Ask HN: What's the oldest server on the Internet? - <AUTHOR>

One of our webservers is pretty ancient.  I configured it in 1993 running CERN/3.0, and it's still running in production use 22 years later.  Admittedly, it's not on the original Sun IPC hardware anymore; sometime in the late 1990s it was moved to a Sparcstation 4, and there it remains.  It stopped being our primary webserver about ten years back, but still handles all the staff webpages in production use:
bash-3.2$ telnet www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk 80
...
GET /staff/M.Handley/ HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.0 200 Document follows
MIME-Version: 1.0
Server: CERN/3.0
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2015 21:19:43 GMT
...
So, 22 year old webserver software running on 19 year old hardware.  Not bad.  But something tells me there must be even older servers out there somewhere?  Perhaps some ancient ftp server or DNS server?  So, what is the oldest continuously used server on the Internet (still running the original software or hardware - even if patched)? <comment><USER2> You might want to look through e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_before...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_before_1995) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_registered_Internet_domain_names)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm on an iOS device so I can't inspect the headers, but how about [http://ftp.arl.army.mil](http://ftp.arl.army.mil) ?

<comment><USER4> Unnamed Apache version, but serving HTTP 1.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of .edu or non-US FTP servers are still running from the '80s. Hard to find and verify though.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.TheWorld.com](http://www.TheWorld.com) Running since 1989, though I doubt it was continuous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, that's running Apache 1.2.6, which was released in March 1998.

<comment><USER7> How are you qualifying the search?

I update my machine all the time with new versions...

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't really impose any hard definition, but I was wondering what the oldest server is that's still running on either the original hardware or original software. I don't mind if the software has a minor patch or two to fix bugs or security issues, or hardware has had parts replaced, but no major upgrade to newer hardware or newer versions of software. There are plenty of DNS servers that were set up in the 1980s and still run on the original domain name, but don't run the original software or hardware. So those wouldn't really count. I guess I'm wondering what software or hardware was sufficiently reliable that it didn't need upgrading over all those years (at least for a limited workload).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Commify - play around hack while  nReduce. - <AUTHOR> http://getcommify.com

<comment><USER2> Is this part of the nReduce program? Is it beneficial so far? Or more of a distraction?

<comment><AUTHOR> very beneficial; the amount of developer and support from the community if phenominal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is it supposed to do? I can't even..

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, just updated the site.. Its suppose to deliver comment summaries from Techcrunch for now twice a day to your inbox. Just a 24hr fun hack

<comment><USER4> I would remove the comma after "Enter your email", as it inserts an unnatural pause.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No way to unsubscribe? Why?</comment>


6.5 mag Earthquake in Idaho - <AUTHOR> 6.5 preliminary. Thankfully, it was centered in a mountain range far enough from populated areas to not cause much damage. <comment><AUTHOR> I was looking at P-wave earthquake alarms after a viral video showed a group of cats simultaneously recognizing the sound/vibration of a P-wave. They're only about $50 USD. Anyone ever tried them and do they work?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us70008jr5...](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us70008jr5/executive)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm in Boise. It was a long and strong one. Ah… it reminded me of home.

I hope it didn't do too much damage to the old brick buildings downtown.

</comment><comment><USER3> I felt it here in the Bitterroot of MT. Shook the cabin pretty good with a weird rolling motion.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's about 130 miles as the crow flies.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk promises rain-sensing wipers, Tesla pickup truck - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/12/elon-musk-promises-rain-sensing-wipers-tesla-pickup-truck/ <comment><USER2> Can anyone explain why rain-sensing wipers on a car is news?

<comment><USER3> AFAIK, it's the first time detection is done only by using the main camera of the car (instead of relying on dedicated infrared rain sensor).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> test

<comment><AUTHOR> ?</comment></comment>


Slickest hosting configuration UI around - <AUTHOR> http://pagodabox.com/cloud-hosting-price

<comment><USER2> I consider this to be a UX failure: visit page, adjust one slider, select something from a pop-up, re-adjust the same slider, and when I hit the Back button nothing happens. Click Back again, nothing happens. Long-click the Back button and see 20 or 25 entries for the site even though I never left the front page or obviously loaded new content.

If they dump the JS that obliterates my browser history that way, _then_ I would agree that it is indeed slick.</comment>


The story of one man's 13 year journey to build a computer game - <AUTHOR>

This is an incredible story of perseverance and dedication. Adam Butcher spent 13 years of his life building a computer game, he has just finished it.<p>Here is his story - http://www.getinspired365.com/20140623 or direct YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b0tSu0QDQ0 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.getinspired365.com/20140623](http://www.getinspired365.com/20140623) or direct YouTube link [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b0tSu0QDQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b0tSu0QDQ0)

</comment><comment><USER2> Previous discusión (from another source): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916597) (330 points, 3 days ago, 98 comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks. Hadn't seen that.</comment></comment>


SSL encryption coming to The Pirate Bay - <AUTHOR> http://www.slyck.com/story1691_SSL_Encrpytion_Coming_to_The_Pirate_Bay

<comment><USER2> what is the point of this?

The isp's will still be able to tell that it is bittorrent by the traffic patterns and the lawyers will still be able to sue you because your ip address is still exposed.

I guess if you don't like other people knowing that you are really downloading you got served 2 it can be helpful, but other than that idk

<comment><USER3> Perhaps to somewhat protect the people who upload torrents to the site? I'm sure a lot of incriminating evidence could be gathered by observing all the uploading/commenting/posting that someone does on tpb.

Of course, everyone knows that the whole SSL setup is quite vulnerable to MIM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully this will get the guys who work on Transmission to add HTTPoSSL support :)

</comment><comment><USER5> _encryption_ please :)

EDIT Thanks for changing it :)</comment>


Norway to switch off FM radio in risky, unpopular shift to digital - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-radio-idUSKBN14P1TH <comment><USER2> What's driving them to kill analog FM so abruptly? For one example, the USA had an overlap of over 2 years between when (digital) ATSC receivers were mandated for all TV equipment and when the analog signals were actually cut off. Have they already reassigned/sold that spectrum?

Lots of mobile devices and small electronics have FM receivers with the advent of cheap FM chips, including some of my phones and even my US$10 Bluetooth headphones. Are there cheap parallels for digital FM receivers?</comment>


Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms - <AUTHOR> http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february042011/global-superstorms-ta.php

<comment><USER2> I was under the impression climate and storms were dominated by thermal processes in the troposphere, not ionization or charged particle flux. Any climate guys or meteorologists care to call this out as BS or not?</comment>


Vasa (Ship) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship) <comment><USER2> If anyone's ever in Stockholm, I strongly recommend visiting the Vasamuseet[0]. It's amazing how much of the ship is actually intact, and I love how you can interact with it.

[0]: [https://www.vasamuseet.se/](https://www.vasamuseet.se/)</comment>


Linux lockfile explained, how to use them the easy or hard way - <AUTHOR> http://dev-random.net/linux-lockfile-explained-how-to-use-them-the-easy-or-hard-way/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4ps0al/linux_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4ps0al/linux_lockfile_explained_how_to_use_them_the_easy/)</comment>


The Retina MacBook Pro 13" - <AUTHOR> http://patrickbgibson.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> The downgrade from 1440x900 UI/chrome resolution to 1280x800 is what kills it for me. This is the first review that I see addressing this issue; I was beginning to think I was the only one noticing this glaring issue.

(The 15" MBP retina display suffers from the same issue.)

<comment><USER3> If you need more screen real estate, you can change to a different scaled resolution in the System Preferences. If you need it, you can go with an effective 1440x900 or even 1680x1050 resolution. It's not an integer mapping between virtual pixels to real pixels like it is with 1280x800, but it looks almost as good - and better than a native 1440x900 or 1680x1050 display.

<comment><USER2> Font rendering looks quite crappy in anything but exact 2x resolution doubling mode. I haven't looked into it, but suspect that subpixel rendering is disabled.

<comment><USER4> This isn't true, speaking as a happy retina MBP (15") owner. It's almost remarkable just how perfect _everything_ , including fonts, look at the scaled resolutions. It certainly surprised me; the sheer tininess of the pixels really messes with your intuition with this. When you can no longer distinguish between pixels, things like scaling work far better than you have any right to expect.

The only time I have ever seen any issue with scaling was whilst moving a 1 pixel horizontal line across the screen on the "highest resolution" setting, and that's only because I was looking for it.

<comment><USER2> I have played around with a 15" rMBP in a store and colleague's 13" rMBP at work. Both exhibited the same symptoms in scaling modes other than 2x: font outlines were a lot more blurry than in the 2x mode.

<comment><USER5> Were you looking at native cocoa text controls or at e.g. Chrome?

<comment><USER2> Text rendered by Safari in a web page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just made the same upgrade from a 2011 i7 MacBook Air to the 13" Retina MacBook Pro and I disagree with nearly every part of this review. Battery life seems on par with my Air. Performance is improved on the MacBook Pro. A good example is something like installing imagemagick from Homebrew. On the Air that resulted in max-fans, the MBP handled it without breaking a sweat. I haven't noticed any UI sluggishness. I loved my Air (like many have said, it's my favorite computer I've ever owned) but this machine is every bit as nice, feels more capable (CPU-wise) and has a gorgeous display. The only drawback is the extra weight and thickness.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did you try scrolling using Safari instead of Chrome/Firefox? With the Retina display, scrolling is significantly smoother on Safari (aka it's not smooth on a 15" Retina on Chrome either).

<comment><USER8> That is a good thing, because it means that Chrome should be able to fix this fairly easily.

<comment><USER9> This is especially apparent on pages with fixed background images. See <https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=155313>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Typing from a 13 rMBP purchased today. Hopefully its an upgrade from my 2010 mba 13" but from the sounds of this review I'll probably be returning mine too in a few weeks, as I have a similar workload as the author. Thanks for writing the review.

<comment><USER3> I think the author's primary complaint was that it wasn't worth the premium; if you've already bought it, haven't you already made that decision?

Yes, it's not completely smooth scrolling The Verge (something that, as a Verge reader, I didn't even notice until it was pointed out), but personally I'd rather have that amazing screen for looking at text and photos and watching videos instead of having 60fps scrolling on a 1440x900 screen.

<comment><USER8> Scrolling issues seem more like a software issue, sure there are a lot of pixels to move around but the retina stuff is pretty new. I doubt that the software is at the limit of what the hardware can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. My new MBPr13 is fast, gorgeous, and light. Sure it's expensive, but you get what you pay for.

<comment><USER12> It's not about the money. It's about performance. Speaking for myself, scroll- jitter is completely unacceptable at any price.

<comment><USER11> I couldn't agree more. However, that isn't the case with the new 13.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The reason why I bought it is because it's Apple's cheapest laptop with two monitor outputs. I can hook up three additional screens to do programming/Photoshop/whatever.

You can't do two/three (native) screens on an Air or even the non-Retina MBP. (You can with USB, but it's laggy and there's no USB 3 things for Mac.)

<comment><USER14> Underpowered with one screen, I'd love to see it with 3...

<comment><USER3> Whether it's "underpowered" depends on what you're doing, I'd say. Writing text, looking at photos, watching videos, browsing 99% websites, etc it performs just fine, and I'd venture to say that that's probably what most people will be doing with the machine. I had mine hooked up to 2 30" monitors the other day and it worked great.

<comment><USER15> >It turns out this machine can't smoothly scroll media-rich websites like The Verge without noticeable choppiness.

I'm not so sure. If it can't even scroll websites, how can it handle 2 30" monitors just fine?

<comment><USER16> What if the problem with The Verge is due to The Verge, and nothing else? Is The Verge doing retina upgrades for their graphics properly? Is their JavaScript doing stupid stuff like loading the double-resolution graphics every time the cursor moves instead of just the first time the page loads?

Why is The Verge choppy on a Retina display Mac?

As for handling 2 30" monitors, the graphics chip is more than capable of handling text, terminals and swathes of PDF documentation on that much real estate: it's non-taxing.

The moment you start doing crazy JavaScript (such as some sites which count how many characters you have left in a text area about a dozen times a second), things go downhill: this is a CPU load problem not a graphics display problem.

So again, I have to wonder what's causing the choppy scrolling on The Verge?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure why he says the effective resolution is 1280x800. The resolution is 2560x1600. I just sold my 13" Air and bought a 13" rMBP; very happy with it so far.

<comment><USER18> It's because the rMBP uses 2 pixels to display 1px which is why fonts and graphics appear sharper.

<comment><USER19> Actually it should be 4 pixels to display 1 "point".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> permalink: [http://patrickbgibson.tumblr.com/post/35140489041/the- retina...](http://patrickbgibson.tumblr.com/post/35140489041/the-retina- macbook-pro-13)

</comment><comment><USER21> Well I plan to replace my Macbook with a 1920x1080 Asus Zenbook Prime... and this only confirms my choice.

<comment><USER22> I'd recommend the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The screen is 14" but in the same size as a 13" ultrabook, it has the TrackPoint (although the trackpad is very good too), and it has great Linux compatibility. And then there's the ThinkPad build quality.

<comment><USER23> But the X1 Carbon only has a 1600x900 resolution. While better than 1280x800, this is still too little for having 2 windows side-by-side in most cases. I know this because I have a Thinkpad T430 myself.

The Thinkpad build quality also isn't what it used to be.

<comment><USER24> The Thinkpad build quality far eclipses the Asus'--to the point where handling them side by side (as we got to do since I have both of them) is a pretty eye- opening experience. The Thinkpad _feels_ sturdy and the Asus feels flimsy. Also, whatever Asus is using for mouse drivers drove me insane. You'll see all kinds of online complaints about mouse lag and stutters. The Thinkpad does not have this issue, and also has 2-finger scrolling. You will not miss the difference in resolution compared to the huge upgrade in hardware quality.

<comment><USER25> I reverted to using Panasonic Toughbooks exclusively after buying, and subsequently returning a Lenovo W520 at $200 out of pocket, and I'm prepared to defend the following Toughbook rave in a verbal deathmatch if need be. Every other laptop I've encountered feels like cheap plastic. Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus, Dell, HP - literally every other laptop on the market today is poor in comparison. The hinges are weak, the design isn't sturdy, the little things aren't done right, and mostly they feel like uninspired works of crap designed to make a buck off of consumers.

The fact that Lenovo advertises some of their products as rugged is simply laughable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Something is clearly wrong here. Have you updated everything to the latest version (OS X 10.8.2, latest firmware, etc)? If so and you're having the problems you described it sounds like a defective unit.

I have a 15" rMBP. It had a lot of graphical issues before upgrading to Mountain Lion. After the upgrade I only had 1 issue with bootcamp and resetting SMC solved that. I run at 1920x1200 and all natively rendered stuff (eg fonts) is crisp. Integrated video (same Intel 4000) works fine for all web browsing. I do notice low frame rates with some OS transitions but nothing on the web. I get 6+ hours of battery life _easily_.

</comment><comment><USER27> I had similar problems with my rMBP15 but I Haven't noticed them in a while. Fixed in software updates?

</comment><comment><USER28> _> The Retina MacBook Pro 13" has an Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset, which is rather underpowered._

Does anyone know of a 13" or smaller notebook with a good discrete GPU? The only one I know of is the Sager NP6110 [1] with a high end Nvdia GT650M.

If Sager can do it, why aren't there a lot more of these?

[1]: <http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np6110-clevo-w110er-p-4343.html>

<comment><USER29> There is a Sony that has one. I don't know the model, but I know a previous co-worker chose it when we upgraded laptops specifically for the decent graphics card with an 11" screen for compact carrying (I was still surprised how much fatter it was than a MacBook Air, but I think that is down to the VGA port).

If you are seriously interested, drop me a line or reply and I'll track him down to find out.

<comment><USER28> Thanks, looks like it's the Sony Vaio S, several configurations offer the discrete gpu.

[http://store.sony.com/c/SB-Series- Notebooks/en/c/S_SB_SERIES...](http://store.sony.com/c/SB-Series- Notebooks/en/c/S_SB_SERIES_PAGE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The 13" Macbook Pro with retina display is proof enough that Apple will waste no time switching to ARM for Macs. They simply care about other laptop qualities a lot more than about total horsepower. If it's just "good enough" or even slightly underwhelming in terms of performance, it doesn't mean they will not do it.

<comment><USER31> You draw that conclusion because of the video performance? I'm not following. The CPU performance wasn't even mentioned in the article. Is it a step backward from the 13" MBP?

<comment><USER3> According to Apple both variants of the 13" MBP use the same CPUs - either a 2.5GHz i5 or a 2.9GHz i7 - so I imagine the CPU performance is identical between the two. Of course, there might be a bit of a CPU hit for apps having to deal with the retina display, but I suspect that the GPU plays more of a role there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > media-rich websites like The Verge

Well, that's one way to put it...

</comment><comment><USER33> I hurried to buy my 17inch Macbook Pro for exactly that reason a week before it vanished from the apple university store. My resolution is NATIVE 1920x1200, which is better than the 1920x1200 you get on a Retina 15inch.

<comment><USER34> No, it's very clearly and visibly not, don't kid yourself. I have a 17" MBP and I compared them side by side.

<comment><USER33> For starters, no font problems AND a bigger screen real estate. Which are the two most important aspects to me as a programmer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Thank you so much for writing this. I've been on the fence (fences?) deciding on the right model for a laptop upgrade. The portability of the Air? Features of the "basic" 13" Pro? The screen of the 13" Retina? The much better performance of the 15" Retina? This is the first review I've read that adequately addresses the real-world performance issues of the newest member of the lineup.

I find the pricing of the current Mac laptop lineup to be out of whack with the feature steps between each level, which makes picking the best performance and value difficult.

<comment><USER36> If you code and/or game I'd recommend the 15" retina, it is the best computer I've ever owned and worth every penny. The screen size is useful for putting terminals next to your code editor, etc. And for gaming I was recently playing Natural Selection 2 (through boot camp) and I found I was loading new maps MUCH faster then other people. We are talking 5-30 seconds faster and in several hours of play not a single person loaded the game faster. Pretty amazing.

Lastly if you do go the Apple route get max RAM as these newest computers aren't upgradable. Good luck!

<comment><USER35> Thanks for the info. I code and also use the machine for laying out documents, web browser, and lightweight design, etc. Mostly coding. I'm normally desk- bound, however, and am weighing the value of the Retina screen if I'm going to spend most of my time looking at an external monitor. I have, however, not heard a bad review of the 15"r.

I'm surprised to learn the machines are not RAM upgradeable. That's a major negative.

<comment><USER37> > I'm surprised to learn the machines are not RAM upgradeable. That's a major > negative.

Between that, the glued-in batteries, the on-board storage, and the lack of an optical drive (i.e. a slot for a second hard drive), I'm really put off the new retina MacBooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yeah, I think the MBA13 (8GB) or the rMBA15 are the two most optimal choices for "primary Apple machine for most high-end users".

<comment><USER39> If only they sold retina desktop monitors. Without a big monitor, any amount of pixels on the laptop will only serve as an exceedingly high resolution twitter stream most of my day.

That said, I welcome they day when I can buy a >= 24 inch retina desktop monitor and I full well plan to spend a buckload of money on it as soon as it becomes available. (IF it is compatible with both Macs and other computers. That is a requirement)

<comment><USER40> I've been sitting here patiently waiting for a 5120x3200 px 27" iMac. When/if that ever happens apple can feel free to take all of my money.

<comment><USER38> I assume that won't happen until Haswell (for FMA) and only in discrete gpu. I'd hate it if they did something like 21.5, 21.5 Retina, 27 as the 3 models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Well, for some the display quality over performance trade off is worth it, while for others (like the author here), it's not.

Haswell will most likely handle the retina resolutions just fine. The iterative polish that Apple is known for will not be lost on the retina MacBooks.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have the 15" and absolutely love it. When the machine isn't taxed, I've gotten more than 7 hours from the battery and I do quite a bit of coding and reading on it. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER43> I seem to remember the previous 13" Macbook had graphics capability. This one doesn't. Seems like a sharp downgrade to me.

<comment><USER8> Not sure they have ever made a 13 inch MBP with discrete graphics.

<comment><USER44> No but they used to make 13" MBP with nvidia chipsets rather than intel's crappy ones. Even the 11" MBA used to have nvidia chipsets. It is a new trend with Apple to downgrade the integrated gpu (compared to the competition, and their own past products). The first incident began with the switch to MacIntels and people who liked the Mac Mini suddenly had to bear with the Intel GMA rather than ATI Radeon. Same thing happened during the switch to intel from iBook (radeon) vs Macbook (gma). TBH it feels like Apple always go for the highest margin components (low cost for Apple while still selling the laptop for a premium price) whenever they feel like they can get away with doing so.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some best feature/dumb phone out there? - <AUTHOR> I have been contemplating moving away from smartphones, what are some best feature/dumb phones out there? What's your experience of moving away from smart phone? Looking forward to some good discussion. <comment><USER2> I think it's best to consider the original "smart" phone: Blackberries. Before my Galaxy, I was pretty broke looking for something better than my feature phone. Throwaway Blackberries were common on eBay due to volume purchasing and upgrade cycles by businesses. Probably more so now that everyone is ditching them for iOS and Android.

Anyway, the main benefits are a keyboard that works, plenty battery life, useful apps, and probably $50 or less. Feature phones especially have terrible keyboard/numpad combos that hurt the thumb. Just having a real keyboard... well, a two-thumb board if we're honest... was a serious improvement. Ended up finding hundreds of free apps online, too.

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=black...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=blackberry&_dcat=9355&rt=nc&_mPrRngCbx=1&_udlo=20&_udhi=50)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a Nokia feature phone for work purposes, and it is a pain to use (, but has excellent battery life).

I don't think using a feature phone is desirable unless you really only want to do calls (using the phone network, not e.g. Skype) and text messages (again, not using Whatsapp/ FB messenger etc.). You would miss out on Maps, traffic information, (most likely) the option to sync your calendar and contacts, ...

Instead, manage your smartphone so that it becomes less distracting, e.g. by disabling all but the most important notifications. Or leave it off sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Battery duration</comment>


Urban Airship's AirMail takes push notifications to the next level - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/22/found-footage-urban-airships-airmail-takes-push-notifications/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the submission!

I'm one of the cofounders of Urban Airship - I'd be more than happy to answer any questions if you have any.

<comment><USER3> Just want to say thanks for doing such a fantastic job with Urban Airship. We're using it for our app and it's proven to be extremely valuable and has saved us loads of time, we'll have no problem paying when we exceed our usage. :) Really looking forward to implementing AirMail too, can we sign up for early access anywhere?

One minor issue I've experienced is that push notifications sometimes never make it to the phone -- since UA/Apple doesn't return deliverability or system status, there's an inexplainable black hole and this is important given the nature of our app and potential consequences for failing to receive a notice.

I assume this type of integrity is related to why you've released AirMail? Is the deliverability failure largely an issue w/ Apple's push/queue system or UA's?

<comment><USER2> Awesome, thanks for using UA!

At the bottom of <http://urbanairship.com/products/airmail/> , there's a signup form - we'll be emailing that list first with early access. Or, you can email me ( firstname.lastname@example.com ) and I can get you on the list.

Apple's push service has a few quirks - in addition to connectivity issues (which can definitely be numerous - thanks AT&T!), there's also a problem when passing along a development device token to a production server. They'll silently drop the connection and we won't know until the TCP window size fills up that this happened - in other words, messages can be lost. There's a feature we've implemented called push debug mode that will watch for this, but it will slow down broadcasts or large sends. We recommend having this on during testing and are working on a more automated solution. So, you could try that.

But, in general, yes, issues like this were some of the initial inspiration behind AirMail - we tried as much as possible to talk to our customers and get feedback and the product naturally grew out of hearing what they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought about writing something like this for Android, but after thinking about it more, I don't see the point. My IMAP client can IDLE, so I get new messages (and a notification) instantly. Twidroid could (but doesn't) long- poll and get instant notifications too. GTalk is also push.

The only thing that I can't do on Android right now is get irc notifications without being connected to my irc proxy. This was why I was originally going to write something like this, but the problem is that no service is going to get private messages properly. Unless it is run on each server (doubt Freenode is going to let me bug their network), or the user runs their own client, it is simply not workable. Not workable == nobody paying for my service == don't really care.

So I don't really see the point of this sort of app.

<comment><USER5> No point for it on the android platform, that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So would this compete against the likes of notifo (the YC company)?

<comment><USER2> No - a Notifo or Prowl or other similar services could use us to deliver their notifications. They are enabling push on web apps and other items and creating a consumer app that serves as a central point for the notifications, whereas we provide a service for any app developer to integrate. Different targets and concepts :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Gomix the easiest way to build apps and bots - <AUTHOR> https://community.gomix.me <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the creator and team lead of Gomix (formerly HyperDev). We're relaunching with a new brand and a ton of new features: persistent filesystems, faster start up times, better reliability and performance, and the beginnings of multiple language support.

I'm happy to answer any questions about design, tech, development, deploying Docker on AWS, etc.

<comment><USER2> Just wanted to let you know, the name "gomix" sounds exactly like a derogatory term for homosexuals in Russian. Might want to re-evaluate that name...

<comment><USER3> They should have already done some due diligence before zeroing in on a name. If they already did, then it means they are ok with it though it might have negative connotations in some demographics.

<comment><USER4> We looked but nothing like that came up. From what we can gather it sounds like the term, but isn't exact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This from the team at FogCreek Software. That alone merits a trial, after Fogbugz, StackOverflow, and Trello. Good luck and keep making good software.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really love this. Not just the technology but the attitude; it's a demonstration that our workflow can be much simpler, but without cynicism or academic snootiness. Thanks for showing us that the web can be a dev-friendly platform again!

<comment><USER4> thanks! We really appreciate this

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aside from the tech required to enable a web UI for creating and collaboratively editing full applications and providing the infrastructure to quickly spin up and deploy these apps... a big part of the appeal to me is the design and personality of the site.

The playfulness makes me curious and interested to go build something "just because", rather than start coming up with all the reasons why I would or wouldn't want to use this over my normal workflow. Plus, the starter app prompts "Tell me your hopes and dreams" \- something my wife would say, so <heartstrings>.

<comment><USER4> cool, pleased to hear it! The "tell me your hopes and dreams" bit came from an early user test we did. We literally just took the app they made and turned it into the welcome project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just found you guys from the new Joel on Software post [1]:

Congrats on the launch!

Would love to see an infrastructure deep dive post sometime : )

1: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/06/anil-dash-is- the-n...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/06/anil-dash-is-the-new-ceo- of-fog-creek-software/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a quick shallow dive:

AWS: EC2, Route53, CloudFormation, CloudFront, S3

Docker Swarm, Node.js, CoffeeScript, Go

We'll probably do an updated post at some point detailing more of the architectural decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to add bash, a surprising amount of bash!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be a great complement to stack overflow - with real running examples rather than just code snippets.

<comment><USER10> Like a fiddle on steroids, yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You've probably heard this a couple of times, but - I don't have a GitHub account, don't want a github account, yet for me to use this I have to create a github account.

Any reason for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> We plan to broaden our auth options soon, though you can get almost the full experience anonymously without even logging in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Love it as a lightweight way to test out new frameworks and boilerplates. This would be particularly useful for kitchen sink demo apps. The potential as a teaching platform is enormous-- imagine getting to learn React for the first time without spending time on the tooling and boilerplate first.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks like a neat service. Browsing through it it was hard to get a sense, what exactly is the use case other than a digital playground. Is this meant to be used for something production-level or just fun a tool to play/explore/experiment with?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're currently in beta right now but long term we expect to provide a production grade service on par with AWS, Heroku, and DigitalOcean (complete with paid plans).

<comment><USER14> This bears explanation.

<comment><USER15> The free-tier, that is the only one available now, allows you to develop all sort of applications already: you can hook up a database through an external provider or through SQLite, you have a few megabytes (128MB) of storage and you can customise your application as you want (using JavaScript and compiled- to-JavaScript languages for now, but more are coming!).

Larger applications require more "benefits", just to name a few: more disk space, a dedicated database, more cpu/ram, a less aggressive cleanup when not used (we put your app to sleep if it has not been used for 5/10 minutes).

Of course additional features are needed. We provide what you see now for free, and we will charge for some of the features that are coming. We expect to cover pretty much any requirement that a developer can have when developing a web application.

This is a big bet, but... well, if it wasn't, it weren't worth to play :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why the name change from HyperDev to GoMix? Any meaning behind the new one?

<comment><USER4> The new name's intended to be a little friendlier for people who might not necessarily see themselves as "devs" but still want to make stuff.

<comment><USER17> any inspiration from hypercard for the original name?

<comment><USER18> we were definitely inspired by hypercard and the work of Bill Atkinson

(I'm the Designer of Gomix)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm helping a lot of people remotely, doing code review and helping get better at programming (mostly helping more junior people). The github import + shared editor feature looks like it would be SUPER useful for me to quickly import their github project and start making comment, changing some code with them etc..

Will definitely look into that!

</comment><comment> alex- This is really cool. Not sure how much I would use the IDE, but it seems like a really nicely indexed collections of solved problems with example code.

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks like a good tool for remote coding interviews.

</comment><comment><USER21> No IRC, no me :( sadly we can't use any of these technologies at work so I'm stuck with old fashioned IRC for team communication

<comment><USER18> You should take a look at [https://www.npmjs.com/package/irc](https://www.npmjs.com/package/irc) which makes it easy to send, listen and receive on IRC connections in a Node app. Which of course you can include in a Gomix app :)</comment></comment>


Scientists to Resurrect Ancient Gene to Replay Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/animals/090502-am-gene-resurrection.html <comment><USER2> "The movie "Jurassic Park" was a lesson in how resurrecting extinct organisms can go awry." It truly was.

<comment><USER2> No, it wasn't.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacker News for Content Marketers - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,<p>Is there any niche platform for content marketers like HackerNews? <comment><USER2> Try [http://inbound.org/](http://inbound.org/) :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for response. In inbound.org there are many topic from social media to SEO. Actually I looking for a platform which full focus on content marketing and content creators.</comment></comment>


Visible Tweets - best twitter back-channel visualisation yet? - <AUTHOR> http://visibletweets.com/#query=ycombinator&animation=2

<comment><USER2> I feel like a curmudgeon saying this, but this doesn't strike me as adding any value beyond eye candy.

At least most infoporn (eg, <http://beta.twittervision.com/>) has _some_ redeeming qualities of presenting the information in a way that provides some insight.

I don't see any here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it has value within the context of a conference. As I mention on another comment, we used it at Be2camp north and it gave a dynamic, bigger feel to the conference. Basically, if you're going to have a twitter-fall type of display in your event, use this instead. Yes, it's eye-candy, but in the context of an event that you want to animate, eye-candy is very useful.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We had this at Be2Camp north last week.. it felt much more dynamic and lively than any of the other twitter visualisations I've seen so far. Thought that people here might want to be aware of it, particularly if you organise events with a twitter backchannel display.

Here's a currently trending term to see what it looks like when there are a lot of tweets on a topic:

[http://visibletweets.com/#query=%23Britflicks&animation=...](http://visibletweets.com/#query=%23Britflicks&animation=2)

</comment><comment><USER3> Augmented Reality Tweets

[http://www.squidder.com/2009/02/17/papertweet3d-augmented- re...](http://www.squidder.com/2009/02/17/papertweet3d-augmented-reality-t- shirts/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's kind of interesting, but not quite sure what it has to do with the post.

<comment><USER3> I was suggesting that augmented reality twitters may be better twitter visualizations than Visible Tweets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, my fault for not being clear then. I was referring to visualisations of tweets within the context of a conference (often, people use Twitterfall or just plain old search.twitter.com). Projecting Visible Tweets on the wall makes for a cool, dynamic feel, by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, but should be twice as fast. How long does it take a person to read 140 characters? Is it limited more by API restrictions?

</comment><comment><USER5> I know Twitter is desparately cool and widely used. But It seems fairly rubbish as a primary back-channel.

It's nice to be able to vaccum up tweets going out of the conference and not directly meant for people in the session/conference. But for direct feedback there are several chat alternatives which would be better, including IRC.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is pretty, although I think our chart is more useful:

[http://twist.flaptor.com/?gram=ycombinator&span=168](http://twist.flaptor.com/?gram=ycombinator&span=168)

</comment><comment><USER7> This would make a great screensaver. Has that been done yet?

<comment><USER8> <http://twistori.com/>

Available as a Mac screensaver (link in the bottom left). Similar idea with a different execution.

<comment><USER9> I have this installed and everyone in my office has asked me about it at this point.

<comment><USER10> Tell me you told them we've got a Mac app now where you can make (and theme) your own custom clusters, to your heart's content? :)

<http://twistoridesktop.com> :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> no CJK support.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ha, the first entry was this post.</comment>


Man compares his prosthetic hand to a 3D-printed one - <AUTHOR> http://www.3duniverse.org/2014/04/19/jose-delgado-jr-compares-his-new-3d-printed-hand-to-his-more-expensive-myoelectric-prosthesis/ <comment><USER2> Cool project, but the $42,000 prosthetic probably has only $50 in materials as well, the expensive part is the engineering, fitting, and assembly. Not really a fair comparison.

Models like this are quite exciting - assistive devices and prosthetics are incredibly expensive due to low volume and customisation requirements. This is preventing innovation and production of new devices and technologies.

They are also (rightly) highly regulated. A next step is trying to figure out how to maintain quality and safety in these kinds of DIY projects.

<comment><USER3> > They are also (rightly) highly regulated. A next step is trying to figure > out how to maintain quality and safety in these kinds of DIY projects.

I can see why medical devices like pacemakers or implanted replacement joints need more regulation, but I don't understand why a prosthetic needs more regulation than other consumer products like gloves or eyeglasses.

<comment><USER4> I broad terms I agree that there's probably too much regulation on medical devices in general. There are a variety of areas where there can be considerable stream lining or reduction to the net benefit of all parties involved.

That said, the myoelectric device at a minimum falls under some level of regulation since it is a biopotential device. The moment you start measuring potentials on the human body, you add the risk of injecting current across the human body - obviously bad. If you wanted to ensure that the myoelectric device was safe, you would at a minimum ensure that a) sufficient isolation between the sensory and actuator circuits b) a safe sensory circuit. Now, while doing that is probably relatively trivial to actually design, you do need to verify it.

So, once again, I agree that there's probably too much regulation piled on, but there is a good reason to regulate/verify in some form or way at least the myoelectric device.

More generally, notice that the examples that you and sister component pointed out are relatively simple, especially compared to a prosthetic hand. Complexity in itself can cause the need for regulation.

Oh, and on the side, you may find this document with regards to impact resistant and safety glasses ([http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/deviceregulationandguidanc...](http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/deviceregulationandguidance/guidancedocuments/ucm070579.htm#3)) a fun read =P.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original url [1] was blogspam—that is, it was a knock-off of some other, more original source. In such cases HN strongly prefers the original source.

All: when you know of a better, more substantive version of a story, please alert us to it in the comments. There's too much material for moderators to check, so community effort makes a big difference. Let's optimize for quality.

1\. [http://3dprint.com/2438/50-prosthetic-3d-printed- hand/](http://3dprint.com/2438/50-prosthetic-3d-printed-hand/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for commenting with an explanation of your moderation (not just this time; I've seen you do it repeatedly.) It really makes a huge difference to how moderation on HN is perceived. (If you look at my comment history, you'll see that I have a history of somewhat passive-aggressive comments about the opacity of HN moderation. I really do appreciate the change tremendously.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for saying so! That's exactly what we are hoping to achieve.

<comment><USER7> Seconded! (what gwillen said)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone on HN who hasn't had the opportunity to use a 3D printer I really recommend that you find a way to use one for a few hours. The experience of willing something into physical existence with a few clicks in Solidworks is amazing. If you remember the feeling of the first time you made the computer say "Hello World" or the first time you set up your own website, you'll get a similar rush from 3D printing. I've been lucky enough to have access to one for my final project at school and it's made me so much more ambitious with how I can design and has made my iteration speed at least 10x as fast.

<comment><USER9> I'm a software developer, but I got a copy of solid works from work. I tried to design a Garmin mount dog collar and failed miserably. I then asked a mechanical engineer to do it for me and he whipped it up in a few minutes. I was humbled by how hard it is to design physical products.

If anybody wants to track their dog: [http://www.shapeways.com/model/1805713/dog-collar-garmin- mou...](http://www.shapeways.com/model/1805713/dog-collar-garmin- mount.html?li=shop-results&materialId=6)

<comment><USER8> Yeah it's an entirely different skill set. I have 3D printed a lot of parts for my recent project but it's all rectangles and circles, I couldn't get anything much more complicated to come out right.

One of the things a mechanical engineer friend of mine suggested is finding a cool SolidWorks file online and learning from it. Basically drag the bar of the feature tree all the way back to the top and you can "play back" the person's design step by step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 3D printing of prosthetics is really exciting. Here's a video showing what poor people were doing before.

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yvev6shNvSg](http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yvev6shNvSg)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19367513/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19367513/)

You take an old soda bottle, cut the bottom off, and use heat to shape it to the stump. You can fix lightweight tools (forks, combs, button hooks, pens) to the screw top lid.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is disruptive. This is the first time in a long time I can say that without imitating a vc/wantrepreneur etc., but be serious.

Obviously there is a lot of data missing here, but the fact that it is even approximated is amazing. Imagine the possibilities for people w/o insurance, veterans, inhabitants of poor countries.

Imagine if one day amputees etc. have a standardized interface to their nervous system that controls their hands. Then all 3d-printed hands need to do is adhere to that spec and people can put their health/abilities in their own "hands".

Very cool and the more geeky/creative amputees could actually build tools into themselves to use for fun sometimes. Granted I'm speaking for people when I have no idea of their struggles. But as Kramer said once, I'd like to have "shoehorn hands".

</comment><comment><USER12> _open source 3D printed hands_

Something about that phrase just sounds really, really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would like to see the middleware between sensors and motors be open source. To me, it seems like the complexity in prosthetics is not the mechanics, but interpreting the signals properly to control the device.

It seems like a relatively rudimentary neural net with a lot more electrical sensors than today (maybe 16 to 256, something on that order) combined with some of the new sensors like light transmission or even maybe ultrasound to "see" the muscles under the skin, could be mapped to a graph with roughly the same degrees of freedom as the human hand.

Then maybe something like KNN could sift the data and map it to the motors. I'm not very familiar with data mining yet, but surely a lot could be done with a 700 MHz Raspberry Pie and a few GB of SSD storage. I'm thinking that giving the algorithm some notion of time by recording 1/60 of a second slices or something in that range might really improve accuracy. Just throw data and processing at it rather than trying to fully understand how nerves work.

Doing the reverse, to stimulate nerves based on how much power each motor is using, should be simpler. It could be sloppier because the human mind would learn to interpret the signals better than a computer.

The software should be available for free online and work with commodity hardware, and then the prosthetic designer could customize the limb for each user. Plus it could have the ability to upload random samples to help train the next generation AI.

As long as I am dreaming, we also need a moonshot to standardize nerve implants. It would go inside the limb somewhere and then use something like 802.11 powered by inductance coils above and beneath the skin, with a faraday cage built into the arm to prevent interference. Actually now that I say that, I wonder if the noise produced by the body's movements would be statistically significant enough for another input into a neural net.

Anyway, chemical markers on the terminals could urge the nerves to grow into the terminals. Or use a bit of foreign nerve tissue that's been grown on a scaffolding in the device in the lab, and then implant it and put the patient on immune suppression drugs until the nerves grow together, and then take them off gradually until the body dissolves the foreign nerves and has a direct connection to the sensor. Another idea would be to press a comb-shaped device with hundreds of microscopic channels through the nerve bundle and read the voltage through each channel. It should be manufactured for longevity and to read the most amount of data possible, and just let the programmers work out how to sift through it.

Once we had good data, training a neural net to do the mapping to actuators seems like a basic problem. Like maybe sample a few hours' worth of movements and put the whole thing online like the Netflix contest until someone has programmed a near-perfect AI. Or a series of contests, each aiming to raise accuracy by 10% or something.

<comment><USER14> Ok, wow, this is my area of expertise actually (well, in process at least).

Lets go through your post and comb it out. I really love the enthusiasm and ideas. My biggest caution going forward though: The body really dislikes foreign objects, like really.

>"...it seems like the complexity in prosthetic is not the mechanics, but interpreting the signals properly to control the device."

You couldn't be more correct! Dr. Richard Weir at CU Denver[0] has some great work in 3-D printed hands. The lack of controls into the hands is a major concern. The issue is you only have so many muscles in the arm to control all the complex motions of a hand. His group is working on the eigen-states of hand movement, trying to decompose them into the number of muscles in your arm.

Why the arm? Well, it makes sense to focus there, as that is where patients' minds are focused. The method is myocardial sensors that sense the nerve firings in the peripheral nervous system and then can send out that data. You basically implant them in a muscle fiber and they last a long time.

>... a lot more electrical sensors than today (maybe 16 to 256, something on that order)...

This would be awesome. But, focusing on a prosthetic hand, we don't have that many muscles in the arm to control that many[1]. The hand is much more complicated than the arm. Decomposing gestures, as Dr. Weir is doing now is a good step in that direction.

>...Just throw data and processing at it rather than trying to fully understand how nerves work.

How true this is! Much is being done in the Big Data era of neuroscience that we live in. Many groups are trying this tactic[2]. The thought is to just describe what the system of a brain does, not how it works. Think Gaussians, not Markov chains.

>...Doing the reverse, to stimulate nerves based on how much power each motor is using, should be simpler.

Feedback is very important to prostheses and helps improve care and quality of life. However, directly stimulating nerves is difficult. Your fingertips have much better 'resolution' than your elbow does[3]. Also, your skin also becomes accustomed to the input and you will ignore that stimulus pretty quickly. Like how you notice the smell of the food when you walk in the door, but don't within 10 minutes of standing next to the stove.

>...It could be sloppier because the human mind would learn to interpret the signals better than a computer.

The body does acclimate to the stimuli, but as I said before, it also starts to ignore as well. Also, people are all different. Genes can account for a lot of the differences, as well as environment, but also even culture and gender[4]

>...As long as I am dreaming, we also need a moonshot to standardize nerve implants.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Each person's situation is very different and personal. Standardizing is difficult with medicine.. Skin color, size, weight, culture, gender, job, etc all greatly vary. For example, a scuba instructor's situation is a lot different than a 1st grade teacher's. The scuba guy has to deal with greatly varying pressure and water. The teacher has to have the new hand be fit for children. The nerve implants will have to follow their situations.

>...a faraday cage built into the arm to prevent interference.

Your blood is mainly salt water, which is very conductive, so there is not real need to cage things. In fact, you want to encase everything in silicone to prevent leaks and make it all non-bioreactive.

>...the noise produced by the body's movements would be statistically significant enough for another input into a neural net.

The noise in a muscle is hard to figure out. Again, it depends on the person, the muscles, the salt content in the blood, etc. In a nerve, the picture is much the same. I will quote without citation that the firing rates of nerves increase with temperature to the 4th power (I'd love a citation, if anyone can find one, my brain is just borking now)

>...Anyway, chemical markers on the terminals could urge the nerves to grow into the terminals.

This is non-trivial and may not be possible. Those markers often are only present in a real soup, and the behavior of nerve growth is not well understood (at least by me, haha). I'll admit it's possible, but a lot of engineering is needed to do it.

>...put the patient on immune suppression drugs until the nerves grow together,

Wow, that is not a good idea. Going on immunosuppressants is not taken lightly, and you'd have a heck of a time convincing people to take that big of a risk just for a hand or something. Also, they won't be necessary in the peripheral nervous system, just the central nervous system.

>...Another idea would be to press a comb-shaped device with hundreds of microscopic channels through the nerve bundle and read the voltage through each channel.

Dr. Theodore Berger at USC is working on a device like this already![5]

>...It should be manufactured for longevity and to read the most amount of data possible, and just let the programmers work out how to sift through it.

If you'd like to join up, many neuroscience departments really favor physics, CS, and EE majors for grad study these days, at least it seems to me like they are.

The peripheral nervous system is a real good area for these neural ideas. But the central nervous system (CNS) is not. The reason is glial scarring[6]. You body really really does not like things in the CNS. This is why paralysis happens mainly. The scar prevents the nerves in your spine from regrowing and making the legs and whatnot work again (sort-of). This takes place in your brain to a huge degree. I used to work with place cells[7](very cool cells) and everyday we would have to 'burn off' the scarring by passing current through the electrode bundle. It turns out, you are your own worst enemy here. Ideas like opto-genetics[8] can bypass the scarring issues, but they also have a host of others.

Again, great ides and enthusiasm! I love it! If you see a future with neuroscience, the field is wide open these days and there seems to be a bit of money floating around. Apply to a progam or 12 and you'll have a great time.

[0][http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Bi...](http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Bioengineer- developing-prosthetic-hand-and-fingers-that-perform-full-range-movement.aspx)

[1][http://www.innerbody.com/anatomy/muscular/arm- hand](http://www.innerbody.com/anatomy/muscular/arm-hand)

[2]It's easter, I'm not counting how many! You do it.

[3][http://visalakshiramani.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/homuncul...](http://visalakshiramani.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/homunculus.png)

[4][http://ccr.sagepub.com/content/34/2/135.abstract](http://ccr.sagepub.com/content/34/2/135.abstract)

[5][http://www.usc.edu/programs/neuroscience/faculty/profile.php...](http://www.usc.edu/programs/neuroscience/faculty/profile.php?fid=23)

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

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

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

<comment><USER15> At the risk of some inside baseball: there is growing evidence that "glial scar" encapsulation (and microglial activation generally) is not main the cause of neural interface failure. Rather, oxidative stress [1] or other neurotoxic factors [2, 3] released by microvascular damage / blood-brain- barrier disruption seem to be the most correlated with interface failure.

What then to make of the widely observed phenomenon that passing small DC currents through electrodes can temporarily rejuvenate them? It could be that this effect is a result of an electrochemical change to the electrode surface itself, rather than to the surrounding tissue.

1\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24550823](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24550823) 2\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23562053](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23562053) 3\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23891081](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23891081)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People might also be interested in Project Andiamo, a startup in London that is going to use laser scanning and 3D printing to make custom-fitted orthotics for disabled children:

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

It was founded by a couple who had a disabled child who needed a back brace, and were horrified by the current process for getting one. The measuring process is upsetting for the child (it involves taking a slow-setting wet plaster cast), it takes weeks to make the brace, it's expensive, and when it finally arrives, it fits badly. They think they can turn round a perfectly- fitting brace from laser scan to 3D print in a couple of hours.

It's a totally brilliant project. It's very rare that an idea is so obviously right.

</comment><comment><USER17> Note that the expensive one has myoelectric sensors and electromechanical actuators, while the 3d printed one is purely mechanic, which means it might not be suitable for all the people without a hand (my guess is that it needs at least part of the muscles of the wrist to be present and working correctly, as they are effectively moving all the mechanical parts in the hand).

</comment><comment><USER18> The 3d printing angle is cool, but I'm also curious in how much the cosmetic focus of the expensive hand held back the functionality. It would be interesting if people were moving past the need to have a real looking prosthetics, and towards having more functional, but clearly robotic prosthetics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why didn't he compare it to the Greifer laying on the table? The myoeletric device he compared the 3 printed one to was the cosmetic hand. The workhorse is the Greifer, which is a much better device for working and handling than the cosmetic hand.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why stop at just replacing human parts? Augmentation is the awesome possibility here.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really think one day the 3D printer will be commonplace. I know the Physibles are pretty much useless now(the ones on that bad boy site), but once they start programming everyday stuff--like enclosures for spare hard drives, or a knob for my '54 chevy radio; more people will might take a second look at the technology. Yes--I used Physibles because I think it's a good catch all word for the different types of files.(I am in now way comparing radio knobs to prosthetic hands.) I am so glad the medical community is embracing these printers. Happy Easter!</comment>


Gmail Denial of Service Attack - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/ksYbkEv <comment><USER2> Interesting... just overloading their inbox with new gmail account requests / notifications ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. Any amount of emails over 60 per minute shuts off the person's inbox. This limit is calculated before applying any filters, so obvious junk still trips the limit.</comment></comment>


The flame of conviction: Anthony Burgess on writing about D. H. Lawrence - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/dh-lawrence-anthony-burgess/ <comment><USER2> Wonderful to read the Eastwood quote on Lawrence: "he was a mardarse". Nottinghamshire has lots of dialect: mardy means sulky and petulant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have to admit to never having read anything by DH Lawrence, but Anthony Burgess is always worth reading.

<comment><USER4> Unfinished Clockwork Orange sequel found.

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/25/the- clockwork-...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/25/the-clockwork- condition-lost-sequel-to-a-clockwork-orange-discovered)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fear the Old Blood</comment>


TIOTI - this could be the Next Big Thing from the UK - <AUTHOR> http://tapeitofftheinternet.com/ <comment><USER2> This has been about 18 months in the making. Shows what can be achieved with an outsourced team. Do you think it'll fly?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a Social TV Aggregator that's due for a full public launch this summer. It's looking really promising.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> they've made a lot of improvements since the beta release - i think it's going to do well. As far as i know the development team has equity stakes etc so its more offshore than outsourced but yeah the technology is pretty impressive.</comment>


Don't Tell Anyone, but We Just Had Two Years of Record-Breaking Global Cooling - <AUTHOR> https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-global-warming-earth-cooling-media-bias/ <comment><USER2> Original author Aaron Brown writes "None of this argues against global warming" and adds "my point is that statistical cooling outliers garner no media attention. The global average temperature numbers come out monthly. If they show a new hottest year on record, that's a big story. If they show a big increase over the previous month, or the same month in the previous year, that's a story. If they represent a sequence of warming months or years, that's a story. When they show cooling of any sort—and there have been more cooling months than warming months since anthropogenic warming began—there's no story".

</comment><comment><USER3> Gee..that publication seems to be all right-wing conspiracies and "Trump's Critics Are Idiots" editorials. Such as this story. The thrust of it is, not that there has apparently been cooling, but conspiracy theories about why that isn't news - because of them evil stupid liberals/Democrats/socialists/etc.</comment>


Show HN: Miniswarm – Docker Swarm cluster in one command - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aelsabbahy/miniswarm <comment><AUTHOR> I've also posted a tutorial video for the tool here: [https://youtu.be/in1ItGKDr98](https://youtu.be/in1ItGKDr98)</comment>


How Bellingcat spies on the spies - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/how-bellingcat-outfoxes-the-worlds-spy-agencies/ <comment><USER2> ... spies that western countries don't like.</comment>


DHH addresses Dreamhost's criticism of Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/21-the-deal-with-shared-hosts

<comment><USER2> If Rails works reliably with SCGI but not FastCGI it can't be that difficult to fix. That's probably the easiest way to get it working for them. Dreamhost could just pledge $10k to have any FastCGI bugs fixed. They're the crappy shared host trying to live in a VPS/dedicated world. I agree with DHH that they should put up or shut up.

<comment><USER3> Everyone who sticks with web development long enough outgrows shared hosting, but they are a good cheap option for when you're starting out. The fact that you don't see the same sorts of problems from every other server-side scripting option (except maybe the Lisps) makes the Rails position seem more unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> RimuHosting and Slicehost are top Xen VPS Hosting for cheap. Both have great rails and django communities to help.

<comment><USER5> I've found RimuHosting to be worth the small premium for sure. I've never had a support request take more than 15 minutes to be fully resolved in a competent and friendly manner... how many hosts can that be said of?

So yeah, I highly recommend RimuHosting for Rails hosting or anything else you might need a VPS for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before: "do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know, like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the popularity of their framework.

Apparently since DHH built Rails for his own use, he doesn't care if anybody else uses it or not. Although I wonder how much the popularity of Rails contributes to the success of 37signals - would anybody even know about their web applications if it wasn't for the Rails hype?

In any case, that kind of thing is why people still choose Java over Ruby.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before: "do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know, like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the popularity of their framework._

I think this is merely the difference between a framework that is fundamentally open source and a framework that is fundamentally vendor- supported (e.g. SpringSource writing and supporting Spring). From my perspective, the Rails Core team cares quite a bit about their community, as their community is themselves. Any developer who has a patch or plugin is free to make it available. That's the beauty of open source.

<comment><USER6> I don't really understand the difference, as Spring is open source as well? However, I guess SpringSource makes money from consulting, so it is in their interest to have as many people as possible adapt Spring?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not hugely familiar with Spring, but the impression I get is that it's not really open source. SpringSource, as a commercial entity, essentially controls the authoring of the framework and has a financial interest in adding features that will drive the widest user adoption possible. If this is wrong, please feel free to correct me.

<comment><USER6> As far as I know, it is completely open source - not even semi open source like MySQL, where they have a commercial and a public license, or like jBoss, where you would have to pay for proper documentation. I think 37signals controls the source of Rails, so again, where is the difference?

I just checked, Spring has the Apache 2.0 license, which is very liberal I think (for example, not as restrictive as the GPL with it'S virality).

Of course the interests of SpringSource and 37signals are probably very different, although I think Rails is good publicity for 37signals (if not the only publicity).

If SpringSource lives on consulting, of course the question is allowed if the features they add are tailored towards making consulting necessary (as I think is a bit the case with the J2EE specification). My impression so far has not been like that, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> 37signals actually does _not_ control Rails. There's no vendor behind it that stands to (directly) make money if more people adopt it.

One thing to remember about Rails was the context in which it was conceived. Rails was not designed as a framework; rather, it was extracted from a real project as a useful skeleton. It is "opinionated software" conceived and publicized as a reaction to the bloated frameworks in the Java world. Edge cases are pushed out into plugins, features generally have to be rejected several times before they make it into core, etc.

<comment><USER6> Of course they control Rails. Or are you telling me that I could this very minute submit some patch to Rails and announce that Rails 3.0 is out? I don't think so.

I don't deny that they might be different in orientation. But which one is a better bet, the one that tries to anticipate all your needs and make you happy (Spring), or the one that only cares for the needs of it's developers? Not saying either way - bloat might be a problem for some, but Spring is very modular, you can only use parts if you want to.

Spring earns more money if more people adapt it, so they try to make it as good as possible. What is the incentive for Rails, I don't know? Economically, their incentive would have to be to get their competition in trouble, to their own benefit? Perhaps they don't even use Rails internally ;-)

Actually Spring also grew out of frustration and personal need, it was a result of Rod Johnson's experiences as consultant, if I remember correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Of course they control Rails. Or are you telling me that I could this very minute submit some patch to Rails and announce that Rails 3.0 is out? I don't think so._

37signals does not control Rails, these guys do: <http://www.rubyonrails.org/core>

This is a group of developers that you could become a part of if you were so inclined (the usual petty open source politics notwithstanding). This is markedly different from having a commercial vendor in control of the product.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they would just let anybody in. On the other hand, SpringSource probably wouldn't reject your free contributions to Spring either, if they are useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, DHH runs his blog on SliceHost.

<comment><USER7> I have a couple sites on Slicehost and I love it. The only thing I miss from shared hosting sites is the easy to use management console for setting up email and such. Other than that Slicehost is the way to go.

<comment><USER8> What I would really love to see is affordable hosting like this but with the ability to do stuff like run a custom web server. I know this thread isn't really about hosting but has anyone seen something like this or is it even technically possible without going fully dedicated?

<comment><USER9> Read more on Slicehost -- its exactly that; you have full access to a virtualized machine, and can do pretty much anything.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Now the Time to Buy Stocks? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122645226692719401.html?mod=rss_opinion_main <comment><USER2> _I fear I may be breaking with etiquette here, so please let me know if I am, and then I will remove this comment.._

I did an analysis of this recently, available at: <http://saffell.wordpress.com/>

My conclusions:

1\. Now is a better time (on average) to make a 5-10 year investment than a random point in time is.

2\. For 20-30 year investments, the recent fall in prices make little difference to returns over such a long period.

This is all based on historic data (from 1871 to 2008), which, as we all know, is no guarantee of future performance..

<comment><USER3> What would be breaking with etiquette about your post? Unless you ripped off the data in your blog post or something, it's informative, interesting and polite.

<comment><USER4> a lot of people don't like "blog spam" so it gets looked down on, not saying this is, but to many people the common idea is that if you see it on a blog, its just copy pasta from a legit source.

<comment><USER3> If people post links to things they've taken the time to write themselves, I'm more than happy to see them. By all appearances, this is something he did himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to Warren Buffett, don't buy a stock, buy a (part of a) business: Find a good business to buy. If the price is right, buy it. It's like buying anything, really.

In a market where all stock prices have fallen dramatically, you'll be able to buy it cheaper than before - but note, it might still be too expensive.

The trick is in recognizing a good business and valuing it - but that's much more doable than deciding whether to "buy stocks", because it's more definite and specific.

To put it in perspective: it's what ycombinator does.

<comment><USER6> Warren Buffett (assuming his performance is not due to chance) buys things he understands. He also has deep pockets.

For normal investors, in ordinary times one should pick up an index fund (roughly one third of your total investments, the rest of them are not stocks) and hold unto them until you retire. The formula can be bend slightly depending how far you are from retirement.

Of course these are not ordinary times.

<comment><USER7> As I have pointed out before, "deep pockets" is actually a disadvantage

<comment><USER5> Yes. Warren Buffett has gone on record saying that if he only had a million dollars to invest (as opposed to umpty billion dollars), he was sure he could double it in a year. His problem is that there just aren't that many multi- billion dollar investments around, and those that are, are well known, and therefore accurately priced. Maybe also, for the same reason, it's hard for a massive company to keep growing (a smaller co has more room to grow).

With a million or less, he could assess the small companies that aren't covered by analysts and so on, to find one that was (1) great (2) cheap

The lack of _money_ is not the deficit that stops you (and me). Mostly, it's effort, and self-confidence in your own considered opinion when it is contrary to everybody else. To buy when others sell - because you've done the research, and trust your judgment. It's mostly an emotional or moral quality. If your judgment is wrong, you have a lovely _learning experience_ that cannot be obtained in any other way (and Warren Buffett has had that experience).

<comment><USER8> He should have a little fun and set aside a million bucks to try to double each year. It's not like he _can't_ make smaller investments just because he has billions of dollars.

Of course if he announced which stocks he picked at the time he purchases them the price would probably increase. Heisenberg and all that...

I often wonder if people like Jim Cramer end up manipulating the market just by talking publicly. And is it illegal? If Cramer says "I just bought such and such stock and think it's a great buy", and the price goes up because of it, and he sells his shares for a profit, is that illegal? He simply stated a fact and his opinion. Where is the line drawn?

<comment><USER9> I think the SEC has rules about when people like Jim Cramer are allowed to buy and sell stocks that they talk about publicly. He wouldn't be able to buy a bunch of shares of Company A, then go on TV the next day and say what a great buy it is, then sell it when it goes up the next day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not for me. When this kind of crisis hit a bottom it plateaus there for a while and doesn't suddenly spike up 30%. In fact, in that graph the top curve follows the bottom curve, except the last bit. Based on that they should predict dividends will collapse soon dramatically.

They either didn't base their argument well or are completely delusional and can't read their own graphs.

And this current crisis is all about prediction based on past data can be plain wrong. See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360412> The End of Wall Street (HN main page today. Beware it is _very_ long!)

<comment><USER11> Oh the market does spike. Just look at the recent month. You just don't know in which direction and whether a further leg down is in the cards. At the end of the day market timing is a game that makes the end of your day come so much quicker, and I'm asking myself, what have I achieved in terms of innovation?

Unless you do it algorithmically, it's incredibly boring, but once you have started it's hard to stop. Market timing is an addiction :-|

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> yes, yes, yes. stocks with dividends. stocks that have been crushed. big name companies that have been around for a long time and will continue to be.

appreciate your downside risk against your upside potential. if you fear the market will go to zero than we will all have much bigger problems than counting our returns.

if you have any faith in the american model than you must conclude that this too shall pass.

<comment><USER10> Like GM?

<comment><USER13> I am not saying you should buy GM but if a 3rd party where to get interested and do a leveraged buyout they could make a lot of money or if the government does a big bailout you could make a lot of money etc. The real problem with GM is they are not making money today so they might not _continue to be_.

PS: Options on GM stock could be a good investment of you are willing to take a lot of risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the point isn't that we've necessarily hit the bottom. if you look at the dividend/price chart, we're probably heading into a big "hill" just like some of the early ones (we've only begun to swing up.

the point is that things are relatively cheap where we stand today. they may get cheaper, but they may not. look at your downside risk (missing 25% of a bigger bottom) vs. upside risk (we've already hit bottom).

or, if your nicholas nassim taleb, you think that you'd be crazy to make any decision based on the graph, because tomorrow everything could go to zero, and you'd be broke.

i'm thinking of shifting part of my portfolio to stocks. but given volatility, like the article says, it's going to be a small segment, and i can allocate more as it goes up. but i'm investing in the long term, and if the S&P goes to 0 then i won't be worrying about money. i'll probably be worrying about people trying to break into my house and steal my cans of campbell's.

</comment><comment><USER15> Answer: Yes. Now is probably the best buying opportunity in your lifetime (assuming you're 18-30).

Buy the fear, sell the greed!

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm probably paraphrasing someone here, but ... by the time you start seeing articles like this, chances are you're late already.

<comment><AUTHOR> i think if you invest for the long term (3 yrs or more), a lot of stocks are still undervalued at this point... and they continue to fall as we speak.

<comment><USER16> Which is what confuses me. How can there be a consensus that something is undervalued over a period of time ... wouldn't the markets just correct the price quickly?

<comment><USER7> Markets are not efficient

<comment><USER16> That's one possible explanation.

The other explanation is that investment firm XYZ is wrong when they say that a particular asset is undervalued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Answer: No.

<comment><USER18> If lotteries are a tax on those who don't understand odds, buying in the current market would be a tax on those who don't understand what's happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does his graph start with 1945, and not, say, with 1890?

</comment><comment><USER19> AAPL and YHOO

Both are cheap, both will double in a year.

Mark my words.

<comment><USER20> Toss a coin; it will be heads. I guarantee it.</comment></comment>


AltSchool, an Experiment in Education, Raises $100M - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/05/altschool/ <comment><USER2> Almost every education article posted to HN that boasts a "new approach" is invariably a school that re-purposing Montessori. In this case it's using technology and data to a higher degree to streamline the BS teachers have to deal with so they can get on with teaching. That's cool and definitely a step above 99% of schools out there, but not a revolution in the Montessori sense.

I wish more people would grok the basic principles of Montessori and just focus on doing those right - because when it's done well its perfect and really doesn't take much structure. My wife runs a Montessori school from our home and has been a teacher for almost 12 years now. She has found that the more hands on she is (and other teachers are) with the students, the worse the outcomes are. As practitioners we see a lot of junk that claims to be "Montessori" but doesn't really stick to the principles. These are primarily: self directed learning and building a community for exploration and creativity.

The best Montessori schools have agreements with local warehouses/mills/shops etc... where children can do internships and apprenticeships. Having "curricula" like the article states is generally antithetical to that and kills a large portion of what makes Montessori so successful - which is pupils taking prepared "vocational" paths which are liberal in educational scope. It's simpler in the long run but takes much more up-front work and I think the technology is there to make that up-front work much easier.

The real challenge is fitting these types of schools into the larger "schooling" world of standardized tests etc... One thing we found was that many students leave Montessori because the clearest path into college is through the testing system and Monetssori doesn't play well with that. That is what needs real reform.

<comment><USER3> If this were still May Day I would think that sending our seven year olds off to the mill would be a more obvious troll, but as things stand I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER4> The Montessori school my oldest went to did week-long apprenticeshps in 7th and 8th grade. I'd be surprised if any school had 2nd grade apprenticeships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm all for doing whatever we can to improve education, but it is extremely difficult to compare the quality of a education between public and private schools because of selection bias.

Private schools tend to pick and choose the best kids and have significantly higher suspension and expulsion rates eliminating the "problem" children. Public schools on the other hand, have to accept everyone from the hyperactive to those with learning disabilities.

When we try to control for these effects, often there is little to no difference between these custom approaches and standard ones. Montessori for instance does customization and outcomes are effectively the same as public schools.

I suppose though even if the end result is a cheaper and highly replicable education system, it could become quite successful as a company.

<comment><USER4> Please cite a source for "Montessori...outcomes are effectively the same as public schools".

Here's a study that found the opposite: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students- prosper-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students-prosper-with- mon/)

<comment><USER6> At the study level sure, you can support any argument, a meta analysis like: [http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp114197.pdf](http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp114197.pdf) Generally shows little to no benefit and often points out flaws in individual studies.

 _Indeed, in our data, previous authors' specifications rarely explain a substantial portion of the selection into the relevant privateschool sector, raising the possibility that the weak-instrument critique may hold for this literature. This point is corroborated in work by Ludwig (1997), who also finds compelling evidence that prior authors' instruments are weak._

<comment><USER4> I expanded my quote "outcomes are effectively the same as public schools" to include more context: "Montessori...outcomes are effectively the same as public schools"

The meta analysis you cite makes no mention of Montessori. It's talking exclusively of public vs. private. There are public Montessori schools, and (obviously) non-Montessori private schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a 5th grader "decides" to learn some algebra, those are the cards the teacher will start preparing for that student, right? But to "learn" algebra, one traditionally learns a set of concepts and practices those concepts in the form of large quantities of practice problems.

Every math teacher I've ever met has said the key to mastery of math concepts is practice and repetition.

So, if we go back to our 5th grader, and algebra comes up for him/her in the customized lesson plan, does that mean for the next year, algebra cards are going to appear, with a set of problems to solve, and links to... what, wikipedia pages that explain how to solve them?

What happens when the kid decides he/she doesn't want to "explore" math anymore? Does that kid just not get a math education, at that time? Are we going to have 16 yr olds who never figured out that "exploring math" is going to be a key to being a competent adult?

I'm sure what I wrote is quite commonly brought up and an answer exists, but I do wonder what that answer is -- to sum: what do you do when a kid doesn't want to "explore" an area of knowledge that we as adults know is going to be critical to functioning as one of us in the world?

<comment><USER8> Not sure where you got the idea that it is entirely the child's choice what he learns. What I got out of the article is that the child's interests, strengths and weaknesses are taken into account to produce an individualized curriculum. If a child is weak in mathematics, the curriculum is adjusted for _that child_ to emphasize mathematics. It's not as simple as "Johnny wants to learn poetry and only poetry, so that's what we let him learn."

At least, that's what I got out of the explanation. It's chaotic in that every student needs to be guided differently, and AltSchool is using technology to make that guidance easier for the teachers to apply across individuals. The idea is not to lose students in the crowd, but also not to let them lose themselves in the chaos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This school looks like a terrifying extension of Snow Crash's "living-in-a- storage-container" lifestyle, combined with training on how to be a perfect worker drone for the new tech/service-based economy (they're even teaching the kids to clock in and out!).

If this is where private/public school is headed, I'll stick to homeschooling/unschooling my kids, thanks.

<comment><USER10> Seemed a bit more Diamond Age to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are several distinct problems in the public education system.

There is the problem where motivated and largely well-off parents find that the public education system doesn't suit the unique interests and learning styles of their children. This sort of school seems like a wonderful experiment to address this sort of problem.

A second, largely unrelated problem is the under-funding (in CA for sure, perhaps elsewhere) of public schools, given the expectation that these school systems rectify the serious motivational and educational disabilities students develop in communities with high concentrations of poverty and violence.

I'd argue that the latter problem is the one that has serious societal consequences if we don't get it fixed, sooner than later.

<comment><USER12> > _A second, largely unrelated problem is the under-funding (in CA for sure, > perhaps elsewhere) of public schools_

I hear this often. I'm curious, do you have a dollar figure in mind that would be appropriate?

<comment><USER13> CA spends less than half as much per student as New York:

[http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/29/how- st...](http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/29/how-states-are- spending-money-in-education)

What the 'right' value is subject to debate, but as a parent in SF having negotiated the tragicomic SFUSD system for my own children, I'd wager it's a lot closer to New York's 19K per student than CA's $9K.

This is pure speculation, but my subjective experience is that CA funds schools at close to the minimum possible level, and that there is a lot of headroom in which every dollar extra spend causes an immediate improvement in service and richness of experience.

I say this because one of the differentiating factors of the most-desired schools in the SFUSD is the large amount of extra money parents bring in via fundraising.

Yet even the most successful schools, which raise on the order of half a million dollars, are only adding something like ~$1K per student.

Yet what they offer above and beyond comparable schools without that funding bump is very evident: all the 'enriching' staples my own generation took for granted as par of public education: art classes, PE, green space, staff with expertise in supporting kids with differing needs (at both ends of the performance/ability spectrum)... etc etc etc.

I have also observed that affluent parents who privilege education also both prioritize and have the luxury of donating their _time_ \-- no small thing in a city in which a single-income household is mostly unthinkable.

So that extra $1K may be multiplied by donated time, as well.

But any way you slice it, a few extra K per student, judiciously spent, would make a hell of a difference in my parts.

That said, a dollar raised and allocated by the parents, in accord with parents' priorities, and subject to their audit, is probably much better spent than one squeezed through the SFUSD.

QED non-profit charters (of which there are several) are currently a very strong bet in SFUSD...

<comment><USER14> I was in a CA high school as it fell apart (Benicia High in the North Bay). The district was in the hole to the tune of millions and cutting everything they could. Multiple teacher walk-outs a year, terrible morale. An administration more concerned with protecting their own asses than doing anything about education.

The school had two copiers on the entire campus: one for the teachers that was always broken, another for the administration that was magically in great repair. I had a french teacher who finally flipped and stormed the admin copy room, refusing to leave until he'd made the copies he needed to teach his class. They put him on leave pending a psychiatric review.

Buildings falling apart, bus service discontinued. Violence and an attempted shooting that was only thwarted through sheer dumb luck.

I was fortunate that my family moved to Texas between my sophomore and junior years so I was spared the worst of it. Just after I left, the school ended all advanced classes and extracurriculars. AP classes gone. The band only survived due to a strong booster organization.

A complete disaster in what was once the heart of America's dream. I was practically in shock when I started at my new school in Texas where the district seemed to have unlimited funds: I was in the first graduating class of the most expensive school ever built ($77 million).

I told a teacher there that copier story and he couldn't believe it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there any evidence that private schools make much of a difference in the overall education landscape or is it just yet another option for rich people?

If you really want to make a difference you need to address the broader audience and do something like charter schools.

</comment><comment><USER16> Glad to see technology used to enhance education. I like their approach and hope they succeed (with Peter Thiel on their side, it should almost be a guarantee).

</comment><comment><USER17> A surveillance-state Montessori with a big data fetish and a bottom line doesn't count as reform, sorry AltSchool. I was particularly struck by:

> "It's not hard to model language acquisition if you can listen to every word > a person is saying,"

This is patently false big data hubris, which I'm afraid bodes poorly for the rest of the rest of their approach. I study early language acquisition and have worked on some very large datasets (e.g. Speechome, [http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word](http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word)), and there's a lot you don't know about the language system of a child even with a complete record of utterances and videos of everything that happens. Higher density/quality data is fantastic, but to understand language acquisition or to understand the progress of a single child you have to work out a complex system of latent variables. Education is similar— the biggest thing is that there is s different mixture of explicit pedagogy vs. observation.

I'm all for school reform that leverages technology but this misunderstanding of data, in conjunction with the for-profit aspect, leaves me pretty convinced that this isn't the right direction.

The other thing that caught me off guard was:

> "and wearable devices that help keep track of students off campus"

I did a double-take. Why does this school track the kids off campus?

The complete lack of criticism eliminated the last shred of credibility Wired had in my mind. I don't care if you think this is a good idea or not, tell me who doesn't think it's a good idea and why.

<comment><USER15> > Why does this school track the kids off campus?

So they don't get lost on field trips?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everything can't be improved by adding Silicon Valley to it.

<comment><USER19> But everything CAN be improved by only adding silicon to it!

<comment><USER20> Or silicone...</comment></comment></comment>


Adding video effects to Microsoft Teams calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.designedbycave.co.uk/2020/Microsoft_Teams/ <comment><AUTHOR> Now that millions of us had our first taste of remote working last week, I thought it was time to make the whole experience more fun. Video effects for Microsoft Teams using virtual webcams. Works with Zoom, Skype and many others!</comment>