Show HN: We're building a better way to pay your bills - <AUTHOR> http://beta.cloudbill.com

<comment><USER2> For every bill I have from phone to internet to all utilities to every credit card, insurance, etc etc etc... That I can name, there is an auto payment option.

The only thing I can think of that still requires a check is paying rent. But for that, and anything else that would require payment by checks, billpay (which is free with every bank I know of or have used) takes care of this.

All of these pretty much can already be automated. All that said, legitimate question, but is there a scenario here that I am overlooking where this would be covered by your service that I can't automate bill payments without writing a check already. Or more accurately, what's different between this and billpay most banks offer (aside from the interface).

EDIT: I suppose the auto address update is a nice feature that most people might have a use for

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if Cloudbill provides this...

But what I would (personally) love is a place to manage _all_ of my bill payments in one place -- instead of having to log in separately to bank/credit card/internet/cell phone/etc sites to view amounts and then pay all separately. (Sometimes they can be configured to autopay, sometimes they can't...)

Every time my CC number gets compromised and I have to change the billing info on 8+ sites... ugh what a pain. And then on CC sites where they don't allow autopay (or only allow it in a fixed dollar amount, WTF), and I miss the e-mail saying my new statement has arrived, and get a late fee... ugh again.

<comment><USER4> Cloudbill does provide what you're looking for. You have outlined the core problem with current billpay...the time it takes and the hassle you have to go through. Cloudbill can alert users via txt, email and within the app itself to help insure you don't forget a Nik.

<comment><USER2> What can you change in cloudbill?

It sounds like you're saying you can change credit card information which I'm unsure how but it sounds like you can update your address, passwords, and everything else it seems like. How are you guys able to do this as I believe backend systems like Yoodle doesn't allow this right?

Currently does the system support all kinds of banks and bill payments already?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How much will the service cost? Presumably they'd have to charge money for it, since the alternative business model would be something unspeakably horrible, like selling users' personal financial information. And it would be nice to see a privacy policy before providing your e-mail to get an invitation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there!

We plan to charge a users in a variety of ways. it will be a freemium service so some users who have a minimal number of accounts or bills will never pay anything, but we'll have tiers depending on what the user wants, for instance the move me service for setting up your utilities, cable, etc could be an a la carte charge.

We think the average user (3 bank accounts about 12 bills per month) will probably pay about $5 per month for the service and with the grey charge removal alone we're confident we can save you that fee :)

There is also quite a bit of interest for the biller to pay us since it will ensure their users pay their bills on time and from the studies we've seen so far having this as an option even improves users' opinions of their bill providers.

So never fear there are definitely ways of making money outside of shady practices or selling your financial info(which we will NEVER do under any circumstance)

Hope that helps :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish this could be integrated directly into Mint.com and/or my bank.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually hope you'll forget about Mint after using Cloudbill ... we'd love for you to never have to login to any bank or bill provider again either. Sign up and shoot me an email at zach [at] cloudbill dot com and I'd love to chat with you about what you like about Mint and make sure we're hitting all your pain points with Cloudbill. I have a feeling we are :)

<comment><USER6> I mostly just use Mint for aggregation between accounts, budgeting, and trend monitoring. We pay our bills via paper. I don't like logging into each bill's bill pay website. Paper seems easier because it reminds you right there, where as a bill pay website you have to actively go to. If banks provided an ability to aggregate between accounts like Mint, and integrated bill pay (like yours) into a single site, that would be pretty close to ideal for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you have a bug tracker? Ended up in an annoying state on my mobile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoot us an email to firstname.lastname@example.com! would love to see it!</comment></comment>


6 Reasons Why I Am Done with AirBnB as a Renter - <AUTHOR> https://donewithairbnb.wordpress.com/6-reasons-why-i-am-done-with-airbnb-as-a-renter <comment><USER2> Startup idea - "real-airbnb-reviews" where you can post your uncensored experience.

<comment><USER3> Why be afraid to post your true feelings, whether positive or negative? Unless I plan to stay with the person again (which would mean I had a positive experience anyway), there should be no reason self-censor a negative review.

There is no way that I am aware of, where anyone can look up a list of your previous reviews. So it's not like it leaves a black mark on your profile to post truthful reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The host guarantee on AirBnb isn't as great as most people assume.

We ate $1500 in damages on one of our first visitors, and we're off the platform now. The whole experience was a real bummer.

<comment><USER5> Can you give some more details please, curious what the issue was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am done with AirBnB in some countries, and will always use it in others.

It is a 'case by case' issue.

<comment><USER3> I feel the same way. I had multiple poor experiences in Japan, where I believe the issue was a cultural misunderstanding of what was expected of both renter and host.

<comment><USER6> Can you elaborate?

It seems interesting to know about the cultural misunderstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny that it's a website and not a blog post.

<comment><USER8> They have Big Feels about this, so big that it requires an entire website.

I will think it is funny if this is the only post and that's it. (I have seen that on other topics: Create an entire website devoted to the topic with a topic-specific domain, post one and only one entry. Done.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> AirBNB has a number and it's not hard to find. From the AirBNB site, click Help -> Visit the Help Center -> Contact Us. The number is +1-415-800-5959 or +1-855-424-7262 (Toll-free).

<comment><USER10> Called that and was left waiting in the queue for 3 hours (about a house I had booked which didn't exist) before I gave up and had to sleep in the car.

<comment><USER11> How did the money side of that work out? (I'm quite ignorant of the AirBnB payment process).

<comment><USER10> I never managed to contact a human about it.

The airbnb dispute process allows you to request money from the host, but doesn't let you get a full refund - only ~80%. In my view, the house not existing warrants at a minimum a full refund.

Instead I took it to my credit card company and got a full refund from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, hotels are still a thing. If you want the luxury of a concierge go ahead and pay for it. You're not "uncool" for doing so and after a year of using the service you should know what you're in for.

<comment><USER13> It's not about luxury or having a concierge. It's a basic trust issue. You can't trust AirBnB reviews.

We had an issue with a place where we wanted to stay for a week in Italy. There was a very noticeable smell of paint/dust, and we couldn't sleep. What do you do then? The host offered to "fix the problem", but how would you fix that? There's also the issue of proof: You can't take a photo of smell. Anyways, we got a percentage of the money back, but of course that meant that AirBnB wouldn't let us post a review. Basically, they pay you for your silence.

And that's why I wouldn't use AirBnB anymore either. You can't trust the reviews.

<comment><USER14> I had a huge hurdle using Uber - after trying it once with someone else, I am now am a power user. I just cannot make the jump to AirBnB. I have friends who use it a lot. I found the rates paid by myself and friends are very similar .. when asked why not just use a hotel, my friends point at quaint/unique experiences, etc. I realized that this is not my thing (I don't "get" blue apron either FWIW).

<comment><USER15> This so much. Uber/Lyft were shockingly better than taxis. I tried AirBnB expecting the same and wow was that not the case. Went to a beach and was hoping to have a destination ready _with_ cooking facilities(hard requirement traveling with an allergic child). Arived ther & spent 45 minutes wandering up and down the beach showing the listing/owner photo to everyone in sight. Nobody's ever heard of them. Later that day the owner who lives hundreds of miles away airbnb messages us to say that the name of the beach resort and the contact info aren't what's actually shown in the listing. Of course we don't have internet then & have already given up and chosen another hotel. By the time we got back to civilization/internet we've already missed the window to leave feedback/dispute. First time in my life I've ever done a credit card chargeback. What a colossal PITA. I figure I wasted 2 to 4 hours fighting with their website between signup(reproducible bugs), trying to dispute/leave feedback/contact them(gave up eventually), and the chargeback. Totally not worth it for 30 something bucks but darn they need some sort of feedback, because I really _want_ to like them. They _should_ be uber/lyft for apartments because that would be awesome, but my experience was a million times worse than agoda/travelcity/whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So basically you're done with AirBnB for a reason that has nothing to do with AirBnB (the fact that some people are awful).

<comment><USER17> These have everything to do with AirBnB. The problems he lists are inherent to the platform, i.e., a website where random people rent out their property to other random people. The competition (the hotel "platform") does not have this problem. AirBnB could attempt to fix things by being stricter with hosts, providing better guarantees to renters, etc. But they don't.</comment></comment>


A codified set of the Builder's, Crafter's, Maker's Rules - <AUTHOR> http://wondermark.com/tink8/

<comment><USER2> When reading this I feel like it's what I think about software. The only point where it doesn't work is the one entitled "if it has screws, they shall be turned", but still, it's a perfectly good metaphore.</comment>


How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects - <AUTHOR> https://people.neilon.software/ <comment><USER2> An extensive zoo of somehow problematic people, in management, design, development, and QA areas. Every type is described, complete with the nature and magnitude of the danger to a project, and ways to fix the situation.</comment>


Japanese Play-by-Postcard RPGs: Net Games (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dampfkraft.com/games/japanese-postcard-net-games.html <comment><USER2> Progressing the state of the game once per month sounds like more than most D&D groups are capable of doing...

<comment><USER3> Truth..

We managed to play once.. this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wolf in White Van [0] is a book written by John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats). It's very dark and is centered around the main character's management of a play-by-mail RPG.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems to be a niche that nothing else fills right now. It's much larger scale than tabletop D&D. Much more freeform and literary than MMOs that do have a large scale. And asynchronous except for the monthly deadline.

Unfortunately it also feels like, to do it right would require it to charge significant fees. There would be a lot of effort required reading, collating, adjudicating and responding to each and every player even if groups doing roughly the same thing got shared replies. Probably more than an individual game-runner with a hobby could do.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if Patreon could be the scaffold upon which this could be built. The basic tier includes receiving the monthly play-by-play, but the highest tier is for the Player Characters, limited to N players.

<comment><USER5> Or "at monthly income level $$$, we can support up to N players. Higher tiers get first dibs but then it's first come first served. If our income goes up to $$$$, we will be able to expand our operation and support up to M players."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to run games like this on forums. Groups of about 30 players doing actions over email 1-3 times a week, mostly in split up subgroups with forum wide responses that explained the complete state of the game whenever they found a means of communicating for a while.

It wasn't as difficult to manage as I think many assumed, although mandating that the game must go on even if people missed something was tough sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER8> My friends and I used to play VGA Planets ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_Planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_Planets)) by handing in floppy disks to the kid with the server program at school.

Each school day we would bring the disk with our turn and hand it in to him and he would hand back our disk from the previous turn. It was a blast and great fun given the limitations of tech at the time.

<comment><USER9> stars! (old 4x ) had native play by email, it was a blast in the nineties, it wasn't easy to play with actual strangers back then and to have internet friends was something weirdos did here in Italy. cables were unheard of so modem sessions had to be short not to interfere with calls. pbm games where perfect for us who lived in this side of the "digital divide"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if this could be restarted (alas in English...). Any English-speakers who have experienced the mechanics of these kind of games? It's been so long that I received a 'postcard' that the idea almost is thrilling.

<comment><USER11> There used to be discussion forums by post too.

Pages 70 & 71 of "Signal: communication tools for the information age" (A Whole Earth Catalog) have details.

I'll take a photo and put it up on Imgur, because the official site is broken.

Here's a link, sorry for the poor photography: [https://imgur.com/a/4miM4vP](https://imgur.com/a/4miM4vP)

<comment><USER12> Hey it's all legible. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Role Playing Gateway [1] may be the closest thing you'll find online. It has shared universes and players creating their own characters and writing short stories about their journeys and taking actions. It's not quite an MMO since it's not real-time and much of the interactions aren't mediated by programs enforcing rules.

This and the OP's example might actually be closer to a form of literature, but one that is semi-interactive and non-linear. I've been keeping a list of digital examples of this [2] but perhaps I should start an offline list, too!

They claim to have been running for 20 years.

[1] [https://www.roleplaygateway.com/](https://www.roleplaygateway.com/)

[2] [https://www.jamesyu.org/hyperliterature/](https://www.jamesyu.org/hyperliterature/)

<comment><USER14> Just google "roleplaying forum". There are more popular ones as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember the back ad for Savage Sword of Conan in the 80s and even 90s was a play by mail RPG called "Hyperborian Wars" or something. I never joined because it was super expensive at about $8/month for monthly mailings with adventures.

<comment><USER16> Is this "Hyborian War"? [http://www.reality.com/hwprul1.htm](http://www.reality.com/hwprul1.htm)

<comment><USER15> Yes, that's it. It was actually and ancient program and I remember finally playing a mud version once I got to college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if there's some opportunity in building a (paid) interactive story or game.

Maybe not exactly for yourself, but maybe doing it for your kids and involving them could be something.

<comment><USER18> The app stores are littered with these, so yes.

"Celebrities" have backed them, they come in life, fantasy, sci-fi, business, crime, sports and every other genre you can imagine.

<comment><USER17> Oh, any examples? Not even sure what to search for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by- mail_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game)

</comment><comment><USER20> The roots of this are probably in Western PBM gaming back in the 1980s. Flying Buffalo ran several popular computer-moderated wargames in this format, but companies like Schubel & Son ran human moderated games such as Tribes of Crane.

</comment><comment><USER21> Funny, I was just reading that yesterday.</comment>


Using Scala to handle exponential growth at a startup (part 2) - <AUTHOR> https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2013/02/13/using-scala-to-handle-exponential-growth-at-a-startup-part-2/

<comment><USER2> That was a good interview. I also got very interested in Scala while taking Martin Odersky's excellent functional programming class last year. I ended up concentrating on Clojure for my (solo) work because of decades of Lisp experience, but the Scala language and developing ecosystem is also very compelling.

I have friends who are still doing Java enterprise scale work, but for most applications something more light weight and concise like Scala, Clojure, or JRuby seems like a better way to use the JVM ecosystem. In addition to more agile languages, I believe that the best practices for most development use microframeworks and composable libraries.

<comment><USER3> I had eight years of (hobbyist) Lisp experience when I was laid off in May; by then I was using Clojure in my home projects. Two of my interviews mentioned Scala, one place used it as their main language. I decided that, even if the languages were equally powerful and interesting, I was betting on the wrong horse, and have started to concentrate with Scala.

<comment><USER2> I think you made the correct decision. BTW, even though I am using Clojure on my own business ideas/projects, in the last 15 years as a consultant I have always used Common Lisp, Java, Ruby, or Clojure because one of those languages was what a particular customer requested. I never try to talk a customer into a particular technology stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My pet peeve with these type of articles is that they miss the fact that there are two type of growth challenges that a organizations face. One , the happy growth, is where a lot of people begin using the system . The other growth is team growth -- when you need to on-board a lot of people quickly and get them up-to speed so that your organization can sustain its growth.

I appreciate the fact that Scala with Akka is very good at concurrency issues.

I am curious to know how well organizations have scaled up their Scala teams. How easy was it transition new developers into organization-bread-and-butter type of products.

<comment><USER5> As a follow up, PHP as he mentioned he considered an entry level language. Scala is not. He had skilled developers who could pick up Scala? I think in most cases the 'retooling' would be a big problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brian from Lucidchart here. I do think we have a fantastic dev team at Lucidchart which makes the switch to Scala easier. We've tried to keep a very high bar in our hiring.

Our team has been able to come up to speed on Scala and get productive pretty quickly. Within a month, the team felt comfortable in Scala. Most team members read through Odersky's "Programming in Scala" book to get an overview of the language which was helpful. We've also had some team members go through the Coursera class.

Our experience is that there is a cost to Scala when it comes to new hires. Very few new hires have any meaningful Scala experience so they have to come up to speed on the language whereas with Java or PHP most new hires are already proficient in the language. In the end, however, we believe that the benefits of Scala, Play and Akka over the long term will outweigh the short term cost of training new hires. Even with our new hires, we find they are pretty comfortable and productive after a month of learning and using Scala.

<comment><USER6> What are the reasons that made you decide on Play+Scala instead of Play+Java?

I'm going through a similar decision so would love to hear your thoughts on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PHP to Scala, sounds like crawling to running to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good article about making tough decisions early on that enable growth down the road. Thank you for the perspective and transparency.

</comment><comment> why-el The link to the previous post in the article 404s. Here it is: [https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/2012/12/18/using-scala- expon...](https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/2012/12/18/using-scala-exponential- growth-at-a-startup/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Semitangent: I'm always interested in stories about startups using or considering between Scala/Haskell.</comment>


Bringing Big Money Out of the Shadows - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/opinion/bringing-big-money-out-of-the-shadows.html

<comment><USER2> The problem I have is why can politicians accept money outside their district? Isn't that a conflict of interest.</comment>


Bulma: Modern CSS framework based on Flexbox - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jgthms/bulma/ <comment><USER2> Did a quick pass of the docs, and the grid system seems to be opinionated/unconfigurable w/r/t changing column ratios as device width scales. Everything is 100% width at mobile size, and once you pass that breakpoint, there's no adjustment mechanism at any other size.

That's a big step backwards from bootstrap's col-breakpoint-width, IMO.

It also fails to address nesting columns within each other.

This feels more like a rudimentary grid system that happens to have some button styles, rather than a "framework".

If you want a bootstrap-like grid experience with flexbox and sans the bloat, I've had a decent experience with this: [http://flexboxgrid.com/](http://flexboxgrid.com/)

<comment><USER3> Foundation Sites (F6) also comes with flexbox grid btw. It's optional, you can switch it on in the sass settings and use the same html markup as before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't found a way to handle <aside> with Flexbox.

Intended behaviour is that you're writing paragraphs of <p>, then a <p> that you wish to annotate, then the <aside>, then some more <p>.

The aside should be, well, on the side. In the margin.

So far, with floating <aside> you need to have the <aside> before the <p> that it belongs to, which is semantically false.

I had hopes with Flexbox to finally solve this issue, but it doesn't look possible, because if you imagine it as a big grid of two columns, the text would have to flow through only the left column, while only the <aside> would have to be pushed to the right column.

<comment><USER5> Is this what you're looking to do?

[https://jsfiddle.net/sadz6va6/](https://jsfiddle.net/sadz6va6/)

Disclaimer: New to flexbox myself. Might have committed some sins.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Thank you (also to the sibling commenters).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who doesn't understand why every single piece of code needs to be installed through npm?

Even css? Come on!

<comment><USER7> There's nothing forcing you. The code is right there in the repo. You're welcome to download it via Github's download button, cloning via git, or NPM. NPM is a very helpful option because it's the fastest and easiest way to get it into my project and not have to copy and paste stuff around either from my OS UI or command line. Just `npm install` then possibly writing a line in a gulpfile to copy the css where I need it if using unaltered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just as popular JavaScript libraries spawn many superfluous forks and microframeworks, the landing of Flexbox has resulted in dozens of these CSS 'frameworks' and grid systems:

1\. [http://basegui.de](http://basegui.de)

2\. [https://github.com/ButaneCSS/butanecss](https://github.com/ButaneCSS/butanecss)

3\. [http://juicedcss.com](http://juicedcss.com)

4\. [http://bowlingx.github.io/flexcss](http://bowlingx.github.io/flexcss)

5\. [http://codepen.io/geoffyuen/pen/ogrPbZ](http://codepen.io/geoffyuen/pen/ogrPbZ)

6\. [https://github.com/meerita/flexsasscandy](https://github.com/meerita/flexsasscandy)

7\. [http://getmdl.io/components/index.html#layout- section/grid](http://getmdl.io/components/index.html#layout-section/grid)

8\. [https://kevinpy.com/Projects/Flexo](https://kevinpy.com/Projects/Flexo)

9\. [http://philippkuehn.github.io/gridilydidily](http://philippkuehn.github.io/gridilydidily)

10\. [http://stylusgrid.com](http://stylusgrid.com)

11\. [https://github.com/IonicaBizau/gridly](https://github.com/IonicaBizau/gridly)

12\. [https://github.com/colourgarden/avalanche](https://github.com/colourgarden/avalanche)

13\. [https://milligram.github.io/](https://milligram.github.io/)

14\. [https://github.com/ButaneCSS/butanecss](https://github.com/ButaneCSS/butanecss)

15\. [http://bulma.io/documentation/grid/](http://bulma.io/documentation/grid/)

16\. [http://gridlex.devlint.fr/](http://gridlex.devlint.fr/)

17\. [http://crabcss.com](http://crabcss.com)

and that's but a fraction of the full list.

I haven't bothered to sit down and actually assess whether these flexbox grids actually differ from each other (my gut says that it's not possible for them to differ too much). My gut also tells me that there has to be an apex, an optimal Flex-based grid from which there can be no improvement.

I think a big part of the problem of why websites all look a bit similar is because they're all developed using Bootstrap, Bourbon or Foundation, and apparently on the rare occasion where a front-end framework is not used, an offshoot or "heavily-inspired by" alternative is used instead.

Nobody is thinking about what /could/ be, but rather what can be done in the least time to produce the best approximation of a contemporary website. Nobody wants to push the boundaries. Maybe we've reached an optimal paradigm for the design and layout of websites. I don't think so.

I always implement my own CSS, mainly because I really don't like carrying frameworks around. If I need all of a framework's features, I'll consider using it. Since I never need all of a framework's freatures, that never happens. If I ever do need a full front-end framework's worth of features, here's a framework that seems flexible, modular and solid to me: [http://www.basscss.com/](http://www.basscss.com/)

and if you want a great grid, look at this: [http://peterramsing.github.io/lost/](http://peterramsing.github.io/lost/)

and if you want to wait for a more powerful future grid tool, investigate the CSS Grid Spec:

[http://gridbyexample.com/](http://gridbyexample.com/)

[http://gridbyexample.com/examples/page- layout/](http://gridbyexample.com/examples/page-layout/)

[http://abookapart.com/products/get-ready-for-css-grid- layout](http://abookapart.com/products/get-ready-for-css-grid-layout)

[https://24ways.org/2015/grid-flexbox-box-alignment-our- new-s...](https://24ways.org/2015/grid-flexbox-box-alignment-our-new-system- for-layout/) [https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2015/11/03/three- years-w...](https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2015/11/03/three-years-with- css-grid-layout/) [https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2015/04/14/grid- layout-a...](https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2015/04/14/grid-layout- automatic-placement-and-packing-modes/)

<comment><USER9> If I was starting a new site today I'd roll with:

\- PostCSS (with plugins: cssnext, variables, mixins, nested, autoprefixer)

\- Lost Grid

\- Typographic ([http://corysimmons.github.io/typographic](http://corysimmons.github.io/typographic))

\- Boy - if I had to support legacy browsers ([https://github.com/corysimmons/boy](https://github.com/corysimmons/boy))

<comment><USER10> ButaneCSS is pretty close to what you want. I was hesitant to add lost grid but it is easy to add to the setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This can be beautiful, but I'd need SOME KIND of back-compatible functionality, even if it's just to tell old IE users "hey you're totally missing on stuff, check this out"

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been working on a toy CRUD app in Elm, after hearing that Richard Feldman wants to 'make the backend team jealous!' and wanting to see why I should be jealous.

Anyway, I managed to quickly style it with Bulma yesterday, and I think it looks nice: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/130414/elm-doc- mgr/index...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/130414/elm-doc- mgr/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Having previously built some medium-sized apps with bootstrap and material, this is something I'd like to try for my next project. It looks simpler than either of those other two, and has enough other stuff to make it usable out of the box, unlike something like skeleton which was too minimalist for me to use easily.

I haven't used flexbox ever myself. Could someone summarize why flexbox makes this framework effective?

<comment><USER2> Flexbox layouts "work like you think they work" for the most part, which is really nice, and far better than their predecessors.

The 3 "holy shit we needed this before!" features IMO are: vertical centering, height matching (if you have 3 columns in a row, and one has more text, all 3 columns will have the same bottom position), and the ability to evenly distribute objects across space.

check this out for more: [https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to- flexbox/](https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/)

caveat: flexbox support, while passably good, is still shaky in places.

<comment><USER14> the ability to dynamically fill the remaining space is also huge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks great. I think I will use it in my hobby projects instead of Bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER16> Flexbox is lovely, and this framework looks great...but, does it work with crappy browsers (e.g. every IE version prior to Edge)?

<comment><USER2> According to caniuse[1], IE support is janky, period.

1\. [http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox](http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox)

<comment><USER17> IE 10 and 11 are supported with browser prefixes, so you're only losing out on 8 and 9, which constitute ~2 of all internet traffic. Some non-trivial percentage of IE 8 and 9 users have them installed only for specific websites and internal corporate sites.

There just can't be that many people browsing the web with IE 8 and 9. Additionally, we need to draw the line somewhere, especially given how much easier flexbox makes front-end styling.

<comment><USER18> Caniuse.com shows the global usage share statistics (based on data from StatCounter GlobalStats for December 2015) next to each entry.

      IE 7: 0.05%

      IE 8: 1.18%

      IE 9: 0.91%

      IE 10: 0.87%

      IE 11: 6.45%

      Edge 12: 0.67%

      Edge 13: 0%

      Edge 14: 0%

For comparision:

      Chrome 47: 20.46%

      Chrome (Android) 47: 17.45%

The full list: [http://caniuse.com/usage-table](http://caniuse.com/usage- table)

IE 8, IE 9 and IE 10 are still more widely used than Win10 with its Edge browser.

Don't use flexbox for your start page, especially if you want to do business (SaaS). It will be completely broken in IE8/9 and look like shit. Corporate managers will close your website instantly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.komonews.com/news/tech/69979672.html <comment><USER2> Gattaca meets OKCupid. It was only a matter of time I guess.

This is pseudo science though, you can do all the genetic testing in the world it's not going to give you any insight on whether people are going to like each other or not.

And if you just want to go for the most genetic diversity, simply find a partner that is as much unlike you in every phenotypical aspect that you can think of.

<comment><USER3> A sea mushroom!?

<comment><USER2> Whatever floats your boat I guess...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Other sites have already sold tests like this. It's basically complete bullshit and still faces the dating site chicken vs. egg problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> The company claims... "longer-lasting love"

Isn't it funny how cheap love is now? Whether you believe it is a chemical reaction or real, love is worth nothing anymore.

Maybe people are learning to accept it.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be a funny experiment to send them dog DNA.

<comment><USER7> It's covered. I've already sent in my ex-girlfriend's DNA.

<comment><USER8> You realize every time you speak ill of someone in their absence, you're dead to all those present? Specially a former lover.

Where I grew up, badmouthing women would cost you social-face, then your jaw meets with a high-speed pavement.

<comment><USER7> It was a joke I couldn't resist. And it wasn't even about anyone in particular, so get off your high horse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is complete pseudoscience, reminiscent of RealAge. Where are regulators when you need them?

</comment><comment><USER10> If they were screening for diseases, now that might be interesting. Alas, no

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone tried matching people through scent? It's well known there are scent preferences that map directly to genetic diversity.</comment>


SpaceX to fly two space tourists around the moon in 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/27/technology/spacex-moon-tourism/index.html?adkey=bn <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13748302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13748302)</comment>


Director of National Intelligence Defends NSA Surveillance Programs - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/the_office_of_t.html

<comment><USER2> Full transcript here: [http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/speeches-and- interview...](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/speeches-and- interviews/195-speeches-interviews-2013/887-transcript-newseum-pecial-program- nsa-surveillance-leaks-facts-and-fiction)</comment>


Functional Programming in Joy and K - <AUTHOR> http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10000360

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in Joy, you might like Factor: <http://factorcode.org/></comment>


Bridj shuts down - <AUTHOR> http://www.bridj.com/ <comment><USER2> Here's the most important paragraph:

"We made the strategic choice to pursue a deal with a major car company who promised a close date for a sizable transaction in lieu of a traditional venture capital funding round. The close date timeline extended from weeks to months, as they sought to gain the appropriate internal approvals that we (and they) thought were already in place. Throughout, we remained convinced of the close strategic fit and both sides had every expectation that the transaction would close. Despite assurances, and all parties acting in the best of faith, that didn't happen."

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

It's bizarre that the board advisors would let that happen. I'm curious how they'd explain the failure. If you've ever done business with an enterprise, you should know that decisions can take years, not weeks or months. Though sometimes a few days if you get to the right person at the right time.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMO, it sounds like a cop-out. More likely the business was pretty shaky and no one would invest at even semi-reasonable terms, so they use the "deal fell through" excuse.

Are we supposed to believe they only pursued one source of funding, which was delayed months, and during that entire time never tried to find anything else? More likely... they couldn't.

<comment><USER3> I don't find it a cop-out at all.

A massive sales opportunity came up that could potentially allow them to bootstrap the service without further investment, or investment on better terms based on the increased revenue and growth from the sale. By the time they realized the sales opportunity wasn't going through the investors that were interested had gotten pushed back without reasonable growth to back up the push-back, and uncertainty of the major deal going through, which means the investors would have wanted more for their money then they wanted before. The situation would have then spiraled out more and more as time went on.

Such is why strategy and execution of these types of decisions is key for a startup to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think part of their problem is Uber's aggressive fair discounting and driver subsidies. Why would I take a Bridj when I can get a 20-minute-long UberPOOL ride through Boston for $3 - $4?

People at my company literally take an Uber to/from work daily because it's only moderately more expensive than the subway (MBTA fares are $2.25 - $2.75).

At this point Uber's grown to the size where they can just slash prices and outlast anyone who can't lose as much money as they can. I wouldn't be surprised if public transportation actually started losing a considerable amount of fares to Uber.

<comment><USER5> Your coworkers haven't figured out how to get a monthly pass? A lot of employers offer a program to buy them with pre-tax income, so effectively a large discount. Can you get Uber for $40/month?

<comment><USER6> Not sure if they are still doing this "POOL Pass" thing but possibly.

[https://newsroom.uber.com/us-massachusetts/july-pool-pass- ri...](https://newsroom.uber.com/us-massachusetts/july-pool-pass-ride-for-a- penny-all-month-long/)

<comment><USER7> Any idea why they have to charge $.01 per trip?

My wife uses the unlimited flat fare package in south bay, 2.99 per pool ride or 7 per uberX ride (with caveats that apply rarely).

<comment><USER2> I have a few guesses:

\- Their software isn't set up to do $0 rides. Even the "free" rides show the total charge and take off a discount.

\- They want to do analysis on the price elasticity of demand and don't want to have a divide by zero error.

\- Someone thought it'd induce better behavior. Humans start getting weird with "free" things.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for replying. I was wondering if they had to charge something to comply with a law or something (not that they would really let that get into the way of a feature).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A more detailed Boston Globe article on the shutdown [1]

Bridj was a service that was interesting as it hit a point somewhere between traditional bus services and on demand Uber/Lyft style transportation options.

1 - [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/04/30/bridj- local-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/04/30/bridj-local-demand- bus-service-shutting-down/56xoGs674wYgyUWdrD9EuO/story.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems like they did fail to really analyse the potential in the Boston market. I live in Southern New Hampshire and like nearly everyone that doesn't hold a minimum wage job here, I work in Boston and commute into the city every day (because the New Hampshire corporate tax system is terrible). The commute is an absolutely miserable experience.

I used to drive but finally gave it up when my employer changed the way they compensated commuting expenses. Now, I take Boston Express Bus which costs me $315/month. The buses are always over full. There's probably about $100K per month for the Bus Company just in work day commuters. They also do a large number of air port runs through out the day.

The problem with the buses is they go to a train/subway/bus station on the south side of the city. But, many (if not most) of the commuters work on the north side of the city. So, they have to buy an additional $65/month subway card and waste an additional 45-75 minutes a day travelling through the congested city to get to and from the buses. Using the subway system in Boston is even more miserable than driving because it is horribly managed and badly maintained. Most riders would love to avoid it.

Instead of doing local uber-like shuttles in a city already over served by subway and bus routes that compete with each other (in additional to taxis, uber, employer shuttles, etc), Bridj could have charged $350-$500 per month per person to do a run from southern NH with a Kendall Square drop off and pick up. People would have loved it. Similar routes could have been set up from the South and and West. I think they easily could have done $300,000 to $600,000 per month in revenue with that model.

It's a shame they didn't take a good look at the market. The roads in and out of Boston are hopelessly overloaded. They could have made a ton of money and improved people's quality of life significantly. I assume many other large cites (SF, LA, NYC) are the same. Employers locate in the large cities and don't pay their employees enough to live in the cities. That is a problem calling out for a business like Bridj to address.

<comment><USER10> "I used to drive but finally gave it up when my employer changed the way they compensated commuting expenses. Now, I take Boston Express Bus which costs me $315/month. The buses are always over full. There's probably about $100K per month for the Bus Company just in work day commuters."

Most buses hold about, what, 80 people - 80 x $315/month = $25k. How did you get to $100k?

It looks to me like a tough business from a capital perspective - if each bus costs your $300-500k (or you lease them), you'd have them utilized for only 4 hours per day.

<comment><USER9> The buses that they are currently using hold just over 50 people. I made a very conservative guess for how many people would leave the existing bus service. There are more than 10 bus trips each morning down Interstate 93 that could be considered "commuter" (400-500 people): [http://bostonexpressbus.com/images/stories/schedules/I93.pdf](http://bostonexpressbus.com/images/stories/schedules/I93.pdf)

There are similar bus schedules from the next city over to the west, Nashua, down Route 3 and another similar schedule from the next city over to the east, Portsmouth. There are additional bus companies that service different cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, they all go to the bus station on the south side of the city.

You would have to lease the buses. The drivers would be the most expensive part of the model, though. There is a shortage of people with commercial licences in this area. The drivers can make anywhere from $45K-$60K per year in salary (not counting benefits). Brijd had already purchased shuttles/buses and had drivers. The Brijd buses were much smaller - probably 25 to 30 seats. But, had they discovered the potential business model early enough they could have bought different vehicles. There is enough demand in the area to deploy double decker buses (80-100 seats). I, and probably many others, would pay a significant premium over the existing $315/month to load/unload on the north side of the city and avoid the additional hour of commute and MBTA subway pass costs.

It would be much more difficult that a cloud based software start-up due to the capital outlays. But, it could definitely be done and be profitable.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but that's just a bus company. To be a high-growth startup, you need something scalable. Like Megabus... Oh.

BTW, I'll bet if you can get in touch with someone from Megabus they'd set up that route. In other cities they drop off in all sorts of random places. It might be some licensing or regulation issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who lives in Boston, Bridj's office location raised a huge red flag for me. They have office space on the ground level of Newbury St.

For those not familiar, Newbury St. Is Boston's luxury shopping street. Our "5th Ave" if you will.

<comment><USER12> When I lived in Boston they were in Cambridge innovation center at Kendall

<comment><USER11> Yeah I remember them there, which made the move even more shocking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a bike commuter in the Boston Area, I saw the BRIDJ vans (they were actually bigger than vans but smaller than busses, but I have not a name), during my commute. I could never see inside to see if the vehicles were full.

I looked into using them, but they didn't serve my area.

Seemed like a good idea, there was even talk they would be used when they cut late night T (bus) service again in Boston.

For an City that has such weak transportation, and terrible winter weather, they'll be missed here.

<comment><USER14> What is (...was) the difference between Bridj and private bus services?

<comment><USER15> They had an app where you could easily schedule a ride for the next day. It took away the opaqueness that comes with using private transportation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slightly off topic, but... I have a request for anybody who is going to be putting up your next "we're shutting down page", please tell us what it was you did, or were aiming to do.

I find whenever I see one of these notices, I have no idea what the company was, what they were trying to do, how far they got. It's like a eulogy which only tells a bit about how the person died, but shares no information about what they accomplished or even aimed to accomplish in their lives.

<comment><USER2> It's funny that you draw the parallel to humans. I'm now imagining the obituary of my startup:

Xapateria filed for bankruptcy last week, after a long fight with customer churn. They tried an experimental fundraising approach that gave a few months of extra life, but ultimately succumbed. Xapatistas enjoyed off-sites in the Caribbean, craft espresso, and weekly frisbee tournaments. They are left behind by an excellent collection of Aeron chairs and Apple hardware.

<comment><USER16> I was thinking much more along the lines of "Xapateria's lifelong goal of ... we experienced ... we discovered... ultimately failed due to ...", but I like your humour angle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The BridgJ's leaving Coolidge Corner were often full durig peak times (and as such, charged about $6/ride). It was nice because ( could go to Seaport or Kendall Square without transferring trains and with a guaranteed a seat (with WIFI). It was a convenient, good service.

It easily takes an hour from Coolidge Corner to an office near South Station, despite it only being about 4.5 miles. Two trains + a walk.

Sometimes I'd take Lyft Line, but it often wasn't as cheap as pricing varied wildly....

</comment><comment><USER18> Did they tell all the people who are waiting for their buses?</comment>


Show HN: Health Scout – An app I wrote for a mother traveling with a sick child - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id957055587?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> While on vacation, I spoke to a mother who often had to be aware of emergency rooms around her because her child had health problems. I built this simple app for her. It's my first app and I'm looking for suggestions on how to make it better. Right now it only works in the USA but I'm hoping to expand to Canada very soon.

<comment><USER2> Not sure if it'll be much help, but you might be able to find and scrape data from here: [http://data.gov.uk/data/search](http://data.gov.uk/data/search) to do something similar for the UK, I can't seem to find it though.

<comment><USER3> Except general people should be using pharmacists; in-hours GPs or out of hours doctors and walk-in-centres; and minor injuries units. A&E should be reserved for emergency care. There's a very small percentage of people who need an A&E department and this app would be great for them, but please don't send people who are not in an emergency to A&E.

[http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/Pages/NHSservi...](http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/Pages/NHSservices.aspx)

[http://www.choosewellglos.nhs.uk/](http://www.choosewellglos.nhs.uk/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links. I'd like to help build a world where people have access to useful information as easily as possible. Of course, with ease of access to information people will need to become more responsible. I'm hopeful we can get there :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've got a medically sensitive daughter and this is a cool idea. Where does the data come from? Are you protected in situations where someone might drive to a now-closed ER?

<comment><AUTHOR> The data comes from [http://medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html](http://medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html)

It has a pretty good amount of useful data if you're interested in searching around :).

To answer your second question: I'm not. For the V1 of the app, I'm relying on the government data being valid. However, I'm currently building an in-app feedback form that will allow users to (a) report real-time wait times if they are in the hospital, and (b) report closed ERs / incorrect addresses etc.

<comment><USER5> rtrivedi - do you have an email I can reach you on? I work for the company that helps Medicare.gov (and a lot of other govt agencies) publish their data online in machine readable formats and I'd love to get feedback from you and understand how you're using the data and potentially make the data publishers aware of this use case as well. You can reach me at email@example.com if you prefer not to post your email publicly.

Great job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One minor nitpick, isn't the listed average delay more a measure of the rate of non-ER traffic in the ER?

I mean if you're in allergic shock or diabetic coma they'll treat you immediately, but if it takes an uninsured person 8 hours on average to be treated for a simple cold, then that doesn't really fit the theoretical use case for the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. The times that are reported are what the government has captured as time until you get to see a doctor. I haven't confirmed but I think you're right. If it's a life threatening situation the hospital will probably treat you right away (I sure hope they will, anyway). I'm also not sure who makes the call whether or not you should get treated right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks pretty slick, nice job. I echo other people's questions about the source of the data etc.

Also, how do the emergency services work in the US? If you dial 911 and ask for an ambulance, will you not be taken to the nearest ER anyway? (Asking as an ignorant Brit!)

<comment><USER8> When I have free time, I spend some time working on ALS ambulances to maintain my certification level.

How EMS works in the US generally follows this path:

You get sick.

You then dial 911.

A dispatcher talks with you, routes your call to an ambulance company, and provides us with some information on what's going on. If the environment is no danger to you, they _should_ generally tell you to stay put. Depending on the nature of the emergency, they'll have some first-responder/stopgap measures they'll want you (or bystanders) to do. If you have crushing chest pain for example, they'll explain how to place yourself into a recovery position (in case you vomit while unconscious), they'll ask for a nearby bystander (in case they have to instruct them how to perform CPR), and they'll do their best to keep you calm and aware of your situation. What they don't want you to do (even if you're 10 minutes away from a hospital) is try to move yourself there because:

If you become unconscious on the way to the hospital, it becomes so much harder to find you (rather than if you had stayed in a static location that you've described).

By moving, you might move from a safe environment to a more dangerous environment (sidewalk to middle of the street).

When the ambulance arrives, the medic will perform their own assessment of your condition. If you're alert, they'll ask you questions, ask you to chew some aspirin, place you on a heart monitor. If you've become unresponsive at this point, then slightly more drastic measures are taken.

When they load you into the ambulance, they'll make a determination (based upon their assessment) of where to take you. _The nearest ER may not have the proper resources to deal with or handle your condition_.

I'm unsure how emergency departments in hospitals outside of the US work, but here, not all EDs can provide the same level of care. If you're having an MI (heart attack), and you need cardiac care (a facility that can crack your chest open), it's _far_ faster for the medic to assess you then immediately take you to the correct place.

As a contrary example:

If you happen to make it into an ED on your own foot-power and manage to explain what's going on to the triage nurse, then they _still_ have to call in an ambulance to transport you to a hospital which can provide an adequate level of care. In some hospitals, they won't even begin to treat you (because of liability issues...it's horrible).

TL;DR. Some ERs cannot provide a certain level of care (Trauma Centers, Cardiac Centers, Psych, etc) and thus the _closest_ ER may not be the _correct_ ER to go to.

<comment><USER9> As a medical student and EMS provider, I agree with all of the above except "In some hospitals, they won't even begin to treat you". Unless you end up at the rare hospital that doesn't accept Medicare, the ED's are required (by EMTALA) to provide a screening examination and treat any patient with an emergency medical condition. For example, any ED should be able to provide you initial care if you're complaining of chest pain (EKG, Chest X-Ray, Nitroglycerin, Aspirin etc). That said, if you're actually having a cardiac event, you'll need to be at a cardiac center to actually get definitive treatment, so the smaller outlying hospital will call an ambulance to transport you to the appropriate facility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a parent, I can say this is a STELLAR idea. Thank you for taking the time to make it.

I'm downloading it right now.

This is very relevant to me, my wife and I are planning a 3 week Europe trip for next summer with our two small children.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really awesome, and WELL DESIGNED! Looks very easy to use, and such a great purpose.

Have you thought about the legal ramifications if someone depended on your app and the info was outdated causing a lot of ache?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the praise. I definitely have considered the legal ramifications. I'm going to do my best to keep the data up to date. However, I've attached a disclaimer in the app that explains the data may not always be accurate. It should be used for informational purposes only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would be helpful to see user reviews for each hospital... and if the hospital is good for out of country/state travelers.

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome idea. Good work with the clean looking UI. Looking forward to when it's available in Canada.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Hopefully in the next update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a really neat app and brilliantly executed! Good luck with it. Would love a UK version!

</comment><comment><USER15> Be gender neutral, some fathers might find title a bit offensive.

<comment><USER16> The title isn't offensive whatsoever, it's a brief origin story.

<comment><USER15> Fair enough, i had not noticed a singular form.</comment></comment></comment>


Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/11/16/climate-scientists-to-be-grilled-by-congressional-investigators-but-their-e-mails-are-still-off-limits/ <comment><USER2> Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests.

Edit: For those that are suggesting that you need the emails to verify that scientists aren't making up the data, the data itself includes information on its providence. All the information you need to trust the data come from independent verification of the data and from information in the data itself. You don't need emails to verify research, but if you did then there's a problem with how research is published.

<comment><USER3> In theory, yes. Among ideal rational agents, yes.

But in practice, science depends on the trust that scientists aren't actively subverting the process: failing to consider alternate hypothesis, fabricating data, ignoring data, deliberately filtering for confirmatory data, groupthink, etc.

So an import safeguard is the ability to detect when someone is doing the above, even if the detector doesn't know the literature well enough to refute it.

With that said, that doesn't mean there's enough evidence of misconduct to justify a subpoena in this case; I'm just saying, it's not simply a matter of "just look at the data rather than the people".

<comment><USER4> Then have a separate group of scientists reproduce the results and review the methodology used. Their publication should provide all the information necessary to reproduce and evaluate their findings. All the possible 'evidence' of misconduct will be there in the data.

Using a subpoena to threaten scientists for finding results you don't agree with is a form of censorship.

<comment><USER5> Unless the data collection itself is biased. The solution to that is to have another team collect its own data and compare its findings. But now you once again have scientists doing science, and if those scientists confirm the other findings, then they might also have used biased methods, so you once again have to either trust them, or not. So to build trust, yet more scientists have to collect and analyze yet more data. But what if _those_ scientists are also in on the bias? So maybe at this point, you hire your own scientists that you trust implicitly because you're the one paying them. Maybe their findings contradict all the earlier findings, and so you trust that. But now nobody _else_ trusts their findings, because you paid them for the study, so people think they are probably biased toward your perspective. This is literally what has been going on for years.

So now what? How do you collect and analyze data when trust in those doing the collection and analysis is not a given?

One approach is to implicitly trust scientists, because they are experts in their field, while you are a novice. This is what a lot of us do, and I think it's a perfectly fine solution, but it is a trade-off; you might misplace your trust.

Another approach is to train up on the science yourself, so that you can independently verify things. This is a great solution, but it isn't scalable. Most people have other jobs and other interests, and in any case, you can never be an expert in _everything_ that matters.

Another approach might be to try to build trust using out-of-band signals, like transparent communication. Transparency often sounds nice, but it also has a major chilling effect, because people communicate more efficiently in the sorts of candid conversations that are hard to have publicly.

Personally, I think the witch hunt for biased climate scientists is disgusting and beside the point, but I also find it distasteful to suggest that it isn't a really hard problem to disseminate trusted information about complex subjects in a highly specialized society.

<comment><USER6> Congress _had_ a solution to this problem, in the Office of Technology Assessment. Quoting from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment) :

> The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was an office of the United States > Congress from 1972 to 1995. OTA's purpose was to provide Congressional > members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the > complex scientific and technical issues of the late 20th century, i.e. > technology assessment. It was a leader in practicing and encouraging > delivery of public services in innovative and inexpensive ways, including > early involvement in the distribution of government documents through > electronic publishing. Its model was widely copied around the world.

It was de-funded "Contract with America" period of the 1990s.

<comment><USER5> Very interesting. I wasn't aware of that! I'm still skeptical of the ability for anything to be completely "objective and authoritative", but that still seems like a good thing to have, and it's unfortunate that it was eliminated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA's staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had "paused" or slowed over the past decade."

Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-faced douchebaggery.

<comment><USER8> It's indeed an exercise in douchebaggery, but the fact is, Smith has the right to subpoena the emails. They're public property.

If you saw The Martian, you might remember the arguments among NASA managers about how much information on Watney's predicament should be revealed to the public. It was pointed out that their only legal option was to lay it all out there. That's pretty much how government agencies actually work, and it's not a bad thing.

<comment><USER9> The actual power being used here, the Congressional subpoena power, doesn't have anything to do with whether something is public property or not, so that isn't the basis they're claiming. It's a general quasi-judicial investigatory power, which can be used to compel any person to both appear physically, and turn over any documents in their possession that Congress, in their sole discretion, believes might be important to decisions made by Congress. That obviously has significant scope for abuse, which is why Congressional subpoenas tend to be controversial, especially if they're fishing expeditions.

<comment><USER8> Regardless of the legal details, they don't get to keep their .gov emails private if someone with the proper authority requests them. That's part of the deal when you sign on with Uncle Sam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good. The only purpose to reviewing _internal communications_ was to find a red herring to use as a lever to undermine the scientific method. Providing details about the research and the methods presented is reasonable for a peer review, but this is someone with a political axe to grind.

</comment><comment><USER11> I will avoid the cliche about how sites like HN have one opinion.

But I do find myself wondering how many people here frothing at the mouth have, in other contexts, sung the praise of heavy government funding of science research. Or how many sing praises of government oversight.

This is it. This is government funding in science research, and government oversight. The oversight committee has the right to perform oversight. In any healthy country, eventually, politicians you don't like will be in charge of the oversight levers, as naturally as day follows night. (Unless you live under eternal single-party control, in which case you've got bigger problems than science oversight committees.)

There's no world where the government funds science research but just ships out the dollars with no regard for what happens afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lamar Smith is going after others too.

"Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the chairman of the science panel of the House of Representatives, announced plans to investigate a nonprofit research group led by climate scientist Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. _He is the lead signer of a letter to White House officials that urges the use of an antiracketeering law to crack down on energy firms that have funded efforts to raise doubts about climate science._ "

[http://news.sciencemag.org/policy/2015/10/turnabout-house- re...](http://news.sciencemag.org/policy/2015/10/turnabout-house-republicans- say-they-ll-investigate-climate-scientist-requesting)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the scientists should release all of their personal emails if these politicians are willing to submit themselves to the same level of transparency.

<comment><USER14> Wikileaks them both. Problem solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These Republicans are shameful. The sad part is that they will all be dead when their grandkids are cursing their names for assisting in the destruction of the environment.

<comment><USER16> _These Republicans are shameful_

You know, the left has their own variety of anti-science denialism.

<comment><USER15> Is your point that when criticizing politicians one is required to criticize other political groups at the same time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That subpoena is fairly damning evidence that these politicians don't understand how science works. Instead of scrutinizing the published data they have to dig into communications - where all sorts of theories might be floated and dismissed - so they can find something to take out of context.

</comment><comment><USER18> An important detail of the story that the headline doesn't highlight is that these scientists are employees of the government, and the communications being subpoenaed are work emails. It's hard to see from where NOAA gets the authority to turn Congress down on this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Politics and science really have no place together. Politics is about pushing the most favorable agenda, and science is about the pursuit of truth. Politicians and liars have always had close association. Politics and science are thus inherently at odds.

That said, I have seen, on more than one occasion, scientists become untruthful for the sake of grants and political agendas (and this is not necessarily referring to global warming). The FDA is one example where money often trumps science. [http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/common- decongestant-m...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/common-decongestant- may-be-worthless-study-finds/)

<comment><USER20> Grants, careers and reputations aside there are fields like Mathematics where there can be _no political agenda_ because the findings are not input to political decisions. Climate change is definitely not such a field and people are wary of agendas in either direction. Given the huge interests involved it is impossible for even the most well-intentioned layman to arrive at a safe conclusion without spending an unreasonable amount of energy (pun intended).

<comment><USER19> [http://i.imgur.com/axlcWY1.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/axlcWY1.jpg)

The above graph is the source data for the famous "Hockey Stick" graph. The one below it is similar data taken from another location (IIRC one was taken in Arizona, the other California). Why they chose to use one and not both is beyond me. So, there are some types of science that are more based on perception. (Note, I'm not saying that this instance invalidates anthropogenic global warming, just that sometimes people present the data that favors their hypothesis).

The distribution of primes, on the other hand, relies on one set of data. We don't know everything about primes, and have some theories that may be invalid, but the data is isolated and irrefutable. This is how math is different IMO - it has a tendency to revolve around the nature of numbers rather than ever-changing real world measurements.

There is a lot of money in climate science and green tech. A friend of my parents got a multibillion dollar grant from the government to develop a clean energy solution, for example.

My usual disclaimer - I dont care one way or the other to what degree humans are warming the earth - I say act environmentally friendly either way.

<comment><USER21> > The above graph is the source data for the famous "Hockey Stick" graph. The > one below it is similar data taken from another location (IIRC one was taken > in Arizona, the other California). Why they chose to use one and not both is > beyond me.

The hockey stick graph is based on a aggregation of global or hemispherical temperature records. It is most certainly _not_ based on a single temperature record from Arizona.

<comment><USER19> [http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the- hockey-...](http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-stick)

It turns out the data was blended, but it was weighted in an odd way to favor the spikey outcome at the end. This is just one source, so take it with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "We are just trying to fully understand the full context of the decision- > making process," a Republican committee aide said of the demand for > correspondence.

I look forward to the day when all email between members of Congress are public by default, to fully understand the representation process that they conduct on our behalf.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's perfectly okay to say all communication on a particular project of public interest should be open. Fine, set up a public mailing list and tell people to use that instead of private email.

It's a lot less okay to lead people to believe their communications are private and then demand to read their email after the fact. What if Alice, in what she believed to be a private email to Bob, truthfully criticised Carol for being a vindictive jerk, and in the meantime Carol has climbed the political ladder and now has the power to sabotage Alice's career?

If Congress or whoever wanted that sort of oversight, they should have said so upfront, not to try to apply it retroactively.

</comment><comment><USER24> On one hand, the aims of the politicos here are bald-facedly wrong.

On the other hand, good luck with that whole "refusing a subpoena" thing - courts don't generally look upon that with favor, and besides, NOAA is a public institution, so the emails are public record, regardless of the aims of the people seeking them.

Being in a contentious field is not free license to ignore the law, and it tends to make people think you're hiding something when you do this.

<comment><USER25> > On the other hand, good luck with that whole "refusing a subpoena" thing - > courts don't generally look upon that with favor

Courts generally (there are rare circumstances in which there are exceptions) aren't more than minimally involved in dealing with Congressional subpoenas to the executive branch, so how favorably they look on something generally is probably irrelevant here. Of course, Congress _on its own_ can impose consequences if it so chooses, so there's that.

<comment><USER26> Yes. Congress has, in the past, sent U.S. Marshals out to physically arrest witnesses who refused to respond to a subpoena. That action was upheld by the Supreme Court, too.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I finish this project? - <AUTHOR>

I'm getting close to finishing productiv.io but the project feels like it's lost steam.
There's a few things (automated emails, etc) that need finishing, should I spend more time on it or is my entire philosophy skewed?
EDIT: The signup link in the header works, if you want to try it our for yourself <comment><USER2> Your brain is reminding you "you've spent an awful lot of time on an idea that's yet to be validated" and it's getting nervous. You're interpreting that to mean - stop work, throw in the towel. What it actually means is that it's time to get feedback. Less coding, more conversations.

Motivation from the idea alone can only sustain you for so long.

Spend the next week or so working on it from the outside in. Iterate on the landing page, pricing page etc.

I was looking for an "About" or "Demo" page to maybe see a video or more indepth close up screenshots.

Once it's visually ready for visitors - with a clear message of EXACTLY what it does, start showing it to people. anyone, everyone, get your beta testers started.

Both good and bad feedback should light some excitement inside of you, to continue and fix any obstacles.

Use the feedback to decide whether to continue on with it. If you decide there are still issues that can't be overcome, at least you have a fully rounded, working project. If the feedback shows you're onto a winning idea, then comes the excitement of the full launch!

</comment><comment><USER3> If it's almost done, finish it. Otherwise anticipate moving onto a new project and 6 months from now writing the same Ask HN post again as the excitement of the new project wears off and you find yourself dreading having to grind out that last 20%.

Don't use "lost steam" as an excuse for the fear of uncertainty as to what comes next after you launch. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to tell when the only visible thing is the landing page and that gives almost no information on the product (one too-small-to-see screenshot).

I'm in the market for a new project management software at the moment so I'm interested, but I couldn't find anything on the page to let me know if it might be the thing I'm looking for.

EDIT: Speaking generally I always find that projects feel like they've run out of steam just at the last bit. Since you've already built the rest of it I say push forward and get it out there. Then even if it doesn't take off at least you can say you did it!

<comment><USER5> Truly agree to it. Quitters don't win and winners don't quit!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sorry guys, that was a little rushed. Yes, the idea is to give a really simple, great looking interface to manage your projects at a single glance.

The basis of this is that it's broken down into 3 functions: tasks, real time messaging and file management.

The sign-up button in the header actually works so you can see for yourself, and any / all feedback is much appreciated.

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfinished product has no value so finish it for 2 reasons

1\. Probably you will get good number of users which might boost your motivation again.

2\. If #1 does not happen then you can always sell this product to someone else(flippa.com) which will at least pay for the time you have spent on it rather than totally throwing it away.

</comment><comment><USER7> Between your post and the site, the ONLY thing I know about it is that it's related to project management. I could maybe give more useful feedback if you gave more detail.

In general, if something is almost done - finish it. If nothing else, it gives you something to show off.

</comment><comment><USER8> Finish it, even if you're a potential competitor of my product <https://pragmatic.ly>, :)

I enjoy building Pragmatic.ly and learning a lot from the process meanwhile. I believe you will too as long as you keep iterating.

<comment><USER9> I like your landing page. Especially the color scheme.</comment></comment>


Los Angeles is the world's most traffic-clogged city, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-traffic-los-angeles-20170220-story.html <comment><USER2> I am a Southern California resident, and I would like to nominate Jakarta, please, as vastly worse than Los Angeles.</comment>


Math Professor Invents Non-Reversing Mirror - <AUTHOR> http://www.techfragments.com/1774/inventions-non-reverse-mirror/ <comment><USER2> > _When you look in a normal mirror, the image you see of yourself is in > reverse._

Funny thing: Mirrors don't reverse left and right. They reverse front and back.

So this "non-reversing" mirror is actually mapping y to -y, x to -x (Where the mirror is in front of you in the z-direction.

Curious.

Edit: I believe tomerv below is correct: x is mapping to -x but y is kept the same.

<comment><USER3> I still don't intuitively understand how reversing front to back results in what we perceive as a left/right inversion.

<comment><USER4> The real headscratcher comes when you realise that all reversions are equivalent disregarding rotation. That is, reversing left/right is the same as reversing up/down and rotating around z.

You can actually get a up/down mirroring effect (intuitively speaking) by standing on a mirror and holding a piece of paper perpendicular to it. It will look up/down reversed, not left/right.

<comment><USER5> It's still left right reversed though, just try it with something printed on the paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And he's holding MTW's _Gravitation_ tome in the photo!

BTW: Why do so few people pose with their favorite books (or holding any book) in profile photos, this was common when people had their portrats painted in the past. Has it become a turn-off?

<comment><USER7> Because most people don't read at all, or read BS (self-help books, how to succeed, cheap thrillers, 50 shades of gray...)

<comment><USER8> Have you read fifty shades? I find that people like to bag on stuff they've never actually experienced first hand.

<comment><USER9> Embarrassingly, I listened to a youtube video where a woman read the book aloud (I listened for about 30 pages). She ended up hitting herself in the head about a dozen times because the writing is that awful.

<comment><USER10> Fifty Shades is pornography for women. IMHO that's the only reason everyone is clutching their pearls about the bad writing. Your typical male pornography storylines/cinematography are much, much worse - and yet they are typically spared the high-brow literary scrutiny.

<comment><USER11> Yep, must be the patriarchy oppressin' again.

The reason that 50 Shades of Grey is subjected to highbrow literary scrutiny, is that it pretends to be highbrow literature. Male pornography usually makes no pretense, being more along the lines of _logjammin'_ "ich bin here to fix your kable"

<comment><USER12> Not really. The reason 50 Shades gets its scrutiny is because it has enough exposure. There's some damn good male pornography (yes, it's literary; yes, I read it) out there, but it's not for sale at Barnes & Noble.

 _That's_ the patriarchy angle, if you actually want it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After knowing the Feynman puzzle, I think this is probably more correctly described as a _reversing_ mirror.

If you look into a metal spoon, you'll see both X and Y reversed. So I'm wondering if you could make this mirror simply by only curving the horizontal part. That's kind of what it looks like in the photo. And if so, why didn't someone think of this early? It's quite obvious.

<comment><USER13> People thought of this before--just place two mirrors at a 90 degree angle. The guy's innovation is to make it very smooth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm having a hard time visualizing this.

If I am standing directly in front of this mirror and slowly reach forward with my right hand until I touch the mirror, will my hand be touching its mirrored self?

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing that the only way you could touch the mirror image of your finger is by doing so in the middle of the mirror. If you move the finger out toward the shoulder, I'm betting your arm would stretch off the mirror away from your body. I could be totally wrong though.

<comment><USER16> Look at the cover of the book that the trick mirror is resting on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those interested in learning more about this, including the math behind the mirror's curve, check out Prof. Hicks's website: <http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/>

<comment><USER18> Relevant part (<http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/papers/physics-today.pdf>):

 _"As a second example, take the object plane and the image plane to once again both be at x = 1 and define T(1, u, v) ≡ (1, −αu, αv). As with the flat mirror of the previous example, the transformation scales the image plane, but be- cause of the relative minus sign in the y and z coordinates, the solution surface will not reverse an object as a conven- tional mirror does._

 _The relative minus sign also means, alas, that no exact solution surface exists. I obtained an approximate solution surface confined to the rectangular volume x = 34 ± 1 cm, y = z = 0 ± 3 cm, and constructed a prototype mirror. With α = 160, the mirror's field of view is wide enough that I could see myself in the mirror when it was held at arm's length, as shown in figure 1. To achieve the appropriate ray paths, the mirror is saddle-shaped."_

So, this mirror only does its magic in a small volume; if you move your eye closer to the mirror or sideways, or even when you look at it with two eyes, the effect breaks.

From cursory reading, I even get the impression that this mirror is also tailored to the positions and shapes of the objects being photographed.

But as I said: cursory reading. Corrections welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Feynmann's great mirror story [1]. Try and solve the puzzle before watching the whole clip.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msN87y-iEx0>

</comment><comment><USER20> How can he "invent" this? Hasn't it been known for years? It's the same principle as two mirrors at right angles, only instead of a corner, there is a gentle bend. I'm pretty sure I read about this in George Gamow's "One, Two, Three... Infinity".

</comment><comment><USER21> This would be great for giving myself a haircut, but not so much for shaving. Probably because it is more left to right than back to front. I also shave more often and have built up my muscle memory more.

</comment><comment><USER22> >The precise manipulations change the directions light rays are reflected off of the surface in a manner similar to changing the angles of millions of tiny facets on a flattened disco ball, but decreasing the size of each facet until a smooth surface is achieved.

Oh, so it's like a Fresnel lens, but it's a mirror instead of a lens. That's pretty clever. You get the non-reversing property of a curved mirror, but it's still flat.

Edit: Another way of thinking of it is that it's a normal map applied to a real-world object.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is probably a small array of double mirror. If you look at the images you see slight loss of light (a bit darker) on his none-reversing mirror. Which is probably due to the gaps between the arrays behaving a bit like a scrim in shooting sets.

I think the invention will have some uses. For anyone who has tried to do anything that requires precision in front a mirror the reversing of the mirror is disorienting. I could even imagine mechanics who use a mirror to see what they are doing in tight spots be able to use it to coordinate their motion to put the ranch on the right nut when they are using a mirror.

<comment><USER17> No, it is not two mirrors. What Prof. Hicks made is a single mirror. The linked article explicitly says this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Completely disagree with the OP's idea of putting this in a rear-view mirror. One benefit of a rear-view mirror is that things that are on the right side of the mirror are to the right of you, and vice versa. This mirror would break that, unless I'm misunderstanding it.

I'm interested in what applications this may have, if any really. I can see it working as a vanity mirror quite well, as then you can truly see yourself as other do. Aside from that?

<comment><USER25> The rear-view mirror mentioned by the article in passing is not a reversing mirror -- it's just supposed to be another example of this guy's expertise at fabricating mirrors, in this case to improve the field of view and to remove blind spots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> You can simulate one of these yourself by getting a wide flexible plastic mirror (dimensions along the lines of 1:4) and bending it to be concave until you look undistorted. Looking into this bent mirror, if you raise your right hand, the hand on your left side in the reflection will move.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps even easier is to secure two flat rigid mirrors at a right angle, like: /\

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> He's looking for uses beyond art galleries. I'm reminded of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sachs.

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

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this not just a reflective lens? I.e. a quadratic surface? If it is, I just assumed people didn't use them because non-reversing mirrors are actually rubbish. There's a reason cameras reverse the image in software but transmit/store the non-reversed image.

</comment><comment><USER30> was hoping for more technical details. maybe they're still going through the patent application?

<comment><USER31> according to the wikipedia article it's a surface of micro-mirrors that work in pairs. so it's basically a pair of mirrors scaled down and repeated.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reversing_mirror>

not very exciting really.

<comment><USER17> No, that is not what Prof. Hicks made. His mirror is a single curved piece.

Source: I am a former undergrad research assistant of his.

<comment><USER31> huh. thanks. so that's the second type listed at wikipedia? or am i confused? perhaps you or he could fix / clarify the wikipedia article? i guess i could but it feels odd to do it third-hand...

<comment><USER17> I wish I could give you a link to one of Prof. Hicks's published papers on the topic, but I'm having trouble finding one that isn't behind a paywall. This seems like a nice introduction: <http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/papers/physics-today.pdf>

If you have access to journals through a university, you could take a look at some of his papers yourself (His website is <http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/>). They're easy enough for a sophomore to recreate the results. (I know, because I did for an independent study with Prof. Hicks.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't wait until these are on the market. I could save so much money on haircuts. (Assuming the motor-confusion doesn't happen when using this mirror, because the image is not reversed)

</comment><comment><USER33> A video of this mirror in action would've been very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not exactly new: <http://www.truemirror.com>

<comment><USER17> No, that link is for 2 mirrors.

What Prof. Hicks made is a single curved mirror. That is new. That is why his results got published and he was awarded a patent for it.

If you had bothered to read the linked article, you'd already understand the distinction.

<comment><USER35> The curved mirror exhibits distortion at the edges, which doesn't seem to be a problem with the two-mirror approach.

Also the curved mirror doesn't present the image at full size, it appears smaller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Breaking news.... HN abuzz with 2.5 year old story...

Hick's work was published via New Scientist (<http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing-mirrors>) in February of 2009.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd love to see a movie demonstrating what this looks like!

<comment><USER38> Here's a pic [http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing- mirrors/...](http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing-mirrors/1)

<comment><USER39> That links also mentions that his amazing 45 deg. FOV side-view mirror is banned in the US, because curved mirrors are illegal in the US. What the hell? Doesn't congress have anything better to do than shoot us all in the foot, repeatedly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> a different implementation of the non-reversing mirror: <http://www.truemirror.com/>

bonus points: you can buy this one!

</comment><comment><USER41> I want one.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is pretty great!

<comment><USER43> Want.</comment></comment>