourself.

2\. Have a friend tap/stroke your hidden hand and some other object that you can see. Use a synchronized, but arrhythmic pattern. Any object will do, even the surface of a table.

3\. After 30 seconds to 1 minute, your brain will "connect" the object to the neural impulses. Now the friend should hit the object (but not your hand!) really hard. Your hand will feel tingly! There is a paper I can't find right now which documents that skin conductance actually changes, as if responding to being hit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see how the animation/film industry has approached the uncanny valley not by crossing it, but by avoiding it altogether. One of the reasons I love the movie WALL-E is that Pixar has imbued WALL-E (the robot) with so many human nuances and characteristics that you empathize with him quite quickly, even though he looks nothing like a person.

There are very few animated television shows/films that I can think of that attempt to depict humans with as much realism as possible. The ones that have tried (off the top my head, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within comes to mind) still have unconvincing depictions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a video of the robot in action. Definitely impressive but squarely in the uncanny valley <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAO_DTeoVm8>

</comment><comment><USER7> This is still my favorite robot: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww>

</comment><comment><USER8> I, for one, welcome our new android-porn overlords.</comment>


Yes, climate change is intensifying Australia's fires - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615000/yes-climate-change-is-intensifying-australias-fires/ <comment><USER2> The climate is ever changing.

Is it possible it is the driest year on record for reasons outside of human impact?

Do we understand weather patterns enough to be confident in the conclusions?

Could the driest year on record be a random event?

This author seems to be reaching a conclusion first, then finding data to support that conclusion. Any time there is a superlative, we can conveniently apply the climate change label to it.

How about some humility?

I try to take these in good faith, but the author's bio descriptions and stated employment at left leaning organizations are also reasons I approach this with skepticism.</comment>


Free distributed crawling and scraping with multiple Tor circuits - <AUTHOR> http://blog.databigbang.com/distributed-scraping-with-multiple-tor-circuits/

<comment><AUTHOR> Free and practical solution to fetch web pages from different IPs.</comment>


Participate in the "Internet Slowdown" with One Click - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/participate-in-the-internet-slowdown-with-one-click/

<comment><USER2> Links wrong. Go to: [http://blog.cloudflare.com/participate-in-the-internet- slowd...](http://blog.cloudflare.com/participate-in-the-internet-slowdown- with-one-click)</comment>


When Management Misdirects Employees (response to Ben Horowitz) - <AUTHOR> http://launch.is/blog/when-management-misdirects-employees-my-response-to-ben-horo.html

<comment><USER2> This is a very important lesson for business people to learn. Employees will respond to incentives. For better or worse. Choose your incentives wisely.</comment>


Introducing a simpler blog commenting system - <AUTHOR> http://jprim.com/introducing-a-simpler-blog-commenting-system/ I decided to come up with a completely custom commenting system that is a super fast, simple and auth-free way to collect all the data needed. The solution – a wordpress twitter hybrid commenting system. <comment><USER2> While I agree with the simple goal and spirit of this, it is irresponsible to not provide authorization when it would be trivial to implement. I wonder if the author would be so nonchalant about it if someone posted damaging comments using his name (and photo) over a few hundred blogs?</comment>


UseTheSource: a job board for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2011/06/usethesource-job-board-for-hackers.html

<comment><USER2> How are filled/cancelled jobs handled?

What is the planned intention for an upvote? Is it (1)I'm interested, (2)I applied, or (3) just keeping it ambiguous for now/undecided.

How are you finding/tweaking the ranking function? Most posters will probably not try to game significant support, but could for an additional one or two votes to gain a relative advantage. I imagine potential applicants will scan the whole list anyways, but did you consider a solely time-based ranking with no voting -- what HN seems to do for YC job postings currently?

EDIT: For example, I noticed someone submitted < 1 minute ago with a default score of 1. The posting, although submitted most recent, is ranked last and is on the second page.

Also, there are a couple times where a single company is posting separately for each position instead of consolidating to one thread. Is there any concern about a top-tier tech company owning most of the first page with many different postings? My apologies if these questions are a little premature -- perhaps we need a "Feature Requests" thread.

<comment><USER3> These are all really good, useful questions. Charlief, can I get your feedback the next time I launch something?

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. I love digging and brainstorming, although I am sure there are many people who are much more experienced/talented on <http://hnofficehours.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please add a whole separate category for remote jobs. When remote jobs aren't separated it's too much effort for remote job seekers to filter through to find them. Basically every job board ever invented fails at this.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a flag for filtering? I think most places that hire remote employees also hire local ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh man I'd love to try this right now, I've got an interesting opportunity. Not being an HN company I've always wanted a way to access the crowd here for recruiting purposes.

Unfortunately I am at only 454 karma. Either I need to be a karma whore or get an exception from you. Crossing my fingers... :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You should be able to use it since you've been a member here for more than a year.

<comment><USER6> Oof I cannot read. Moving a bit too fast this morning. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this intended to include contract work / freelance projects, or only jobs in the traditional sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy for freelance/contract work to be there as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great.

I hope Tokyo startups start posting; they seldom come up in the "Who's hiring" threads.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are you concerned about using an old news.arc, with its somewhat-easy-to-steal auth token?

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you talking about the timing based attack or the cookie in vote URL?

<comment><USER9> No, about using the user identification cookie value as the "auth" parameter for voting. <http://xach.livejournal.com/228481.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll fix that myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guys, i know most people will be aware of this, but since its forcing the same username as HN, please choose a DIFFERENT password.

</comment><comment><USER11> I managed to submit one posting without the magic string in place in my profile, but I needed it the second time.

I'm reporting this here in case it's a bug. ;)

Thanks for building this. I hope it proves useful to everyone.

<comment><USER12> I fear this website will be forgotten after a few days.

It may have a chance if people keep posting links to jobs there on their profiles or relevant comment threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Direct link: <http://jobs.usethesource.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER14> Probably not the best place to ask, but if time permits can we have the original UseTheSource please. For a brief moment the title gladdened my heart as I thought UseTheSource is up again. The stories there were fascinating to read.

EDIT: Meant the board where one contributed interesting articles about pieces of code. We really dont have many of those. I am sure maintaining it is painful, so only if time permits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean the original circa-1999 UseTheSource which was my original blog, or the reboot as a sort of StackOverflow?

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure he means the reboot, but I would enjoy seeing both. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a real shame the code focused HN didn't take off :-(

</comment><comment><USER17> I mentioned this in the previous thread but if you want this to stick around you might want to get a link to this put in the monthly whoishiring threads. Those should also be scraped for seed data to get this thing rolling.

</comment><comment><USER18> Any chance of adding a 'save' feature? I clicked through from your blog to the board, saw an interesting job or two, and now I either have to email myself the links, or hope I remember when I get home from work.

Reddit has a nice little link below every post that says 'save'. Click it and that post goes into a page of saved links [0] I can skim through when I get home. It'd be nice if you had this too.

[0] <http://www.reddit.com/saved/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I love the idea, but doesn't HN make its money from the job listings on the front page? If this gains traction HN might have to figure out other ways to monetize.

<comment><USER20> Why was this downvoted? Although I don't think that PG has any need to monetize HN, he's said that 'job listings are the ads here'. I assumed that meant they brought in revenue that helped cover the cost of running HN.

<comment><USER21> I think the ads here are only YC-funded companies, and so they're just a way to promote his investments, rather than a way to charge companies to list here.

<comment><USER19> Ahh gotchya. For some reason I thought there was a rule against posting jobs as submissions on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, I made a typo in my job post, and I can't edit it. Now I must shame myself in front of the community. Woe is me.

Any chance we can edit the title later?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am curious of its success rate. Of those of you who have posted, have you heard from any candidates yet?

I posted 4 hours ago and have had no replies yet. While I don't expect to receive any responses this quickly, I am curious what other people are experiencing.

</comment><comment><USER24>
      > 2. Have a Hacker News karma of greater than 500 or
      > have been a user for more than 1 year

I predict that this filter will only last a year from the time that it takes recruiters/etc to notice it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sorry to be the security weenie, but any chance we can get HTTPS for the login POST?

</comment><comment><USER26> Speaking of job boards, I kinda wish someone would build a scraper that scraped dice and/or monster and excluded all CyberCoders and other recruiters submissions. Is there anything like that out there?

<comment><USER27> Most job boards provide XML feeds to aggregators/search engines, so you don't even need to scrape it. Filtering out recruiters is the tricky part, how would you do it ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The magic string should be 8e6eb25da4d3731a6583b81fb39977299bf5475a ;-).

<comment><USER29> I don't get the reference, and google doesn't help.

<comment><USER28> The magic code from the linked post is sha1 for "usethesource\n", the one I gave is for the same string without the trailing "\n" (which is here probably due to a `echo usethesource | sha1sum` instead of `echo -n ...`).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2660737>

</comment><comment><USER30> Very nice job. Once I hit 500 karma or my account is a year old, I might be able to get some use out of this. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> No point having the magic string polluting your profile here for the time being. You only need it the first time you submit.

<comment><USER31> Nitpick mode:

Beyond "pollution", the magic string is subject to race conditions. If someone puts it in the profile, and then waits a while to register, anyone could claim that username.

Sure, it's a somewhat unlikely scenario...but pretty easy to exploit if someone forgets they have the magic string in their profile but haven't yet registered. A unique magic string per-user would be the solution to that.

<comment><USER32> Not really, it's public. If someone wants your username, they can just look at the magic string in your profile and register it if you haven't.

<comment><USER31> That's true, but Google can find profiles with the magic string, and one could even go so far as script finding the names that haven't been registered. A unique magic string, only generated _during_ account creation, at least means you have to crawl HN yourself, and pull out those strings via some regex (which could be thwarted by making the magic string unpredictable in length and format), and do so in a very small period of time.

I'm sure it's not really likely that any of those scenarios would happen...but it seemed an odd bit of security theater, which could at least be made a bit more secure by adding a dose of randomness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Thank you for putting this together!

It's dead simple to use, and hits a great niche market.

</comment><comment><USER34> Would it be possible to add jobs location in the RSS feed?

Thanks, a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER35> Just an aside, I absolutely hate serif fonts on any text less than 20px in size.

Cool idea though. Can't help but think it's been tried before but sites like <http://hnhackers.com>, etc.

<comment><USER7> > _I absolutely hate serif fonts on any text less than 20px in size._

<https://www.readability.com/>

<comment><USER35> I'm pretty sure on computer monitors, sans-serif produces better readability, but on paper it's the opposite.

"Numerous studies have been done on the readability of serif vs. sans serif typefaces. Studies indicate that serif typefaces may be more readable in print. Studies of on-screen use are more ambiguous, suggesting that low screen resolutions make serifs more difficult to discern, with a resulting erosion of readability compared to sans serif fonts." -Wiki, so feel free to cite a better source.

<comment><USER7> "Readability" (linked above) is an app that allows you pick your own fonts on the web.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists create 'sewer to brewer' machine that turns pee into beverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3708852/Belgian-scientists-make-novel-water-urine-machine.html <comment><USER2> Why do you need a machine for that? What happened to plain amaroli?</comment>


Many books aren't fact-checked, and we're realizing they're full of errors - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness <comment><AUTHOR> Thought this article was interesting in the context of the replication crisis and issues with peer reviewed journals.

Books from experts tend to carry a lot of authority but fact checking is not something that most publishers do.</comment>


Sxript: Arbitrary-precision math and programming environment - <AUTHOR> http://people.umass.edu/wfbarnes/STxAxTICMathWriteup.html

<comment><USER2> How am I supposed to pronounce the name?

<comment><USER3> 'Toothgnip'. (Incidentally, if you don't like 'Sxript', then you'll just love the 'STxAxTIC' library apparently underlying it.)</comment></comment>


Charging (a lot) for news online: The Newport Daily News - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/charging-a-lot-for-news-online-the-newport-daily-news-new-experiment-with-paid-content/ <comment><USER2> Send 3 guys, a Django hacker, a reporter and a business guy to that town. Get credentialed.

Hacker sets up a blog and a GiantBomb.com-style structured wiki of every person, place, thing, story and issue in town. They now have the speed advantage and own local search. He also cooks up a self-serve, stupid-simple advertising system that works just like Facebook's original Flyer program. $15 bucks to run a flyer for the day. $50 for the week.

Reporter covers local meetings and businesses and recruits citizens to contribute to a town hall blog. The goal is not so much to get pageviews off the citizen blog, but to show the community that the cool people are all on board.

Business guy meets every small business owner in town, organizes weekly reader meetups, handles sponsorship sales.

In three months, they could position themselves as THE web site for the community. Then it's a matter of selling monthly sponsorships at $300/month to local businesses and professionals who want a seat at the town's front page. You sell 40 of those and you're making $160,000/year. Add on another $20-30k in flyer sales.

Meanwhile, the biz-dev guy cuts a deal with a few regional outlets to syndicate their content to them and with a few local businesses to host sponsored blogs for them.

And 1-2 times a year they throw a must-attend event and make a profit off ticket sales.

There's probably a bit of a ceiling to an approach like this, but the right three guys could more or less call the shots in their community once they get up and running.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Want home delivery of the print paper? That's $145 a year. Want home delivery and online access? That's $245. And if you want just online access — to an electronic edition that duplicates the appearance of the print product — it's a whopping $345._

So it costs me $100 more p/a to _not_ get the dead trees delivered to my door 6 times a week? I read the article three times to make sure I wasn't the one smoking crack.

<comment><USER4> Better ad rates on paper?

<comment><USER3> I assume so, but I really wonder how they expect to sell this to their customers (apart from a few emigres with intense ties to their place of origin). That their online subscriber visits have dropped by 66% even before the paywall goes live isn't encouraging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting business model. It may work for very small newspapers because they have a lock on the niche, but I don't see this model working for larger newspapers. I'm pretty media company agnostic when it comes to news (except for the economist).

</comment><comment><USER6> Well isn't this a great business model for someone without competition.

</comment><comment><USER7> This sounds backwards to me. Newspapers are dying because news is commoditized. Having an inferior product will NOT help these people compete with the free guys.</comment>


CS-838: Virtualization - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Classes/838/Spring2013/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why this is on the front page. Remzi is a great teacher, and the papers cover the historic approaches used to get to where we are now, but most readers will probably find a summary and survey to be a more pertinent and efficient use of time.

I learned the art of scientific reasoning by repeating historic physics experiments, but you don't need to know about the ideal shape of water clocks to use a stopwatch

</comment><comment><USER3> Spring 2013

</comment><comment><USER4> virt <ring1>>>><ring0> exclude else refuse solicitation.</comment>


Failure is familiar, safety is suprising - <AUTHOR> https://ryanfrantz.com/posts/failure-is-familiar-safety-is-surprising.html <comment><USER2> I guess you could say that a successfully running system quickly gets taken from granted, but that systems that fail are more salient.¹

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_\(neuroscience\))</comment>


Ten Year Futures - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/4/24/ten-year-futures <comment><USER2> Swords and shields.

People can't really see it yet, partially due to a unwillingness to see the darker side of humanity, but a real cyber security expert is worth more than a cruise missile.

Planes, self-driving cars, swarms of aerial and underwater drones, fraud, propaganda, auto-targeting laser systems, surveillance, power generation and distribution, command and control interruption, machine learning + cyber warfare.

Who needs nuclear weapons when you have a zero day on a hundred million self- driving cars and you can get them to the nearest gas station or chemical plant going 300km/h?

<comment><USER3> I wish the present was a little less obsessed with having everything Internet- connected. I don't want an Internet connection on my self-driving car, or at least have an air gap between the user functions and the car's driving computer. But that won't happen because the company will be more worried about being able to push updates than about security.

To be fair I guess even with a non-connected car that I have to update via USB, I could still download a malicious update. But at least we won't all get the malicious update pushed at once.

<comment><USER4> All I see is praise for Tesla on HN. I rarely see sentiments like "Tesla makes great cars, but I just wish their ECU and other critical systems wasn't internet connected" or "I refuse to buy any Tesla products until they remove the constant user tracking".

People vote with their wallets, and if the technology-savvy and privacy- conscious HN crowd is voting this way then...

<comment><USER5> .. nothing changes. We are too small of a group, even as influencers to change that.

However, if someday a zeroday is used to duke it out, a very angry, very unreasonable, not interested PR-Bla and Excuses crowd is going to assemble outside someones office tower. The someone will call the police, but the police will be busy, with the mess someones ECU peeping has made. The privat guards will do what private guards always do, if they see no good outcome for themselves and step aside. The escape helicopter pilot will have lost loved ones in the mess and take off. Someone is going to get shoved out the airlock, for all the other someones to see. That will have a interesting learning effect. Thus ended the lesson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a community with so many members that pride themselves on contrarian views, why is this view on autonomous vehicles and more broadly, incredibly powerful AI that is just around the corner so broadly accepted?

<comment><USER7> A number of us live in Silicon Valley or work daily with AI. These aren't science fiction technologies for us: they're, real, tangible cars that you see daily on the roads, or software libraries that you can download and use yourself. I can understand why they'd seem like fantasy if you live in some far-off place, but when you're stuck behind a self-driving car going 25 mph on El Camino, there's pretty concrete evidence that self-driving cars are here.

I do think that AI and particularly deep learning are overhyped. It _is_ a big deal, but it's not as big a deal as many people make it out to be. It's much like the Internet in 1998; it _works_ , you can use it now, and you know that it's going to drastically increase the reach of computing power, but people are talking like that's all going to happen in 1-2 years when really it'll be 2-3 decades.

<comment><USER6> I guess my concern isn't that these are "science fiction technologies" but that they're rather simple. AI has a history of over-promising and under- delivering and even if a few "self-driving" cars have made it on the road, how long until people begin trying to use them in scenarios they're not really ready for? All of that progress can disappear overnight if there are a few bad accidents.

I guess when I look around, I don't see a comparison between AI now and the Internet then, I see a comparison between AI now and AI then (70's).

<comment><USER7> AI has this effect where whenever an approach starts working, it ceases to be AI:

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

It's worth remembering that many of the actual technologies developed in 1970s AI - A*, beam search, pattern matching, constraint solving, rules engines - are now basic CS algorithms that most programmers are just expected to know, and they have continued applicability to a wide variety of domains. We just don't call them "AI" anymore, because the technology has been commoditized enough that they are "business rules", or "single-player games", or "layout engines", or other examples of the actual problem domain that's solved.

Ditto 1990s AI - fuzzy logic, SVMs, Bayesian networks, collaborative filtering, perceptrons. It just got good enough that it became the standard way you solve a certain class of problems with computers, and now it's called "fraud detection", "Zestimates (tm)", "recommendation engines", "stream ranking", and so on.

Deep learning is the same. The hype cycle will eventually bust, because all hype cycles eventually bust. But in the meantime, it has opened up whole classes of problems in computer vision, speech recognition, recommendation, machine translation, and several other domains that were not amenable to computerized treatment before.

<comment><USER6> I guess that's sort of my point though isn't it? A _, SVMs, etc. aren 't really called AI because they're not. Because AI carries a connotation and once you understand A_ it's obvious that it's not really AI. Won't the same be true of today's neural networks? Granted they've been given a name which should add some longevity but when a layperson thinks "AI" they think a robot which acts like a human, they think AGI. If someone had an AI algorithm which could start to demonstrate more AGI leanings I bet the AI effect wouldn't apply.

<comment><USER8> When cars came out they killed quite a number of people in accidents and mechanical failures. They were just so much better than horses we kept on improving them.

That's how I see AI. People will surely get injures and even die in Accidents. We are a humanist society where human life is valued above everything else, so I'm very optimistic that AI will get better and give their humans more divine powers and longer life over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or of course, things could take an altogether different turn. I remember when GPS was introduced in 96 for civilians and no one could have predicted Uber at that time, though all the pieces were there. BE does a great job of synthesizing possible directions from what's available to him in albeit a really good position at a16z. However, there are many people out there quietly building technology that changes the game completely. Making affordable graphene is one such unknown at this point.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, in 2001 (eight years before Uber):

 _Basically WebTaxi works well with people having wireless web access from PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). Imagine a scenario where you are sitting in a restaurant and you need a Taxi service. You go to the WebTaxi website and request a Taxi to your home. WebTaxi comes back and tells you exactly how much it will cost you. It can even tell you how long you will have to wait for the taxi. You continue to chat while you wait for the taxi to show up. As soon as the taxi arrives, your PDA informs you that the taxi is waiting for you!_

[https://web.archive.org/web/20010127103500/http://www.eventh...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010127103500/http://www.eventhelix.com:80/ThoughtProjects/WebTaxi/WebTaxiIntroduction.htm)

<comment><USER9> good argument that all internet businesses were invented in the late 90s bubble. nearly all were too early.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 53% of US jobs look automatable within 20 years.[1] There will be a much larger underclass in a decade.

But they'll have legal pot to keep them quiet and passive.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/the- par...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/the-parts-of- america-most-susceptible-to-automation/525168/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER12> Or they'll do better jobs. At one point, 70% of US workforce was engaged in agriculture, now it is 1%. The 69% didn't become an unemployed underclass.

<comment><USER13> > Or they'll do better jobs. [...] The 69% didn't become an unemployed > underclass.

No, they moved into factory, mining, retail, and other jobs that were commensurate with their abilities. The automation shift is not the same, because it will take over _all_ the unskilled/low-skilled jobs, and there will be nowhere in the economy for the displaced people to move into.

It is not really conceivable that all these people are capable of taking on jobs which require complex thinking, judgment, creativity, or other higher skills. IQ is a real thing, and although it does not reflect on someone's human value, it does very definitely place limits on what functions a significant portion of the population can perform. And in the long run, we will all be in that displaced portion. Best that we find ways to create human security and meaning, now, for a coming world in which we have no necessary economic role to play.

<comment><USER14> >The automation shift is not the same, because it will take over all the unskilled/low-skilled jobs, and there will be nowhere in the economy for the displaced people to move into. It is not really conceivable that all these people are capable of taking on jobs which require complex thinking, judgment, creativity, or other higher skills.

There are plenty of "low-skill" jobs that nonetheless require human labor in some form because of the ability of humans -- even less intellectual humans -- to think creatively and contort themselves both mentally and physically.

Imagine a robot that does everything a school janitor can do. That simply won't exist in the near future. Sure, maybe the janitor won't have to mop large floors anymore. But there's plenty of other work to be done around a school nearly always to continue to justify their employment.

<comment><USER13> I suppose it depends on what you think of as "near future", but I - and I have no special insight, for the record, just speaking as an outside observer - would put around 75% probability of a robot that can wholly replace a janitor existing in 15 years, and 95% in 20.

In terms of time needed to politically and socially prepare for that situation, 20 years feels really near term to me. I don't really expect our existing political structures and processes are capable of dealing with the challenge adequately in time. It's one of my top three fears for the <30 year future. And unfortunately the other two (global displacements from climate change, and bio-/nuclear-terrorism by desperate or angry people/groups) are synergistic with it. If it weren't for my normalcy bias, I'd be kind of terrified.

<comment><USER11> More likely, instead of 10 janitors, you'll have one janitor and a dozen robot cleaning machines.

<comment><USER13> > More likely, instead of 10 janitors, you'll have one janitor and a dozen > robot cleaning machines.

For how long, though? Is there any reason to think that will be anything besides a transitional stage before the robots entirely phase out the human?

<comment><USER15> Hoooomans are cheap and trainable - they will get directed by the AI to serve the robots' needs. See "MANNA" [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think he missed the point about TV ad budget not moving to the likes of Netflix or Amazon. The reason it hasn't moved is not because the audience is limited but because the companies in question don't want to pollute their viewers' experience with Ads. Compare that to YouTube which is free and does have Ads.

Viewing habits are shifting but so is public opinion on Ads. The future of Ads on these internet TV sites is going to be the same as it was for traditional TV albeit a bit more targeted. Instead of TV networks controlling the viewing data in the future internet TV services will control it.

so the potential of a startup to take advantage of that data is going to be minimal since it will be guarded like gold.

<comment><USER17> Some Web sites will have enough data to do some unique and especially effective ad targeting, due to data and targeting math, for their own users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I realize mentioning Bitcoin in a tech forum feels gauche in 2017...

Having said that, it's strange that this guy doesn't mention cryptocurrency anywhere in his post.

He spends a lot of time discussing technologies that aren't quite there yet, and leaves out the one area that is (likely) right at the point of adoption.

<comment><USER19> I was thinking the same thing while reading through this essay. I know the firm he works for (A16Z) is investing in the cryptocurrency area and even just did a podcast[0] on it.

[0] [http://a16z.com/2017/04/03/cryptocurrencies-protocols- appcoi...](http://a16z.com/2017/04/03/cryptocurrencies-protocols-appcoins/)

<comment><USER18> Regardless of his opinion, he probably should have added a one-liner as to why it he didn't think it relevant. Otherwise he leaves the reader wondering did he forget? or not think it will have impact? or feel it's outside the scope of what he''s discussing? Regardless, it was an interesting read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the rise of machine learning, graphene, high performance electric engines and metallic hydrogen will finally allow a reusable vehicle to go into space, something like the Skylon [1].

The reason why I bring this up, as being important in 10 years or less. Is that it will be available for around $1m.

AI will negate the need to go through rigorous astronaut training. Maybe there will be some, but not as thorough.

Graphene and other exotic metals will allow for lighter craft and reusability.

High performance electric engines will allow for less fuel payloads to get into high altitude, whilst allowing for the metallic hydrogen to literally blast out into space. Metallic hydrogen is 7x more powerful than liquid hydrogen.

I think once average joe is able to get into space. We could finally see an abundance of rare earth materials. Could be like the old west, where a co-op of you and your buddies go out, wrangle an asteroid and mine. Come back with a trillion dollars worth of metals.

Of course, a glut of anything will bring prices down. But hopefully by then manufacturing is ubiquitous also.

Maybe it's the optimist in me, but there are certain historical events that could take our society from where it is now, scarcity based, to an abundant one.

Interesting times ahead.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_\(spacecraft\))

<comment><USER21> Graphene is interesting I was working on synthesizing it for my undergrad thesis in Materials Engineering in 2010 (back then we were looking at using it in Li-Ion batteries).

Personally I feel we are still more than 10 years away from mass applications. I'm happy to be proven wrong though.

Thinking from a Materials POV in the next 10 years I think 3D printing (additive manufacturing) is an area where large advances will occur. New applications for 3D printed materials and wider adoption of 3d printing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't think we know where AI driven cars will lead.

no parking lots? If we have AI driven cars than billions of people who can't drive can suddenly use a car. Your 5yr old kid wants to visit grandma? The just ask the car to take them there. Grandma who's too old to drive wants to go somewhere? She jumps in an AI car. All that public transportation in Tokyo, HK, Singapore, NYC, London, Paris, Berlin? Maybe all that disappears. Maybe many people stay close to home because they don't have a car and public transportation is no fun (10 minute walk to station, 2-3 transfers, possibly a crowded train standing with sweating people, 10 minute walk from station to final dest) but if there are ubiquitous AI cars then I can go door to door at any time. Those two 10 minute walks disappear, the standing with sweaty people disappears. Now I start traveling far more often. Even better I don't have to concentrate on driving I can use that time.

In other words, AI cars might 10x car usage

<comment><USER23> Public transport will continue to exist because it'd too expensive to build enough roads. London without Bus & Tube? You could walk faster than using a self driving car (recent tube strikes confirm that).

It would hurt medium distance flights and trains though. Boston-NYC would probably be more attractive in a self driving car than flying.

<comment><USER22> AI cars are supposed to solve traffic. That assumes all cars are AI cars but that's certainly one possible future (30-50yrs out). I'm sure someone thought horses would still be a thing when cars were introduced. I think it will go the same with AI cars. People will find the convenience too hard to resist and and some point I suspect human drivers will be relegated to race tracks and country roads

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Excellent questions regarding autonomous vehicles. Instead of a city center being two hours away at rush hour, it could be a half hour trip.

But also living in the city is going to get a lot easier because of robotic transportation. It won't be necessary to haul anything home from a store, for example. A lot of cabs could just have one or two seats and no trunk.

We'll see tiny vehicles delivering dinner, handling dry cleaning. And parking woes disappear.

But the biggest change will be in how easy it will be to move from one place to another. Yes, robots will be able to move all your stuff cheaply. But they also might just procure comparable stuff in your new city instead. And most of your stuff you don't use all the time, so maybe it's in long term remote/cheap storage until you do. Maybe its okay if those table leafs are at your house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Maybe you move every month or live in one place during the week and another on the weekends.

<comment><USER25> This sounds good in theory because it correlates with trends in the IT industry. Centralized compute/storage/app delivery on an IaaS but in the real world, with our actual physical stuff instead of data. In practice I'd wager that this lifestyle of moving constantly and having robots move your stuff around for you would be prohibitively expensive. Also, who wants to containerize their life? How could this ever be sustainable for someone with kids.

I think we should be less focused on autonomous driving, and more focused on reforming our tax code, infrastructure spend (too little), and healthcare spend (too much).

<comment><USER24> I know a guy that travels constantly and has no permanent address. And there are a few families that spend years on the road because they want to teach their kids that life is an adventure.

They haven't found it prohibitively expensive or unsustainable. It's worth it to them. Making that lifestyle cheaper and easier will expand the number of people for whom that is true.

Automation, as it has always done, will make our infrastructure cheaper and more robust. It will slash the cost of healthcare and dramatically increase the amount of resources we have available and our quality of life.

So, no, I don't think we should focus more on nibbling around the edges of what is possible. Those things can all be fixed, but that takes political will and convincing the majority of people. And most of them are stuck in the analogies of the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Higher ed should see the most impressive shift of all in the next 10 years. Right now, it seems like everyone realizes there is a problem, but nobody can see the future.

Student loans are driven by massive inefficiencies that various companies will exploit. The end will be apparent in 10 years.

<comment><USER27> For the US thats true, as a german who can basically study for free at any of the "elite" Universities in the country (same for scandinavia, netherlands etc) the whole higher ed concept in the US seems borderline scam to me anyway.

<comment><USER28> ...not implying that you meant otherwise, but:

The German "elite" label does not mean anything at all. It's basically a government program to allocate (a small amount of) additional funds decorated with a fancy term.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Universities_Excellence...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Universities_Excellence_Initiative)

<comment><USER27> Well yes, but all of them are among the most highly regarded Universities in the country, while there are others without the label that are equally good. I just wanted to emphasise that the quality you can get for "free" is really good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not the main point of the article, but pretty interesting to see that Google's ad revenue is now apparently about equal to advertising revenue from all print media in the world combined.

</comment><comment><USER29> "mobile is maturing and its growth is slowing"...yes, somewhat on the hardware side. There are still annual sales of maybe 1 billion smartphones a year...so that's a pretty big market.

I think that there's still ENORMOUS potential for mobile apps and mobile- driven services. There's huge opportunity for new services e.g. Uber. I think just about every large web/desktop property faces a significant threat from a mobile app e.g. craigslist, match.com (they luckily own tinder), flickr (wait, already gone to Instragam), AIM/Yahoo Messenger (gone thanks to Whatsapp), etc...

<comment><USER11> The top 10 apps are now all from Facebook or Google. The average user now loads zero apps per month. Apps are dead.[1]

[1] [https://www.recode.net/2016/9/16/12933780/average-app- downlo...](https://www.recode.net/2016/9/16/12933780/average-app-downloads- per-month-comscore)

<comment><USER30> in addition, the users who don't have smartphones yet don't have very attractive demographics, and attention is saturated: [https://key2.bluematrix.com/docs/pdf/570bbc5f-526e-482f-90ac...](https://key2.bluematrix.com/docs/pdf/570bbc5f-526e-482f-90ac-c6ff2fd9fb29.pdf)

<comment><USER11> From that article: "U.S. users spend about 12 hours a day consuming media, which seems a relatively hard limit (up only 4% in the past five years)."

12 hours? Wow. TV maxed out at about 5 hours a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > TV, which so far has not really been touched by the internet,

uhhh, wasn't I reading pieces about how the internet was really shaking up TV about 5 years ago?

<comment><USER32> His point is that TV ad dollars haven't shrunk (look at the graph)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My view is:

(1) Software is well on the way to an old, slowly changing, mostly routine, boring, low margin, slow growth business and industry.

(2) That the general purpose computing hard/software and 100 Mbps Internet data rates are all so cheap will in places undercut large, expensive approaches to computing projects. E.g., people will do projects, but Sand Hill Road need not be more involved than they are now in, say, a new pizza shop in Peoria, not more involved than they were in the romantic matchmaking Web site Plenty of Fish.

(3) A huge problem for computing causing (1) is that there just are not enough good, new ideas for high value IT startups. For a joke, but a simple explanation, the days of a hot social, mobile, local sharing app are gone.

(4) For Evans's dreams about machine learning (ML), he is not very well informed and is not seeing very clearly, but in principle, if strain to extend the meaning of ML, he is correct about the potential. But in practice that future will come slowly, very slowly.

Why so slowly? In fact, e.g., looking at, say, scikit, that's basically some applied math, and nearly all the math there is now old enough to have long, gray whiskers, literally. That applied math and much more in optimization, simulation, experimental design and analysis of variance, stochastic processes, on and on, i.e., the _math sciences_ , optimization, operations research, statistics, except for a few niches (e.g., optimization in operating oil refineries, the fast Fourier transform for oil prospecting, partial differential equations for modeling oil reservoirs, air line crew scheduling, maybe airline plane scheduling, statistics in biomedical research and development) hasn't caught on at all well generally in business; so there is only tiny reason to believe it will become "The next big thing" now.

For that math, it's not so easy to get good at it: (A) The pure math departments don't want to teach it. (B) Very few other departments have enough grounding in the math prerequisites to teach the material very well. (C) Except for a few niches, business has long made its position crystal clear -- such applied math and a dime won't cover a 10 cent cup of coffee. (D) It has long been the case and still is that about the only paying customer that takes such applied math seriously is the US DoD for purposes of US national security.

Run a good applied math project down Sand Hill Road, for a big problem, with running prototype software, and will hear laughs, silence, or "don't call us; we'll call you". I have to doubt if there is a single information technology (biotechnology can be different) VC firm on Sand Hill Road able to direct technical due diligence for an applied math project.

There can't be "The next big thing" without a few hundred times more well qualified startup founder, worker bee, applied mathematicians to do the work.</comment>


How We Get Fat - <AUTHOR> http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.html/ <comment><USER2> (March 2010, and apparently not updated to reflect subsequent research.)

It's a bit ironic that Lyle misspelled _anecdote_.</comment>


Matched.io: women could live more simply by accepting male pronouns as default - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kotzendekrabbe/status/1290665892267921414 <comment><USER2> 1\. Part of the issue is a language barrier: Matched.io's team is primarily German according to LinkedIn. There seems to be some lack of linguistic nuance at work on the choice of words.

2\. Interestingly, German as a language is far more gendered than English, with gendered article and noun forms)

3\. "It would be easier if you just chill" is rarely a good answer to the representation of women in personal or professional arenas.</comment>


Computer Vision and Adversarial Images - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601955/machine-visions-achilles-heel-revealed-by-google-brain-researchers/ <comment><USER2> link to the paper.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.02533](http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.02533)

Their method more maximizing the cross entropy yields very peculiar results if you look at the images as the hyper-parameter iterations go up. It seems as if what we are seeing is some convolution with some peculiar form of noise. I wonder what the structure across these adversarial images looks like and whether it could provide some insight into certain patterns in cov net learning?</comment>


How a Startup Created the No. 1 Rated Mattress on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/05/how-a-startup-created-the-no-1-rated-mattress-on-amazon-com/

<comment><USER2> Has anyone here purchased one of these? If so, any insights on quality and comfort? They sure have some great prices.</comment>


MonitorControl: Control external monitor brightness and volume on your Mac - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl <comment><USER2> For a command-line option, ddcctl ([https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl](https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl)) works nicely in my experience, with a Dell Ultrasharp connected via USB-C.

I have a script hacked together to fetch the internal display's brightness once a minute and apply it, with a scaling factor, to the external, so that they're both effectively controlled by the laptop's ambient light sensor. It's really nice for working in a room with lots of windows.

A more batteries-included alternative, which appears to also provide brightness sync, is Lunar ([https://lunar.fyi/](https://lunar.fyi/)). I haven't had a chance to try it, but the Github repo makes it look pretty solid.

<comment><USER3> Could you share the script? I think lots of people would find it very useful!

<comment><USER2> No, but the only thing in it that isn't trivial or already discussed is the invocation for getting the internal display's current brightness values, which is this:

        ioreg -c AppleBacklightDisplay | grep brightness | cut -d= -f2- | perl -pe's@=@:@g'

(The cut and perl commands cause it to spit out a JSON blob, instead of the vaguely JSONish format ioreg gives you.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This works with my Caldigit dock and Dell monitors and I love it.

No one else in my house cares though.

<comment><USER5> "No one else in my house cares though." This is my favorite comment on hn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I didn't know this was even possible. It says the controls operate via DDC [1].

How do you know if your monitor, television, or project supports this? And does it depend on the connector used? (HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA?)

Does this work for most display peripherals, only newest/expensive ones, or something in between?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel)

<comment><USER7> It works for virtually all monitors on HDMI/DisplayPort/VGA. I guess not for TVs.

More specifically it is called MCCS: [https://milek7.pl/ddcbacklight/mccs.pdf](https://milek7.pl/ddcbacklight/mccs.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great codebase. I stumbled on this while trying to figure out how to programmatically control screen brightness in a macOS app. Turns out that this is far more difficult than imagined. Even controlling just the built-in screen, something I assumed would be included in Apple's libraries, was not included. The source code in MonitorControl is very well written and commented and helped me catch the mistakes I was doing in my very hacky solution.

<comment><USER9> Doing anything on macOS is more difficult than I imagine it to be. For example, writing an alt-tab-type app, enumerating the list of apps and their windows. Good luck.

<comment><USER10> I really would love something like rofi for macos

<comment><USER11> I think a combination of Alfred and Hammerspoon could get you most of the way there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have often wondered if you could exploit a monitor over the DDC bus sending i2c commands. There have just got to be memory corruption bugs in the display controller code.

They probably also typically have some flash memory, so perhaps one could permanently reprogram a monitor after the exploit?

<comment> blep-arsh Yes. Dell U2414 (afair) could be updated via DDC and the firmware could draw over the input image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love this thing. It only seems to work over DisplayPort cables for me. HDMI doesn't work. I'm using a MBP mid-2014.

Saved me from buying a new monitor or something silly like getting an iMac. Seriously weird why they don't just support DDD/CI natively.

<comment><USER14> It does work over USB-C on 2019/2020s

<comment><USER13> That's good to hear. If/when I get forced into a new MBP I can look forward to that working at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes I just wonder why does apple don't provide such a basic features/necessities.

<comment><USER16> If you have a touch bar it does, in my experience. Tap the brightness button to open up controls for each monitor.

<comment><USER17> I don't have a touchbar mac to test, but does it work with external _non- apple_ displays? Via Karabiner you can configure keys to change the external display brightness. Works great on a Thunderbolt Display. Completely ignores my Dell / LG.

The main reason why I think this wouldn't work is because in the display properties there's no brightness slider for non Apple external displays. There is one for Apple displays.

<comment><USER16> Yep, works with my external non-Apple display, LG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's software that does this on Windows too: [https://clickmonitorddc.bplaced.net/](https://clickmonitorddc.bplaced.net/)

<comment><USER19> Fantastic program. Not the nicest UI but very capable

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> On linux: `ddcutil setvcp 0x10 + <value>` to increase brightness (and - <value> to lower it). Ymmv.

<comment><USER7> Alternatively, you could use kernel module to expose it as standard backlight control: [https://milek7.pl/ddcbacklight/ddcci_bl.c](https://milek7.pl/ddcbacklight/ddcci_bl.c)

        insmod ddcci_bl.ko
        modprobe i2c-dev
        echo ddcci_bl 0x37 > /sys/bus/i2c/devices/i2c-2/new_device     (replace i2c-2 with bus number for your monitor)

<comment><USER21> Disabling Secure Boot so you can have control of your monitors seems very 2020.

<comment><USER17> That's not necessary. There is ddcci-dkms which can be built against the running kernel and signed as all the other modules. I use it on both Ubuntu (via shim + grub) and Arch (via direct boot).

This allows controlling the screen brightness from the usual places (gnome power menu thingy or via light for the i3 crowd). See the Arch Linux Wiki for more info [0].

Arch : ddcci-driver-linux-dkms (aur)

Ubuntu : ddcci-dkms

[0] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backlight#External_moni...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backlight#External_monitors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh wow great, I hope this works for me too! I have an LG 4K screen and the LG tool to change brightness and contrast is really terrible, it has some stupid built-in fake Picture in Picture mode which is constantly flashing red borders around the screen when you use it. And the UI is really bad and slow.

This little menubar control looks like just what I wanted.

Edit: Yes it works great! On my LG24UD58. Perfect! Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work with my Eizo L568 but that's ancient. And I think it had some special USB-based control method. But really glad to be able to get rid of the LG software now.

PS: You have to enable the contrast with a tickbox, otherwise that slider is not shown.

<comment><USER23> I use Brightness Sync ([https://github.com/OCJvanDijk/Brightness- Sync](https://github.com/OCJvanDijk/Brightness-Sync)) for my external LG 5K screen attached to my iMac.

The iMac light sensor controls the brightness of both monitors automatically. You can even insert a fixed offset to match the absolute brightness of both monitors.

<comment><USER22> Oh thanks as well!

But my Mac has no brightness sensor (it's a mini). I use the screen with my PC and a raspberry pi as well so I couldn't use an iMac, though I have one at the office (if I ever go back there...). It's really a shame they got rid of the target display function, this would have been perfect :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Worked over VGA with my DELL monitor and MacBook Air (both from 2012). Where has this been all my life!

I didn't even know it was a thing and thought there was a special chip in the Apple screens to be able to control your screen from your computer.

<comment><USER25> If this works for you, please also give Lunar[1] a try! It's free, and has a handy mode where it can sync your already adaptive built-in brightness to the external monitors.

I'm the developer of Lunar so feel free to ask any questions about it.

[1] [https://lunar.fyi](https://lunar.fyi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not if only someone could figure out how to make external monitors on mac actually work consistently. Macos still tends to not pick up the correct refresh rate or even the monitor itself.

</comment><comment><USER27> On Linux you can do the same with ddccontrol. I wrote an article last year explaining how I have my monitor automatically dim at night, in combination with Redshift:

[https://www.stackednotion.com/blog/2019/05/07/automatically-...](https://www.stackednotion.com/blog/2019/05/07/automatically- dimming-your-monitor-at-night/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I would love to be able to donate to continued development & support of this software - it's great! There doesn't appear to be a Patreon/tip jar but I'd love to contribute if there is one.

</comment><comment><USER29> This works great in my setup: MBP 15-Inch, 2018, macOS Catalina 10.15.5, Installed via Homebrew Cask, LG 34" 5k2k 34WK95U-W via Thunderbolt 3, Sonnet Echo 11 Thunderbolt 3 Dock, Dell U3417W 34" via HDMI via Echo 11 Dock. Volume and brightness work on both displays. Contrast only works on the Dell (after enabling in the preferences) - no big deal. I can adjust brightness on both displays at the same time via the keyboard... that is spectacular. Volume controls work as expected - finally!! Fantastic!!

</comment><comment><USER30> For those on Windows there's Twinkle Tray, works remarkably well. It has the ability to set timers, which I set to dim my monitor at night and increase the brightness during the day.

<comment><USER21> I have 2 Dell monitors and I haven't been able to get this to work either on the built-in Intel graphics or with HDMI plugged into an AMD card.

<comment><USER31> I just tried this with two Dell U2711s connected via DisplayPort to a USB-C adapter[0] and everything is working really well!

I have a laptop with a Ryzen 3 and a 1660ti, so it might be the Nvidia graphics that is enabling this.

[0] [https://smile.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Multiport- DisplayPort...](https://smile.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Multiport-DisplayPort- Ethernet/dp/B0746NKVBN/ref=asc_df_B0746NKVBN)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Happy to see this app mentioned on HN.

If you have Swift experience please check the issues of the repo. Need assistance with the identical monitors issue, it's there for two years already.

<comment><USER25> You could try Lunar[1] for that issue. It supports any number of monitors and contains a workaround that seems to also work with multiple identical monitors that can't be uniquely identified through their EDID data.

There are still some issues with some multiple port docks but so far that only turned out to be hardware related.

I'm the developer of Lunar so feel free to ask any questions about it.

[1] [https://lunar.fyi](https://lunar.fyi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://twinkletray.com/](https://twinkletray.com/)

Brilliant app that does the same for windows 10.

</comment><comment><USER34> There also is [https://github.com/Bensge/NativeDisplayBrightness/](https://github.com/Bensge/NativeDisplayBrightness/) (I use it on macOS 10.11 with an external Dell P2415Q, with Fn+F1 and Fn+F2)

</comment><comment><USER35> I use External Display Brightens app ([https://github.com/fnesveda/ExternalDisplayBrightness](https://github.com/fnesveda/ExternalDisplayBrightness)) and it seems to be easier to use

<comment><USER25> If you like keyboard shortcuts you might like to give Lunar[1] a try. It also has shortcuts for changing contrast and volume of the monitor as well as do that automatically for you based on the builtin monitor brightness or the sun elevation in your location.

[1] [https://lunar.fyi](https://lunar.fyi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> OMG, thank you so much danso and all the developers of this app! This is the biggest inconvenience and overall PITA docking my MBP, it annoys me constantly on a daily basis. just tried it out, it's like my prayers were answered!

</comment><comment><USER37> Might be useful to some: LG Ultrafine 4k/5k brightness can be controlled with the touch bar. Press the Brightness icon on the touch bar and two sliders show up, one for your mac and one for the LG.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm so annoyed my OS doesn't integrate with DDC :/

</comment><comment><USER39> I haven't had my office monitor in a while, but from what I remember, ctrl+brightness button would change the external screen's brightness.

This might not work with all monitors.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is too awesome! Adjusting the brightness of my monitor has been a pain especially at night since WFH. Does this work with dynamic lighting?

<comment><USER25> You could try Lunar[1] for that. It syncs your builtin monitor brightness to all your external monitors. As long as you have adaptive brightness enabled on your Macbook, the external monitors will also be adaptive.

[1] [https://lunar.fyi](https://lunar.fyi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> macOS should ship with this feature by default.

</comment><comment><USER42> Works great with my Iiyama ProLite 82888UHSU / MBP 15" late 2016 / CalDigit dock. Nice one!

</comment><comment><USER43> What are the keys anyway? I'm using a WASD Code Tenkeyless keyboard so only have F1 through F12.

</comment><comment><USER44> I dropped the author ten bucks as a thank you. This is exactly the program that I needed.

<comment><USER28> How? Trying to do the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone have trouble with their Macbook recognizing an external display? I have a new 2020 Macbook Pro and it struggles to recognize my Samsung display. I often have to reboot the Mac for it to be recognized.

<comment><USER46> I've got issues where macOS sees both monitors but won't send output to both every time I come out of sleep. Like one of the displays will turn on like it has signal, then hang for a second and go back to sleep, repeat. I use a program called disable monitor, which shows all the profiles for the display. For some reason when one doesn't connect it goes into the first profile for the resolution/refresh rate/color depth, then I manually select the third and it connects right away

<comment><USER17> I wonder wether there's some problem with the usb-c alternate modes and their implementations / drivers.

Below are a bunch of my experiences with this which shows that behaviours are all over the place which kind of excludes an outright broken OS or piece of equipment. To me it looks much more like a compatibility issue.

I don't own a usb-c mac, but I've never had any problems whatsoever with my 2013 retina, always works perfectly even with 4k@60Hz screens.

I have a desktop PC which exhibits the same kind of weird behaviour you have. It has a thunderbolt 3 / usb-c / dp connector which is downright awful.

I've managed to connect an Apple thunderbolt display to it with official tb2 -> tb3 adapter, it works well most of the time. Put the computer to sleep though and the screen never comes back on. Sometimes it doesn't detect the USB ports on it either. Mostly works if I force the thunderbolt mode to DisplayPort only in the bios.

I've next connected a regular usb-c monitor to it (DP alternate mode + usb2 for peripherals). Works great in bios. Mostly works on Linux. On windows it turns off when getting to the login screen. I don't know how, but I've managed to get it to work exactly once. When I turned the computer back on the next morning, it was again off on the windows login screen. The monitor IS detected, it shows up in the Display Preferences if I connect it to both usb-c and display port. It just won't turn on.

On Linux, it kinda works. I would say there's a 50/50 chance it won't detect it at 60 Hz. Sometimes, if it works at 60Hz, if the display goes to sleep it won't come back on at 60Hz. I guess at least there is _some_ output, so it's got that going over windows.

I found an option on the bios to enable "high speed display output". No idea what exactly that means, it didn't do anything.

This same screen works perfectly with a usb-c (no thunderbolt) laptop on linux. Never had any issue, always detected as 4k@60Hz.

The same monitor and same PC over DP: no problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Volume control is the killer feature for me.

</comment><comment><USER48> I believe that the difficulty of controlling external monitor brightness is a significant factor in almost all people running external displays too bright (often _much_ too bright). Because the standard software that comes out of the box doesn't let you adjust the brightness of external monitors in any operating system I know of, and adjusting brightness by pressing buttons on the monitor's on-screen display is invariably a pain.

Windows has two completely different APIs for adjusting screen brightness: one seems to only work on internal displays, the other seems to only work on external displays. I say "seems to" because they don't _document_ these facts, this is just what I observe by fiddling with the APIs. And only the first one is exposed anywhere in the UI: in Settings → System → Display (where you change the screen resolution and such) it lets you change the brightness of an internal display, but says something like "you can't adjust the brightness of this device" for external monitors.

Laptop brightness keys (what Linux calls XF86BrightnessUp and XF86BrightnessDown) can't be remapped by any means I know of. I don't know of any way of being notified when the internal display brightness changes, either. I _think_ you can poll the value, though it's three years since I prodded this stuff and my memory is vague. Even so, it'd always be a delayed reaction. Kinda wish I were back on my last laptop where I used Arch Linux + i3 and handled XF86Brightness{Up,Down} myself.

(That brings me to my second major annoyance about built-in monitor brightness control software: stepping by a linear 10% the whole way is stupid; something like a logarithmic scale is much more sensible. The difference between 1% and 10% is at least as important in low lighting as the difference between 10% and 50%. I wrapped xbacklight to make it logarithmic on Arch, but I can't do that on Windows, where the keys just jump by 10%. Similar deal with phone brightness, the difference two millimetres makes at the left end of the scale is more than the whole right hand half of the scale. Who on earth thought linear brightness was the right thing? Do they know _nothing_ about human perception of brightness? Why is this obviously-badly-wrong practice universally adopted?)

What would be rather nice would be the ability to calibrate internal and external displays to match, so that the brightness of connected external displays could match my internal monitor immediately, following my chosen curve.

As it is, I use ScreenBright and script it so I can do both my external displays at once. (Now, I could reimplement the needed functionality from the relevant API in a short time, but ScreenBright does the job so I don't bother.) I tend to type `b 20` in the mornings, sometimes `b 40` in the afternoons, and `b 0` in the evening. Seldom do I want to go past 40%. As I said, most people run their external monitors too bright, often _much_ too bright.

</comment><comment><USER49> Aw. I was expecting this would involve a phone app and a service you sign up for.

</comment><comment><USER50> did they disable this in OS X? Used to work fine for me, but I gave up buying $2,500 iPads after the keyboard debacle and ensuing 1984 treatment

<comment><USER51> DDC was afaik never officially supported, and whatever they did with the connection path means that there's enough reports of "crash whole OS trying to change brightness of display"</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cardtables.Online – Virtual Cardtables for Playing Cardgames Online - <AUTHOR> https://cardtables.online/?src=hn <comment><USER2> Very cool and it reminds me of Yahoo! Games back in the day. I also bought Tabletop Simulator on Steam for this purpose. Will give this a go when I reach home.</comment>