Locale - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/locale.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29&utm_content=Netvibes <comment><USER2> I've been using Locale since it was first available for my G1 over two years ago, and it has never let me down. It's quite honestly _the_ killer app for Android as far as I am concerned, not only because it's extremely useful, but because it embodies everything that Android is capable of that Apple has refused to allow in iOS.

The best part though is that you can download apps from the market that do nothing but add _even more_ conditions and settings to Locale, such as: headphones plugged in or not; whether the phone is on a car dock; launching other programs; lockscreen passwords; and many more.

As an example of what it does for me:

Default settings: Wifi off, Ringer volume 85%, Media volume 70%, Password Lockscreen on.

At home: Wifi on, Lockscreen off

At work: Wifi on, Ringer volume 0%, Vibrate on

At night (10pm-7am): Ringer volume 0%

Headphones plugged in: Media volume 20%

<comment><USER2> Shameless plug: I ended up writing a full blog post about the topic, and included more detail and some links to the Locale plugins that I use.

<http://noswap.com/blog/locale/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Locale sounds pretty sweet.

I wish my iPhone would be able to do this too, but it is probably a bit too much of configuration for Steve. Also, depending on your configuration, it could lead in breaking the semantics of the physical ringer switch.

For Mac OS X, there is an app which does pretty much what Locale does: MarcoPolo. I found it very useful when I needed to change SMTP server based on where I was.

<comment><USER4> Any idea about Windows? Because it seems it doesn't even let you manage network settings by location like OSX does...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Llama is a great free alternative: <https://market.android.com/details?id=com.kebab.Llama>

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that! I think paying $10 for Locale seems a bit much.

<comment><USER7> How so? I'd bet if it worked for your laptop, you'd pay more and use it less (given that your phone has the potential to ring 24/7)

<comment><USER6> It's just an app to toggle my wifi settings and change my ringer volume. It's not enough of a pain point to be worth $10 to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No mention of Tasker? It does some bit more than Locale, I believe, and can even run Locale plugins. Not free, but worth it if you're into phone micro- management.

<comment><USER2> My biggest complaint with Tasker is that it has no concept of _default settings_. I've tried Tasker on multiple occasions, and every time I come away with two frustrations: a) it's way too complex to navigate and configure, and b) I always end with my phone in some weird configuration state that I don't want it in, because Tasker doesn't let me set default values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wrote an OS X app to do this sort of thing a few years ago. At the time, I just used MAC addresses of routers to determine location. I wish I could write it for the iPhone, but it's above and beyond what's allowed by the rules.

The holy grail for a laptop was switching your SMTP settings, since a lot of people use different ISPs at work and at home. That problem goes away with a phone, but ringer volume seems like a similar level issue for phones. I could also see doing things like reducing your notifications or changing your lock settings.

(If you're interested in my software, you can find it at <http://codehackers.net/locations/>)

</comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't tell from the Locale web site whether it lets you turn photo geocoding on/off based on location. My photo sharing site has this ability server-side, but I've always thought it would be better built into the phone.

<comment><USER2> By default it does not, but if outside applications have access to change your camera app's settings, then it should be rather straightforward to create a plugin for Locale that adds a new setting option to handle that.</comment></comment>


Google's Introduction to Parallel Programming and MapReduce - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/edu/parallel/mapreduce-tutorial.html <comment><USER2> So the map worker saves map results to its local disk, and eventually a reduce worker does an RPC call to copy that data over the network so it can perform the reduce. What is the advantage of doing this over having the map worker do the reduce part itself?

<comment><USER3> The mapper only has a small fraction of the data for each reduce key.

<comment><USER2> Couldn't it at least perform the reduce on the portion it does have? i.e. transfer partial reductions from M to R, instead of the raw map results? Presumably there are many problems where this would be a win.

<comment><USER3> Yes that's sometimes an option, but very often the reduce isn't associative.

<comment><USER2> Ah, so that's the reason. Do you ever have the problem that the reduce computation, for a given key, is too big for one reduce worker and itself needs to be parallelized? Or does this boil down to the same thing as my previous question - i.e. if the reduce computation isn't associative, you couldn't parallelize it anyway, and if it is then you can just do partial reductions on M.

<comment><USER3> Yes that is often a problem and is probably my biggest criticism of mapreduce as a framework. Extreme reduce keys often have to be handled differently and in a way dependent on the nature of the problem. Mapreduce doesn't provide great tools for handling it, though I'm not even sure what abstraction you could build that would be comprehensive enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Concurrency (single CPU context switching) is "easy". Parallel programming (multiple tasks on multiple CPUs) is _hard_. I'm currently studying the internals of parallel programming, I am amazed by how much magic MapReduce abstracts away.

<comment><USER5> I don't agree with your terminology. Concurrency is having more than one task in flight; it's inherently non-deterministic when the tasks can interact via shared resources. Parallelism is having more than one operation happening simultaneously; it can be a way of implementing concurrency, but it is not necessarily non-deterministic, depending on how it is exposed in the model. And indeed, map-reduce with pure functions is a way of using deterministic parallelism.

Concurrency is a high-level concept; it comes in at the architectural layer. Servers open for multiple clients, where those clients are asking the server to operate on shared mutable memory, are non-deterministic; small differences in timing make all the difference.

Parallelism in an implementation-level concept. Depending on how it is put to use, it can be merely a way of speeding up deterministic computations; or it can be directly harnessed to implement concurrency.

<comment><USER4> Right. Those are stricter definitions.

Although wouldn't Parallelism's multiple operations each be "in-flight"? That is, it's pretty clear that one can have concurrency without parallelism, but you seem to suggest that one can have parallelism without concurrency ("deterministic parallelism"). Which doesn't _sound_ right... Even with MapReduce, the order in which tasks are complete are not deterministic (different hardware, network latency, etc), so I don't see how you could determine in which order mappers are passed on to reducers.

<comment><USER6> SIMD is an example of parallelism without concurrency.

<comment><USER4> my RISC-architectured world has been shattered. Neat example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have found the best resource for map reduce algorithms to be "Data-Intensive Text Processing with MapReduce" by Chris Dyer and Jimmy Lin - a short and very useful book that characterizes map reduce problems and their solutions.

</comment><comment><USER2> The article says that Fibonacci can't be parallelized. But I seem to recall that there is a true data-parallel way of doing Fibonacci - one of those virtuoso tricks where something that seems intrinsically sequential gets transformed into a parallel computation. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Edit: to be clear, I don't mean the obvious but useless trick where you can compute F(n-1) and F(n-2) recursively in parallel, which is just redoing most of the work. I mean a way to model the problem as operations on data-parallel vectors.

<comment><USER8> [1 1; 1 0]^n = [Fn+1 Fn; Fn Fn-1]

So you could rewrite n as a sum of m powers of 2 (just write it in binary), then for each "1" there, send it to a separate processor to compute [1 1; 1 0]^k using exponentiation by squaring (where k is the corresponding power of 2). Your reduce step multiplies the resulting matrices together.

Note: this is just the first thing that comes to mind, I have no idea if this is what you were thinking of, or if it's even a good idea.

<comment><USER9> Since computing [1 1; 1 0]^(2k) where k is a power of 2 would involve computing [1 1; 1 0]^k first, you'll end up reproducing the exact same work on all your machines, and you might as well just use the one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool, I actually attended a talk about MapReduce hosted by Google a few weeks ago. Sadly, I have to say that this page explains it better than their engineer did, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> doodlin' <http://wonderfl.net/c/zzQD></comment>


My lunch with Dieter Rams - <AUTHOR> http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/my-lunch-with-dieter-rams

<comment><USER2> > I can happily say that he looks amazing for his age (80) now. He's wearing a > Braun BN0035 [1] in black by the way.

Huh, that's a beautiful watch, though too expensive for my taste. Did Rams design it? It reminds me to pay closer attention to Braun's objects for their design. This watch was designed in 2012, and here I thought Braun's design heydey was the 60s...

[1] [http://www.braun-clocks.com/watch/BN0035](http://www.braun- clocks.com/watch/BN0035)

<comment><USER3> God, that Braun website is terrible... I'd love to have a crack at making it an amazing piece of design - there is sooooo much you could do with it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Dieter Rams complained that the word "design" was ruined by the fashion > industry and marketing. They sell products as "designer products" that > aren't necessarily good representations of good design. He suggested that we > be called "Gestalt Engineers" - Gestalt is the German word for "form" or > "shape".

Loved this line and the term "gestalt engineer".

<comment><USER5> Should be Gestaltingenieur.

<comment><USER6> More like "Gestaltungingeneur". But I think what Rams says is right. Here in Germany the misuse of the term design is even bigger I would say.

<comment><USER5> Oh, it would need to be "Gestaltungsingenieur". But Gestalt is a proper word in German by now, thanks to Mr Jung and friends. See eg [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestaltpsychologie](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestaltpsychologie)

<comment><USER7> Oh, German words!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcMT395UvWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcMT395UvWI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > [He] cautioned that computers should not be allowed to have input into our > thoughts.

What does he mean? He disapproves of brain-computer interfaces? Google Glass? Our distraction-based use of them (Facebook, Reddit, HN...) ?

Or as a way of redisigning (sorry) our interaction with the world around us? If this is what he means, I strongly disagree with him: computers are probably the most powerful tool we've ever invented, and we're just beginning to understand how we can integrate them well in our lives.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I would have liked more exposition on that point as well. Earlier, when talking about product design he says, "We wanted to change the world," so it would have been interesting to worry the tooth a little over modern technical innovation (computing, software, robotics, to name three), as I'd be surprised if he was dismissing it all out of hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can clearly see the return of his ideas such as "less but better" into many aspects of our lives, now and in following decade. People in West are overwhelmed by abundance - cheap clothes designed to be sold in quantities such as H&M that don't last to long or information overflow on the web and media. This trend of less but more is already emerging outside of web and tech.

</comment><comment><USER10> Dieter Rams talking about Apple from the documentary Objectified.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahtHKCQUD2k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahtHKCQUD2k)</comment>


Ask PG: What do you think of quantum computing? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I know nothing about it.

<comment><USER3> Maybe this is timely: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMdHDHEuOUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMdHDHEuOUE)

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big- data...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> can you build one for $14k?

if not, pg won't know anything about it.

<comment><USER5> And if the HN readership can't finish one in a hackathon or during a weekend project, we wouldn't know either.

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I predict it won't work. Specifically, that the low levels of thermal and other noise required to get a useful number of coherent qubits will be unachievable, and a million dollars worth of quantum computer won't ever beat a million dollars of regular computers.

I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, of course.

<comment><USER7> It takes courage to make bold predictions, and I admire that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think its fun science. I hope we'll get a bunch of coherent qubits one day, but if not, what're ya gonna do.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a wise philosopher (s.moz) once wrote, applicable to the issue knowledge of quantum computing:

Shyness is nice and Shyness can stop you From doing all the things in life You'd like to

</comment><comment><USER10> It's really tricky^n to boot one up. Like bio computers, this is still pretty much ivory tower technology.

</comment><comment><USER11> Where a bit can be 0, 1 or both.</comment>


Why We Can Send to Gmail in China - <AUTHOR> https://xiaolongtongxue.com/articles/2016/why-we-can-send-to-gmail-in-china/ <comment><USER2> So port 25 in the GFW is open for outbound connections? My mailserver spam-log tells me that much every other second.

I wonder what weight Spammers had in the decision to allow port 25. Though when I think about it, spammers are probably a negligible faction compared to the businesses that would shut down if they couldn't communicate with international clients on Gmail anymore.

It would be interesting, as other commenters already remarked, to see what STARTTLS does to the connection.

<comment><USER3> The GFW is mostly a blacklist. Unless your site (or your hosting) is on the list, it will work fine from China. It also detects some keywords.

<comment><USER4> It is a dynamic blacklist. It also uses pattern matching and machine learning to detect some undesired behaviors. It will not cut out SSH connections but will recognize the traffic shape of HTTP traffic over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that mail sent this way is "in the clear" and can be used for passive monitoring.

I wonder if the Great Firewall allows clients to do opportunistic STARTTLS or if it modifies the server response to indicate TLS as being unavailable.

<comment><USER6> I've noticed that the firewall really doesn't like TLS connections. It doesn't block them outright, but it does slow the traffic, and periodically break the connection. Basically they just try to interfere with it enough that you don't bother.

I run mail servers (based in the US) for my company (based in China). My employees don't understand why I make them use these email accounts that time out every twenty minutes or so, or drop connections randomly. I've explained why we do it this way, and they understand the security, but still don't really get why I bother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > You cannot visit those well known global sites like Google, Twitter, etc.

Google's main search function has not been blocked for the past two years according to Wikipedia:

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

Erotica is bad, but torrents (isoHunt, etc.) are OK. The New York Times and the Economist are blocked, but strangely, Amnesty International, the BBC, and Wikileaks are permitted.

They probably have a big productivity boost by _not_ having Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

<comment><USER8> Google Search has been blocked over the last two years, even through the CN site that redirects to HK. Mobile is possibly an exception, but I never had an Android phone so don't know.

<comment><USER9> Mobile wasn't an exception (I haven't been in China for a year, but I was there for two years before that); my phone was cut off from all google services.

Edit: I say cut off; that's not entirely true. I couldn't communicate with google from my phone. I could visit Google Play in a web browser, tell it to install something, and the install would hit my phone just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what else the Great Firewall of China will pass. (Or what your local ISP will pass.) There are lots of other protocols to try. TP4 (Windows 2000 supported that.) Xerox Network Architecture. QNX remote message protocol. Those are non-TCP protocols, at the IP level. Almost nobody uses any of those, but they're defined for IP.

At the TCP level, there are lots of ports other than port 80. What about FTP, and SSH? TFTP? POP? NetBios? IMAP? NNSP? NNTPS? Blocked or ignored?

<comment><USER11> They're getting pretty sophisticated. For example, SSH used to work just fine. When I was there last year, SSH would work fine for standard terminal stuff, but would die if I used it in SOCKS proxy mode. It was similar for a lot of VPN protocols I tried. Often the connection would work, but then die as I tried to use it. Typically I couldn't reconnect for a while after that. From what I've read, they're doing traffic analysis and machine learning to try to block things based on usage rather than simply protocol, port, or destination.

<comment><USER12> You can get around the statistical analysis by randomly padding small packets: [http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great- firewal...](http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewall-of- china/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't really explain __Why __can email be sent from China to Gmail, only that it can. Is the GFW filtering only port 80?

<comment><USER14> I was expecting this to be "why" as a policy matter, but instead it's a technical description (mostly about the fact that SMTP is different from HTTP, for people who might not appreciate that).

I guess the idea may be that Chinese people are not supposed to _have_ or _use_ Gmail accounts, but are allowed to communicate with other people who do. (This isn't necessarily a super-bizarre distinction to imagine a government making; the cost of not being allowed to exchange e-mail with anybody on Gmail is really quite high.)

Edit: also, people have told me that there is a legal restriction in China on the ability to listen on (some?) TCP ports or allow a hosting subscriber to do so (!) -- you're supposed to have a government license to have a TCP listener and your hosting provider or ISP can be punished for allowing you to operate one if you don't have the license. That means that Chinese Internet users couldn't easily set up their own personal mail servers free of government oversight and surveillance. So they can write to Gmail users all they like, but it may be trickier to receive a reply except via a government-approved mailserver.

<comment><USER15> Let's write a webpage-to-gmail proxy! Send an email with a subject like [http://news.ycombinator.com/](http://news.ycombinator.com/) to a special email address and it will reply with the text of that page in the body of the email.

<comment><USER16> There are a whole bunch already!

[http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet-services/access-via- email/](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet-services/access-via-email/)

Probably worth some karma to update this 14 year old document too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ian from dangerousprototypes (Bus Pirate) wrote about his troubles with getting an email account in china that actually works:

[http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2016/06/21/china- stuff-e...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2016/06/21/china-stuff-email- that-works/)

<comment><USER18> That seems more like a complaint about just unicom. It looks like China has a problem similar to the US when it comes to ISP monopolies, except that theirs are state owned and there was no period of free market competition where people could realize how good it can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You can get through the firewall, but that does not mean your traffic isn't monitored.

<comment><USER11> And potentially blocked adaptively. I haven't tried it recently, but it used to be fun to hit up a search engine while in China, search for "tiananmen square," and watch as the search site suddenly went "down" for about ten minutes.

<comment><USER14> Which is odd since Tiananmen Square is one of the main tourist attractions in Beijing. Did the government conclude that all English speakers are using it as metonymy for 6/4 or that there's too great a chance that English-language materials about the place will discuss it?

<comment><USER11> I imagine it's some of both. If I do a Google search for it, the top result and about half of the first page are about the protests, and the famous "tank man" image, which is no good at all from their point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have never even thought about how weird it is that you can communicate with gmail via mail, while hardly ever actually access the service.

I wonder what other blocked services it is possible to communicate with.

Can you update you twitter account via e-mail from China?

</comment><comment><USER21> Someone should write a web server that looks like it implements SMTP, but can be coaxed into handling HTTP connections over port 25 as well.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that'll thwart deep-packet inspection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> EDIT: format

The post only tells part of the story. There are at least two places that GFW can (and does!) block email traffic as long as the traffic goes through GFW:

1\. By DNS poisoning your domain name. There's nothing special, when GFW decide to DNS poisoning your domain, all query types will be poisoned, including your MX record.

2\. By TCP reset your SMTP connection to MTA (or forge reply from the other end) if the sender or recipient is something special.

For #1, this is happening to my domain name yegle.net. This could be demonstrated via a DNS query sent from outside of China to __any __servers (even it 's not a DNS server) in China (see examples in the end of this comment).

For #2, this is happening to my gmail account. Try connect to an MTA in China from outside of China, as soon as you type "MAIL FROM: MY_EMAIL_ADDRESS", you'll get a TCP reset. (see examples in the end of this comment). If you are sending email from China to my email address, you'll get a forged reply saying the email address doesn't exist (again see example in the end of this comment).

In order to make sure you can send/receive email from/to China, you need to make sure the sender and receiver's email service support [StartTLS]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS)).

        // TEST FROM OUTSIDE OF CHINA
        $ dig MX yegle.net @188.8.131.52

        ; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.8-Ubuntu <<>> MX yegle.net @220.127.116.11
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 9506
        ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;yegle.net.                     IN      MX

        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        yegle.net.              2654    IN      A       184.108.40.206

        ;; Query time: 176 msec
        ;; SERVER: 184.108.40.206#53(188.8.131.52)
        ;; WHEN: Mon Sep 19 13:13:17 PDT 2016
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 43

        // TEST FROM OUTSIDE OF CHINA
        $ dig MX yegle.net @188.8.131.52

        ; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.8-Ubuntu <<>> MX yegle.net @126.96.36.199
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 17621
        ;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

        ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
        ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;yegle.net.                     IN      MX

        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        yegle.net.              299     IN      MX      10 aspmx.l.google.com.
        yegle.net.              299     IN      MX      20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
        yegle.net.              299     IN      MX      30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
        yegle.net.              299     IN      MX      40 aspmx2.googlemail.com.
        yegle.net.              299     IN      MX      50 aspmx3.googlemail.com.

        ;; Query time: 24 msec
        ;; SERVER: 220.127.116.11#53(18.104.22.168)
        ;; WHEN: Mon Sep 19 13:13:27 PDT 2016
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 171

        // TEST FROM OUTSIDE OF CHINA
        $ telnet mail.kingsoft.com 25
        Trying 126.96.36.199...
        Connected to telecom.mail.kingsoft.com.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        220 mail.kingsoft.com ESMTP
        EHLO gmail.com
        250-mail.kingsoft.com
        250-8BITMIME
        250 SIZE 52428800
        MAIL FROM: cnyegle-AT-gmail-com
        Connection closed by foreign host.

        // TEST FROM INSIDE OF CHINA
        $ telnet aspmx.l.google.com 25
        Trying 18.104.22.168...
        Connected to aspmx.l.google.com.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        220 mx.google.com ESMTP u6si11379881igw.58
        EHLO yegle.net
        250-mx.google.com at your service, [18.104.22.168]
        250-SIZE 35882577
        250-8BITMIME
        250-STARTTLS
        250 ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
        MAIL FROM:<email@example.com>
        250 2.1.0 OK u6si11379881igw.58
        RCPT TO:<cnyegle-AT-gmail-com>
        551 User not local; please try <forward-path>
        Connection closed by foreign host.

</comment><comment><USER24> This if off-topic, but what is the preferred tool for making flowcharts in ASCII like the ones used in the post?

<comment><USER25> [https://monodraw.helftone.com](https://monodraw.helftone.com) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Time for an HTTPS-over-SMTP RFC? :)

<comment><USER27> We could use RMS' system[1][2]. :)

[1]: [https://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html) [2]: git://git.gnu.org/womb/hacks.git</comment></comment>


Deriving interfaces for free, generically, in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Generics

<comment><AUTHOR> An example for JSON parsing and generation:

[https://www.fpcomplete.com/school/starting-with- haskell/libr...](https://www.fpcomplete.com/school/starting-with- haskell/libraries-and-frameworks/text-manipulation/json)</comment>


3 Reasons the U.S. Additive Manufacturing Skills Gap Is Growing – Design News - <AUTHOR> https://www.designnews.com/materials-assembly/3-reasons-us-additive-manufacturing-skills-gap-growing/126339027458786?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=4351&elq_cid=655521 <comment><USER2> Companies want employees to act like contracts and pay for their own learning and use their own time, but they don't want to pay contracting rates.</comment>


Gates vs. Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO8l-Bd1O4 <comment><USER2> Dang, after only three days we already have YouTube videos on the front page. (I voted it up though.)

<comment><USER3> Heh, you beat me to that comment. Anybody want to post an xkcd comic? It's a realy good video but I decided to like it on reddit instead.

It seems the conversations I had at barcamp London and with the digg guys at FOWA are right- the only way to keep a community good is to keep it small and niche.</comment></comment>


Choice as Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/choice_as_happiness/

<comment><USER2> Choice can backfire(1), and must be taken in moderation. But, of course: "The greatest miracle is this: when hungry I eat, when tired I sleep."

(1)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less)</comment>


Ask HN: Best Project Management Books - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,<p>I was just wondering if people have recommendations on good project management books. I don't have time to take a course but I looking for something which gives a good solid introduction. <comment><USER2> four steps to the epiphany is a great book on product development and product management. hopefully its relevant to your question

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, will look that up</comment></comment>


"No doubt" LinkedIn's share price was a bubble, based on definitive bubble model - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/02/linkedin-idUSL3E7H20D820110602

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder whether they are confident enough to trade on this information. If it's as "definitive" as they claim, they can make a lot of money in the long run.</comment>


Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2015/12/saying-goodbye-to-carousel-and-mailbox/ <comment><USER3> Ugh. Yet another intriguing email startup being acquihired and killed off by a more-established tech company (see also: Sparrow). It's 2015 and I still bounce around email clients every couple months because all of the major options have substantial flaws.

<comment><USER4> Probably because there simply isn't money to be made in being an e-mail startup.

Or, more correctly, there isn't _enough_ money to be made to satisfy VC investors. Mailbox and the like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for apps with comfortable but small levels of profit, but that isn't what Silicon Valley rewards.

EDIT: also, IIRC Apple's restrictions on background processing meant that they needed to have every user's account set up on their servers to process push notifications. Did that ever change? If not that's a non trivial expense/complication to scaling, especially when you're up against an OS- integrated app that doesn't have those restrictions.

<comment><USER5> > there isn't enough money to be made to satisfy VC investors. Mailbox and the > like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for apps with comfortable

I'm not sure that's true (see: Sparrow). I just don't think there is enough demand for people to want to pay for an email client. I imagine for a huge majority of people, default mail client's work fine enough for personal use.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention, if you're old like me, you remember paying (I think?) $100 and then eventually $49 for eudora / upgrades for eudora. In approx 1990 dollars. We now live in a world where people pitch tantrums about paying $10 for an app, and expect perpetual upgrades for that price! So simultaneously expectations have skyrocketed and prices have plummeted.

Part of the problem is, unlike say Pinboard, an email client doesn't feel like 1-3 devs worth of work. The protocols are horrendous, you have to understand the quirks of lots of servers, etc. Plus all the UI and backend and search work. I'm not sure it's approachable as a small indie company.

There's also, of course, bad behavior by large companies such as mozilla: Thunderbird made it very difficult to build an indie email client because you have to compete on merits and against free, but they eventually got bored and just quit making it. Not to mention competing with free/ad-supported. And the semi-annual YC/vc supported email client company.

Not to mention what is coming close to active sabotage of productivity apps by the ios and mac app stores (lack of trials, lack of upgrades, etc).

<comment><USER7> I remember paying for The Bat! and loving it.

<comment><USER8> Pegasus mail was pretty good, even if a bit enterprisy. I just searched and wow... it's still being developed! The website even still lists the msdos version. [http://www.pmail.com/](http://www.pmail.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I felt this coming given my experience using the Mailbox desktop app since it launched:

\- Good experience, fairly regular releases, stability increasing with each one.

\- Stagnation in releases, but app is in a fairly good working state.

\- Out of the blue, big update comes in, application changes completely. For the worse, as it loses a bunch of features and is sporting a far less polished look and finish. I believe the new version is now an OS X native application as opposed to a webview.

\- Frantic releases over the following weeks, killing some bugs but introducing more.

\- Stagnation in releases, in its fairly broken state.

\- This announcement.

From the outside, it looks like a case of an engineering team that decided it would rewrite the application from scratch in the native stack. Widely regarded as a bad idea. [1]

After numerous months spent burning money in refactoring and rebuilding features that already existed and worked, management pressure builds up, and they decide to release their "good enough" native version. After torturous weeks of back to back frantic releases to fix all of the complaints coming in, some factor or another (developer churn possibly) caused them to cease development and decide to sack the project altogether.

This is of course just speculation, a narrative I made up. That's how it looks like from the outside to me, but I'd like to hear from the developers inside, since I know they must be reading this thread.

I loved this application and I'm saddened to have to move away from it.

[1] [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RewriteCodeFromScratch](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RewriteCodeFromScratch)

<comment><USER10> I worked on the desktop client for several months up until the first public beta release.

No, Mailbox for Mac has been a fully native app since inception - which is how you get those nice fluid gestures.

What happened next I have no idea, since I left the company. If I have to guess, we incurred a lot of technical debts during the sprint to beta, and they were doing some major rewriting to fix them. Before it was finished, the project was axed. The new version was released nonetheless to support sunsetting.

<comment><USER9> The reason I thought the previous version was a webview was due to the not- really-native-looking settings pane (Cmd+,), which turned into a much more typical looking one post-update.

Thank you so much for the input, and thanks for helping build something I enjoyed using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish they could open source Mailbox at least... That way it might survive.

[1] "Will Mailbox be open-sourced?

Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, but this is ultimately not something we will support."

[1] [https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/](https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/)

<comment><USER12> I imagine Mailbox has a heavy server component, which would be non-trivial to get set up and running on your own.

<comment><USER13> That's hardly a reason to not open-source. You're not required to provide support just because you release your source code. Even a dump of their repositories would be useful for people who are interested in Mailbox.

<comment><USER14> No; but often the server components are heavily tied to some other proprietary libraries that they're not ready to open source. They could remove all proprietary code from their codebase, but that costs money - likely more than they were willing to spend on this product.

Unless open source is part of your marketing strategy (which means the effort would have a budget), it's really difficult to open source an existing commercial application.

<comment><USER15> That's a speculation on your part.. and PR spin-off on theirs.

Nobody asked them to support it, or whatever. Just dump the damn thing online so others can pick up and continue to "help fight your inbox to zero".

Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - <USER2> kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either.

I wanted to get my company (over 3,000 users) off DropBox long time ago after each update comes with new issues. But this just broke camel's back. I will make the switch happen this weekend.

<comment><USER14> > Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - > they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email > either.

Um, of course their intentions were profit? Dropbox is a for-profit company, nobody ever questioned their intentions as being anything else.

And it's not pure speculation; I've worked on enough internally-developed products to know it's not always feasible to open source an entire service offering after the fact. It's expensive enough to do between code scrubbing, legal reviews, etc. that you're generally only going to do it for strategic reasons (i.e. you know you can never make money doing it but want to commoditize the market space to hamper a competitor's growth, you want the community to help support your infrastructure, or your business model is open source + support).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very sad news and I don't really get the decision.

The thing with Mailbox is that it was truly a great product before it switched hands to Dropbox. Once they bought it, that was the end of good functions and the product only went downhill from there.

There's a lot of potential with email clients that will help you work better, Mailbox was definitely one of those products that helped. With good clients for Mac and PC along with smartphones it would also be profitable IMHO.

The only thing I can think of is that Dropbox is headed for major firing rounds and they want to save up on resources.

I have switched to Airmail on my Mac and I am much happier now.

<comment><USER17> I'm still hoping they'll sell them to someone.

Dropbox is obviously planning to go a different direction with its core product strategy, so that makes sense to me, but those products were too good to just let die. I'm sure someone would be willing to take them off of Dropbox's hands.

<comment><USER16> That would be the rational thing to do. I don't believe it will happen though. If it was going to happen it would before they announced they're shutting it down.

I just don't get how you can spend 100m$ on something and just let it die. What did Dropbox get out of this deal?

SV is depressing sometimes.

<comment><USER18> They got the brains and patents (if applicable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought Carousel looked really cool, eagerly installed it on release.

Then I discovered that when Carousel is installed, the Dropbox app stops automatically uploading photos from your phone. You have to now open Carousel to do so. Broke my existing upload process, and due to iOS permissions for the new app or not launching it frequently or something the new Carousel upload process wasn't reliable.

Discovered this by noticing that weeks of pictures weren't backed up to Dropbox. Glad I didn't lose my phone.

Ended up just deleting the Carousel app rather than figuring it out. The Dropbox app started syncing reliably again.

<comment><USER20> I had the same experience. I really liked Carousel. It was a great way to organize my photos, but like you said it totally disables auto-sync.

<comment><USER21> On iOS at least, apps can't run in the background. Carousel could only upload photos when you open it (or, as a workaround, when your GPS location changes if you've given that permission).

Carousel's "Flashback -- Discover This Day in the Past Year" feature strikes me as a very clever social workaround since it gets you to open the app at least once a week.

The Dropbox iOS app has the same limitation. Presumably you opened it more to do unrelated tasks, so it makes a lot of sense to bundle them.

Google Photos has the same limitation as well on iOS. I find Carousel's syncing and Google Photos' syncing seem to be roughly on par with each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Crap. I absolutely _adored_ Mailbox; it did everything I wanted, but especially:

1) The ability to snooze emails

2) A really nice UI on both OS X and Android letting me quickly swipe emails to archive or snooze them.

3) A unified inbox that showed multiple email accounts as a single inbox.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a mail client that meets these requirements? I'm quite happy to pay.

Edit: Google Inbox doesn't have a unified inbox, which drives me nuts, and nothing else I know of has message snoozing. ANY suggestions welcomed.

<comment><USER23> Outlook. Seriously. It supports multiple accounts I believe (I only use my work exchange account so not positive), and it has scheduling of messages. The scheduling hasn't synced very well to the desktop version in my experience, but a lot of people have called it the best gmail client on iOS.

<comment><USER22> Well, I guess it's worth a shot.

Although my primary OS for dealing with email is OS X and I see the OS X app is $130? Acceptable for a good Mailbox replacement, but a bit pricy for a gamble. :(

And "The scheduling hasn't synced very well to the desktop version in my experience" worries me a lot.

<comment><USER24> He means the Outlook iOS/Android app, which was a 3rd party app Microsoft bought (Accompli) and further upgraded by the people at Sunrise Calendar (also bought out) to make the app that it is today. Outlook for OSX, though, is still the classic Microsoft Office for OSX app, so it doesn't have any of those upgrades. The iOS app is my daily driver, and it works _splendidly_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sad, Drew had said it's not going anywhere when the acquisition was announced.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572)

<comment><USER26> Executive promises at the time of an acquisition mean absolutely nothing, their main goal is to reduce break-off risk (both of users and employees) due to change of control.

<comment><USER27> It's far more likely that he was overly optimistic about Mailbox's chances of success at Dropbox. Founders are notoriously delusional about this kind of thing.

Dropbox wasn't worried about maintaining the small existing Mailbox userbase, they were betting they could grow it by millions of users. When it didn't work, it messed up their plans (and promises).

 _Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity._

<comment><USER26> > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

As a CEO I'm not sure which of those two explanations I'd prefer.

<comment><USER28> Stupidity because people who act in malice are dicks. You can choose to be nice, but it's inevitable you'll be stupid at one point or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is this Dropbox cleaning up their balance sheet in an attempt to IPO?

There's a pretty loud rumor floating around, heck it was reported on CNBC today, that Dropbox can't come close to IPOing anywhere near its $10 Billion dollar valuation. Though Fidelity did mark them up slightly at the end of November!

And for better or worse, they are going to be closely compared to Box, which has been a pretty big disaster since IPOing. For the record, BOX is valued at 1.65 Billion currently. And it has an awful lot of short interest current( a measure of the ratio of shares sold short vs the total outstanding shares).

<comment><USER21> On the other hand, I thought Dropbox was squashing Box like a bug in terms of users. Not sure if that translates to revenue though. Wouldn't investors want the most profitable company to IPO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is the reason why I stick to the native mail on iOS or Gmail app for the emails i need instantly without fetch. Yeah they may have their cons, but I don't have to worry about Apple dropping Mail app.

Mail should be simple, I think the best apps are the lightweight ones that don't require too much work to keep alive, and definitely don't require a backend server process.

Also, Mailbox had access to all your mail, and when Dropbox bought it while having M̶r̶s̶Miss.Rice on the board of directors, well...that just felt yucky.

My simple solution to keeping my mail under control:

 _ONE_ filter on the Gmail side of things, called "Good Spam". Any reoccurring email I like, but don't want to keep manually archiving everyday, SKIPS inbox and goes into that folder. The filter is literally a huge list of email addresses from senders. (ex snippet "....email@example.com email@example.com email@example.com Hewlett- email@example.com....")

Anytime I get an email I don't consider "Good Spam" I unsubscribe from.

Then on my phone, I just get important or new mail.

BONUS from using filter instead of unsubscribing: When you are in that store and you need that BANANA REPUBLIC coupon at the register, you still have access to it. Open email app, search for it, and use it. And you don't need to keep looking at their emails everyday just to archive it. Or in case of Mailbox, swiping right....thumbs get tired too.

<comment><USER31> What I've started doing is to filter via whether or not they're in my contacts. I have a folder (I don't use Gmail) where all non-contact- originating email goes into. That folder doesn't even ring up the new email count.

I've immensely enjoyed this new system. I, like you, immediately unsubscribe from things that I don't even care about in the "good-spam" box. Only I am too lazy (or don't care enough) to maintain a huge list of email addresses to filter out. I'd rather err on the side of too much filtering (e.g. not in my contacts) since I still get it on my phone/desktop. If I ever want something to hit me right away, I just add it to my contacts, even if it's a company/"good-spam" address.

<comment><USER30> Nice. White list approach as oppose to black list. Makes sense. I would probably end up still using a filter though, because I don't want to have so many contacts for people I barely contact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Assholes.

Getting sick of big companies buying great small products, and shutting them down after "trying" to make them work out.

Still hadn't had time to get over MS killing Sunrise, and now this.

<comment><USER33> Indeed, I had finally taken the plunge on Carousel for its killer feature: Freeing up space on my 16GB iPhone while having the photos instantly available if I needed them. Carousel was a breath of fresh air; it had no issues with backing up photos over WiFi or cellular data, unlike the main Dropbox app. Now it's back to the unreliable and slow Dropbox app for photo syncing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> For fans of the genre, I strongly recommend Our Incredible Journey:

[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Mailbox and Sunrise, two productivity apps that I liked, got acquired (Dropbox 2013, Microsoft 2015), and discontinued in 2015.

<comment><USER36> I'm still using Sunrise to this day, is there an announcement about it being discontinued?

<comment><USER37> Apparently so: [http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces- plans...](http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces-plans-to- discontinue-the-popular-sunrise-calendar-app)

(Unwelcome) news to me.

<comment><USER38> so Sunrise gets sunset :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> @teej nailed it:

> teej: "... They signed the keys away to Drew Houston and the management team > at Dropbox. Mailbox dies the moment Drew decides to kill it."

> dhouston: it's not going anywhere :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381671)

</comment><comment><USER40> Can anyone explain to me, someone who's more than happy with GMail, what these apps offer that aren't being offered by Google/Microsoft?

It seems like Mailbox had a loyal following but I guess my email use is just not sophisticated enough to understand.

<comment><USER41> It's related to a productivity strategy called "inbox zero" where you immediately deal with every email in your inbox when you check your mail. "Deal with" might be to delete it if it's junk, respond immediately if you can, or defer it to later. A lot of these clients are aimed at making this process as fast and efficient as possible. So taking actions on an email are often just a swipe, and there are facilities to defer an email to a particular time, or adding it to a to-do list.

It's mainly intended at people who get too much email.

<comment><USER42> Ain't Google's Inbox app the same sort of thing?

<comment><USER41> Yes, first came "inbox zero" as a concept (2006) then came Mailbox (Jan 2013) then came Google Inbox (Oct 2014).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The message from this: outside of backup, Dropbox can't/won't sustain a small scale but profitable business for the long term (e.g. Basecamp style).

So don't even consider adopting and trusting their new "Paper" collaboration offering.

<comment><USER44> Yeah. Dropbox Paper is like Box Notes. It's nifty but why switch from Google docs?

<comment><USER45> Because your documents are already in dropbox. I believe that is the main value proposition.

<comment><USER44> How is that a value proposition? You still have to open Office to see your word, excel or ppt docs.

DB simply looks at what Box is doing and puts it on their backlog in JIRA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> For those disppointed with Mailbox's abandonment, I'd love to hear your feedback on Polymail ([https://polymail.io](https://polymail.io)). We're in private Alpha right now, but we have many similar features to Mailbox like Read Later + some better ones like Email Tracking & Send Later. Feel free to DM me on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/foolywk](https://twitter.com/foolywk)) if you'd like to be added to our next Alpha release!

<comment><USER45> I'm not really sure how we are supposed to give feedback to a closed alpha test, but many people here are discussing the business viability of native email clients, so maybe you can talk about the market and what the business prospects are when entering this market.

<comment><USER46> There's definitely a large subset of the market which expect not to pay for an email client, but there are many email products available now with many paying customers e.g. yesware, streak, sidekick, etc. There are certainly ways of capturing revenue from the email marketing, but I think that Mailbox was too focused particularly on the entire 'Inbox Zero' aspect of the product and never expanded much beyond that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> That's abrupt. It wasn't that long ago I was bribed into downloading Mailbox by some notification in the Dropbox app.

Bummer too, because I really like it. They're not even going to leave it and let it slowly decay until time takes it's toll and nature wins like with Sparrow.

"As you evaluate alternatives, you might consider the stock apps like iOS Mail (Apple) and Gmail (Android)"

I guess they didn't have much time to research other mail clients.

<comment><USER48> I ctrl-F'd "Android" \- Mailbox is the best email app for Android other than Inbox - which doesn't work with my school's Google Apps configuration.

Shame that there are no other good Android apps, but iOS has a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've been a Dropbox user for--I don't know how long. A long time. I would say since...maybe 2009?

I do not know what those products are for sure. By their names I'm guessing something with photos and something with email. I feel like an old evangelist like myself would have known more about those products. Thus, I wonder if this was a marketing failure as much as a product-market-fit failure.

<comment><USER50> Likewise, I've had Dropbox since around 2009 or 2010, never even heard of Mailbox until now. I actively avoided Carousel solely because of how much the mobile Dropbox app was trying to push it on me, my reaction was more-or-less "What? I'm not changing my workflow." and ignored it. Might have been a shame, but it didn't feel welcoming with how they tried to do that...

<comment><USER51> A while back Dropbox said that they had grander ambitions that being a single- product (Dropbox the service) company, rather they wanted to be a sort of Microsoft, Lotus or Borland of the current generation.

This statement preceded the acquisition of Carousel (a sort of alternative to iPhoto and Picasa built on Dropbox [the service]) Mailbox (an alternative email client, no technical connection to Dropbox [the service]).

So yeah maybe this strategy isn't panning out? I dunno, just irritated that the default move for abandonware isn't open-sourcing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I haven't used Mailbox, but I'm glad to see Carousel being rolled back into the main Dropbox app. It's already good for photos, and didn't warrant a separate app.

</comment><comment><USER53> Ooh, this is very sad. I rely heavily on Mailbox and its follow-up functionality. Any advice for ios-capable replacements out there?

EDIT: The FAQ recommends Google Inbox, Apple Mail and Outlook. I just looked at Inbox again after quite a while away, and it seems like it may be feature- complete with Mailbox.

<comment><USER54> Snooze functionality became my most important feature after using Mailbox. I switched to Outlook several months ago because it supports snoozing and archiving with the same swipe gestures, and it allows me to add all of the mail accounts Mailbox didn't support. The UX isn't quite as polished as Mailbox's, but that's improving regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I only recently switched to Mailbox because I got tired of an annoying UI bug in Sparrow that was never going to be fixed.

I was just starting to get used to Mailbox. What mail app should I be using now?

<comment><USER56> Check out Spark by Readdle. It replaces Mailbox fairly well.

<comment><USER57> Agreed! It had great functionality, including customizabiltit and the best approach to separating wheat from chaff I've seen to date. Spark is entirely client side (Though they're hinting at adding server-side features; as long as it doesn't include server-side access to my email no problem).

Mac client slated for early 2016. They support plain IMAP (yes!) and even Exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> _" In 2013, we acquired Mailbox ... In 2014, we launched Carousel ... Mailbox will be shut down on February 26th, 2016, and Carousel will be shut down on March 31st, 2016."_

Someone should track the lifespan of cloud products. It's not long; the median is probably less than five years. Dependence on a cloud product is risky. They can go away so fast.

</comment><comment><USER59> Not surprised at all, there hasn't been any updates or improvements in awhile, especially for the desktop app, it's nearly unuseable with its current bugs. Seemed like Dropbox never put enough resources into it for it to really get off the ground.

I've switched to airmail for the time being, but I'm definitely going to miss snoozing emails to specific dates.

</comment><comment><USER60> This Gmail strategy helped me transition from Mailbox: [http://lifehacker.com/this-gtd-workflow-is-how-i-finally- got...](http://lifehacker.com/this-gtd-workflow-is-how-i-finally-got-my-email- inbox-u-1505884967)

Essentially use Multiple Inboxes as well as some filters/labels to create the basic GTD categories. I've modified it to use Labels since I find the various stars inefficient. I have inboxes for "Work On" (label: _Priority), "Someday" (label:_Someday), "Waiting" (label:*Waiting), and "Reference" (is:starred). This combined with services offered from Boomerang ([http://www.boomeranggmail.com/](http://www.boomeranggmail.com/)) get pretty close to what I was trying to accomplish with Mailbox. It's not as elegant but I don't have to worry about using a proprietary email client that might not be around.

</comment><comment><USER61> Here is more detail about Dropbox Paper: [http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-paper-team- collab...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-paper-team- collaboration-tools/)

<comment><USER62> They will focus on Paper... until they decide to axe that, too , when they see they can't compete with Google. I think the axe-happy mentality sends the wrong signals when considering products. I'm not gonna use Paper, really, I'm gonna phase off Dropbox as well. I'm not happy they killed Carousel. It was a small simple product - maybe they need a couple of developers to keep it going. It doesn't have to be fancy. I just worked and worked well.

<comment><USER21> > It was a small simple product.

Dropbox itself is just a folder that syncs. Small and simple, right?

Carousel is just a camera roll that syncs. Small and simple, right?

There is an amazing amount of engineering and planning that goes into both products though.

<comment><USER62> Well, compared to Mailbox and Paper, Carousel is simple. Dropbox is not as simple as Carousel itself. There are much more complex apps developed by single developers than Carousel, for example, and many are not even developed for profit. There's very little investment that Dropbox has to do to keep Carousel running, but they decided not to and compromise a lot more than they expect!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Oh man this is sad news. I'm currently using Mailbox as my default mail app on Android. I'll pay for it is there was an option.

</comment><comment><USER64> Cool products coming and going doesn't really even surprise me anymore. I've become a little jaded to the whole come and go of all the different tools and apps.

Anyway, if you guys haven't checked out Boxer [1] for email, it's the best. I went a little obsessive, tested every email client on iOS, and this one was without a doubt is my favorite:

* Push notifications

* Doesn't hijack labels with archive/to-do/completed nonsense

* Universal inbox

* Nice labeling/archiving/customizing via swiping

* Beautiful interface

I love it and highly recommend

[1] [http://www.getboxer.com/](http://www.getboxer.com/)

<comment><USER65> Check this out

[http://www.getboxer.com/boxer-joins-vmware/](http://www.getboxer.com/boxer- joins-vmware/)

how likely is that they will shutter it down, rebrand it in a way that we/me will not like it.

<comment><USER66> It will be brought into Airwatch and used exclusively for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > _The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many > people_

And now those people will hate Dropbox.

<comment><USER68> thankfully many is very different to most.

its a pretty good approximation that compared to dropbox /nobody/ uses those products.

<comment><USER67> That's right, and it sucks to be those users - I'm not one of them, but I have experienced similar things in the past which led to a vehement dislike of the parent company that did it.

<comment><USER68> sure. i don't disagree, but i can see why people would make these decisions. its a tradeoff between small numbers of angry users and burning money on something that is failing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> When Carousel came out, I thought it was a great opportunity for Dropbox to go up the stack and blogged about it: [http://kiyototamura.tumblr.com/post/82662241570/dropboxs- car...](http://kiyototamura.tumblr.com/post/82662241570/dropboxs-carousel-is- different)

Ultimately, I am beginning to think that Dropbox simply does not have the product DNA =/

</comment><comment><USER70> Ug. Carousel solved so many problems for me. Is it just that people don't like having multiple apps? Is the barrier to entry too high? I thought carousel struck a nice balance in not really forcing anyone to use the app, if they were simply on the receiving end.

I hope Dropbox keeps their word on incorporating the carousel functionality into the main app. I don't particularly care what they want to call it.

</comment><comment><USER71> Frustrating as its still my favourite mail app. Although development has definitely slowed down (for desktop at least) over the past 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER72> I've always been puzzled at the two acquisitions. I know it's easier to say this in hindsight but there are a few reflections many had upon hearing the initial acquisition of those tools:

* So you've acquired a Gmail client - why? Surely whatever good comes out of that Google would just re-create into Gmail. Sure enough: Inbox. I'm not even sure how this would have fitted into the Dropbox strategy? I doubt they would have wanted to be acquired by Gooogle. I doubt they would have wanted to compete in the email space... If it was just to get attachments from email surely there are many other ways to solve this problem.

* Second thought: Dropbox has acquired a photo sharing and organization app. Surely they don't think they will win over Facebook, iPhoto, Flickr... What for? Store the photos? Even if it's an awesome product, don't they just risk Apple Photos getting better? Or wait... Here comes Google Photos.

Inbox. Google Photos. iPhotos. Facebook Moments. It feels like both Mailbox and Carosel were just ticking timebombs.

</comment><comment><USER73> Why, oh why can't companies just focus on their core competency? Does Dropbox really consider the sync-and-share problem _solved_?

</comment><comment><USER74> FWIW, a friend told me Mailbox was dead (the team had been moved off the product) back in June, so this was internally known for months.

<comment><USER75> Relevant Twitter discussion: [https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/673918795707244544](https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/673918795707244544)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> > We've come to believe that the best way for us to improve people's > productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so > much email in the first place.

AKA Paper --> [https://paper.dropbox.com](https://paper.dropbox.com)

I don't know if I understand what Dropbox is anymore. It's gone from: syncing file storage --> a decentralized app ecosystem that in some ways competes with PaaS (effectively an OS [1]) --> document and media collaboration tools.

They might be one of the only companies whose products compete with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon...

Just to clarify, I think they've done all of these things well.

1: [http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2015/12/07/059...](http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2015/12/07/0593.html)

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm now getting nervous about Hackpad. Been using it for years and love it to bits. Another Dropbox acquihire...

<comment><USER78> I'm afraid Hackpad is also dead—Dropbox open sourced it, and no one has touched it since October: [https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad](https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> What are the chances that these go down the path of HackPad and be turned into open source projects? I think it's a win-win situation if companies, such as Google and now Dropbox: let go of the responsibility of maintaining it and allow the project to live on in the hands of the community.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/](https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/)

Will Mailbox be open-sourced?

Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, but this is ultimately not something we will support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Awesome. Hey, start-up type peoples. Good luck getting me to use any of your nifty new software. Cause every time I do, and invest my time, data, and learning in you, you sell out then disappear.

There's fool me twice thing in here, but I'm not that inspired to be clever with it.

</comment><comment><USER81> "But as we deepened our focus on collaboration, we realized there's only so much an email app can do to fundamentally fix email."

We beg to differ. We built a new email client around the very idea that it could fix team collaboration: [https://missiveapp.com](https://missiveapp.com)

The thing is… with Sparrow, Mailbox and countless others before, it is getting really hard for a team like us to convince people to invest their time into our new product. People are increasingly worried that we will just fold/sell in the coming months and that their time will be lost.

Establishing credibility in the email space is hard and takes time, there is no shortcut, announcements like this one doesn't help us.

</comment><comment><USER82> It is no surprise, when one-product companies do other products they don't last for long.

Only reason why I still use Dropbox is their client for Mac and and simple web interface and some other small features. I don't understand why nobody else is able to do it...

<comment><USER83> _I don 't understand why nobody else is able to do it..._

Because they don't care, need to, or want to? Google and Microsoft are competing with Dropbox on economics of scale and perhaps as a loss-leader. A lot of people are willing to forgo peer to peer LAN sync or block-level syncing when the cost is much lower. Additionally, both Google Drive and OneDrive have an integrated office suite, which adds value for a lot of people.

Moreover, if you can get away with a weak client, it's an advantage. Someone who has all their data synced to disk can easily switch. Someone who has their data primarily in someone's cloud cannot as easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> So stupid, really! Carousel is the only Dropbox product I use and it works really great!

<comment><USER84> They're killing the apps I actually use from them. Carousel was quite useful for all of the photos I've uploaded, and handles uploading the photos pretty well too.

This is finally giving me the opportunity to explore using some of the other cloud storage such as Google Drive or even iCloud where I can save some money each month as well.

<comment><USER62> Yes. They are shooting themselves into the feet. Too bad I pay annually! They won't be able to realize I left them until next year! I even got one extra year from Dell's Black Friday. Urgh!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Another one bites the dust...

I still remember the discussion when the acquisition was announced:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572)

I hope it was really not going anywhere.

<comment><USER86> >Did you not RTFA? >> " To be clear, Mailbox is not going away.

When people say stuff like this when a startup gets acquired, don't believe them.

<comment><USER87> If you put a few in the back of someone's head, technically they're not _going_ anywhere either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> That is unfortunate. Mailbox was, and still is, (barring a few bugs) one of the better, Zero-inbox mail apps for IOS.

Spark by Readdle has taken up slack there, and they look like they're building it in a way that will actually be monetizable.

<comment><USER88> > Spark

Do you know if they're going to do a desktop version too?

(Or, to be more pessimistic: "How long until that gets acquihired and killed off too?")

<comment><USER56> I don't know about desktop. I just use my phone/ipad for 90% of my email, so that works fine by me.

As for being hired, Readdle makes a ton of ios apps, and are profitable in their own right. Also, while Spark is free, some of the features they've hinted to as coming in the future will likely be in-app purchases / upgrades, that will allow it to be profitable as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> It used to be when the company went out of business, their software still worked...

<comment><USER90> Now the trend is to export the cloud-dependent, you-buy-only-license model to the physical world. Welcome to the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> I've been using carousel and have switched a lot of family members to it. I was using Snapjoy before (which Dropbox acquired and killed), and had done the same thing.

I find the announcement about Carousel extremely disappointing. I'm definitely going to think twice about using Dropbox for anything other than simple file storage in the future.

Pictures are peoples' lives, their families, and their memories. This is a big part of file storage and I thought Carousel was a superb product on desktop and mobile.

Sorry to vent but I haven't been this disappointed about a product being killed (for no apparent reason) in a long time.

<comment><USER92> This is one of the reasons I just accept the flaws with iCloud Photos and go with it. My other family members can use it easily enough and I don't have to worry about it going away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Perhaps I'm wearing rose-colored glasses as a non-gmailer, but I think in the end everyone is served better by more difficult types of innovation. I look forward to seeing what Paper turns out to be.

</comment><comment><USER94> Wow - feels bad for those folks that got acqui-hired and now see their product being "laid off"

 _RIP_ Mailbox, you were cool to play with for a few hours that one stormy day I decided to install you

<comment><USER75> Mailbox/Orchestra was not an acquihire for pennies; it was a normal acquisition for _$100 million_ : [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/mailbox- cost-dropbox-around...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/mailbox-cost-dropbox- around-100-million/)

<comment><USER95> Mainly stock. They acquired the engineers for a tiny fraction of Dropbox's valuation. (Today: $10bn.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I've been looking to move to FastMail for a while, but Mailbox was holding me back (the whole zero-inbox with the remind me this weekend stuff).

Does anybody know of a good zero-inbox client for FastMail?

<comment><USER97> If you want a zero inbox client, then InBox on top of gmail is pretty good.

I use FastMail as my primary email, and I don't quite do zero inbox. I probably have on average 5 to 8 emails in my inbox, and a few stick around for days.

It takes some effort and overhead but I am trying to move away from email as being a "memory box" for organizing my life. Instead I am using subject organized markdown files stored in encrypted cloud storage where I maintain tasks, research notes, etc. since these are synced on my laptops, I can search them with spotlight, cortana, etc.

Combined with FastMail, this scheme keeps me organized. As easy as using InBox for email and TODOs? No, but so far it is working for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> We're a group of folks interested in solving this problem - perhaps by building a stable self-funded business around the most widely requested email client features, or perhaps by driving an open source movement in the community. Maybe both. Help us help you.

[http://goo.gl/forms/9AVIGXNgkc](http://goo.gl/forms/9AVIGXNgkc)

Note: All responses to this survey will be shared with the Hacker News community within 24-48 hours after initial posting.

</comment><comment><USER99> Significant amount of discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690716)

</comment><comment><USER100> This is a huge blow, this was the mail app I used exclusively on the phone. What's the best alternative? Inbox? It seemed a bit complex when I first tried it out.

</comment><comment><USER101> Such a shame. Only snoozing system that works for iOS and Mac without injecting additional emails into the thread to return them to the inbox. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER102> This stinks. I was just getting used to Mailbox. Why buy these smaller companies unless you have a long term plan on how its going to be NPV +ve?

</comment><comment><USER103> I would have guessed Mailbox could have been sold instead of shuttered. Maybe MAU has slid lately, but I thought they had a lot of happy users.

On the other hand, it's amusing to note the Valley inflation that has happened since Mailbox was acquired in early 2013. It was for ~$100M which seems like chump change in the Age of The Unicorn that we now find ourselves in.

</comment><comment><USER104> It always feels awkward when reading such a note, seeing that it gets a lot of upvotes and never heard about any of these products before. What was mailbox? Like many other people I'm pretty unhappy with the mailbox choices I have nowadays. In fact, I have to use four(!) mailbox programs to handle everything I need. Pain in the trashcan, I tell ya.

</comment><comment><USER105> That is very sad. Carousel was a essential part of my photo editing and backup workflow. Maybe need to investigate switching back to drive. The problem with them was though that photos backed up with "Google Photos" didn't appear inside drive and vice-versa. Did they fix that by now?

Mailbox never worked fine for me and had bugs in every corner.

</comment><comment><USER106> I don't know much about Mailbox, but I was an enthusiastic Carousel user . . . until Google released Photos. With Google Drive integration (both up and down), way better search, easy sharing (without requiring a recipient Google account), and photo editing, I dropped Carousel like a rock. I suspect I wasn't the only one.

</comment><comment><USER107> Makes you wonder why they even bought them in the first place. There was no possible integration there, the only move was expansion into other markets.

So buy them, wait two years, then kill them off? Great use of funds there Dropbox, I guess you put the stellar bunch in charge of the development roadmap in charge of acquisitions too.

</comment><comment><USER87> The single best software product since GMail, and they've shuttered it. It's a sad day for our industry.

</comment><comment><USER108> They have opened a community thread in their forums. [0]

[0] [https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en- us/community/posts/203840...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en- us/community/posts/203840413-Saying-Goodbye)

</comment><comment><USER109> Despite all the bugs and the short-falls of the Mac app update, it had the best snooze feature that I've come to live by in my email workflow. It looks like Polymail is an evolved Mailbox (with a eerily similar design/features) and Nylas N1 has a lot of potential as well.

</comment><comment><USER110> I loved Mailbox. Really disappointing. What do folks suggest we use as our replacement email app? Problem with Apple's stock Mail app is that Google doesn't allow push email. Yes, those few seconds before I receive an email are very precious to me :)

<comment><USER111> Wait up, you can setup apple's stock mail to push via the google exchange server.

<comment><USER47> I thought that one cool trick stopped working for new accounts a long time ago?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Mailbox helped me get control of an otherwise unmanageable email problem. Brad Feld recently recommended outlook. Which is funny because an old version of outlook was the thing that created my email monster & subsequent search for a better email client.

</comment><comment><USER113> [https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox- app/sha...](https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox- app/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true)

</comment><comment> cat-dev-null An open-source Mailbox clone could be popular, and a way for mobile (iOS/Android/etc.) developers to show their chops.

The self-starter types of people tend to route around obstructions and unpopular decisions by doing it themselves, better.

</comment><comment><USER114> Stepping off the pity train, what out there is a good replacement for Mailbox?

<comment><USER13> You can look at [https://github.com/nylas/n1](https://github.com/nylas/n1) (also mentioned elsewhere in this thread)

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> That's really bad news for me. I've used Mailbox everyday for a long time, before it joined Dropbox. I am really happy with it, and never tried to switch to another mail client.

</comment><comment><USER112> That sucks, I really like Mailbox. I guess outlook it is on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER116> Don't use anything that's not open source. Period.

</comment><comment><USER117> Part of me is really mad, the iOS app works well and does the work. Part of me is liberated, the OSX app is buggy as hell and drives me nuts every day.

Apple MailI now?

</comment><comment><USER118> This is really disappointing. I have been an avid Mailbox user since beta. Does anyone have any other mail client recommendations for iOS?

</comment><comment><USER119> It is too bad they decided not to open source Mailbox. I would have liked to run my own mailbox service perhaps as a docker container.

</comment><comment><USER120> Would be great if they Dropbox opensourced Mailbox's codebase. I don't want to have to go back to apple mail...

</comment><comment><USER121> At least in case of mailbox, I would say they were sherlocked by Google Inbox: nearly as good an UI but without the need to share access to email with a third party.

I really never liked that aspect of mailbox and I thus never used it with my primary mailbox, which meant that I practically haven't used it at all.

The moment Inbox came out for google apps, I started using it to the point where it is now my primary means for accessing my mail.

</comment><comment><USER122> Good to hear it's finally official. The Mac desktop app has been unusable for the past 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER123> Can someone in the HN community please just remake Sparrow? I'll give you my money right now.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd love to see what else Dropbox is working on besides Paper and enterprise features.

</comment><comment><USER124> Monetization around email is just hard. Except for one like Google.

</comment><comment><USER125> erm, what? I don't even there's mailbox and carousel

i've been just using the basic feature of dropbox, which is just upload/download/sync files

did they put in effort to advertise it?

</comment><comment><USER126> At least they could do was open source it!

</comment><comment><USER127> Time to make an open-source replacement?

<comment><USER94> or just open source this?

<comment><USER63> Will Mailbox be open-sourced? [1]

Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, but this is ultimately not something we will support.

[1] [http://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/](http://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER128> This makes me worry that Dropbox is next.

btsync just became a lot more appealing to me.

</comment><comment><USER129> Is this a sign the Dropbox's diversification strategy into a full collaboration product failed?

In other words, Dropbox can't move away from being a feature?

<comment><USER130> Yes.

<comment><USER131> Then Paper is likely going to be next.</comment></comment></comment>


Babies from Skin Cells? Prospect Is Unsettling to Some Experts - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/health/ivg-reproductive-technology.html <comment><USER2> It seems to me that our social norms – including women foremost expected to get an education and a career – are inevitable moving our societies in the direction of artificially creating babies, if we want to survive longer term. To an extend this process have already begone with screening babies for disabilities and other invasive fertility treatments. Soon this will involve screening for a variety of hereditary diseases. And from there why not go the next logical step and improve the human body by modifying the genetics?

This is currently meet with reservations in much of the Western world due to history, but it is doubtful that will China or India will show the same hesitation. On the contrary their population might view it entirely positive, who doesn't want to have a tall light-skinned son performing well in school. In such a scenario we will be forced to partake or be overtaken.

<comment><USER3> > It seems to me that our social norms – including women foremost expected to > get an education and a career – are inevitable moving our societies in the > direction of artificially creating babies, if we want to survive longer term

This isn't really a technological question but a socioeconomic one. Gestation is hard enough, but the much longer work of child-rearing: who pays for that?

Similarly with artificial generation: who is going to pay for it? The very rich who've already exhausted conventional infertility treatment?

The fully artificial person raises a possibility from cyberpunk dystopia: corporate-owned persons. After all, if someone is built out of artificial DNA and has no direct link to human parentage, could they be made liable for their own existence? Kind of like college loans, only starting from birth.

<comment><USER4> >After all, if someone is built out of artificial DNA and has no direct link to human parentage, could they be made liable for their own existence? Kind of like college loans, only starting from birth.

No, because minors can't enter into a contract. Not to mention that they didn't even consent to it.

<comment><USER5> minors can't enter into a contract as for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most concerning possibility I find is the ability to surreptitiously create offspring of two unsuspecting people with nothing more than some left behind skin or hair (wouldn't the Bene Gesserit have liked this?). The rest of it doesn't seem particularly concerning to me.

<comment><USER7> It reminds me of the scene in GATTACA where the imposter Jerome vacuums up any of his skin cells to protect his identity.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kTdh-u5tis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kTdh-u5tis)

<comment><USER8> GATTACA is now 20 years old. It's amazing how memorable it is, and how well it's held up.

<comment><USER7> It seems the world is becoming a combination of 1984, Idiocracy and GATTCA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> it is infuriating when the topmost comment on that article is about overpopulation FUD while the comments have gotten closed, so I am unable to retort.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation- is-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the- problem.html)

There is absolutely no hard evidence that world overpopulation should be seen as a serious concern, because we do not know the actual food production capacity limit of the earth, and clearly we are already wasting quite a bit of whatever's there (such as eating meats instead of plants).

<comment><USER10> Also, the rate of population growth is slowing such that the UN projects a peak population of 9.22 billion, occurring in 2075.

[http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Wor...](http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Population increases and declines are not evenly spread across the world. The migration crisis leading to the rise of global populism seems to be set to happen again.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-africa- ana...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-africa-analysis- idUSKCN12D1PN)

<comment><USER10> Yes, but the UN projection takes that into account. Not to imply that any projection is perfect, but they are working with a lot of historical data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably the biggest long term concern is that this kind of reproduction, that depends on machines will become prevalent to the point of non functionality of normal reproductive systems. One freak solar flare and our species, can't multiply.

<comment><USER13> More importantly, "transposons" (endogenous retro-viruses) spray damage all over a normal human cell's DNA about once a month. The damage would be cumulative.

Gamete cells have special mechanisms to control transposon activity that skin cells lack. The child won't be getting a clean genome.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Regardless of possible misuse, the technology (apparently) exists. We can't just ignore it and hope that it will go away.

Besides, it has numerous benefits too. I feel like the argument against it is an example of the slippery slope fallacy[1].

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

<comment><USER15> Oh the irony of invoking the slippery slope fallacy in a post stating "if it exists, it'll be used" :)

<comment><USER14> That's not exactly what I said but---even if I did---I don't think that it's such a flawed line of reasoning.

Do you mean to imply that if something exists, it is likely that it will never be used?

<comment><USER15> No. I meant to imply that slippery slope isn't a fallacy in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> underlying tech is the following:

\- reprogram cells (could be any cells, here they are considering skin cells as they are easy to get) to become embryonic stem cells capable of growing into different kinds of cells

\- use signaling factors that occur in nature to guide those stem cells to become eggs or sperm

This has been done with mice

<comment><USER17> Did it "work" with mice? Ie. were the created eggs and sperm able to combine and start multiplying when put inside the appropriate part of a mouse?

That would be great, however the backlash from the more... conservative population will be equally huge, I guess :)

<comment><USER18> The work by Hayashi published last year had derived precursor egg cells, but the sperm was from normal mouse testes as usual. As described in the article, they did successfully create healthy offspring, though the success rate was very small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yep welcome back eugenics.

<comment><USER20> This isn't eugenics. I'm not sure why people use that label so much with almost any reproduction-related technology. Birth control is "eugenics", genetic disease screening is "eugenics", the creation of egg cells from other cells is "eugenics".

Eugenics is, very specifically, the application of husbandry to humans. I'm all for anything that has similar benefits without the associated human rights violations.

<comment><USER19> Let's not pretend ... if babies can be artificially created, why not tweak its genes a _little bit?_ It's harmless right; what's wrong with going for brown hair, green eyes? What's wrong with cutting the risk of getting fatter/cancer?

Then there's the social consequences worthy of a _Black Mirror_ season.

It's a slippery slope me thinks.

<comment><USER21> > Let's not pretend ... if babies can be artificially created, why not tweak > its genes a little bit?

Why not indeed?

We have taken, or are trying really hard to take, natural selection out of the equation for ourselves. Doing so without an alternative way to bring out desirable traits and reduce undesirable ones condemns our descendants to lifetimes of treatment for ever more exotic and complicated genetic diseases. I don't think that's ethical, and I don't think stopping medical research is either, leaving us with gene editing of embryos (and hopefully someday fully developed humans) as the only way to ensure the health of coming generations.

Of course, you're right that this will have profound social effects. But so will doing nothing while continuing medical advances.

<comment><USER19> The question is do you want to survive or do you want to be more _super_. IMO the gene-editing/eugenics topic falls under the latter.

No one is saying that curing diseases is bad. But the fact is our lives will always be blighted with something, if not Disease A then it's Disease B and if not Accident C.

Nature has a wonderful way of intervening, somehow or another. If you find one, then it'll just get more creative. And by the way, I would argue that most of the current ailments are _human-generated_ \- like climate change and lung cancer caused by smoking.

The only leeway I can sort of accept is serious hereditary diseases like madness passed down through generations - but even then I'm cautious that it'll open the floodgates.

No. The risk is too much - a new human race with a clearly defined code of what's good and what's not good for them? What about those who can't "make it"? What about the rest of us who can't afford fancy genes?

Geez, this is Darwinian struggle taken to the extreme.

<comment><USER21> > No one is saying that curing diseases is bad. But the fact is our lives will > always be blighted with something, if not Disease A then it's Disease B and > if not Accident C.

But our entire history has seen us making it safer to be alive. From cooking to antibiotics to now immunotherapy, we have reduced the risk of death at every turn. This even extends to mobility: we have reduced the ways in which we move (what is a road but a disincentive to use any other path?) in exchange for making them massively safer. Safety hasn't _monotonously_ increased, but the pattern is clear. And successful. Saying that it can't be perfect isn't an argument against continuing.

> No. The risk is too much - a new human race with a clearly defined code of > what's good and what's not good for them? What about those who can't "make > it"? What about the rest of us who can't afford fancy genes?

This is a very valid ethical concern, and I agree that getting it wrong is a scary prospect. But I don't think that getting it wrong is inevitable, nor do I think that inaction is better.

In particular, the "never" position relies instead on _blind chance_. It may seem seductive because, hey, after all, blind chance is how we got here in the first place, but we suffer from tremendous survivor bias; our fitness to our environment is built on billions upon billions of failed experiments that resulted in death for each of the test subjects. I think it's perfectly fine to look for better models.

The societal problems you're worried about are very real, but I think the solution is to talk about them and work them out.

<comment><USER19> > but I think the solution is to talk about them and work them out.

Hey you're right, and I appreciate that you're open about your thoughts. But my position differs in that I think there isn't anything to "work out", because it's a non-essential technology. Sure it might eradicate diseases, _it might._ But there are other ways to tackle them that have far less controversial impact.

> But I don't think that getting it wrong is inevitable, nor do I think that > inaction is better.

With tools that have greater potential to be massively destructive, they inevitably end up like that.

Look how we shot ourselves in the foot with the inventions of dynamite and nuclear fission. Yes they did open doors, but arguably we've upped our own risk of self-destruction too.

"Inactive" here just means rejecting this path and taking up another instead. And, the latter may well open doors more beneficial to us.

Look, I have to say that I dislike looking at society and social issues from the Darwinian perspective. It's just too cynical, and kinda missing the point of living. We're not just here to _survive._ Whatever age we live to, every one has a chance to witness the wonder of just existing. We keep passing the torch of enlightenment, but we're not supposed to fall in the trap that we have _control_ and therefore _power_. Trust me, Nature will laugh right back at us.

And you can't compare this issue with our rich history of wit and innovation. For a start, the generations before were trying to _change the world_ , and this is radically different to creating a new "breed" of humans, where going down this path is not only superficial, it's most likely very painful for a lot of us.

Let's shift perspective a bit here: with this new "species", _ours can get wiped out._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py babies the normal way is pretty unsettling if you've got one on the way.

<comment><USER22> Right? Imagine the reaction if we'd done it the test-tube way all along, and somebody suggested the natural way.

<comment><USER23> I feel like I've seen a movie or TV show that had this once with the characters being totally grossed out and unsettled by the natural way and thought test-tubes were clearly the superior way.

<comment><USER5> GATTACA</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many vacation days do you give your employees? - <AUTHOR> How many vacation days do you give your employees? Why not more or less? How did you determine what your company PTO benefits should be? <comment><USER2> > How many vacation days do you give your employees?

My employer gives me as many as mandated by the employment law. Why do you ask?</comment>


Raise the Gas Tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/12/blumenauer_gasoline_tax_hike_oregon_congressman_wants_higher_fuel_taxes.html

<comment><USER2> The entire idea behind fuel taxes (and why these taxes are not levied on off- road use such as farm fuel, like for a tractor or to run a threshing machine), was that fuel taxes are to pay for the roads and other infrastructure.

Typically for these kinds of articles, nowhere is the actual cost of maintaining the road system actually mentioned.

The reason is, that in many cases, the fuel taxes collected are far, far in excess of the money actually spent in maintaining the road and building new roads.

And most politicians love the slush-fund aspect of all the money that flows in, and the horse-trading that goes into determining how it is spent.

Also not mentioned and not included in the calculations: the thousands of dollars taken in on sales taxes, license fees, plate fees, etc. over the (let us say 15 year) lifetime of your average car.

<comment><USER3> > The reason is, that in many cases, the fuel taxes collected are far, far in > excess of the money actually spent in maintaining the road and building new > roads.

Actually, you have this backwards[1]. The cost of maintaining roads exceeds the revenues generated by gas taxes.

In fact, the only transportation 'use tax' account that consistently runs a surplus is the federal Airport Improvement Trust Fund.

[1] First hit on the Google: [http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation- infrastructur...](http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation- infrastructure/Do-Roads-Pay-Themselves.html)

<comment><USER4> Are there other sources that discuss the cost of roads and bridges? One of the main arguments people use against high-speed rail in the US, for instance, is that it's not profitable, except in the North East between Washington and Boston.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see a gas tax that is progressive based on population density within 10-20 miles of the gas station. They greater the population density, the higher the tax. Rural gas stations pay the least tax per gallon and city gas stations pay extremely high tax per gallon.

<comment><USER6> This really is a bad idea. This subsidies sprawl and fuel consuming lifestyles. Gas taxes pay for a part of the externalities of fuel burning which rural folks do a lot more than urban dwellers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could figure a way to make the following suggestion not so painful on the working poor, but if the social cost of burning a gallon of gas is $2.10, why not hike the gas tax to something north of that AND index it for inflation automatically?

I realize that I have a certain privilege to live 15 minutes from work, and that those who drive long distances to work would be hurt by such a policy, if you take today as a frame of reference. But, perhaps they should be hurt by it, if indeed they're costing society that excess amount.

Phasing it in linearly over an 8 year period starting 2 years from now would blunt some of the transitional sting, perhaps.</comment>


"meta-learning scheme  [for] cognition and emotion" (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003094 <comment><AUTHOR> I've known about this article for a while, and I find myself thinking about its concept all the time. It really does provide a versatile rule-of-thumb, information-theory-enabled way to explain one's feelings.</comment>


YC SuS library Growth list with track feature - <AUTHOR> https://jooseph.com/modules/88 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone,

I shared YC SuS W2020 Growth List from YC library in our platform(I referenced YC SuS W2020).

For the ones who doesn't know what is: It is a list of resources for understanding and implementing growth tactics into your startup.

So with our product

\- You can track the resource you clicked last

\- You can like and dislike resource to guide others and rank the list.</comment>