Show HN: Every Twitter and/or Facebook user has a public message board here - <AUTHOR> https://corkpage.com/ <comment><USER2> Hi there. Please delete my data from your "service". As a European, my data is subject to the EU's data protection directive as long as I'm acting as "Consumer".

You can chose to stay in Canada and I can't do anything but get a useless default judgement. Until you choose to travel to Europe, or to any country that has an extradition treaty with the EU, or CETA is implemented. But meanwhile I do get better-than-average interest :)

<comment><USER3> Exactly this. Sadly, this is not the first time that somebody is immorally trying to profit off of public profiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this looks like a great way to harass people. Now you can publicly post bad shit about people on their public page that they don't even know about, but anyone else who knows about it can now see it.

<comment><USER5> One can already harass people on other sites. I could post to 4chan saying bad shit about a person. Or create a page with bad shit about a person.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but none of that stuff is associated with the person. You badmouthing someone on a forum is simply you badmouthing someone on a forum. But what we're talking about here is a public page that is explicitly associated with a given person, and yet not under that person's control or even necessarily known to that person. It's a very different context and will be interpreted differently by people viewing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the expected use case? Generally people set their social media to private for a reason. Maybe I'm just being negative, but I feel like the most common use case would be to say bad things about someone where they haven't thought to block it yet or don't know about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> So this is ask.fm with twitter login support.

 _opens ask.fm to make sure. realizes that they added twitter login_

So this is an ask.fm clone?

 _realizes this sounds more negative than intended_

What would make me prefer corkpage over ask.fm and other similar services?

In addition, why limit this to Facebook and Twitter handles, rather than accepting any URI?

<comment><USER8> > What would make me prefer corkpage over ask.fm and other similar services?

I haven't heard of either of these services before, but I just spent 30 seconds on each.

With corkpage: I told FB to accept the request and I was logged in straight away.

With ask.fm: I told FB to accept the request, and then ask.fm asked me a bunch of information to register. Quite annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't twitter basically a public message board for every twitter user?

So now the public message board app has a public message board?

This is like explaining that Lyft is Uber for rides.

Unless I am missing something (which, I concede, is entirely possible).

<comment><USER10> This gives me a neat idea though: curated corkpages. Basically, I tag people in from twitter and facebook, and they can only post on certain pages.

</comment></comment><comment> temp-4916c990 It's very meta, I like it. It's a good demonstration that that people's social networking accounts (or any username or identity) are real-world phenomena and aren't just applicable within the walled garden itself, but can be used to label, target, and identify.

The concept is not new. Back in the myspace days, people would have these crush pages for confessions and rants, etc. This is the same kind of thing. But it's interesting that we've come far enough (technologically) that you can actually log in using your $socialnetwork account and claim your own page. This gives it a new dimension that we haven't had before.

</comment><comment><USER11> how do I opt out?

<comment><AUTHOR> Close your page(s) from Settings (need to log in): [https://corkpage.com/help#close-page](https://corkpage.com/help#close-page) [https://corkpage.com/settings](https://corkpage.com/settings)

<comment><USER12> So I have to login to your page (that I never signed up for in the first place) which means I'm giving you access to my Twitter/Facebook account just to prevent people from posting to my "public message board"?

That's messed up!

<comment><USER13> How else would you suggest they verify it?

Without you proving you're the account owner; you could close down random peoples message board.

<comment><USER12> There's a proven way to do this: opt-in instead of just assuming everyone wants this and can opt-out otherwise

<comment><USER14> While you're correct you won't gain adoption nearly as fast with opt-in. If the OP wants this to take off without major changes then it's going to be opt- out.

Edit: not sure why I'm being downvoted; it's true. If someone has to _opt into_ using your product you're starting out with friction from the gate which is difficult to overcome.

<comment><USER12> And that is what is inherently wrong with stuff like this. Sacrificing person's wishes for stuff like "growth", "adoption" or "conversion".

<comment><USER14> That's called capitalism. Until the added friction of respecting a person's privacy is profitable it'll always be the lesser of the options available should you want to grow a company or product.

Morally it's questionable but trying to create a grow a product it certainly shouldn't be surprising. Gitter does this and the HN crowed seemed to really like it last I saw it posted.

<comment><USER12> Again, you perfectly pinpoint the problem. I don't want a profile on this page. I am perfectly capable of setting up accounts on the platforms I want to monitor and I want to allow people to give me feedback on.

I don't want anybody to make those decisions for me. Just because I set up a public profile on one page, does not mean, that I want others to scrape data from it and use this for their purpose. Of course, stuff like this happens all the time, but it doesn't make it right.

<comment><USER14> For sure and I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying with how our businesses work it's impossible to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've actually been worried about a more malicious version of that with complete disregard for privacy, scraping terms and what not. Sort of a personal Wikileaks on everyone. Somebody could host the real thing on TOR and just have proxies accessible from the general Internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's mine if you want to try it out: [https://corkpage.com/f/505938970063](https://corkpage.com/f/505938970063)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, Corkpage does not have everyone's data. Facebook and Twitter do. They give out basic profile information to other apps via their APIs, which any developer can use within limits. Say, if someone downloads a third- party Twitter app, they can look you up from within that app. The app will request your info from Twitter via the API, and will get it, even if you have never installed the app yourself.

Please do not freak out. This was just an idea. We thought it would be cool to turn profile URLs into something like an email address. So you could write to anyone, from Facebook to Twitter, and back. We were building a back-end framework and a JS library at the time. It was more fun to work on a project that used both rather than do it in the abstract.

We were/are worried about abuse as well. There is a way to report abuse, and we are monitoring the reports. Except there aren't a whole lot of posts anyway. We don't have a good idea of what the best use for Corkpage would be either (if you figure it out, let us know), but we were never going to let it be anything negative.

As someone said, you post only on pages of others, but can reply, delete and premod on yours. It works like a guestbook, or Ask.fm.

Thank you for the feedback. Peace.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not quite. Every Twitter and/or Facebook user _potentially_ has a public message board here. The page is only created if someone accesses it. They don't have Facebook's user list. But if this becomes popular, they will, over time, acquire it by scraping.

Anyone remember Third Voice?

</comment><comment><USER18> Seems like a waste of storage space/bandwidth/resources/etc. I very well may be wrong, but I don't really see much point in it. It could become a fad, but those aren't very useful.

<comment><USER19> So like your pointless and negative post then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> After short time, this whole idea seems pointless.

Maybe if there is something that you see in here but fail to describe, please try again.

The commenting is not even anonymous, so... no...value..

</comment><comment><USER21> So I can't post something to my own corkpage? Or is it by design in order to ....

Please tell me what I should replace the ellipses with. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I actually like this. This definitely will come in handy for expressing gratitude towards others, and I can see a potential use case as like a memorial guest book to commemorate people who have passed away.

But, how is this any different than using Facebook and setting the privacy on your wall to be public or changing the privacy setting for individual posts?

<comment><USER23> They get to take ad revenue from Facebook :) I seriously wonder if Facebook will allow this to continue (to use their login) don't most services have clauses about offering competing services?</comment></comment>


In Japan, an artificial intelligence has been appointed creative director - <AUTHOR> http://www.springwise.com/japan-artificial-intelligence-appointed-creative-director <comment><USER2> In Japan, a cat has been appointed as a railway VP [1], and a cartoon robot cat has been appointed as a cultural ambassador [2]. Their management culture simply isn't very anthropocentric.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21656623-tama- station...](http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21656623-tama- stationmaster-kishi-station-and-vice-president-wakayama-electric-railway-died)

[2] [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23716592/ns/world_news- asia_pacifi...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23716592/ns/world_news- asia_pacific/t/japan-appoints-cartoon-ambassador/#.Vxe0SWOTXow)

<comment><USER3> There really seems to be nothing Japan won't anthropomorphize to make a quick buck[0][1].

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuru- chara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuru-chara)

[1][http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/01/19/toyota-goes-full- otaku...](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/01/19/toyota-goes-full-otaku- makes-40-kawaii-mascots-for-every-part-of-the-car/)

<comment><USER2> We live in a pretty wacky future. [τ]

[τ] [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dominos-app-featuring- hatsune-...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dominos-app-featuring-hatsune-miku)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An advertising company in Japan has "appointed" a robot (that they developed? really?) as their creative director. What it actually does: search advertisement databases to give suggestions. Calling it an "employee" is a publicity stunt.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it sounds like this is just a tool they're really getting a lot of use out of, so they have a giant "in-joke" that it's actually an employee.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to see them pay income taxes for this 'employee' and do all the other paperwork needed.

<comment><USER7> That employee would need a corresponding Social Security Tax Number System (SSTNS) number, and only those with resident registration are eligible.

I'm not sure the government wants to collect taxes on an individual that doesn't use any social services. It would be very strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seriously this is just a major PR piece of an article. I work with McCann in Japan and their ways of working are far from modern.

</comment><comment><USER9> Whats funny is that on "Mad Men", McCann was one plot line generator as was the big hulking IBM machine at about the same time. If I understood everything, the IBM machine was part of why McCann was interested in SCDP.

</comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR: In Japan, an advertising agency makes up they have an AI to appear in news.

<comment><USER11> They are advertising their services by showing how good they are.</comment></comment>


Polarr's $11.5m Series A and Why - <AUTHOR> https://blog.polarr.co/polarr-series-a/ <comment><USER2> Congrats Polarr! I interviewed with Borui and team back in 2014, when they were still crashing their investor's offices. I was super impressed by the founding team and all their creations since then. Wishing them the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you search CoreML, TFlite or Caffe2 on GitHub, there are already a score of offline AI models on the vertical of image recognition and vision. While these guys might have gotten lucky landing a couple deals with phone makers to enable some 'AI', it's hard to imagine the real AI leaders like Apple, Google or FB making models more and more accessible in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> It can still take a few hours to put together or days to test performance. Apple's thermal issues could also make development difficult. This is an area we're working on to ensure stability of our modules running across multiple iOS devices.</comment></comment>


Iron Is the New Cholesterol? - <AUTHOR> http://m.nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol <comment><USER2> A significant percentage of people are living comfortably up to an age of 70 or more even in the poor nations. I think this focus on marginal effects is not going to cut it any longer.

How about focusing on air pollution, which is the likely emerging leading carcinogen in developing countries?

<comment><USER3> >How about focusing on air pollution, which is the likely emerging leading carcinogen in developing countries?

You are right, air pollution is a huge problem. But there is no reason to think we can't work on both at the same time. And I may be wrong, but my guess is that you are perfectly well aware of that.

<comment><USER4> It is a good practice to be aware of though - often constructive conversations can be derailed by well-intentioned but unintentional "but-what-about-X" arguments being introduced when no such arguments existed to begin with. It is a hard habit to break when it comes to important topics. Generally, as in this case, the two things are in no way mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER5> They don't need to be exist "to begin with". A conversation can expand with new X items to put things in perspective.

Besides, even if every course of action is not mutually exclusive, there is a opportunity cost and a need to prioritize them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The opening is pretty misleading.

"Like almost any refined food made with wheat flour, it is fortified with iron"

This makes it sound like everything we eat has this absurd level of iron. Typical refined food made with wheat flour has a much lower level of iron than cheerios (which incidentally are not made with wheat) do. Cheerios are weird that way. Kix are the only other thing I've found that has that level of high iron fortification (I'm personally at risk for low iron and read a lot of labels). Even Luna bars back when they were marketed as having nutrients for women had less.

<comment><USER7> To complicate matters, not all iron should be considered equal per units mass, some forms of iron are considerably more bio-available, and in general the forms provided as supplement on cereals in are on the low end of bio- availability.

<comment><USER8> This. I remember my biochemistry professor in college grinding up a bowl of cereal into a fine powder and then using a magnet to yank all the iron out. Fine iron powder like the kind present in cereals is nowhere near as bioavailable as iron complexed with proteins (e.g. from red meat). You basically just poop most of it out. Ask anyone who has had an iron deficiency. It is ferociously difficult to take enough supplements and change your diet enough to correct a severe form of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hereditary Hemochromatosis is a genetic disorder with which some one million people in the US (and more in other, especially northern European countries) are priviledged to suffer. Hereditary Hemochromatosis is a disorder of iron metabolism. The body stores inordinate amounts of iron obtained from fortified and unfortified foods. The iron damages liver, pancreas, brain, joints, causes diabetes, causes impotence, extreme fatigue. Etc etc etc. We don't need extra iron. Give us the choice. Phlebotomy is not fun.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've heard calcium in milk blocks iron absorption so only a tiny part of iron contained in cereals is actually absorbed in your body if you eat it with milk. Can anybody tell how true or false this is?

</comment><comment><USER11> If only there was some kind of iron that the body isn't forced to absorb... oh wait there is. The non-heme iron in plants

<comment><USER12> Yep. It's unfortunate how little people know about nutrition and think it's all BS. A bunch of quacks hijacked the entire industry and everyone somehow believed them

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Up next, "iron-free" becoming the next dietary fad after low-salt, low- cholesterol, low-fat and gluten-free.

<comment><USER14> They'll process the parts-is-parts even more to remove the Iron from your "iron-free" McNuggets or put Iron-chelating agents into your Szechuan sauce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So its the new thing we will be told is bad for you for a decade only to be told the next decade that it's actually good for you?

Great! Marketers get two food fads: low iron today, iron rich when its reversed!

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of skeptical remarks here. The commenters seem certain, without any evidence, that it is simply impossible that problems with iron are even one tenth as bad as the article says the might be.

I think it is quite possible there are some real problems here, and so there should be a big research push to find out.

You know, it occurs to me that if an article raising danger signs about iron fortification is published, the iron fortification industry would have a strong financial interest in attacking it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The article starts by giving as example cereals fortified with iron.

A much better idea is to simply stop eating processed crap.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article made me look at the iron content of various foods that I eat often. Surprisingly, dark chocolate has a lot of iron -- a 100g bar has 100% of DV.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wait, I had anemia all my life and I thought this was bad. Does this mean I'm actually healthy now?

</comment><comment><USER19> I hate to be that guy, but... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703544)

There's a reason enrichment of foods is illegal in most of Europe.

<comment><USER20> Leaving all the content of your comment in links isn't very informative to most people, I'd guess, who don't bother clicking. Especially when you forget to say why they should. I clicked - but you did exactly the same thing on the linked-to page! No thanks. Don't waste my time. If you have something to say, say it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Iron is the new cholesterol

Gluten is the new sugar

Sugar is the new fat

Fat is the new salt

X is the new Y

At what point do we come full circle and just realize "consuming too much of anything is bad for you"?

I'm not trying to be flippant, but it feels like there is a study to support that just about anything can give you cancer. When do we just say "cancer happens no matter what"? Will we ever say that? Is that even the direction we're heading? It feels like the more we understand these diseases, the closer we come to the conclusion that they simply aren't preventable and no matter what you do you're always at risk. Obviously there are unhealthy lifestyles that increase your risk, but I feel like a study comes out every week linking something new to cancer.

<comment><USER22> I understand the desire to abstract everything to simple, general, easy to follow rules, but it's better to have a better understanding of nutrition. These beliefs can change over time and that's a good thing, even if it's hard to keep up with.

<comment> barry-cotter This would be much more convincing if I didn't remember salt and dietary cholesterol going from definitely bad to mostly irrelevant or that we were told margarine was healthier than butter. The new health scare is sugar and that's less than ten years old. Nutritional science in humans is important but it's also impossible. Leave nutritionists to try and do their research and in your own life ignore everything they say.

You can't do long term randomised control trials, you can barely do short term ones because people do not follow diets. And observational studies are very, very confounded.

<comment><USER12> Salt and dietary cholesterol never went from definitely bad to mostly irrelevant. It's still definitely bad. I'm guessing what you had read are magazine articles and 'nutritionists' coming up with their own theories.

If you look at actual recommendations from real organizations from real registered dietitians, the advice has largely not changed:

\- Don't eat processed crap

\- Eat mostly plants

\- Eat lean meats and try to eat more beans and legumes as a protein source

\- Keep your overall fat intake low

\- Calcium from low-fat dairy, a milk substitute like almond milk, or plant sources of calcium

\- Reduce added salt as much as possible

\- Avoid saturated fat

\- Avoid dietary cholesterol

\- Avoid refined carbs

\- Avoid added sugars and oils

And this advice is consistent across health organizations and across different countries. It's scary how much people get all their information from shitty sources and then spread the misinformation everywhere..

Sources:

[https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact- sheets/detail/healthy-...](https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact- sheets/detail/healthy-diet)

[https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/executi...](https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/executive- summary/)

[https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food- nutriti...](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food- nutrition/canada-food-guide/choosing-foods.html)

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.dge.de/index.php%3Fid%3D52&xid=17259,1500008,15700021,15700124,15700149,15700186,15700191,15700201,15700237,15700242&usg=ALkJrhikcFGd8Jbjo_1ooCpTPKpVaMMeQw#)

[http://www.mangerbouger.fr/pro/sante/alimentation-19/determi...](http://www.mangerbouger.fr/pro/sante/alimentation-19/determinants- de-l-etat-nutritionnel/limiter-la-consommation-de-matieres-grasses.html)

[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_national_nutrition_s...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_national_nutrition_sant%C3%A9)

[http://www.fao.org/3/a-as686o.pdf](http://www.fao.org/3/a-as686o.pdf)

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/742750/Eatwell_Guide_booklet_2018v4.pdf)

[http://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-dietary- guidelin...](http://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-dietary- guidelines/resources/en/)

[http://www.fao.org/docrep/pdf/010/ai800e/ai800e00.pdf](http://www.fao.org/docrep/pdf/010/ai800e/ai800e00.pdf)

[http://apps.searo.who.int/PDS_DOCS/B4818.pdf](http://apps.searo.who.int/PDS_DOCS/B4818.pdf)

<comment> barry-cotter Cholesterol

Intake of saturated and trans unsaturated fatty acids and risk of all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532752/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532752/)

"does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats."

Salt

[https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/tl- tls080818...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/tl- tls080818.php)

The Lancet: Sodium reduction programmes may only be appropriate for communities with very high salt intake

A new study shows that for the vast majority of communities, sodium consumption is not associated with an increase in health risks except for those whose average consumption exceeds 5g/day (equivalent to 12.5g of salt, or 2½ teaspoons). Communities with high average levels of sodium intake (above 5g/day) were mostly seen in China, with only about 15% of communities outside China exceeding this level of consumption.

WHO guidelines recommend a global approach to reducing sodium intake in all populations to below 2g/day, but this has not been achieved in any country. The authors say that sodium reduction strategies should instead target communities with high average levels of sodium consumption (above 5g/day).

[https://secure.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/action/getSharedSiteSe...](https://secure.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/action/getSharedSiteSession?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelancet.com%2Fjournals%2Flancet%2Farticle%2FPIIS0140-6736%2816%2930467-6%2Ffulltext&rc=0)

<comment><USER12> You can't rely on single studies to come up with conclusions, if you want to play that game you can literally prove or disprove anything you want to.

The whole picture can and does look very different than any single study. Studies vary a lot in quality, and there are tricks that are done to fudge with the conclusions. See:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg](https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg)

He very clearly points out exactly how people screw with the data on a large number of studies. That's why I listed all those sources from credible organizations from conclusions drawn by actual dietitians, not me or you or joe 'nutritionist' randomly trying to come up with our own conclusions.

Also, any reasonably intelligent random person can attack any studies pretty easily and make it look credible. Example: The first one is a meta-analysis of observational studies, one of the weakest forms of evidence, and other meta- analyses came up with the exact opposite conclusion. The second one's conclusion is obviously flawed, since salt without a shadow of a doubt increases blood pressure, so salt intake definitely does matter for older populations which almost always have a compromised cardiovascular system, so it definitely matters to them. The third isn't really saying anything except that they aren't successful at reducing salt consumption.

I'd rather trust experts to do their work, but you can do what you want it's your health. I bought all this crap for a few years until I suffered health problems from eating tons of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat with theoretical benefits. I could _literally_ see my intake of saturated fat and cholesterol turning my blood cholesterol (total and LDL) and triglycerides on and off like a light switch. I did this several times. It was SO cut and dry. I kept all other variables the same. And I've always eaten tons of really health foods, a ton of plants, I just bought into the hype that butter and eggs are suddenly 'healthy', according to magazines and 'nutritionists'. Even blood work doesn't stop some people -- I remember reading a HN post of someone who started eating tons of eggs and had absurdly high levels of blood cholesterol, but his conclusion was that it's 'not a concern' and he 'feels fine' \-- The doubt that was introduced already got to him and he just doesn't care anymore.

Cigarette companies played this exact same game for years btw, introducing doubt as to whether cigarettes caused cancer and lung disease. All you have to do is introduce doubt. It doesn't even have to be a strong argument towards experts, as in experts don't think there is any doubt. It's targeted towards just the lay person who doesn't understand the science</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Computer science curricula 2013 released - <AUTHOR> http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2610445

<comment><USER2> Can someone comment on the significance of this?</comment>


Bitcoin in 2031 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/54e30383f387

<comment><USER2> "2031—The vast majority of the world's financial transactions take place through a decentralized crypto-currency (likely Bitcoin). Governments can no longer print their way out of debt. Banks can no longer siphon billions of dollars out of the world economy in the form of transaction fees. And those 'computer nerds' (like Thad Wormald) who bought Bitcoin at $12 will have models (and Jenna Maroney) fighting after them."

So basically an empty and vapid "Ra-Ra" cheerleading of bitcoin that showcases nothing but the total and wholesale ignorance of the author. Ignorance of economics, politics, history... need I go on?</comment>


Ask HN: How to decide if it should be a feature or be built as a new product? - <AUTHOR> Our company is building a new crowdfunding platform for energy poverty (inability to afford basic energy services). However, a lot of people comment that it can just be a feature/project on the existing crowdfunding platforms (e.g. Gofundme).
So, how do you decide whether it's okay just be a feature of a (existing) project or it has the potential to be developed as a new project?
e.g. crowdfunding for everything VS. crowdfunding for hardware VS. crowdfunding for energy poverty?
Our landing page: energizelives.gridmates.com/energy-poverty/
Homepage is still the old version of the website.
We'll appreciate any honest comments that you have! <comment><USER2> A crude heuristic: Products segment markets. Features enhance products.

This sounds like market segmentation. Existing funding platforms tend not to segment the market. Whether or not it's a viable segment is another matter. Whether or not the product can get enough of a lead to make up for the low barrier to entry for existing platforms is another matter, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> A new product has to have a significant functional difference and and technological advancement. Or it should cater for the special needs of a different demographic that has a very different behaviour.

A product is not nice to have. It's a leap. It's a break through.

A feature is just nice to have.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a technology (plugin) for utility companies to put on their websites and let people donate on their websites. Does it work? Our billing system is also designed for energy donation.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, we built this product because we could find a way to donate money, food, clothes but not energy. However, it's something really important in lives. That's why we decided to build a product for it.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're building a business, never build it as a feature onto someone else's platform without some sort of contract that confirms the nature of your relationship.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are not really building on anyone's platform right now. It's intended to be an independent platform. However, we just don't know whether existing platforms e.g. Dosomething.org, Indiegogo or GoFundMe can achieve the things that we want to achieve or not.

However, there's a crowdfunding platform for the homeless (www.handup.org) and for water (Watsi) too. So we're not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the new product has to fit a large audience that is not satisfied with the existing product. If I wanna support poor people, why don't I donate cash to them in general. Why don't I donate for food or education but energy? Is it more emotionally appealing to donors?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah this is the challenge we're facing right now. it seems like not a lot of people are familiar with the concept of energy poverty.</comment></comment>


The art of the error message - <AUTHOR> https://thestyleofelements.org/the-art-of-the-error-message-9f878d0bff80 <comment><USER2> Interesting to hear this from the UX team at spotify. I think these are all very good advice.

Of course, Decided to see how fast I could trigger an obscure error message in the app. 2 minutes in:

1\. Enable offline mode 2\. Click a song that hasn't been downloaded yet 3\. "Song unavailable" is the error. No explanation why.

<comment><USER3> Looking at that one-pager linked at the bottom[0], it seems there's only 12 error messages in Spotify where this gets applied.

While I have certainly seen at least five of those, I'm not surprised that you've managed to trigger the one without it in two minutes. After all, an app like Spotify probably has significantly more than 12 error messages in it.

[0] [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6f9wHapAofKRFdvU3BUbVZjckU...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6f9wHapAofKRFdvU3BUbVZjckU/view)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great advice, BUT: apart from the laziness and the poor written communication skills, often the real reason for the vagueness is that these pesky details are simply unavailable to the coders who throw that exception or issue that message. It is buried somewhere deep in the bowels of inner components.

Better error messages start with better architecture.

<comment><USER5> Yes. From the title, I thought the article was about how to actually address that problem.

That said, I wonder if you could invert it. When trying to make a seemingly arbitrary architectural choice, then perhps to break the tie you can ask yourself "if an error occurs, will this allow me to get the right info to the user?"

<comment><USER4> > When trying to make a seemingly arbitrary architectural choice, then perhps > to break the tie you can ask yourself "if an error occurs, will this allow > me to get the right info to the user?"

Definitely. That is something I've never heard discussed, and it really should be discussed. User experience is influenced by the inner works of the engine, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing that has amazingly never improved for 20 years. That's when your internet connection does not work. It could be anything from:

1\. your computer broke 2\. your network/wifi card failed 3\. your wifi access point failed 4\. your hub/switch failed 5\. your router failed 6\. your cable modem failed 7\. your ISP failed 8\. the URL you were trying to reach failed

The error message you get is just a generic one with no clue at all.

<comment><USER7> My pet peeve is HTTPS/SSL errors when your clock is off (usually caused by a dead battery and your device time resetting to 1970). Breaks pretty much all network services on your machine, and absolutely no software tells you it's because your time is completely unreasonable.

<comment><USER8> Google Chrome actually will tell you about your clock settings I believe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's nice to see this raised as an important issue for designers. It can be really hard to get anybody outside engineering interested in error messages until they see them show up in production.

I also like the emphasis on giving explanations that help the user understand what they can and can't do next. When users see errors, they immediately go into the mode of trying to make it work. They get hyped up and focused; they don't relax. A vague "friendly" message will just frustrate them further if it doesn't help them understand what to do next.

I think this is one aspect of UX where engineers can provide a unique perspective. I think designers and product managers are often surprised by the amount of energy a user can pour into struggling with an error, and the level of anger and frustration that can result. As programmers we can identify with that experience better than most, so we need to take it on ourselves to write good error messages and, when possible, present them to the designer as part of the design that needs their attention and vetting.

<comment><USER10> > It can be really hard to get anybody outside engineering interested in error > messages until they see them show up in production.

IMHO any given request should be able to return multiple errors for the different stakeholders who will be consuming them. A good JSON error response could be something like:

{ 'display_error': '', 'field_errors': { 'field1': []}, 'internal_error': '' }

The idea is that display error is something shown to the user, possibly a form-level error when relevant. Field errors are validation errors for user- submitted data. And internal errors are things that aren't shown to users, and are only meant as a way for backend and frontend devs to communicate amongst themselves to help debugging.

<comment><USER11> [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7807](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7807) ("Problem Details for HTTP APIs") may interest you (but just for clarity: I only know _about_ it, but haven't attempted to apply it to any situation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll quote the Android Guidelines on error messages here, because they summarize it well into a single sentence:

> It's not my fault

> Be gentle in how you prompt people to make corrections. They want to feel > smart when they use your app. If something goes wrong, give clear recovery > instructions but spare them the technical details. If you can fix it behind > the scenes, even better.

You can find the other design principles of Android quickly summarized here: [https://developer.android.com/design/get- started/principles....](https://developer.android.com/design/get- started/principles.html)

These design principles are important for any developer, on any platform, and they're short enough that they're easy to remember.

</comment><comment><USER13> See the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines for the original Mac. They thought this through.

Error messages were to be two sentences. The first one explains the problem. The second sentence says what to do about it. There were rules for buttons, too. "Your file has been lost" should have a button that says "Sorry", not "OK".

<comment><USER14> Why "Sorry" as a button? It sounds pretty awkward to me. I wouldn't be sure what clicking it would do. And, the button text is usually the option that I choose, but why would I say "sorry"?

<comment><USER15> > _Why "Sorry" as a button?_

I believe the idea was that making the user click "OK" was adding insult to injury, and "Cancel" wouldn't have made sense either.

That said, the word "sorry" doesn't appear in a HIG from 1992 (the earliest I could find in PDF form).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Last week I saw someone get stuck trying to change his password, the interface would not tell him what criteria was making it not secure enough.

<comment><USER17> The problem was probably that it wasn't exactly six characters long and only alphanumeric.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, too secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also equally important and related to the article is messages on exceptions raised by libraries used by developers. I think this is one of the primary reasons why I found some Python's open sourced libraries like Numpy or Pandas easy to learn. Most of the messages when an exception is raised are specific and helpful in helping me fixing the error.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mate of mine from years ago (we've lost touch), once told me that the system he built to scan blood samples and used by lab techs all over the UK had some very interesting error messages he put in there.

He got a call one day from a customer who told him the error message read "Fuckity, fuckity, fuck, everything's about to get stuck". His response on the phone was "Well, the good news is I know exactly where the error is..."

It was in a loop you shouldn't be able to get into and so his defence was that this error was "impossible".

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah, can't really disagree with any of this. Depressing how many programmers and software designers don't listen to this advice though, I mean, look at the standard Windows Media Player error nowadays. Server execution failed, really? You couldn't be more precise than that?

Eh, I guess it's still better than the (thankfully very rare outside of deliberate glitches) error Nintendo consoles give you now. "The software closed because an error occurred". Thanks for that useful piece of advice.

<comment><USER3> Nothing's worse than Windows 10's "something happened" error message: [https://i.stack.imgur.com/LRZtX.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LRZtX.png)

<comment><USER22> Diagnosing failed windows updated is tough for exactly this reason. The UI doesn't bubble up anything detailed, not even an opaque error number. You have to dig through the log files.

<comment><USER23> If you even get log files, and they aren't locked away in trace files that need conversion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Haha. Last error message I saw from Spotify was: "Login failed. Unable to login, either username or password is incorrect. Have you signed up for a Spotify account?". The issue was that I filled in my email instead of username into a form that said "Username or email", see [https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/I-can-t- log...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/I-can-t-log-onto-my- spotify-iPhone-app/td-p/894951) Tell me something about error messages, Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER25> There was an excellent talk by Larry Wall on the perl6 error message design. I think it was in Santa Clara and it was a Perl Conference, but haven't found a transcript yet. It was about 9 years ago.

Anyone have a link?

<comment><USER26> There's a youtube of a 2008 Google talk at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzIWdJVP- wo&list=PLRuESFRW2F...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzIWdJVP- wo&list=PLRuESFRW2Fa77XObvk7-BYVFwobZHdXdK&index=162)

He talks a bit about error messages. I found that by searching for `message` in the transcript generated by selecting the 'Open transcript" menu option of the ... button.

Hth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So is there a guide for error messages when the message is not client facing. The grammar, format, etc. +1 if it also provides language specific info , for example in Java use e.getMessage() etc?

</comment><comment><USER28> One of Nielsen's classic UX heuristics:

> Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely > indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

</comment><comment><USER29> ed has perfected it years ago:

?

</comment><comment><USER30> I love diagnosing Microsoft enterprise frameworks.

Half the time in CRM or NAV, it's either an error code with zero google results, or, "general error."

And yes, I know about tracing.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's disappointing that this needs to be spelled out. It really should be common sense, minimal competency.</comment>


IPad effect - <AUTHOR>

I've had my iPad for a little over a month. Just today, I was using my desktop and wanted to bookmark an article I was reading. Without thinking, I reach out and touch the monitor to tap the instapaper link. My mind suddenly flashes forward a couple of years and the computer I know and love so much is obsolete. And my iPad is sitting beside me, smiling. <comment><USER2> I had always thought touch-screen didn't make sense in a desktop environment.

Then my mom got one of those HP desktops with the touch interface. I figured she'd never touch it, just use the keyboard and mouse.

When I was showing her how to do a few things, I found myself using the touch screen WAY more than I expected.

I would be very surprised if your next desktop/laptop wasn't touch enabled as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fact of the matter is that your eyes look directly in front of you and your fingers are typing at 90 degrees to that.

I don't know from experience but I can only guess how uncomfortable it would be to have to lift my arm up to have manipulate on screen objects as opposed to using a mouse and/or keyboard. Maybe I'm just lazy..

I don't think the iPad will displace this traditional method of input unfortunately. The mouse and keyboard will be around for a long time to come.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think you're looking for a self post in /r/Apple.

I could write a bunch of crap about the different pieces of functionality that are lacking in touch applications or the wasted screen real estate or touch interfaces in general.

But these types of articles are around the internet everywhere and this post simply isn't worth the effort to discuss.

<comment><AUTHOR> Build something better and easier to use and i'll dump Apple, buy your product, and be your number one cheerleader. I was simply trying to convey my surprise that an action totally unrelated to everyday everyman computer use only took a month to become, for me, a reflex.

<comment><USER4> "easier to use". I have absolutely no problems using Ubuntu 10.04. It's better in almost every way in terms of openness and functionality and I can be much more effective in terms of getting things done quickly and efficiently than you ever could on a touch screen device lacking a dedicated keyboard and mouse.

My only point is that the desktop space and mobile space are very different and I don't see them converging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Smiley Face Screensaver App .99 USD</comment>


Chicago TechStars Meetup tomorrow at Threadless HQ - <AUTHOR> http://tschicagomeetup2009.eventbrite.com/

<comment><USER2> I'd love it if someone would post a comprehensive list of these incubators.

I'm going to be applying to TechStars for there Summer program. I currently don't have a cofounder, so if anybody has skills (or knows someone that does) that would complement well with a python and Django developer, please contact me (my email address is in my profile) and we could start a dialogue.</comment>


Silk Road Defense Says Ulbricht Was Framed by the 'Real' Dread Pirate Roberts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/01/isilk-road-trial-opening-statements/ <comment><USER2> I know he's fighting for his freedom and you can't begrudge a man for doing whatever it takes to beat a charge, but I really think this is such a cop-out defense and I wish he had the balls to act like the same person he pretended to be when he was writing his grand manifestos about freedom of choice and individual rights.

Whatever Ulbricht himself may be, whether or not the murder for hire allegations are true, however he might have gone about running Silk Road, the libertarian ideals that justify the existence of Silk Road should have their day in court. But that won't happen here, because his defense relies on Silk Road being a terrible thing that somebody else did.

<comment><USER3> >the libertarian ideals that justify the existence of Silk Road should have their day in court

Real trials don't play out like they do in hollywood. You don't get to spend your time in court talking about your ideology and lobbying for better laws. The entire trial will be about whether or not he's guilty of breaking the laws that already exist.

<comment><USER4> The defense can object to letting him explain his libertarian viewpoints if they can convince the judge it is not relevant to the case or charges. Which the prosecutor in this case directly attempted during pretrial last month:

> Prosecutors in the case against alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht > want the court to prohibit Ulbricht from saying almost anything political at > all, according to a motion filed last week by the government.

> They're worried that the jury might end up sympathizing with Ulbricht's > politics.

[http://www.dailydot.com/politics/silk-road-jury- nullificatio...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/silk-road-jury- nullification-political/)

<comment><USER5> If he were being tried by a jury of _his peers_ , it would not need explaining.

<comment><USER6> 'peer group' != legal 'peers'. [http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- procedure/what-is-a-jur...](http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- procedure/what-is-a-jury-of-peers.html)

<comment><USER3> And this is why I hope I never end up on trial for anything. Some types of people are more easy to dislike than others. For example, I have asperger's. I'm pretty certain that if I ever went on trial for anything, my personality would increase the chances that I get convicted.

<comment><USER4> Criminal lawyers don't let defendants talk for a reason, that is their job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So for him to effectively use this defense, he'd have to cast reasonable doubt on the prosecution's evidence that _he_ was "Dread Pirate Roberts"?

And in order to do that, he'd have to discredit the authenticity of their evidence that his computer was the one doing all the work, which means the defense would have to show that his computer was hacked, and all of the evidence was forged by the hacker(s).

How's he going to show a jury of non-techies (which you _know_ the prosecution selected for) that it was all just his computer getting hacked?

How do _any_ high-level technical trials work, when the jury goes into the trial not educated on the topic? The reliance on expert testimony?

<comment><USER8> Well, if his defense can throw up enough dust, the government will likely have to abandon the charges around murder and go for something a lot lower level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, the 'Keyser Soze' defense.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyser_S%C3%B6ze](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyser_S%C3%B6ze)

<comment><USER9> Or the Shaggy defense.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv5fqunQ_4I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv5fqunQ_4I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It will be interesting to see this unfold. But I am inclined to believe Ulbricht here.

My main reason for finding it immediately believable is that the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" is an obvious _Princess Bride_ reference to a pirate who inherited his trade and occupation from another pirate. That combined with the fact that the name did not appear on the forums for the first few months leads me to believe that the name is an inside joke about the fact that the Dread Pirate Roberts did not create the site.

The 2013 quote from the Dread Pirate Roberts saying the same thing when he had no particular reason to lie is just icing on the cake.

<comment><USER11> People were inclined to believe Hans Reiser too[1],[2], untill he led the police to Nina's body.

Despite all the evidence, lots of people did not want to believe it was him and held out for hope, in the end, though, people realized indeed it was he who did it.

[1] [http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/06/09/1155214/hans- reiser-...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/06/09/1155214/hans-reiser-to- reveal-location-of-wifes-body)

[2][http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/02/23/2218256/hans- reiser-a...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/02/23/2218256/hans-reiser-and- the-geek-defense-strategy)

<comment><USER12> I totally wanted to believe in Hans, given his accomplishments to the file system community and open source, I was saddened when he admitted to doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Given a jury without sufficient education and a case with as much technical nuance as this and then a reasonable doubt that the same technical nuance _could_ indicate a frame job... Seems like an ok move...

<comment><USER14> I'd say it was a good strategy in light of overwhelming evidence he is connected to the site.

He's still going to prison just maybe not for the rest of his life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe they just need to convince the jury he didn't act alone? There is probably a decent amount of evidence to show he had help and maybe wasn't running the whole operation, but this seems like a defense approach that will make the jury very suspicious from the onset.

<comment><USER16> I think the strategy is to dazzle the jury with confusing uncertainty

<comment><USER17> Ah, the Chewbacca Defense. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As for "murder for hire": he was never charged with it. Why?! Why on earth prosecutors have chosen not to throw a book on a guy? Because it never happened. Whole "murder for hire" story is just a part of smear campaign.

<comment><USER19> Well, the other possibility is that there isn't enough proof. But IMO if there isn't enough proof, he's not guilty, and they shouldn't even _mention_ it, to avoid damaging his public perception.

<comment><USER20> The counterpoint to what you say is that the evidence comes from personal documents/conversations/etc. they obtained, and if they released _some_ of that but not _all_ \-- in order to avoid publicly releasing any murder-for- hire bits -- you would be here saying that the selective release is suspicious and that they should release _everything_ in order to avoid damaging his reputation through cherry-picking evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wasn't Ulbricht logged into an administrator account of Silk Road when he was busted at the library?

That would make it harder to claim you were "framed".

<comment><USER22> No, their genius leadership somehow got him to come back for... for whatever. Yes, people he doesn't really know doing illegal things that he didn't want to be a part of convinced him to go to a public space and get back into it just before he got caught. All because they are far to clever to get themselves caught, you see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not a bad start.

</comment><comment><USER24> The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.

<comment><USER25> Pantagonia... sounds like I'd like the weather there

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow. I had a joke theory that the "real truth" was the Silk Road was a DEA sting operation but the (gov) operators were caught skimming and needed to shut it down in a hurry. I didn't think that would be the real defense.</comment>


Twitter is facing a class action lawsuit for gender discrimination - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/21/8270585/twitter-gender-discrimination-lawsuit-tina-huang <comment><USER2> >Text from the lawsuit, obtained by Mashable, says a largely male upper management is responsible for all the hiring decisions, and that creates an environment that favors men, intentional or not...

That's beyond weak.</comment>


DigitalOcean DNS/ARP Exposure - <AUTHOR>

I'm not sure if this is an issue or not, but I noticed that running tcpdump on a DigitalOcean droplet shows you ARP and DNS requests. This lets you get a list of machines hosted by DigitalOcean... I might be way off here, but could this make DO vulnerable to ARP spoofing?<p>Made a quick video to demonstrate what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmNaJCkGFOw <comment><USER2> Just FYI, I think what you are seeing is normal and arp spoofing is still being blocked. (Open a ticket anyway, We're happy to give people free hosting credits for reporting bugs and security holes.)

\-- Jeff Carr Chief Architect Digital Ocean Inc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, will do. I mentioned it on IRC, but I'll open a ticket too.

By the way - it's nice to see such a pro-active response from DO. Great work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It might be wise to contact DigitalOcean support (or on their forums) before posting this on a public forum that they probably will not read. Even if you are completely wrong, there is no problem in letting their support know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned it on the DO IRC channel, apparently it's being looked into.</comment></comment>


SpaceX announces a mission to land on Mars by 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/05/03/spacex_announces_a_mission_to_land_on_mars_by_2018.html <comment><USER2> Previously discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11582605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11582605) last week

</comment><comment><USER3> If you read near the end of the article, they say that SpaceX is going to launch a Falcon Heavy in November as a test. But additionally they are going to try to land all three boosters. The two side boosters on land and the middle booster on the drone ship(because it will be going a lot faster)

Here is a simulation([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM)). I have probably watch this video 20+ times just amazing.

<comment><USER4> That is a promo.

Here is an actual simulation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89AIsPTCJLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89AIsPTCJLs)

<comment><USER4> Replay at 16x speed if you're busy: [https://youtu.be/89AIsPTCJLs?t=10m35s](https://youtu.be/89AIsPTCJLs?t=10m35s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am an elementary school teacher, and while I teach many subjects, this news has the geek in me very excited. As we get closer to the launch date, kids, no doubt, will be very excited about this mission. I get to plan space- and Mars- based curriculum now!

<comment><USER6> Will you show the launch in class, if the timing works out?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely! My goal would be to plan a series of experiences _prior_ to the launch that would give the children a real-world understanding of what they're seeing on the screen. I imagine many of this article's readers who arrive from HN may have a deep understanding of the technical difficulty of what SpaceX is trying to do, especially given their timeframe. How would children understand this event, however, if we simply watched the launch on screen? People hurl giant flying objects through the sky every minute of every day, so what's the big deal?

Creating soda bottle rockets in the classroom and encountering real-world (though kid-level) engineering challenges would be a first step.

<comment><USER7> my dad always used to joke that the key to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Which is surprisingly an accurate representation of how orbit works.

I find that the biggest thing that is often mistaught/misunderstood is orbital mechanics. You dont get to the moon by aiming directly at the moon. You dont get to mars by aiming directly at mars.

Watching lil einsteins with my kid the other day. and in episode one they say "we've left gravity!" as they travel to space. Which clearly is not how it works.

I think the falling past the edge of the world repeatedly really helps people get a grasp on how orbit works. and once you get that concept down, you can move the sphere of influence to the sun and get space travel down.

Might depend on what grade "elementary" is. Kindergarden might struggle, but I bet 5th grade could handle it.

<comment><USER8> [https://xkcd.com/1356/](https://xkcd.com/1356/) . Seriously, Kerbal Space Program teaches you so much more and faster than anything else.

<comment><USER7> Yeah. I have an engineering degree but never really thought much about orbital mechanics.

My first try at KSP I just overbuilt a rocket and aimed it directly at the mun. I missed. Quickload. Back on target, sudden realization that I need about 6000 dV to slow down in time. Watch a Scott Manley video -> instant understanding.

It's definitely one of those things that once you understand it, it's mind boggling how often space is depicted incorrectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a really great throwaway joke in the caption of one of the illustrations that accompany the story.

In the image captioned "The trajectory of a Falcon 9 booster from launch to landing," the caption directs the reader: "Click to vonbraunenate."

I googled "vonbraunenate," and there were only a handful of results aside from this particular article.

So then I googled "von braun," and of course, the first result that came up was the Wikipedia entry for Wernher von Braun.

So what's the connection?

Von Braun was an aerospace engineer who "developed the rockets that launched United States first space satellite and first series of manned lunar missions."

<comment><USER10> I get the connection, I don't get the joke...

<comment><USER11> Diagrams are occasionally labelled "click to explode".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SpaceX has a pretty poor history of keeping to their announced schedules (e.g. Falcon Heavy was supposed to fly in what, 2015?). So while this will be great if it happens, I wouldn't get too excited yet.

<comment><USER12> The thing is, if they miss the date by mere months, they will have to wait 2 years for the next launch window.

<comment><USER13> More info for people curious about this. The best time to launch is during "Earth Mars opposition" and the next window is in Jul 2018. After that there is a 26 month wait before the next optimal (from a fuel perspective) time.

<comment><USER14> I thought the biggest concern about launch window was journey time? And that would only matter for a crewed mission. I didn't think fuel mattered because it would probably be close for either mission profile- burn to get up to speed, shutdown and coast for months, then any orbit corrections and slowdowns as the Mars approach nears. It's not like the engine is burning for the whole trip, and they'll be using solar for internal instruments. Or am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER15> You are, the total energy required for a transfer varies considerably depending on the phasing of the planets.

This is mars->Earth, but you get the idea. [http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/mission/...](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/mission/Mars2103PorkChop.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I never thought I would live to actually see the day. Seemed like everything just slowed down on that front for two decades and now it seems almost to soon.

<comment><USER17> To be clear, this particular mission is an unmanned mission, which of course has done many times before. But it would be the heaviest payload ever landed on Mars, and would pave the way for future manned missions.

<comment><USER18> No way they will be able to plan, make, and test any interesting instruments if they start now. With the proposed time line it is guaranteed to be a pure put trash on Mars mission.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't bet on that. What they're building is a vehicle that conveys things to Mars. If that massive problem is being handled, entities like NASA are free to focus on _what they want to put on Mars._ If SpaceX is just ferrying NASA's shit, I'd bet we'll see more than trash inside Red Dragon.

<comment><USER18> Not for the first launch we won't. They might get something a cut over an rc car with an iphone taped to the top, but with the time line suggested there is no way to slap together something that will do anything _new_ : the trip will be purely to show the trip can be done, and not contribute very much for science.

<comment><USER19> I guess we'll see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really interested to see if and how SpaceX covers the cost of this mission. Is it just a huge R&D/PR write off? Do they sell data/instrument payload slots to NASA or others?

</comment><comment><USER20> Few other interesting articles on this have been posed in the last few days, but none have got much traction - if you are interested more to read here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988)

<comment><USER21> Is that the link you meant to post? Looks like it's about solar

<comment><USER20> Ha no! Ah well a bit late now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm sure it'd be impossible, or foolish, or just plain silly, but I'd really like it if a SpaceX launch could be "crowdsourced". Not money or ideas, but the actual process of the launch itself. Set up a website with a big red "launch" button that links to the physical launch process, and only launch the mission once, say, a million people have clicked the button. All those people would get to say they've played a tiny part in launching a mission to space.

It'd certainly be about the closest I'll ever come to participating in an actual space mission, and it'd be a heck of a lot of fun.

It probably needs to be more rigorous than that though.

<comment><USER23> Launch windows are pretty specific. Not sure about the next Mars one, but some windows are so narrow that launches can be scrapped if the window is missed by even a couple of seconds.</comment></comment>


A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/the-man-feeding-a-remote-alaska-town-with-a-costco-card-and-a-ship <comment><USER2> That's actually how a lot of businesses in rural parts of Alaska work, even places that don't require a boat or plane to access. My dad lives right off the highway in a small town in Alaska, and the closest thing to a grocery store is an old airplane hanger that one of the locals runs a general store out of. The owner makes weekly trips to Costco, which is ~4 hours away, and buys as much as they can fit into a big U-Haul, then resells it at their store. The selection is pretty limited, but they take requests throughout the week and will try to fulfill them on the next trip.

<comment><USER3> Rural Croatia too, except it's a truck that comes to all of the villages 3x/week with staple items. Plays ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music through a loudspeaker to announce his arrival.

And then a meat truck once a week and a fish truck more irregularly.

Took requests as well.

I think of it like villages having Amazon Prime starting in the late 90s.

<comment><USER4> That's interesting!

I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away.

Or is it just a matter of convenience?

<comment><USER5> >> I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away.

I still think about the UK. I cannot imagine anywhere in the UK being more than an hour or two from anywhere else.

<comment><USER6> Why? UK includes Scotland, and you can easily go 600+ miles from a point in northern Scotland to southern England. Even in England, Liverpool is 200+ miles from London, and there are farther places in England.

<comment><USER7> 600 miles? I had no idea Great Britain was that small. What is the widest distance West to East?

<comment><USER8> Per Encyclopedia Britannica[0], 300 miles is the widest, and no part is more than 75 miles from the sea.

It's smaller in land mass than 10 US states, coming in just behind Oregon and just ahead of Idaho.

0 - [https://www.britannica.com/place/United- Kingdom](https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> Parker did some work around town, scrounged together $3k, and began taking a state-subsidized ferry to Juneau, where he bought Costco inventory to resell in Gustavus at a small markup._

 _> As the store grew, Parker and his father launched their own freight company, purchased the town's gasoline station, and bought two of their own ships — a $300k "insurance policy" that gave Parker tighter control over the supply chain in case of an emergency._

I feel like they left out a step between $3k and a frieght company with 2 ships.

<comment><USER10> Occasionally ships can be had for extremely cheap when the former owner cannot afford the maintenance on it. It's more common with small pleasure craft, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear about small cargo ships being occasionally abandoned up there.

<comment><USER11> Indeed: even if you get a ship for free, the crew is not free. Unless you're a certified captain already, you probably can't just operate the ship yourself. Also, now _you_ have to pay for maintenance, fuel, mooring, loading and unloading cargo, etc. I suspect that $3k is not sufficient to start and sustain such an operation, so some steps are clearly missing.

(Can't help but remember Grim Fandango, where a similar transition between a small-time sales agent and a ship owner is made by writing "one year later" across the screen.)

<comment><USER12> My favourite example is Roman Abramovich, who somehow made the transition from reselling rubber ducks from his apartment in 1991 to having $100M to buy an oil company worth $3B, to obscene oligarch wealth a decade later.

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

<comment><USER13> He is friends with Russian president.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case.

The only explanations I can see are: 1) People are still panic-buying flour even after they've settled down about toilet paper, 2) everyone is secretly gorging themselves on bread, 3) the supply has dried up, or 4) there's some vast and growing stockpile of unsold bread flour in the wholesale supply chain. None of these explanations ring true to me, so where's the flour going?

<comment><USER15> Flour isn't the problem now, it's yeast. Fortunately my mother in law traded us a few packs for an old iMac, so my daughter can now make pizza dough.

Joking aside, we did give her an iMac, but you can't find yeast anywhere.

<comment><USER16> I'm about 2 months and a couple of dozen loaves into sourdough starter. Excellent results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Necessity is the mother of entrepreneurship.

I grew up around there and bagged astoundingly large grocery orders for people coming in from the villages to shop. I also stayed in Gustavus at family friends homes, and even grew up with a kid named after the town. It's weird that I am reading this story from SF now. Just wanted to show up and rep the hometown/s.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a slightly different version of this story with a much less snazzy title (weirdly, on the same site, it seems): [https://thehustle.co/how-a- remote-alaska-town-gets-its-groce...](https://thehustle.co/how-a-remote- alaska-town-gets-its-groceries/) (It's possible the writing is the same, but one has more photos?)

I thought it was a gripping read. Neither title really does it justice. I have submitted it to r/CitizenPlanners because this one store is playing such a critical role to the welfare of the entire community and does so even under "normal" conditions. And these are not remotely normal conditions.

</comment><comment><USER19> I visited Dawson City in the Yukon last year and was surprised to see Kirkland Signature goods on sale at the general store. Didn't think to ask how they got there.

<comment><USER20> For those who are unfamiliar, "Kirkland Signature" is Costco's private brand.

<comment><USER21> And very good Vodka, apparently due to being produced in a former Grey Goose distillery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for sharing - if anyone is interested in a great remote Alaska read (novel) - would recommend The Great Alone: [https://kristinhannah.com/books/the-great- alone/](https://kristinhannah.com/books/the-great-alone/)

<comment><USER23> Also, Proenneke's documentary "Alone in the Wilderness" is great too.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's a video of a grocery trip in Alaska, the prices are insane.

[https://youtu.be/3TVlmmVqgnQ](https://youtu.be/3TVlmmVqgnQ)

<comment><USER25> Alaska still has fresh bananas... Incredible

<comment><USER26> This photography book[1] about weekly grocery shopping around the world looks like a find the bananas puzzle.

[1] [https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks- around-...](https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around- world-3251)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would love operating a small ship for my groceries store rather than sitting in front of my computer all day.

<comment><USER28> Write a simulation game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _"The town might have a 100-gallon swing in demand for milk from one week to > the next without any explanation of why. One week, nobody wants whole milk; > the next week, everyone wants 2%."_

IIRC it's a known phenomenon, but I can't remember the name right now. Buyers overestimate the demand, then the next cycle they have stock left, then again buy double because the shop might not have the thing next time. So the demand keeps swinging thereafter.

In fact, the dude is sorta lucky since he can just ask everyone what they want, no need to guess from jumping numbers.

<comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game)

<comment><USER29> That's exactly where I learned of the effect—the game was probably recently mentioned on HN.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect) is the article specifically about the fluctuations.

Come to think of it, apparently in the case of the Alaskan dude just one level of interaction is enough to summon the effect with 100% variation. I wonder what the Costco managers think of the picture on their end and whether they in turn order even more reserves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's interesting to see how the only grocery store in a remote place works. I've become interested in the story in another country, especially in my own country (Indonesia) an Asia generally.

In some village in Papua, Indonesia, the logistics are supplied by small plane that visit regularly. The road infrastructure there is still bad, especially in the mountainous part of the island. And even if there are roads, it's safer to go by plane.

Some small islands got their logistics by ship either once a week or once a month. And it really affected by the weather.

Being an island country puts a challenging problem for Indonesia to distribute logistic to its people.

</comment><comment><USER32> As I live and breathe - we're talking about ToshCo. I have shopped here, spent time in Gustavus, enjoyed the greatest July 4th celebration in the US here while climbing a grease pole. Funny thing is that not all the residents can buy stuff from ToshCo because it's more expensive, so they go to the local thrift store instead, aka Treasure store.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice read - enjoyed that.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's an impressive and respectable story of entrepreneurial behavior and solving a town's problems.

But sometimes you wonder, some places just seem to not be suited for people to live self-sustainably in, because of location, population density, transportation networks. Maybe $12 milk is one of those signals.

</comment><comment><USER35> My one trip to Molokai some 7 or 8 years ago. The main market had staples that were primarily split up bundles from Costco. So it seems like (given the other posts) a common model.

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't this just another example of how businesses start?

Hauling a trailer vs trucking in, storing, and managing stock. Seems like a smart move to keep overhead low.

</comment><comment><USER37> Out of curiousity:

>>One week, nobody wants whole milk; the next week, everyone wants 2%

Do Americans call 2% whole milk? Around here full is 3.2% or even 3.8% of fat content

<comment><USER38> No, 2% and whole milk are different in America.

<comment><USER37> Right, it's just the way the author put it in the same sentence makes it sound like 2% is full fat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> One of the problem is people do not pay for his overheads and insurance need. The town would not survive long by goodwill. Have to pay.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great... now I have to re-watch Northern Exposure!

<comment><USER41> Unfortunately it's one of those series that you can't get the unaltered original because of music rights. (It's also pretty much a complete fantasy view of a small Alaskan town but it was a fun series in any case.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sales hackers – Glassdoor for salespeople - <AUTHOR> Hey HN! I had an idea a few months ago to create a Glassdoor like site for sales people. So it's a crowdsourced site where you'd be able to see if company you're talking (or targeting) has big budgets, requires IT/procurement processes, is generally risk averse etc.
All companies have a culture that determine how things get done, including buying tools. So this is just a crowdsourced way to share that information.
MVP is super simple - just an excel sheet that my friends and I have added to over the last few months for now. We sell into marketing mostly. Contribute if you find it interesting/helpful, and only share what your comfortable with - don't feel like you need to share anything competitive! Would love any feedback as well.
Thanks: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1swSrr8gXflyPxGVBriUj... <comment><USER2> That is bold. Not many people will share that kind of information; check my HN profile and send me an email, I'd like to talk.</comment>


Nintendo aims at young gamers with new handheld console - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/23871340 <comment><USER2> Wait... how is this not just a different form factor of the DS? Is there a better article for this?

<comment><USER3> The difference between the DS and 3DS isn't just the 3D display. The 3DS also has faster hardware, and wider top screen, and plenty of other new hardware aspects that the DS didn't have. So what this is is a different form factor for the 3DS, that doesn't have 3D, and is thus cheaper.

It's designed for children under the age of 7, as the hinge design on the normal consoles is too delicate for young children. It's for durability to withstand the non cautious nature of kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It really does not look like the most ergonomic device Nintendo have created.

<comment><USER5> I've heard from a number of friends that are saying that the thumbstick and buttons appear to be in a more natural position in the 2DS than they are in the 3DS. I'm thinking it's going to vary for everyone.</comment></comment>


Eureqa discovers equations from data sets (incl Newton's 2nd law of motion) - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2009/12/04/eureqa-discovers-equations/

<comment><USER2> How is this different from Bacon? [http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5862)</comment>


Show HN: Real-Time Video Analytics with Redis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RedisGears/EdgeRealtimeVideoAnalytics <comment><USER2> I used redis for something very similar once before and found that redis was a bottleneck on hd video unless the frames were compressed as JPEG. I came away feeling that it was an easy way to solve the problem but not very efficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have an interesting handle, but regardless, I'd love to get more details

<comment><USER2> 1080p means, uncompressed, each frame is about 6MB. That is a pretty large message size for redis and the throughput/latency of redis is known to go down.

It may just be a case that redis is not terribly optimized for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work man will set it up on my MBP19 the unofficial metrics seems really promising. any idea to change the license to MIT ?

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome use-case with redis and it's newest modules. Very well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> TY - that was the secondary goal (the primary being to inspire new use cases...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty awesome. Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Ask HN: What are possible ways to get access to Google Glass API? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to play with Google Glass API but it's only available to developers who have Glass as part of the Explorer Program. I missed Twitter contest too. <comment><USER2> If you don't own Glass, Google currently will not let you have an API key.

However, this guy has been working on trying to replicate the API as closely as he can though for those who cannot get at the real deal.

<https://github.com/Scarygami/mirror-api>

</comment><comment><USER3> <https://developers.google.com/glass/quickstart/index>

<comment><AUTHOR> But I need API Key to interact with API.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a movie streaming app in Unity - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/eDPxa5Gv7jg <comment><AUTHOR> I got to know about public domain films and decided to make an app for them. Presently they are scattered on several websites and youtube.

I made this in Unity because: \- Contrary to what I believed, the battery didn't get drained. 2 hours of streaming brought my entry level 1 year old Android phone from 50% to 25% charge.

\- I took this as an opportunity to make a UI framework of my own. It makes UI a purely data thing, optimizes dynamic images loaded from URL by caching and clearing based on visibility, added easy to author transtion. And more. I'll be open sourced soon.

\- I will be porting this to VR as well. There is actually a substantial user base of older people that I think would like it.

Some technical details: \- UI is using my own framework. I developed it along with the app when I was working on the domain and services.

\- I use MongoDB Atlas for hosting film meta data. For working with MongoDB in C# I use MongoDB.Entities instead of the driver directly.

\- The videos are hosted on BunnyCDN.

\- I use the in-built Unity VideoPlayer with an abstraction over it so that I can later change players if needed. I'm yet to finalize subtitle support.

This app is launching this weekend!

<comment><USER2> Cool, that's an unusual use of Unity - but I imagine you could do some unique graphical things with the UI later on to take advantage of a game engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is unusual :) I guess VR support itself is something I couldn't have done without a game engine and I know Unity well so it made sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Youtuber/Scientist running a crowdfunding campaign to build an awesome lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I17YF76ucW4

<comment><AUTHOR> direct link to his campaign: <http://www.indiegogo.com/NurdRage></comment>


Show HN: Twitter and text message shortener - <AUTHOR> http://readmo.re/

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's useful as a text message shortener because for me, my Android phone automatically sends 2 text messages. It will break the workflow if I have to click on a link to read the entire message that someone had sent.

As a tweet shortener, I know there's code to breaks a long message into chunks and tweets them so a link to read the entire message is again not ideal.

Best of luck :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thinking about getting rid of this domain/service. Do you find it useful?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is this C Programming Book Worth $674.99 - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Development-Program-Design-Using/dp/0314069879/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 <comment><USER2> That's not what it's worth, it's what some seller asks for it.

It could be a scammer trying to make the book look rare ([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/technology/amazon-used- pa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/technology/amazon-used-paperback- book-pricing.html)), or it could be price-setting bots derailing each other ([http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358](http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358))

<comment><AUTHOR> These are legit sellers. And different ones too. Doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER2> What makes you think they are? I, for example, find it weird that both "From My Family To Yours" and "Chris's Bargains" have over 100,000 items on sale. That, at least, seems like misrepresentation of a business as an individual seller.

 _"And different ones, too"_

How do you know they are? 2 of the 3 ship from Florida; the third doesn't mention where it ships from. Could be chance, could be a sign that some of them are the same seller.

(And no, I have no idea how common it is for a merchant to have multiple stores on Amazon. It is fairly common on other stores on the internet, though, as it doesn't cost much to create another web store, and it allows you to target different market segments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an old C programming book. I'd like to know what's so special about this book?.

It's not just 1 seller that has high prices, there are different sellers, selling it for $600-$700 and on abebooks I've seen a $1000.

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER3> _Am I missing something here?_

When I see weird situations like this, I usually assume it's a consequence of algorithmic pricing driven by bots, and that there's a bug, or the bots got caught up in some weird feedback loop or something, and the prices got set to some goofy value.

It could also be that demand for the book did temporarily spike for some reason (maybe somebody famous mentioned it in a popular Youtube video or something) and the pricing algorithms were reacting, but just overshot the mark.

I _think_ something like that happened with _Human Universals_ ([https://www.amazon.com/Human-Universals-Donald- Brown/dp/0070...](https://www.amazon.com/Human-Universals-Donald- Brown/dp/007008209X/)) a while back... it's not really all that notable a book in general, and there are plenty of used copies available. But Alan Kay recommended it in his Startup School videos and when I went to look for a copy, the prices were all totally outrageous. Like, on the order of several hundred dollars for even the paperback edition. But it eventually settled back down... but even now, the cheapest used paperback copy is around $65.00. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I suspect it was related.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have seen two different ideas about this in the past. One: money laundering. Anyone can say they are a book seller and sell to themselves or an accomplice, pay the fees and taxes and the rest is then legitimate income. Two: warring bots. One bot keeps raising their price slightly above the most expensive other copy for sale. And when there are two such bots there may be no upper limit. In the past I've seen books priced for $1000 U.S. or more when identical copies were for sale for a few dollars.

</comment><comment><USER5> Price discovery is not rational, it's sociological. I still remember the "I Am Rich" iPhone app.

</comment><comment><USER6> Try this, it is highly recommended: "C Programming: A Modern Approach," 2nd Edition by K. N. King is selling for 111 USD, covering C89/C99 but the First Edition, covering C89 is only 60 USD

But if you want his "Modula-2: A Complete Guide", its only $300 new!

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of people think this is an Amazon thing. But every bookstore that lists this book have it for similarly high prices. Even used copies are a couple hundred bucks.

<comment><USER3> _But every bookstore that lists this book have it for similarly high prices._

It's the same batch of sellers, selling across most all of those sites. Or to the extent that there are sellers who are, say, on Ebay but not Amazon, or vice versa, they have bots tracking the prices across all the sites. In either case, I find that you just don't get much price variance across book selling sites these days. I mean, sure, there are occasional exceptions, but by and large, prices tend to converge to a common value, or at least to a small range around that.</comment></comment>