Do billionaires have higher IQs?(2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/are-billionaires-smarter-than-you-2013-04-24?pagenumber=2

<comment><USER2> Subtitle: "New research suggests the rich may be smarter"

It does nothing of the kind. No matter how many ways this kind of nonsense is packaged by journalists, a correlation is just that, nothing more. Wealth and I.Q. test scores are weakly correlated, but the implication of the above subtitle is that the correlation is more than a meaningless, chance association. There is zero evidence for this implication.

<comment><USER3> > Subtitle: "New research suggests the rich may be smarter" It does nothing of > the kind. No matter how many ways this kind of nonsense is packaged by > journalists, a correlation is just that, nothing more.

 _That 's what a positive correlation means_.

> Wealth and I.Q. test scores are weakly correlated

Not very weak at the tails like billionaires.

Fulltext: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/56143/wai-a...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/56143/wai- americas-elite-2013.pdf)

<comment><USER2> > That's what a positive correlation means.

Not so, at least, not without an explanation backed up by evidence. You're missing something fundamental -- a positive correlation does not carry evidentiary weight until it's been explained. Science is not a collection of descriptions, it's a discipline that is sometimes able to uncover explanations -- where they exist.

Alongside the old saying "correlation doesn't prove causation" should be another similar cautionary note about uncovering evidence for the meaning of a correlation before describing it as meaningful.

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/correlation-or- causatio...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/correlation-or- causation-12012011-gfx.html)

<comment><USER3> > a positive correlation does not carry evidentiary weight until it's been > explained.

What on earth? A positive correlation _is_ a fact. This is like looking in a microscope and saying, 'ah, none of this data is true until we have a theory which can explain it'. Uh... no. The data is the data. The correlations are the correlations.

<comment><USER2> > What on earth? A positive correlation is a fact.

You know, you could just learn how science works. Did you follow the link I provided? It shows that correlations mean nothing without an explanation.

> This is like looking in a microscope and saying, 'ah, none of this data is > true until we have a theory which can explain it'.

Yes, and that is exactly how science works -- observation means nothing unless and until it addresses a theory.

But to show you what you're missing, let's do a little experiment. Let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) your version of science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, as you seem to think.

Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that you feel are necessary for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no?

<comment><USER3> > You know, you could just learn how science works.

Your condescension is hilarious.

> Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the > requirements that you feel are necessary for science, I deserve a Nobel > Prize. Yes or no?

No. My observation of your claimed data is fine, but it is an additional matter of interpretation to make any causal claims, or claim external or internal validity.

What you are not getting is that the correlation stands on its own. It's when you try to read into it some other claim (and I use the pronoun 'you' very deliberately here), like 'the rich are rich solely because they are smart' or 'only smart people are rich' or 'the rich are morally better', and are revolted by them, that you try to pretend the data doesn't exist.

It does. Deal.

<comment><USER2> >> You know, you could just learn how science works.

> Your condescension is hilarious.

When one seen someone assume a correlation has a meaning not proven in the evidence, it's not condescension, it's charity.

> What you are not getting is that the correlation stands on its own.

Yes, as does the causal relationship between puddles and rain in advance of an attempt to offer an explanation: puddles predict rainfall.

> but it is an additional matter of interpretation to make any causal claims, > or claim external or internal validity.

Yes, and now that you're reduced to making my points for me, we're done.

<comment><USER3> > When one seen someone assume a correlation has a meaning not proven in the > evidence, it's not condescension, it's charity.

Where did I assume a meaning? My point was simple: you were trying to pretend the data doesn't exist by directly contradicting the very definition of what a correlation is. I am not committing myself to any further framework or theory or causal model of how the correlation comes into existence.

> Yes, as does the causal relationship between puddles and rain in advance of > an attempt to offer an explanation: puddles predict rainfall.

Indeed, it does. Which is why a puddle-denier is a sad sight. 'There can't be puddles because no one has offered a fully-comprehensive theory which predicts puddles and which I find acceptable! Why must people be so puddleist?'

> Yes, and now that you're reduced to making my points for me, we're done.

Denying your fallacious original overreadings and adopting your opponent's criticisms and claiming to have held them all along, while flattering, is still very annoying.

<comment><USER2> >> When one seen someone assume a correlation has a meaning not proven in the evidence, it's not condescension, it's charity.

> Where did I assume a meaning?

Apart from the correlation, when you began speaking as though an I.Q. test measures intelligence. Even the current test's designer denies that.

> you were trying to pretend the data doesn't exist ...

Citation needed. You're using words I never used to assert a claim I never made. I never claimed that data don't exist, I made the point that without evidence for a connection, the correlation has no meaning. And I proved it with multiple examples.

> Denying your fallacious original overreadings ...

I see that you still need to learn the role of evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Sysadmin's Unixersal Translator - <AUTHOR> http://bhami.com/rosetta.html <comment><USER2> A thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15180581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15180581)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284655)

(Links for the curious. Reposts are ok after a year or so.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't know xmessage existed but I found it's quite a nice tool for filling your screen with windows that follow your mouse cursor with minimal effort.

</comment><comment><USER4> Aww, no column for powershell on windows =)

</comment><comment><USER5> Missing non-Unix OS like VMS.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't non-Unix be out of scope for a Unixersal project?

<comment><USER5> Oh I missed the pun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> oh, wow!</comment>


Welcome to Quora. Do Yourself a Favor & Slow Down. - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Lucretia-M-Pruitt/Welcome-to-Quora-Do-Yourself-a-Favor-Slow-Down

<comment><USER2> While I really enjoy reading Quora and think that it has enormous potential, this type of comment shows me why I don't think it can reach the mainstream. Simply, the community is not meant for everyone. While Twitter also has a small portion of people tweeting, Quora goes even further- towards generally discouraging people outside of a small group of technically inclined giants in the startup world. I don't know how they are going to spread that into other fields in a way that continues to interest people when so much interaction with the site is frowned upon.

<comment><USER3> Agree completely. Didn't really like the tone of that post either. Pretty presumptuous actually and condescending.</comment></comment>


Announcing Microsoft Ventures for startups - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/06/25/announcing-microsoft-ventures-for-startups-to-build-innovate-and-grow.aspx

<comment><USER2> No way.

I'd take dirty cash from Larry Ellison before I signed up to anything related to them these days. This is after 20 years of working with Microsoft on large enterprise products, some of which were built in partnership with them.

If you've ever been on the end of a partner agreement, which is what this probably amounts to with much more lock-in (as they're channeling cash to you as well), then you'll understand what I mean. It's overbearing and you're treated like a criminal after about 3 months if you don't spend, spend, spend.

Also, I worked for a startup which was spun up in conjunction with them (no funding but support, advice and endorsement). It was quite successful circa 2005. We switched out to Python/PostgreSQL as to be honest it was getting expensive throwing SQL boxes out and the time to market for ASP.Net was high.

The moment this happened, everything was off the table and we had the license police on our arses, even though we were in compliance and they knew it.

You know the film: The Firm? Not far off it from experience.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting. I had the exact opposite experience. I was part of a small startup that received exactly what you describe as "support, advice and endorsement" (like you, we did not receive funding) for developer tools.

We developed Java software using Eclipse. Most of our team used Linux or Mac OS, only one of our developers used Windows. We shipped software for HP-UX on HP-PA RISC and IBM mainframes. Our web site was written in Ruby on Rails and backed by PostgreSQL.

Microsoft liked this arrangement enough that they acquired us. (Full disclosure, I remain a Microsoft employee.)

<comment><USER2> We must have been blessed with an asshole rep or two!

<comment><USER3> That would be difficult. Our positive experience was certainly a direct connection to the welcome nature of the product development team and the sales and evangelism teams. Without them, we would have had a much more difficult time making inroads into a sales channel.

I'm sorry about your experience and I really hope it's the exception and not the rule.

<comment><USER2> Which country? We were in the UK and is was the guys from Reading (partner support).

<comment><USER4> In my personal experience, the foreign subsidiary care about nothing except screwing as much licensing out of people as possible. I've dealt with a local MS that told people it was _illegal_ to use a non-regional copy of Windows inside the country. (So, technically, travelling with a laptop using US Windows wasn't allowed.) This was incorrect, they didn't care. In another country, the regional MS office was flat-out corrupt. I have a feeling the incentive structure for the other offices is very different, and the lack of R&D happening there skews the work environment.

I've met good individuals, just haven't seen good overall management. Then again, I'm not looking at total sales as my evaluation metric.

<comment><USER2> Thanks - that makes sense. That matches our experience exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft Ventures' site -- [http://www.microsoftventures.com/](http://www.microsoftventures.com/) \-- has this nugget right at the top, in large lettering:

"You have an idea so brilliant it burns. You can't sleep. You can't eat. You just have to make it happen—now."

There have been plenty of posts on Hacker News about entrepreneurs and hackers being bad at work-life balance and/or trying to create better work-life balance with varying degrees of success. It's a real issue, and I think the common consensus is that entrepreneurs with poor work-life balance are more likely to experience burn-out (or other problems like alcohol or drug issues -- or depression) which will ultimately make them less effective at whatever they're doing.

So I wonder two things:

1) How much of this "work at the expense of all else" mentality is, in fact, driven by marketing like this on the Microsoft Ventures site? (Edit: Not that it's Microsoft's fault, but that this attitude is common in marketing relating to start-ups and entrepreneurship.)

2) Should having this kind of "work at the expense of all else" language in the most prominent position on the Microsoft Ventures site make me conclude that they actually kind of don't "get it" as far as start-up entrepreneurship goes? Or, at least, that they are trying to take some "cool" stance and "appeal to the kids" with some slightly more sophisticated form of the "EXTREME" everything marketing aimed at teens and twenty-somethings about a decade ago? Because it makes the site feel more like an ad for Mountain Dew or Red Bull than an advertisement for an organization that really cares to understand how start-up culture should work. Which, I guess it is, since the end-game for Microsoft is most likely to get more cool new companies to use their (otherwise struggling?) software platforms.

I understand I'm judging based on one throwaway tag-line, but it's literally the only non-menu-item piece of text on the screen when I visit their site. So I feel I have to give it a fair amount of weight.

<comment><USER6> To me, it comes across as trying to seduce the desperate.

<comment><USER7> Most startups and founders are like that, either because they want to get the product out yesterday, they are broke as hell or both. So MSFT is not targeting the desperate, but real start-ups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this is a smart move. Microsoft has a lot of cash and doesn't seem to know where/how to spend it. I mean their latest product launches have met pretty cold receptions. Curious to see how this will play out.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a Bizspark member I'm a little perplexed at not having received an email first...

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure, but this looks like the first major global approach by an in-house tech VC fund - 5 accelerators around the globe.

<comment><USER11> I noticed that too. It looks like MS is taking advantage of their global reach to get the benefits of accelerators to places that the mainstream "startup" community isn't going. It's their chance to be firstest with the mostest, when they're coming into this venture accelerator thingy late in the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if rounds A, B and C would cover the licencing cost of a SQL Server cluster? But in all seriousness I hope this would result in more interesting .NET based apps and will give Microsoft more reason to support Mono, new open source frameworks and middleware and better integrations/bindings with existing ones.

</comment><comment><USER13> WHAT??? Anyway, good news for the startup scene, as long as they don't force everyone to code in .NET. ;)

<comment><USER14> You only have to code in .Net if you don't agree to put in an NSA back door.

<comment><USER15> I know yours is just a pithy joke, but I think a lot of this community has extreme NSA-fatigue, including myself. It's not enough that 50-90% of the stories on the front page are _all_ related to the NSA scandal, but it also has to infest completely unrelated posts like this one.

I'd like to pretend that we're still a forum about technology and startups, as opposed to an ever so slightly higher-level form of /r/politics.

<comment><USER16> There there, it isn't good to lie to yourself like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anecdotal, but the only positive experience I've ever heard that someone had with Microsoft was being acquired. Every other interaction turned sour (and often fatal) for the 2nd party.

Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's, the Microsoft Kiss of Death was well known. The concept is not well known today, but I'm not sure anything else about it has changed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like they are priming the pump for Metro and Azure as well as trying to get some new blood on their side.

I've been tempted to go down this road, but then my memory of previous startup experiences and the number of times I've been pissed off about shit from Redmond stops me.</comment>


Layouts [OSX/Alfred extension to manipulate windows] - <AUTHOR> http://projects.jga.me/layouts/

<comment><USER2> It's great that Alfred got a window manager. I've been looking into so many that I've forgotten their number and names. But for the last couple of months I've been using Slate[1] and it does everything I needed -- actually I'd love to have a restore initial size action, but I can live without it for now.

[1]: <https://github.com/jigish/slate></comment>


Twitter moves away from 140 characters, ditches confusing and restrictive rules - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/24/twitter-moves-away-from-140-characters-ditches-confusing-and-restrictive-rules/?ncid=tcdaily <comment><USER2> official announcement: [https://blog.twitter.com/express-even-more- in-140-characters](https://blog.twitter.com/express-even-more- in-140-characters) (running discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11761583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11761583))

</comment><comment><USER3> "After all, Twitter is a great big, public conversational platform — the fact that you could follow chats between other users you cared about was part of its draw."

Insane. For me it is the complete opposite. Having to read a personal conversation between two people is perhaps the primary reason I do not use Twitter. Far too much noise. And they should count hashtags as double (the other main reason why I cannot stand Twitter).

<comment><USER4> If you think twitter is bad for hashtags, I recommend staying away from Instagram.

<comment><USER3> Do not use Instagram either, but for other reasons. :)

I tried using Instagram. Downloaded the app and created an account. It promptly emailed everyone in my address book notifying them that I created an account. Deleted the app and my account. Never again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I almost completely ditched Twitter because I got sick of attempting to condense my thoughts into blurbs a toddler with ADD could understand.

On twitter, I have thousands of followers and I'm lucky to get even one reply or mention.

On Facebook, however, I have about 300 friends, and I can post an actual paragraph along with a photo or a video. I often get 30 likes and 20 comments on the posts.

Facebook does a much better job of facilitating real conversations, and yet it still allows people to post 140 character blurbs (if they want to).

I get it though. Twitter is what it is, and there are tons of people who love it. I'm not one of those people.

</comment><comment><USER6> The way I understand it, the 140 character limit still holds. They just stopped counting things like mentions and URLs.

<comment><USER7> But if they didn't use a misleading title you wouldn't have clicked the link...

<comment><USER6> haha I thought about that too. Clever but slightly misleading. Surely they could have come up with something true and equally attractive but then again it's the battle of " _who gets the story out first_ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Removing the ".@" syntax is a mistake. I don't always want to broadcast replies. I still don't understand why URLs are still included within the 140 char limit either. Can someone explain that better than the article?

<comment><USER9> Urls where fixed to 22, then 23, lately 24 chars. It's the length of the actual shortened url.

I've been working with people helping social media for a bit, and one common issue in preparing a list of tweets to schedule is making sure the length is ok. So you end up with silly xls files where you have a url column, a text column, etc. and weird formulas to compute the size.

I think Twitter just wants to simplify the life. You can send 140 chars of text/comment. Mentions, urls, images, etc. are not counted because normal people aren't counting like that.

<comment><USER10> He was asking why URLs ARE still being counted as part of the length – Twitter seems to have excluded everything except for those. Your reply demonstrates how arbitrary that distinction is :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know if this was the original Techcrunch title, but it is extraordinarily misleading. The proper title is the current article title:

 _Twitter moves away from 140 characters, ditches confusing and restrictive rules_

<comment><USER12> Thanks, we restored the original title.

Submitters: please do not rewrite titles unless they are misleading or linkbait: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Please especially don't rewrite them to make them _more_ misleading and linkbait. (Submitted title was "Twitter ditches 140 character limit".)

<comment><USER13> Apropos character limits: maybe you could stop counting (2001) etc. towards the 80 character limit in submissions?

Because a few times I have left out the year since I couldn't find a good shorter title, and then you added the year afterwards. I would have done that myself. :-)

<comment><USER12> We can't get around that limit any more than you can!

Currently the only thing that's allowed to exceed the limit is "[pdf]" but yes, it should probably include "(year)" and "[video]".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I get why this is news to many people, but when you get down to it, a company removed its own arbitrary limitation. It's really difficult to give a shit about such things.

EDIT: I'm aware of the original reasoning for the limitation, so perhaps "arbitrary" is not the best adjective.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting move toward the end of the 140 character limit. Let's see how it goes but I'm pretty sure people will still complain about the limitation, until they really ditch it...

</comment><comment><USER16> Silly question perhaps (I'm a Twitterer): but can't you now do hacky things like @insert_complete_message_you_want_to_tell?

<comment><USER17> Maybe not that since that would not be registered username.

[http://but.you.might.be.able.to.do.something.like.this](http://but.you.might.be.able.to.do.something.like.this)

<comment><USER18> no, because URLs are still counted (probably because of this workaround).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow I have been using Twitter since 08/09 and I never knew about the ".@" reply.

<comment><USER19> There was nothing special to them though. Convention was just ".@user" but you could also have used "Hello @user!" The point was to force Twitter from treating it as a recipient-only message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> About damn time!

</comment><comment><USER21> are bots going to be confused because there is no limit now ? or are they going to step up to the next level and write essays ?</comment>


Avian malaria-mediated population decline of a widespread iconic bird species - <AUTHOR> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.182197 <comment><AUTHOR> > _London's house sparrows (Passer domesticus) have plummeted by 71% since > 1995, with new research suggesting avian malaria could be to blame._</comment>


Amazon Hires Homeless Workers, and Everyone Ends Up Disappointed - <AUTHOR> http://kuow.org/post/amazon-hires-homeless-workers-and-everyone-ends-disappointed <comment><USER2> It's almost as if Amazon is being criticised for offering the jobs in the first place, and instead they are being saddled with the entire burden of the issues homeless people face. I think that is unfair. What Amazon agreed to do is essentially look the other way on issues which employers usually see as reasons to not hire. It is very clearly seasonal work and there are many benefits to doing that work which might lead to more reliable jobs in the future.

<comment><USER3> Ethical entanglement: if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame. Happens all the time: [http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of- ethi...](http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

<comment><USER4> Yep, you beat me to it. It's like a variant on the old joke[1]:

"You must be a profiteer."

'Sure, I guess I count as one. How'd you know?'

"Well, you learned about the immense, tragic problem of homelessness, and apparently your first thought was, wow, awesome, a cheap labor force I can use to cut costs!"

'Hm, okay, fair enough. You must be a philosopher then.'

"Yes! You're right! How'd you know?"

'Well, because homelessness has been around for ages, and appears to be intractable, and you've been unable to make any real progress on it, and yet when I offer homeless people an alternative to their current state, and some of them take it, somehow, the whole problem is all my fault."

[1] [https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm](https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm)

<comment><USER5> >Well, because homelessness has been around for ages, and appears to be intractable

It's not at all intractable. Giving jobs to the jobless and homes to the homeless is exactly as straightforward as it looks.

The homeless and jobless serve a function, though - to keep wages and agitation down for the precariously employed and the precariously housed. They're like this mainly for the benefit of corporations like Amazon which farm cheap labor.

Effectively the homeless serve as a form of 'public good' for the owners of capital.

That's why proposals to house or give homeless jobs with government money are met with sheer disgust by the same media that happily endorses spending billions of dollars dropping bombs on brown children.

<comment><USER6> It is not straightforward at all. Most homeless people suffer from a mental illness. You'd have to treat that first. Some of them might not want to be treated though...

The notion that the owners of capital would want to have homeless people is absurd. The "capitalists" would like everyone to be working, as higher production means more profits for them. The state may need to step in with a minimum wage (or basic income), but otherwise the system should work fine.

<comment><USER5> >It is not straightforward at all. Most homeless people suffer from a mental illness.

Unsurprisingly unemployment and homelessness and being told that it's all your fault causes mental illness, especially when combined with attempts to self medicate with drugs or alcohol.

>The notion that the owners of capital would want to have homeless people is absurd. The "capitalists" would like everyone to be working, as higher production means more profits for them.

More unemployed + homeless

=> More afraid workers

=> Workers who are willing to take a lower wage

=> Higher profits

The notion that higher production automatically leads to higher profits is pretty comical.

<comment><USER7> >>It is not straightforward at all. Most homeless people suffer from a mental illness.

>Unsurprisingly unemployment and homelessness and being told that it's all your fault causes mental illness, especially when combined with attempts to self medicate with drugs or alcohol.

Achievement unlocked: Trivialized mental illness.

Being homeless is certainly stressful on the psyche, but not every crazy homeless person started as a sane homeless person. Some people just cannot function as independent adults. One person I know managed to score Section 8 housing, and she trashed the apartment and threatened the landlord and ended up on the street. Until her condition deteriorated enough for the police to call a 5150 on her.

But she doesn't consider herself crazy. Just stressed out. Modern liberation theory means the institutions consider her to be an adult, so if she says she doesn't want to stay in an asylum, then there's no way for us non-super-rich people to stop her from leaving psychiatric care and ruining her life.

There is no firm boundary between crazy and sane, and even being delusional doesn't prevent one from being a productive member of society. We just don't have enough appropriate services for all the crazy people in this country.

[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8)

<comment><USER5> >Being homeless is certainly stressful on the psyche, but not every crazy homeless person started as a sane homeless person.

Most of them started out not being able to hold down a job, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow that was a really depressing read. I did learn several new problems that homeless people can face getting back into the working world that I wasn't aware of (e.g. night shift work isn't compatible with homeless shelters).

<comment><USER9> My takeaway from this is that homeless shelters don't do enough to support employment of the homeless, and that a minimum wage job is not sufficient to get you off the street. Conversations I've had with homeless people seem to corroborate this.

<comment><USER10> I did the math previously on the numbers that SF put out on the homless support they pay out per homeless person; $25k per year / homeless...

yet the services are abysmal!

One of the things I've long thought would be three areas to address homelessness;

1\. create "hygiene trucks" \- they are semi trailers that are mobile that would provide showers, bathrooms, 'scrubs' style basic clothing.

2\. container based micro housing, divide the containers into ~3 rooms.

3\. "standard pantry" \-- give them a basic standard pantry which has the ingredients or basic meals (a step up from MREs)

4\. basic min-wage jobs with initiatives like this with Amazon where the co gets a tax break - but must provide basic skills like cleaning, organizing etc.

Then -- FOCUS ON MENTAL HEALTH

Mental health degenerates REALLY fast for those that dont have the above basics.

NO PETS.

<comment><USER11> > _1\. create "hygiene trucks" \- they are semi trailers that are mobile that > would provide showers, bathrooms, 'scrubs' style basic clothing._

How is this better than a permanent facility? It's got to be way more expensive to build this into a truck.

> _2\. container based micro housing, divide the containers into ~3 rooms._

Containers are not an affordable way to build housing. Shipping containers converted into housing is a fetish for rich people with architects.

> _FOCUS ON MENTAL HEALTH_

Yep. Mental health problems are highly correlated with homelessness. Everything from depression to schizophrenia to substance abuse. Often multiple issues combined.

> _NO PETS._

This eliminates a huge number of homeless. Many homeless desperately cling to their pets because they have no one else.

<comment><USER12> You might get beyond not in my backyard with a truck.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but if you can build container housing in someone's backyard, I'm pretty sure you can get a washroom in there, too.

<comment><USER13> I think the previous poster was referring to NIMBYs[1] (people who oppose something because of its proximity to them, even if it's a necessity).

A fair amount of people wouldn't want a homeless shelter or washroom next to their house, but a mobile truck could have the same benefit while placating the NIMBYs.

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

<comment><USER11> I understand that. Item 2 on the list was container-based micro housing units, though, which are going to have to be built/installed somewhere. If you can get the permits and land to install micro housing units, you can most certainly get permits to install shower and was facilities. In fact you are required to do so. You cannot housing housing without plumbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am not sure what this article achieves. I think it only discourages companies from hiring homeless people.

How is the risk of going into these kinds of jobs any different for a non- homeless person? Possibly even greater, given they are paying rent/mortgage, car lease whatever.

Would it be better if these kinds of job completely abolished? Anyone who puts their hand up for these jobs, knows or should know what they are getting into.

Having said that, efforts should be made to work out the issues rather than just bash anyone who is trying to lend a hand (even for selfish reasons). For instance the shelters could adjust their policies and accommodate the people who work during the night (and have proof of it).

<comment> jon-wood > Anyone who puts their hand up for these jobs, knows or should know what they > are getting into.

In many cases they know they're getting into the only job available to them, and that their kids need to eat.

We shouldn't be creating a world where people are expected to do strenous physical labour under stressful conditions for barely enough money to live. Amazon is taking billions a year, it doesn't seem unreasonable that the people who make that possible should see some of that.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate the sentiment but what exactly are you proposing?

<comment> jon-wood Ideally, companies voluntarily paying at least enough that someone working there can expect enough to live a decent life. Short of that, a higher minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Everyone ends up disappointing is a bad characterization. I am surprised that a company as big as Amazon even bothers to hire homeless people. If the people prefer night shelter over night work they could perhaps stay in the shelter.

I think we must applaud Amazon for this brave move in first place and homeless people should be thankful to Amazon. Clearly these people have not seen 15 Indian students staying in 2 Bedroom apartment earning below minimum wage for part time work.

<comment><USER11> > _If the people prefer night shelter over night work they could perhaps stay > in the shelter._

Perhaps they shouldn't have to choose between shelter and employment.

> _I think we must applaud Amazon for this brave move_

We can applaud Amazon for trying while also acknowledging problems with the attempt.

> _Clearly these people have not seen 15 Indian students staying in 2 Bedroom > apartment earning below minimum wage for part time work._

Maybe not. Instead they've seen 50 hungry people crowd into a shelter trying to get a night's sleep while earning no wage at all. They've also seen 50 more get turned away because the shelter is at capacity. And they've probably been in the second 50 many times themselves.

This is ridiculous. Do you suppose students working part time and living in cramped quarters actually have it worse than people who are literally unemployed and homeless?

<comment><USER15> No one else has an obligation to fix the world for others. People can only pick between choices they have.

10 people working at night can pool in money and rent a space just to sleep during day time. I have done that in past and it worked well. There are several ways to solve these problems without complaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Homelessness shelters will generally be up against some pretty tight constraints. Their service is non-profit, their staffing is either voluntary or tight and their organization structure will be pushed by fluctuating demand.

The constraints on a company participating in a program are quite disproportionate, they're looking to fill a seasonal gap and while looking towards a social problem to fill this gap is honourable (and mutually beneficial), they also need to be aware of the duress that mutually beneficial labour can create.

This article only attempts to highlight the constraints. Amazon should have better social policy to be deal with the vulnerabilities of the assets they hire in this situation. I'm sure it's a learning experience for the YWCA, but the onus is still on Amazon to be able to better negotiate stable living conditions for the people it employed through such a program. These are people who have the potential to get out of bad situation but are still vulnerable (financially / socially / mentally), and this vulnerability should be realistically accounted for as the real liability that it is to the company employing.

No company needs to embark on such a program, they could fill labour shortages through traditional means, but when they do, it should be with some mutual agreement to work with the organisation and employees to ensure a quality outcome. Anything less is socially negligent.

It's heartening that Amazon wanted to participate, but I hope they can take on the criticism and help build a better program.

</comment><comment><USER12> The title implies that Amazon was disappointed, that doesn't seem to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hum, maybe the problem here is not in Amazon, maybe is with the shelters culture.

What if some shelters around just reverse its schedule, and start closing by night and opening by day for this people?.

Amazon will have what they want

Homeless will have a job and a safe place to stay when is colder out and most conflicts between homeless and drunked people arose. I suppose that Amazon pays for heating its buildings.

Shelters could save some precious money in electricity and heating and maybe an easier life for shelter's volunteers.

It seems that all parts will benefit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slightly off topic, but why in US diplomas are not universal? Why nurse from Dallas suddenly is not nurse is Seattle? What is 'good' about that? Personally I have hard time imagine any sane reasoning for that. Are one locked to the state where one did studies? How cross-state studying work then?

<comment><USER19> It's not diplomas it's certifications. It (e.g.) a lawyer moves between states he or she may need to take _that_ new state's bar exam.

<comment><USER18> Ok. While it's different, the difference is subtle. As you said for lawyers there is an exam each time one changing state? Same for nurses? Engineers? I can't see good part of that.

<comment><USER19> The difference is that there is no nationwide licensing body, so the license issued by the "nursing licensing body" in Texas needs to be transferred to the "nursing licensing body" in Washington state. And they need to accept it and turn it into a Washington state nursing certification.

Because these are separate bodies there may be different rules, regulations, standards regarding what it takes to be a nurse.

<comment><USER20> Yet a doctor can travel between _countries_ who agree to have "equivalence" between qualifications.

Law obviously makes sense when so much is state specific, I'd be less convinced by nursing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I get: There is a base line of unattractivety which Amazon crossed. Working under the conditions Amazon provided in that specific program effectively reduced overall utility. Which in turn means that being homeless without that job is better that having a job like that.

That should tell something.

<comment><USER22> No, what I got was that the terms of the job were not communicated correctly, possibly not presented at all. It depends on who at the YMCA was doing the recruiting. Was it an Amazon rep or someone at the YMCA just selling a dream?

Warehouse work isn't fun. My employer has a large number scattered across the country and picking and stocking requires some hustle to meet customer demands; ours is more sensitive as we pull for both overnight and on demand. Still there are many people who keep these jobs for years, if not using them as a springboard into better positions within the company (most of our older executives came from pullers). Amazon may or not have a path out of their warehouses, I don't know

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What would be amazing is if Amazon provided their own shelter for the employees who are taking on the odd shifts. It would give a double incentive to stay clean and work hard. Of course there's an additional expense to this, but if they want to go above and beyond with this particular issue, this could be the first step to a real answer.

<comment><USER24> I dunno.

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

<comment><USER23> ha. That's more extreme. I was thinking more toward a hostel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "It may even hurt you ... pay your rent, and then all of a sudden the floor > drops out from under you. There could be an eviction, which could hurt > chances of landing an apartment later.

Or, you know, just leave when you can't pay the rent?

Is that not an option? Or do they not expect homeless to be able to do that?

<comment><USER26> Leaving before your lease is up usually has financial penalties and terms shorter than 1 year are more expensive for the exact same apartment.

<comment><USER27> Really cheap housing (which is generally all you can afford on minimum wage) often doesn't have a yearly lease, in fact many places charge weekly.

<comment><USER26> Ah, I've never seen or really studied that low end of the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> All political ballyhoo aside, I see this as just a 1/2 baked plan. They had a goal, they apparently didn't look for the big picture or consult with appropriate sources for advise, and they failed. Regardless of any moral or political judgements, it doesn't reflect well on them.

<comment><USER29> If they keep trying, and learning from their mistakes, I'll be happy to forget the initial missteps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Emotionalism in the workplace spells disaster. Why hire the homeless simply because they're homeless and we need to help them? What they need is rehab not jobs. Give the to the graduates who need them.

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems to me that an opportunity presents itself: work with the shelters on ingress/egress issues. Amazon should be pretty good at it by now.

If it makes it easier for both sides to get what they want, it's not even that big of an expense.

</comment><comment><USER30> Emotionalism is the assassin of professionalism.

</comment><comment><USER31> I took it as a positive. It's an opportunity for homeless people to be given a chance. As long as the lessons are learned.

That's a fascinating web site and interesting article. They use the term "people" a lot (great!), but refer specifically to only women being impacted (bad but very PC), "She said she and the other women in her shelter felt burned". That might be that the shelter is a female only shelter, but it's very common.. However, I read about 10 articles on that site. They were only about women or a black man... Very interesting. On the surface, it looks like a prejudiced website (PC on steroids).

On a side note, Australian Bureau of Statistics says that ~70% of homeless people are men, but most articles in Australia talk about the plight of homeless women. I wonder if that becomes self-fulfilling: extreme sexism in the media means that homeless men are neglected for Political Correctness' sake.

Personally, I think most media have a lot to answer for in driving prejudice as hard as they can, especially in the last few years. While some call for a men's movement, I see how much feminism drives sexism - and we don't need more sexism driven by gender based movements. We need society to universally condemn prejudice.

<comment><USER32> The article mentions that Amazon was working with the YWCA a number of times. The "W" in YWCA stands for women [1], so it's very likely that this was a women's shelter or at the very least a program targeted toward women. So it's unsurprising that the article refers to women being impacted, and I would hardly attribute it sexism or "political correctness".

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like a half-hearted effort, resulting in predictable outcomes.</comment>


Is 'Eat Real Food' Unthinkable? - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/is-eat-real-food-unthinkable/

<comment><USER2> From the referred Michael Pollan's article[0]:

> Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible > foodlike substances in the supermarket.

Once you let that sink in for a moment, your food choices should be pretty easy.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?_r=1)</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you get your science? - <AUTHOR>

Where do ya'll consume your science? I know it's no longer the case of tv, radio, or newspaper headlines for this crowd, but I am curious to know what websites, blogs, or social networks you all use to keep up to date. Or do you even consciously keep up to date at all, or is the headline method of learning about science just changing?<p>Reddit (/r/science, /r/askscience), Scienceblogs, viral Twitter news, and maybe here are some of the venues for myself personally. These tend to be pop-sci and general in topic. <comment><USER2> _Reddit (/r/science, /r/askscience), Scienceblogs, viral Twitter news, and maybe here are some of the venues for myself personally. These tend to be pop- sci and general in topic._

Yep, I like more serious stuff myself. When I really want to research a subject in depth, I go straight to the academic libraries of my alma mater university across town (now often via its extensive subscriptions to databases that I can access from home with user authentication I gain through an affiliation with that university). For articles to look at for submission to Hacker News, I

1) make sure to have a science section in my Google News set-up, and additionally use Google News and Google Scholar keyword searches to check submissions by other users to HN,

2) follow the recommendations of certain key Facebook friends of mine who are either professional scientists, science writers, or science educators,

3) daily read Science-Based Medicine

<http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/>

(I don't submit to HN from Science-Based Medicine every day, but I have found some GREAT articles there over the years)

4) daily read Why Evolution Is True

<http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/>

(which sometimes has personal posts by the site owner but also has EXCELLENT posts by him and by guest posters on cutting-edge science issues, some of which I post directly and some of which lead to professional journal articles I post directly)

5) daily read Skeptic Blog

<http://www.skepticblog.org/>

(which goes from very ordinary to EXCELLENT in quality in unpredictable fashion, and has several very thoughtful co-bloggers contributing)

6) daily read Respectful Insolence

<http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/>

(which has had some EXCELLENT posts about the methods of research over the years)

7) receive specific suggestions of research articles to read on human intelligence and human behavioral genetics either by request or by researcher nomination from the Minnesota Twin Family Study researchers with whom I discuss issues in a journal club during the school year

8) occasionally look at Pharyngula

<http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/>

(which is going through a dry spell right now while its author finishes writing a book that I am very eager to read, but which in the past has had some great posts on topics of much interest to HN participants)

and

9) generally prowl the Web and recommendations I see anywhere else in cyberspace for good articles on science.

I test most articles I see submitted anywhere with the checklist from Peter Norvig (Google's director of research)'s article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation,"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

which is my all-time favorite link to share in discussions on Hacker News.

By the way, a while ago there was a discussion on Hacker News about which sources NOT to submit here, and I collected some links after that discussion.

PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit. ScienceDaily is just a press release recycling service, nothing more. Users here on HN think there are better sites to submit from.

Comments about PhysOrg:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869>

"Yes Physorg definitely has some of the worst articles on the internet."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249>

"Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam:

<http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/> (press release),

<http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/> (video),

[http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien...](http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1116.pdf) (paper).

"PhysOrg: just say no."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888>

"The physorg article summary is wrong, I think."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857>

"Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong."

Comments about ScienceDaily:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206>

"Blogspam.

"Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing):

[http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare- dn...](http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dna-changes- following-population-explosion-may-hold-common-disease-clues)

"Underlying paper in Science (paywalled):

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1219240)

"Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on similar topics:

[http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare- genetic-...](http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic- variants-1.10655)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603>

"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc.

" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily."

Comments about both PhysOrg and ScienceDaily:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185>

"Why hasn't sciencedaily.com or physorg been banned from HN yet?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529>

"Original source:

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole- asymmetry...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole- asymmetry.html)

"What ScienceDaily has added to this: (1) They've removed one of the figures. (2) They've removed links to the Hinode and SOHO websites. (3) They've added lots of largely irrelevant links of their own, all of course to their own site(s).

"Please, everyone: stop linking to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361>

"Those sources don't have RSS feeds, and ScienceDaily and PhysOrg have a bad habit of not linking to such things."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766>

"Added value in PhysOrg article: zero.

"Please, everyone, stop submitting links from PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. I have never ever ever seen anything on those sites that isn't either (1) bullshit or (2) a recycled press release with zero (or often negative) added value. (Sometimes it's both at once.) It only takes ten seconds' googling to find the original source."

<comment><AUTHOR> Aren't aggregators like ScienceDaily and PhysOrg doing a service by filtering though?

Most journalistic news is 2nd, 3rd degree regurgitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For me, only a miniscule amount of 'my science' (say, 5-10%) comes from latest papers, and when it is - it's through relatively mainstream media (HN; BBC; New Scientist, etc.). Instead, 90-95% of my science consumption comes from learning fundamnetals (OCW.MIT.edu is great for this!).

For me, this is because advancing science is an inch-by-inch process, where to really grasp the significance of each paper you have to come from the same background as the researcher themselves. So only the mainstream stuff is super-exciting for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I generally just ask friends, I spent 4 years in academia after getting my PhD in applied mathematics, I used to work with equations from magnetohydrodynamics. I got a couple of friends in academia in fields as diverse as oncology, economics, history and physics.

Generally I'm not interested in new papers or new findings, I'm generally just try to master the basis of a new science every couple of months to understand the more stuff complicated stuff and this my friends always can provide.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> RE: the argument that the scientific process forces headlines to be better aggregated than delivered immediately, because it takes a long time for the public to digest and analyze the findings of a paper.

I x-posted this question on 4chan:

"Science news articles and headlines don't really exist. I mean, you can always subscribe to Science or Nature or what have you and get your news that way, or through some other peer-reviewed journal's online offerings, but because of the nature of scientific publications, "Oh fuck some new things is out", followed a month later by, "Those fucks didn't do their experiment correctly", you'll generally get better and more accurate information by following news aggregators.

The only reason I'd recommend following the as-it-happens scientific literature is if you're a PhD in the field and can understand the pedantry that they'll discuss at length, all while trying to find where they fucked up. If you just want to see the occassional bit of cool shit, just subscribe to /r/science or something on reddit"

<comment><AUTHOR> My response on 4chan:

"two contradictions:

1) higgs boson one of the most live streamed events ever, and hugely viral outside of the physics community. people were streaming directly into the presentation at cern.

2) mars curiosity arguably the largest scientific event to have happened on the internet. people were watching a livestream at NASA, and also watching a direct simulation of the landing. twitter hashtags and facebook shares, galore.

other events like the lunar eclipse are showing that the general public want to be in on the scientific action, as-it-happens."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aside from the top news sites, I browse and read 6 or so scientific journals at the local university library.

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't solve the problem how to find the gold nuggets, but if you want all the details: <http://arXiv.org> has the real preprints/articles. At least in the fields covered there, most articles appear here first.

</comment><comment><USER7> I mostly read books. There's enough material for the whole life.</comment>


How a guy from Montana overturned 150 years of biology - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> The thread from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143199)

</comment><comment><USER3> The HN title is consistent with the Atlantic title, but the Atlantic title is clickbait.

He didn't overturn 150 years of biology. He found that one little corner of the vastness which is biology was somewhat wrong -- lichen are symbiosis of two fungi and an algae, instead of just one fungus and an algae. Good for him, and he has an interesting backstory, but sheesh.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, "150 years of lichen biology" would be much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite part of this story is how incredibly strong biases are toward existing hypotheses.

"Lichenologists all thought that the fungi in the partnership belonged to a group called the ascomycetes—so Spribille had only searched for ascomycete genes. Almost on a whim, he broadened his search to the entire fungal kingdom, and found something bizarre."

Sometimes we need to just throw our hypotheses out the window and look at all the data our tools can give us, especially now that sequencing is so cheap.

<comment><USER6> Here's another story that demonstrates the bias towards an existing hypotheses, featuring a newly minted recipient of the Nobel prize whose work was ridiculed by his peers and by a rather famous recipient of multiple Nobel prizes.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-chemistry- idUSTRE794...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-chemistry- idUSTRE7941EP20111005)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> TLDR: lichens are not a symbiosis between a fungus and an alga; they are a symbioses between _two_ fungi and an alga.

It's a very nice article that explains how this was discovered. If you like biology, read the article; you'll like it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Montana should be capitalized, no? Proper noun, right? Possibly Biology too, but I'm an engineer so English not my strong suit..

<comment><USER9> Montana yes, biology no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hate the writing of the article. Hallmark of a lazy writer is one that starts with "if you had told <insert name> ... would have laughed". Probably grew up in one of the Hutterite communities in Montana (since he spoke a form of German).

Other than that, nice discovery.</comment>


Hardware Isn't Hard, Competing with Apple Is Hard - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/hardware-isnt-hard-competing-with-apple-is-hard-27ae935bab1b <comment><USER2> > Dopplr's product was ambitious, gorgeous, and by all accounts, it worked > well, but it didn't provide the magical experience the Airpods did. Almost > no startup could! That "magic" is the cumulative product of decades of R&D > and manufacturing expertise.

Nope. The "magic" of Airpods (I own a pair) is quick synced pairing. Startups like Dopplr can't provide that "magic" for iOS/Mac users because Apple doesn't enable the requisite access on their software. Dopplr, Bragi etc are better than Airpods but Apple controls many of the devices they need to interface with so they are fucked.

The lesson is don't design your hardware to match Apple and primarily at Apple users. They will cut the legs under you

<comment><USER3> Android user with Airpods. Magical syncing doesn't do anything on Android. It's the battery life, ear comfort, and the fact that the case is designed so well. There isn't a single set of wireless headphones that does the same thing as the Airpods.

<comment><USER2> Have you tried, or even heard about, any of the other options like Bragi and Doppr?

<comment><USER4> Two of my colleagues were in on the Bragi Kickstarter. They were buggy and went through many firmware updates, but those couldn't fix the poor BT connection between the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a HW designer I'd like to contest the title; hardware is hard. Mistakes always happen on any project, but with hardware they're very expensive to find and fix. Test equipment like oscilloscopes and bus analyzers are in the $100k range, furthermore building your hardware will cost $100k++. Hardware is hard. Software tools are generally free and fixes only cost engineer's salaries.

Not that this keeps me from thinking HW ideas, and SW is great too.

<comment><USER6> Hey there, I'm the writer and I'm definitely guilty of exaggeration on the title. My goal was to push back against this popular narrative that it's something intrinsic about hardware that kills these startups, not strategic errors or poor execution. Hardware is less forgiving, but I'm not sure it's meaningfully harder to build a new gadget than take on Facebook or Google in social or search.

My first job was at an HW startup and I launched a dozen hardware products. It's tough. A screw-up at a single soldering station in Shenzen can screw-up a deal years in the making with Walmart. Overordering materials means you have to lay off friends.

But saying "Hardware is Hard" is an oversimplification.

When we say that to explain the failure of HW startups, we miss a lot of important nuances. Hardware is hard, but that's not the primary reason most HW startups fail. Almost all of the high-profile failures we see in hardware are companies that are trying to be the "Apple of X."

In this post, there are two hardware startups, valued at nine-figures, that are essentially bootstrapped. Hardware was hard for them too, but they managed to win with very little in the way of resources.

<comment><USER7> A quick note to the author: The article names the company as "Dopplr" but it should be "Doppler". The former seems to be a defunct social networking service.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! Just fixed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We fucking started a hardware business! There's nothing else to talk about. We shouldn't have done that."

What I hear in this quote is "we went into a technological field we know nothing about with the intention of making money. We shouldn't have done that".

Nothing wrong with going into hardware if you have experience end-to-end bringing a hardware product to market. It's just that less people have that than in the software world, and us software people get used to being able to figure out everything JIT.

Probably don't go into chemistry either, or algotrading, or practicing law, thinking "eh, I'll figure it out as I go".

<comment><USER9> Also, the current trendy management practices in software like: "Move fast and break things," "Release crap early and iterate," and "QA is a useless cost" don't transfer over to manufacturing hardware.

<comment><USER10> Nope; a lot more rules and regulations you have to respect, certifications for e.g. electrical safety, etc.

Mind you there's a few similar things in software, things like security requirements when handling payments, EU privacy laws, cookie banners, that kinda thing. But they're a lot easier to either outsource (use a payment processor service) or implement (cookie banners range from a notice that says "by using this site you agree to cookies", which probably isn't enough for the law but reasonably user-friendly, to full off-site cookie walls.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was part of a hardware startup for nearly a decade.

Most real hardware companies that I recall failed for reasons other than hardware. Which fits with the author's overarching argument.

When people imagine a hardware company failing, I think most imagine something going terribly wrong with prototypes, some failure in the field, manufacturing failures, overbuying, etc, etc. But I think those events are rarely fatal for real hardware companies.

I say "real hardware companies" because those kinds of failures are endemic with crowd funded hardware startups. And I think that's why most people assume that all hardware companies fail for those reasons, because crowd funded hardware startups get so much public attention.

But outside of the crowd funding bubble, my experience has been that those kinds of events are just normal bumps in the road. We were on razor thin angel funding, and we hurdled all those kinds of problems. What really kills hardware startups is what kills _any_ startup. Bad product-market fit.

Over the decade of my involvement with my previous hardware startup, we watched _tons_ of fellow hardware startups die. Not because they hit some manufacturing snag, or shipped a million units of explosive doorstops. Every single one died because no one wanted their product. The classic startup tale.

Perhaps I have a unique perspective on the whole software startup versus hardware startup thing because I'm a jack of all trades. I'm just as comfortable working software as I am hardware (and boy does that duality come in handy). So I've seen both sides from the trenches. Hardware people will tell you it's harder, because they don't know how frustrating real software development is and assume it's some kind of greener pasture. And software people will tell you it's harder, because hardware is a mystery to them.

I've wasted days dealing with Google Cloud's SDK issues. And I've wasted just as many days chasing a defect in a board remotely with a customer half way around the world.

In other words: The grass is not greener on the software side.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's another important aspect: No, You Can't Manufacture That Like Apple Does [https://blog.bolt.io/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like- apple...](https://blog.bolt.io/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-apple- does-93bea02a3bbf)

<comment><USER13> This article doesn't mention it, but if you follow all their guidelines, not only did you lower your expectations if fit and finish, but you also lower the expectations of the whole product for people who buy it.

That's actually a good thing. First revision hardware is going to have issues and building a beautiful product and putting in a beautiful box will set you up for disappointed customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hardware is hard in ways that software will never be.

* The cost model is different.

* The hiring model is far more interdisciplinary.

* You can't apt-get your supply chain.

* There's near zero real world A/B testing.

* You're at the mercy of far more external factors.

Relative to SaaS, hardware seems Sisyphean.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't get their line of thinking:

>Do the opposite of what Apple would do

Count how many Chinese companies just jack into Apple lookalike market or market for goods designed along the same line of thought.

Take Rapoo for example, once an unremarkable company. What elevated them to the current level was a big bet of proper design. Their first red dot winning product was designed by an intern that they almost had fired for insisting on design that "does not look enough like apple".

I also see no surprise if a company like Jawbone gets into "last mile operational impediment" what in reality was just the usual result of company not having engineering expertise.

Here, I'd say lies the greatest rift in between SV style software startups that take quality compromise in code as something usual and a normal hardware company that knows that a broken product is literally simply broken with all resulting material losses

</comment><comment><USER16> Hardware is hard imo due to:

1\. Cost and pricing models. This is very difficult especially when you're not big enough to place larger production runs. You don't have economies of scale here. It's expensive to manufacture just a few boards at a time.

2\. Manufacturing/supply chain points of failure.

3\. Hardware points of failure (buggy vendor chips etc.) which could easily derail a project. Hardware isn't as malleable as software too.

4\. Long product development times. Your first version of the product can quite easily stretch out to many months or even years. This is a huge risk from a shareholder's perspective.

To gain some context into hardware manufacturing, I recommend reading:

The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware by Andrew Bunnie Huang.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Building a hardware startup is hard, but trying to build one that competes with Apple is nearly impossible."

So what is it? Hard or not?

<comment><USER18> What the author is trying to say is:

1\. Apple products are glossy and polished, aiming to capture the premium end of a large consumer market for very complex products.

2\. Doing this better than Apple is very difficult.

3\. However, other less difficult business opportunities exist.

<comment><USER19> I don't know why people think competing against Apple is hard or impossible. Apple steers a pretty clear course, and they don't like to take risks on niche products. They're not like Google where, on a whim, they might make an IoT blender for reasons that nobody can explain.

Apple also maintains very high margins, something that leaves more than enough room for another company to compete on price. The trap here is instead of producing a good product at a better price, most companies produce the cheapest possible product in a race to the bottom.

Find something Apple isn't doing, doesn't seem interested in doing, and use their business model. It worked for Nest. It worked for Tesla. It could work for you.

<comment><USER20> >I don't know why people think competing against Apple is hard or impossible.

You just made the case against this. The fact that they won't make an IoT blender is why they're hard to compete with. Apple is the polar opposite of Google in so many ways but a big one is their organizational mentality of "more wood behind fewer arrows". Apple is the batter in a no-called-strike baseball game (to borrow a Buffett quote) which means they're only going to swing when they get a fastball right over the plate.

Apple has high margins but it's actually because they have the lowest costs. In Porter's terms, they're the benefit leader but they're also the cost leader.

>Find something Apple isn't doing, doesn't seem interested in doing, and use their business model.

This isn't actually competing with them then. This advice is probably valid, but you're basically saying to just be the Apple of some other industry (like Keurig or Nespresso).

<comment><USER19> I'm saying Apple has amply demonstrated a business model others can apply, and it's not like Apple singularly invented this model. They just borrowed from other companies like Nikon, Canon, BMW and others, adapting and perfecting it for the business they operate in.

There's a lot of other industries that need an Apple and don't have one. Who is the Apple of toilets? Of mattresses? Of 3D printers? Of blenders?

Some have leaders that succeed not based on having a superior product, but by their crushing marketing pressure and omnipresent retail representation. They're ripe for disruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Never mind that Apple has a long running inside track with MSM, and do some serious marketing.

I recall being virtually unable to go a commercial break without seeing at least one iphone feature demo ad right after launch in my part of the world.

With Apple it is just as much about attention as it is actual products. They have managed to make the choice of phone or computer into a lifestyle signal that their competitors can only dream about.

Oh, and i recall the Palm CEO talking about how when they were designing the Pre they constantly ran into Apple having bought up whole factory outputs of part Palm wanted to use. End result was that Palm constantly had to go with their second best choice.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the competition is on par with Apple, maybe it should be titled "Copying Apple is hard". Ultimately, have been a lot of innovation by the competition long before Apple did it, like QI charging, large screen, multiple usability improvements etc.

<comment><USER23> The point is that starting a new company to compete with Apple is effectively suicide, not that an existing business with billions in capitalization like Samsung et al can't do it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you store a number with a 10^6 digits and all numbers  - <AUTHOR>

Very large numbers have a few applications, the largest prime numbers in the world have millions of digits [1].
On stackoverflow, one solution for storing a million phone numbers is to use a trie. [2][3]
Another way would be to use alphabets as a method of encoding the numbers. For example if all the unicode characters were used in a string we could have 110,000^(String length) [4]
Here Pi is displayed to a million digits [5].  As a unicode .txt this is 2MB. If I was to store every combination of number from 0 to this number it could prove to be impossible. How would you suggest storing such large numbers?

  [1] http://primes.utm.edu/largest.html
  [2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5262465/storing-1-million-phone-numbers
  [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie
  [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode
  [5] http://www.piday.org/million.php
 <comment><USER3> Presumably it rather depends on what you're storing such large numbers for. If you want to store a single number n (for the sake of argument, let's say a positive integer) for later reference, and have no knowledge in advance of any special properties of the number, you can't do better than ceil(log_2(n)) bits of information, whatever scheme you use for storing it.

On the other hand, if you know your number has particular properties (for example, say you knew it was an even number between 10,000 and 1,000,000 digits long) you would be able to use that information to store it more efficiently. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory> for the mathematical background for treating this sort of problem.

However, many space-efficient ways of storing data are not time-efficient when it comes to retrieving it or performing operations on it. I can refer to huge numbers using very dense mathematical notation - for example, I could mention A(100,100) (see Petrushka's comment on the Ackermann function) - which would allow me to refer to an astronomically huge number in ten characters - <USER2> this is useless for most practical purposes as it would take an inordinate amount of time to calculate. Similarly, I could 'store' the quadrillionth prime in memory by simply writing "the quadrillionth prime" - but this is probably not what you wanted.

The data structure you use will depend enormously on what you want to use it for. For phone numbers, it is helpful to be able to auto-complete numbers a use is typing, which would be difficult to achieve if you simply concatenated them with separators and compressed the data. For storing words in a dictionary, you might use a trie, but that becomes a poor choice of structure if what you actually want is to be able to easily identify words that rhyme with each other.

In summary, it is important to identify what sort of numbers you are storing, what operations you intend to be able to support on your dataset, and how you intend to access the elements. In principle, for arbitrary positive integers, you can't do better than the bound I provided - and if you want more than to just store the data without using it, you may end up using rather more than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Say I was trying to find the next mersenne prime what would you suggest?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Knuth's up-arrow notation and the Ackermann function are both designed to make very large numbers easy to notate, but unfortunately I don't know how difficult it would be to write a program to find an expression for any number in one or the other (I'm sure there are plenty of others on HN who can). Might still be worth looking into however.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation>

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

<comment><USER3> In principle, not every number can be directly expressed as the result of a nontrivial Ackermann function or Knuth operator (just as not every number is a square or a cube) - although there is a section in the Knuth page you linked on how to represent any nonnegative integer as a series of Knuth-type operations.

I would imagine, though, that to represent an arbitrary integer between 0 and n still needs ceil(log_2(n+1)) bits - since you have to distinguish between n+1 choices, whichever notation you use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't remember where I read the story, but it goes:

There was alien who recorded all the knowledge of Earth. Each fact was encoded as a numerical string and all the strings were concatenated. The concatenated string was converted back to a number. The number was treated as length. The alien took a stick, cut it that length, placed it in his pocket and left.

Not remembering the source drives me nuts every time I think about one of these storage problems. Not that it's a practical solution of course.

<comment><USER6> It's on page 48-49 of Martin Gardner's "aha! Gotcha" book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about a very long link-list?</comment>


Y Combinator Is Launching a "Grad School" for Booming Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/40524163/y-combinator-is-launching-a-grad-school-for-booming-startups <comment><USER2> Another greate option for training people during growth are the Harrison Metal classes, starting with General Management. If you are a first time manager (or even a seasoned one!) in a growing startup, its an invaluable crash course in business.

</comment><comment><USER3> How strict is the employee headcount? Seems like it would have excluded the lean WhatsApp's of the world

<comment><USER4> Something tells me that they'll be flexible if you have 300m DAU :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious why Y Combinator doesn't open this up to all startup companies just not the small % that went through YC already.

<comment><USER6> They did: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/open-application-for-yc- growth-p...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/open-application-for-yc-growth- program/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any plans to do this in Austin, TX?</comment>


Watch Movies Online - Stage6 is the new level of internet piracy. - <AUTHOR> http://onlinemovieforum.com <comment><USER2> <http://www.joox.net> is all you need for stage6 links</comment>


Ask HN: Something to be said for slow software? - <AUTHOR>

Does quick software always leave the best impression on users? In many cases, yes of course: people hate when a slow computer gets in the way of what they want to do. But I wonder if an application that's too zippy can be perceived as cheap in some cases.
Analogy: Everybody loves low prices, but if you sell your product at a bargain (or give it away for free), its perceived value can suffer. People see a competitor who's charging more than you and assume their product is higher quality.
Compare:

  * "It's free so I guess it's not worth much."
  * "It takes no time to load so I guess it's not doing much."
 <comment><USER2> I would make an opposite point: software that's distinctly faster than its peers impresses users not only as faster but also as _generally higher- quality_ in ways one would not think had anything to do with performance.

Users are sensitive to tiny differences in speed, much tinier than most software developers consider significant. For example, there have been many studies showing dramatic drop-offs in web usage with what seem like micro- differences in response times.

A good example is how Chrome is gaining rapidly in market share primarily by being more responsive. There was a fascinating post recently on a political blog I read where the author was talking about switching to Chrome even though he couldn't quite figure out why. I read it as an example of the psychological spill-over effect of performance. (Edit: here it is: [http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/12/the_case_f...](http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/12/the_case_for_mind_control.php). Well worth reading for anyone interested in the psychology of software.)

It's a fascinating conundrum that while hardware has gotten orders of magnitude faster, software has remained sluggish. I know it's fashionable to explain this by saying "but software is doing orders of magnitude more than it used to", but I think this is only a partial explanation; it's also the case that we're leaving huge amounts on the table because of the way we write code. I used to believe in the dream of an ideal high-level language abstracted away from the hardware altogether. That now seems to me a harmful delusion. What we need is a better way to combine high-level constructs with low-level ones. This in turn (veering wildly off on a tangent here...) explains the persistent appeal of C++ despite its manifest perversity. No other mainstream language is even in that game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing that article. The Chrome example is definitely relevant and compelling.

No doubt the case is strong case for better performance improving overall perception of the software by the user. My question though is, is there really _nothing_ to be said for slowness anywhere? Nothing for the occasional well- placed delay? Nothing for dramatic pause? Were all those accumulated hours of my childhood waiting at loading screens on the PlayStation 1 really for nought?

<comment><USER3> I suppose an algorithm that takes a little longer to run might make the user think that the software is doing something more advanced, but that would only apply when the software leaves room for the user to make qualitative judgements about the answer.

Take the filters in photo editing software for example. In Photoshop, you can apply many types of filters. Let's say you apply a noise-reduction filter in Photoshop and it takes 3 seconds to run, then you switch to the Gimp and apply a noise-reduction filter and it runs instantaneously. [1] The slowness may lead users to believe that Photoshop's algorithm is more advanced. Of course, this may partially be due to branding. Photoshop is the $1000 professional photo-editing software, whereas the Gimp is free editing software put together by hackers. This ties it to your analogy in the original post. Now if the situation were reversed, and Photoshop's algorithm ran faster than the Gimp's, I suspect it would be less likely for people to believe that the Gimp's algorithm is more advanced.

This may work for a noise-reduction algorithm, because there is no one correct answer. People may believe that the microscopic differences in the pixels represent a difference in quality. Obviously, if you compare two algorithms that are supposed to compute an answer for which there is an oracle (e.g., Fibonacci or factorial), then slowness is just slowness. If I write a slow implementation of fib(n) and you write a fast one, people will know yours is better because it's faster and there's no ambiguity in the answer that could allow room for people to believe that mine is "more advanced."

Of course, this is just me speculating. I don't know of anyone that's conducted research on this.

[1] This is hypothetical. I know nothing about the performance differences between Photoshop and the Gimp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it can be the case if people have a perception that it's supposed to be a computationally intensive task. It's kind of a standard joke in AI circles that if you have a demo coming up, one way to make your dumb system seem smarter is to make sure it takes a bunch of time and displays diagnostic messages while doing so. Ideal is to slap a fancy sci-fi-movie front end on it that displays both nice graphics (for flashiness) and a console window spewing a bunch of technical garbage (for scientificness).

Of course, there are some legitimate reasons people might come away with the impression that a system like that is smarter, mainly that they have more idea what it's actually doing, because it was slowed down and visualized in a way that let them see it operate (instead of just spitting out the solution).

The somewhat less legitimate reason is that there are a certain group of people really enamored with high-end computing, and so if your thing runs in 2 seconds on a desktop, they assume it must suck, because why weren't you doing something fancier that needed 30 minutes on a huge cluster?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think a UI with well thought out transitional animations certainly enhances the user experience. It might be slower than just switching to a new window/view/focus, but it helps the interface seem more intuitive. The rapid expansion/zoom that iphone apps do when you open them, for example.

As for slowing things down for no reason, no. I don't think anyone enjoys having their time and attention put on hold.

</comment><comment><USER6> People are very task oriented. They want their tools to work quickly and effectively. They don't spend much time thinking about how the tool works so I don't think it's possible for software to be too quick. It opens the door to your customers feeling like they're not getting the optimal value out of their hardware over what would basically be a marketing gimmick. It also leaves your venerable to your competition who can simply offer a faster alternative which has the coat tails of representing their software as being more efficient, better designed and sold by a company with better programmers & management. On a slightly different topic I do think it's possible for GUIs to poorly represent a fast application is working correctly. The first h264 video encode I did on an octo-core machine left me with that feeling. I was sure something had gone wrong. It _was_ too fast. Once I realized everything went well I was delighted of course.</comment>


Devastating Amazon hardware review of a wireless power switch - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R2JVRCO8T1ON0R <comment><USER2> Just as worrisome as the content of the review is the fact that the company tried multiple avenues to make him remove it:

[https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/747612713786847232](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/747612713786847232)

> _Incidentally, now up to three separate emails begging me to remove [the > review] or they 'll be fired_

[https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/747866725945737216](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/747866725945737216) contains a screenshot of an email complaining that the review is "unfair" because it is negative and people are marking it as helpful, making it more difficult for other "honest reviewers" to get traction.

<comment><USER3> At the first link, I'm immediately turned off by his follow-up: _Capitalism is fucking bullshit_

What's really ironic is that this experience shows how well capitalism does work, more effectively than other systems can: The reviewer found a bad product, reviewed it honestly, and is now helping other people stay away from it. Let's see you try to make that happen when you're faced with poor and disinterested government-provided services.

<comment><USER4> He doesn't actually clarify his line of thinking. As someone who is also not much a fan of capitalism, my thought at getting those emails might be "this company cut corners trying to turn a quick profit making a crap product, and now some poor shmucks at the bottom are getting fired. capitalism sucks"

Soviet-style five year plans are also not the only alternative to hobbesian capitalism, that is a false dichotomy.

<comment><USER3> _Soviet-style five year plans are also not the only alternative_

Actually, what I had in my mind when I was typing that was an experience of my wife, very recently, right here in America. Her job is researching regulations for Medicaid across the country. Her boss came across documentation from State of Illinois that were contradictory, so he tried to call their offices. He logged 11 calls to them two weeks ago today, with no one taking his call, and then had to hand the question off to my wife.

Last Monday she attempted to call, only to get a message saying that: (a) they were replacing their phone system for the entire week so they can't receive any calls; and (b) they normally don't take any calls during the last week of the month (!) but because of the phone system problems, they'd make an exception and open their phone lines for the last week of June. So she started trying again this past Monday, and it still took several days for her to get someone to pick up the phone.

That can happen in any system where there's no market allowing people to reject bad alternatives, and to signal the importance of a product through the price system. But any time you remove the market forces (e.g., any socialist- type system where the government is making the calls), the system quickly stops responding to the needs of its customers.

Can you imagine any capitalist company that would simply take down phone communications for a weeks while replacing the system? Years back, my employer put in a new phone switch, and the outage amounted to hours over a weekend. Even worse, can you imagine any company that would just say "we never take customer calls during the last week of any month"?

<comment><USER5> It's entirely unclear that the US health insurance market is evidence that capitalism is a _good_ thing, compared to literally the entirety of the rest of the first world, _e.g._ the UK, where Garrett is from.

<comment><USER3> Yes, my point was that this is an example of a NON-market-driven system, i.e., not an example of capitalism at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whilst I wouldn't use the word 'devastating', this is certainly a well-written review pointing out the glaring flaws in this IoT device.

It's not devastating because there's enough 4- and 5-star reviews from people who have evidently overlooked these flaws (or who have iPhones or old Android devices that allowed setup to work). This word of caution is likely to get lost among the noise.

The author has done a steller job highlighting the awful quality and attention to security of an innocuous IoT device. Granted, a wifi-controlled socket is likely to only power a table lamp or something similar, so anyone brute- forcing the MAC addresses isn't going to do horrendous amounts of damage, but the inability to prevent someone doing this is a clear illustration of the little control the end user has over 'smart' devices.

Bottom line: if you can't root it, don't put it on your LAN.

<comment><USER7> > It's not devastating because there's enough 4- and 5-star reviews from > people who have evidently overlooked these flaws...

You misspelled "been paid by the seller via Fiverr".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Be interesting to see whether the reviewer gets any more bargains to review after that?

<comment><USER9> With a review that thorough, he should get a consultation fee

<comment><USER10> Weird. I thought the review was myopic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> paraphrase> The plug connects to a Chinese IP.

It's time we setup a standard so that everybody can choose there own "cloud" server for these "smart" home electronics. These manufacturers should not be building their own. Of course the app on your phone could also just connect to the bloody thing itself instead of using these relay servers of the manufacturer. (yes I know, NAT punching is a PITA, but better than this)

<comment><USER12> You can use a solution like Home Assistant or OpenHAB today. Device support isn't 100% there but they are constantly improving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great review, but I'm more excited about the fact that this runs on an ESP8266, presumably controlling a simple relay. This means that I can just open it up, hook it up to my computer and flash my own firmware that will be exactly as secure as I need, all for a rather low price.

Hell, maybe they left the FOTA port open and I can give people a small script with a firmware so they can just run that and flash the plug over the wifi network!

<comment><USER14> Why pay $30 for such a device when you can order a similar product direct from China for $5? [https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-wifi-wireless- switch.html](https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-wifi-wireless-switch.html)

It has the same configuration problems he mentioned but is easily flashable via FTDI.

<comment><USER15> Incidentally, I reviewed a pre-release version of that device a few months back. I didn't try flashing custom firmware to it though - are there any instructions for that that I could link to from the review?

[http://www.nfriedly.com/techblog/2015-12-16-itead-sonoff- sla...](http://www.nfriedly.com/techblog/2015-12-16-itead-sonoff-slampher- review/)

<comment><USER13> It looks like you connect 3.3V/GND/TX/RX to the four pins shown in this image:

[http://dl.itead.cc/IM151116002/sonoff-parts- without-433.jpg](http://dl.itead.cc/IM151116002/sonoff-parts-without-433.jpg)

Then you flash it with PlatformIO as usual, except I'm not sure which pins are connected where, that would take some fiddling. I'll buy one to experiment with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain me "If anybody knows the MAC address of one of your sockets, they can control it from anywhere in the world." part in more detail?

<comment><USER17> a) the sockets all connect to a central server in China b) the sockets identify themselves to that server with their MAC address (kind of makes sense, it's a readily available, global unique (more or less) identifies) c) if you send a message to a socket (identified by its MAC address) from the app on your phone and your mobile phone can't find it on the local network, the app sends a message to the central server in China, which sends it on to the socket, if that happens to be turned on and is thus connected over the internet to that central server

So, it's not that you can suddenly magically access devices by MAC address over the Internet (MAC addresses are still local network only), but since the sockets are all connected to a central server who knows them by their MAC address, that makes it possible to send those messages.

This would all not be a problem with good crypto for authentication (and secrecy), but apparently they put pretty much none of that into the product/app. So it should be realtivly easy to find out the MAC address and then very easy to talk to the central server and tell it to send messages to whatever device.

(It's a little like an open relay mail server, and bad for similar reasons)

<comment><USER6> One other issue is that MAC addresses are allocated in contiguous blocks to manufacturers. If you know the general pattern (the first N characters are manufacturer-specific), there is precious little stopping you writing a script to loop through all the possibilities and spam the server with them. Most network devices have the MAC address printed on a label (with a barcode for an admin to scan), so it would be trivial to grab an example from a photo.

<comment><USER18> N=6, this is called the OUI.

<comment><USER19> Sometimes N=9, such as when the address starts 00:50:c2. This block is divided into blocks of 4096 instead of the usual 2^24 so small users can get a block for a few hundred dollars instead of over a thousand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> this is a big problem with customer reviews in general. Only rarely you'll see a review by someone who knows what they're doing; most times the reviews are very superficial and isn't helpful at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> <3 mjg59

</comment><comment><USER10> > In summary: by default this is stupendously insecure, there's no reasonable > way to make it secure

That's an honest review? I tend to ignore reviewers who talk about security as an all or nothing proposition. Maybe everyone else will in a few years too.

<comment><USER22> It is likely possible to take the device apart and overwrite its firmware in some way to be more safe, but that is somewhat unfeasible for the average consumer.

<comment><USER10> I'm not interested in a review of the average consumer and what they can and can't achieve. That seems like a harder problem anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


Income Inequality: Perception and Reality - chestnut-tree http://www.iwkoeln.de/__extendedmedia_resources/176927/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully you notice that this data offers little insight independent of:

        1. absolute income
        2. income mobility
        3. net migration

How does, for example, the middle tier in Poland compare to the bottom tier in the U.S.? If our goal is to minimize envy, we don't need to know this.

How do other countries compare to the U.S. in terms of net inflow of unskilled immigrants?

How many people in each country move at least one quintile in their lifetime? In the U.S. it's about 25%. What is it in France?

</comment><comment><USER2> _" The Americans are unique: They are the only ones who underestimate the size of their bottom class."_

More unfortunate evidence of American hubris and delusions of grandeur. I say this as an American.</comment>


Zap.com: Fish protein producer/Internet portal [1998] - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/Zapatas-next-shot-at-the-Net/2100-1023_3-212978.html

<comment><USER2> Ah, to be a kid in the Age of Stupid again. When tech friend after tech friend would bail to be with an unpromising start-up for the promise of gazillions in options. When bank accounts were passe, and everyone kept their savings in etrade. Friday night's mood was determined by Yahoo's stock price. When the phrase "you don't get it" was used instead of logic. The tech valuations may seem crazy today, but they are absolutely nothing compared the Age of Stupid. And just what was Apple's stock price in 1998?</comment>


How to Build a GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/talk/how-to-build-a-github <comment><USER2> I attended this talk at QCon São Paulo. They scaled through incremental, non- breaking changes. This approach seems to have worked very well for them.</comment>


Small Businesses Using Yahoo! Web Hosting Services Lose Sales on Cyber Monday - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS77610+29-Nov-2007+MW20071129 <comment><USER2> This never would have happened if they had kept it written in Lisp.</comment>