Amazon wins streaming rights for Thursday Night Football - <AUTHOR> http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Closing-Bell/2017/04/04/NFL-TNF.aspx <comment><USER2> I hope Amazon markets this properly. My GF and I both struggled to even find the [https://www.primevideo.com/](https://www.primevideo.com/) landing page after we signed up. They have two different interfaces... the amazon.com video section and a seemingly unrelated Prime Video site which was difficult to find on their site. I had to use chrome://history the following day after signing up for the 30-day trial.

Amazon is great at specific UX functionality but not so great at high-level information architecture.

Prime Video has a superior video player to Netflix thanks to the XRay feature which tells you which actors/songs are currently playing/acting during the current scene. I've used it countless times.

Speaking of Xray, for sports it would be great to see which players are currently on the field/court during a game, including which jersey number, and if possible the box score when you hover over the game. That would have been amazing during NCAA March Madness where I didn't know most of the young college players.

The only thing missing from the Amazon player which Netflix has is "skip intro credits" button.

I love this technology/product competition between the two none-the-less.

<comment><USER3> Xray is powered by IMDB, which Amazon also owns right? Is there an entity they could buy to power such a service for sports?

<comment><USER4> X-ray shows the actors that are in that specific scene. Does IMDB have this information that they just don't show on their public site? That seems a lot more useful of a database than the few titles Prime offers it on.

<comment><USER5> That feature is damn impressive. It's incredibly responsive and accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The big reason many people have to _not_ canceling their cable is live sports.

If this is the new trend, it's catastrophic to cable providers.

<comment><USER7> On the flipside, many have cut the cord because of the high cost of cable, partly due to the cost being inflated by being forced to have channels such as ESPN. Amazon purchasing the rights to sports increases the cost for those that do not care about sports.

<comment><USER8> ESPN is currently quite the quagmire for Disney corporate. Surprisingly, it's the business unit that makes up the largest amount of Disney's revenue, around 30%. [1] The last several posted losses for Disney (including the one just reported this month) have been primarily due to decreasing subscriber counts for ESPN.

ESPN royalties are ~$7 per subscriber; $7 of your monthly cable bill goes to Disney _just_ for ESPN [2]. They are obviously collecting that from many people who are uninterested in sports, as most basic cable packages include ESPN (if not ESPN 2 and so forth).

Cord cutting is the single biggest threat to Disney right now, and I'm sure this, a major signal that people are excited to consume their sports via the web and that ESPN is inching closer and closer to death, has them crapping their pants.

When Amazon buys Disney World, will they replace Cinderella Castle with a giant cardboard box bearing the "Amazon Prime" tape? ;)

[1 (PDF)] [https://ditm-twdc- us.storage.googleapis.com/q1-fy17-earnings...](https://ditm-twdc- us.storage.googleapis.com/q1-fy17-earnings.pdf)

[2] [http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/espns-rising-cable-fee-is- no...](http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/espns-rising-cable-fee-is-now-up-to- over-7-per-subscriber-per-month.html)

<comment><USER9> I'm actually surprised how cheap ESPN is. In the UK, adding the two main sports networks (Sky and BT) adds something like $70/month, maybe more, to your bill. It's definitely not included in "basic" packages but i bet millions of people still subscribe to both. It's pretty much the only reason people have payTV, and something like 60% of households do have payTV as a whole.

<comment><USER10> You need five channels to get the equivalent of what BT and Sky provide with the Premier League, and you are absolutely bombarded with advertising. European football isn't really suitable to the same business model, so we have to pay for our sports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never understood Twitter's TNF streaming. I couldn't watch it on the phone, and when I tried the website, I saw a small video (no audio) of the game, with live tweets. I was genuinely confused and turned off by the experience. I wanted to watch the game, just like I would have on television, but instead I got this neither fish nor fowl experience, that was the worst of both.

Twitter should have never gotten the contract at all, because they don't have a video client that runs on my television. Facebook doesn't either, and that's why Facebook shouldn't have gotten it either.

Watching video in a browser is lame when I have 55 inch display literally feet away. I want my content there. That's where I watch OTA television, Netflix, and Hulu. If you can't provide it to my television, you've failed. (Yeah, you can hook your computer up to your screen via HDMI, but it's janky as hell, and a horrible experience. It's the 21st century equivalent of taping a magnifying glass to your television and calling it a "big screen" [http://www.tvhistory.tv/TV-Magnifying-Lens.JPG](http://www.tvhistory.tv/TV- Magnifying-Lens.JPG))

<comment><USER12> All the twitter games were simulcast on CBS... Not sure what the point of having them on Twitter was...

<comment><USER11> Probably an attempt to court young people and cord cutters.

Some people don't seem to know that many of the popular channels come free and over the air like radio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully they will be broadcasting in 4K. It could be an influential driver of people with 4K TV's to try out Amazon Prime.

<comment><USER14> I'd bet the has 4K TV and doesn't have Amazon Prime segment to be pretty small.

<comment><USER15> Probably.

Vizio's TVs are pretty much all Smartcast (Chromecast) now. Chromecast doesn't work with Amazon Video, which is the main reason I don't watch it despite having Prime.

<comment><USER16> Semantic correction, but it's really Amazon who refuses to let their streaming garden exit their hardware garden. I'd say it's more that Amazon Video doesn't work with the Chromecast. Since, you know, that's driving a lot of Fire Stick purchases (fellow frustrated Chromecast and Prime owner here).

<comment><USER17> This is the reason I don't watch Amazon Prime video. It's so dumb to have to have a separate device for everything.

<comment><USER18> I bought a roku. Plays both amazon and netflix perfectly with a great interface.

<comment><USER19> I'm planning on buying a Fire TV stick. Plugs into your TV like the Chromecast, and plays Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just want to watch local games on my HD antenna. Being locked out of a Patriots MNF game, forcing me to either go to a bar or watch an illegal stream, is simply absurd.

<comment><USER21> Why is this absurd? It's expecting you to pay for their product.

<comment><USER22> Don't forget that many of the stadiums are at least partially funded by taxes.

<comment><USER23> The patriots stadium construction was owner funded.

"After the Hartford proposal fell through, Robert Kraft paid for 100% of the construction costs, a rare instance of an NFL owner privately financing the construction of a stadium."

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

<comment><USER24> _Concurrently announced was a new road to access the stadium from U.S. Route 1_ so not quite.

<comment><USER25> That doesn't mean the city paid for it. If you start a new land development to put up houses, you often cover all the costs associated with putting in roads and signs. Not saying that's what happened here but one sentence saying a road was put up doesn't indicate paid for by taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So Amazon seems to be competing pretty hard for my streaming dollars.

I subscribe to Netflix and I buy a HBO Go subscription when GoT comes around (and cancel it right afterwards)

Given the good things I've heard about a few of Amazon's shows (the Man in the High Castle for instance), I'm tempted to give it a try.

But I'm not going to pay for two streaming services at the same time. I just don't stream enough to make it a feasible choice.

I reckon this is a good problem to have. Lower costs for me, and higher content quality

<comment><USER27> Amazon is the better deal if you only go for one, their content library has gotten better and better.

Also, consider the other perks you get with Amazon, shipping, music, books etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No question they have the infrastructure to do this well. I was impressed with the quality that Yahoo managed when they streamed some live games last season - perfect clarity with zero buffering and very little choppiness to the stream that some other providers don't always manage.

<comment><USER5> I use Prime video extensively and it works great, but I've not seen them attempt a live stream. I actually don't know how big a technical challenge it is compared to static streaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazon owns Twitch so I'd say they have some experience with that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> YouTube is my overwhelming choice, you want to be on a platform that is in some form substituting TV. Twitter, FBLive, Amazon, AppleTV, XboxLive etc. are all nice but are sideshows.

YouTube and Netflix are the only two real games in town, but YouTube is the overwhelming front-runner.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thursday games are usually the worst, so I'm not sure what kind of a coup this is. Really, the NFL needs to bag the whole idea of Thursday games

<comment><USER31> Agreed. TNF doesn't allow teams enough time for preparation and physical recovery from the previous week's game. Especially when the previous game takes place on Sunday or Monday night.

The Redskins had a stretch this past season where they had to play MNF on 11/21, and then TNF on 11/24 -- only 2 full days in between. That scheduling was absurd.

<comment><USER32> Is it really that big of a deal if that happens once in awhile? I'm probably opening a huge can of worms with this comparison, but NHL players play 3-4 games a week all the time. Granted, both sports are tough as hell on the players.

<comment><USER33> Football is much more tough than hockey and needs recovery time. Hockey is tough but Football you have running backs/WRs getting hit on every other play. You have the QB getting knocked down 3-5 times a game. The the offensive line is having a pushing and hand war with the defensive line on every single play while playing strategically and covering additional players. The WRs have to sprint on every play. And for special teams you have the opposite team running at you as you run at them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When will VR sports streaming become a thing?

I want to watch a match virtually from within the stadium.

<comment><USER35> Steve Ballmer talked about this recently on a podcast, and said that they are working on it. It would allow you to buy a "virtual ticket" for any seat in the building.

I think it's a pretty great idea for fans who live far away from their favorite teams.

<comment><USER36> Sporting events (and experiences like concerts more broadly) seem like one of those areas where VR could actually find paying customers. There's a proven market for subscribing to watch this sort of activity and it avoids the physical interaction/feedback challenges that a lot of other VR applications have.

The tech still needs to get better and there are certainly questions of viewer fatigue etc. But it certainly seems like a very plausible use of VR.

<comment><USER33> i don't get this. You get a better view of the game on tv (multi-angles, commentary, etc.). You go to arenas for the experience, of getting there beforehand, tailgating, going with your friends/kids. You get a worse view but you get a better experience. Why would you use VR for a worse view without the experience?

<comment><USER35> As a baseball fan who doesn't live in a city with a team, I would definitely use this. You're right that you don't get the full experience with VR, but I disagree that the view isn't _part_ of the experience. So if the choice is no experience, only TV viewing, or some little bit of it, I'll take VR. Not every time I watch, of course, but every once in a while, definitely.

EDIT: I just realized that you're probably focused on football. Football isn't a great live sport for viewing, so I get where you are coming from there. The pregame experience (tailgating) is the biggest reason to go to a football game. I've done plenty of tailgating where we never go into the game at all.

For other sports I think this makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Only need to signup 500k people to break even.

</comment><comment><USER38> So cable and all its burdens is just followimg the cordcutters. Please amazon, let the sportsball fools pay their own way. I cut cable partly to avoid paying the sports tax.

</comment><comment><USER39> >Amazon has wanted to put sports rights on its Amazon Prime video service,

Amazon wants me to cancel my Prime Video Service....

I would have rather gotten Season 3-n of Alpha House than Football or any other sports.. If they start investing in sports over premium content they can count me out...

I have been a prime member almost from the beginning of prime, I own 6 fireTV devices, and a few Kindle's, I am deep in the Amazon eco system, I will rip them all out over sports..

I dropped cable TV originally because I grew tried of most of my payment going to subsidize sports, and having my channels interrupted with "Live Sports"

<comment><USER40> So if they pocketed the $50 million or did share buybacks or similar you'd be ok, but you have an ideological problem with sports and will cancel over them?

<comment><USER41> He's probably concerned that going forward a certain large percentage of his "Prime" subscription will go toward sports, just like cable:

[https://consumerist.com/2014/08/05/espn-accounts-for-more- th...](https://consumerist.com/2014/08/05/espn-accounts-for-more-than-6-of- your-cable-bill-could-soon-top-8/)

...I doubt Amazon will get that bad, but it's definitely a good reason to currently avoid cable. Really, for people who don't like sports, the notion that watching people throw a ball around costs vastly more than the other channels is baffling. I really don't want some heavyweight imbeciles getting my money when I want to watch news/movies/comedy/etc.

<comment><USER40> This just seems like such a strange attitude, given the veritable ocean of non-sports content out there at the moment. If your show got cancelled, it's almost certainly not because of sports; rather, it's exceedingly likely that it's up against some other show (or shows) which drew a larger audience.

In fact, realize that up until very recently a great deal of non-sports content only got created because sports were used as leverage against the cable companies. The bundling that happened on major cable networks required cable companies to carry channels which comparatively few people watch in order for the cable company to be allowed to carry e.g. ESPN. If you're a fan of indie content/comedy, you should be happy about the existence of ESPN et al, otherwise your show would likely not exist.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Breathing Is the Key to Persuasive Public Speaking - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2015/06/breathing-is-the-key-to-persuasive-public-speaking

<comment><USER2> I've never realized how hard it is to speak publicly until I had to do public presentation.

I was so stressed I rushed through the material and I was taking too shallow breaths, too rarely. 20 minutes into presentation I had to make 5-minute pause just to catch some air, I was literally exhausted by talking :)

Few people from our team (programmers, ui designers, testers) had presentations, and we all learnt a lot. It's surprisingly hard.

<comment><USER3> ...did you not learn how to do presentations in school?

<comment><USER4> Most people don't. Not that they don't give presentations in school, but they are absolutely not either graded or coached on presentation skills, only on content (since most of the time it's presentation of a research project).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would say the single most important part of public speaking, which should encapsulate everything else is _rehearse_. It can feel weird and contrived to have three of your colleagues sitting in front of you pretending to be an audience, but it's enough to make it feel real, and let you run into most of your issues ahead of the real thing.

Then you go back, fix what you can, and rehearse again. You want to have some "muscle memory" to fall back on during the real event.

<comment><USER6> Rehearsing in front of a webcam is also very useful.

Make sure you are standing up in roughly the position you will be giving your talk in, set it to record and then have at it (I find it helps if you _can 't_ see yourself while recording).

Then play over the recording, if you use VLC it has a useful trick in that you can speed up playback without affecting pitch (saves time and makes it _really_ obvious at 1.5x if you are talking too fast, you should be legible at 150 percent).

Make notes where you stumbled and/or were not clear then go over it again.

Oh and if you have slides you can run through them on the machine in front of you (instead of behind your or off to the side) which really helps as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rehearsing in front a webcam seems like one step from submitting your rehearsal to a service that can critique your presentation. The service could go through a checklist of fundamental variables that are deemed highly correlated with successful presentations, and you could receive timely and useful feedback. Is there such a service? @noir_lord

<comment><USER6> Not that I'm aware of but it would be useful, an impartial third party watching your talk would be less intimidating than getting someone you know, hell you could have someone go over the slide deck as well for common errors.

...and now I'm thinking of how you'd build that and how the UX would work, damnit I have enough side projects I want to build ;).

<comment><AUTHOR> Load the decks and live stream and record the video: Basic screen: [ | ] [-video- | -deck-] [ event_timeline ]

Allow the presenter to move through the deck on the service so there is a timeline of events of video and deck traversal. Then reviewer can highlight key moments on the timeline with notes that are part of an overall critique.

User presentation is the base. Deck critique comes at a premium.

\--Edit-- HN didn't like my formatted 'mock' screen.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, thinking client side, split screen for uploading video and deck with a notes/goal box underneath (things like Target audience, group demographics, expected venue).

On the backside have a review interface with video front and sent and controls underneath, like "Add Note" which pauses the video and enters the time stamp and note into a formatted list, once review is marked completed it transfers that list into the feedback part which also has a notes section for things like body language and such.

Once complete email the user with a link to the review page that has the video and the timeline underneath, make the timeline clickable so the user can jump straight to each note and either accept or decline the review (that way you have a metric of what criticism people respond to positively and negatively).

Handling the deck is more of an issue, powerpoint isn't a problem but you will get all sorts of whacky formats (people using Beamer, javascript based stuff), You can generally get those out in PDF format in one form or another though so maybe accept PDF and Powerpoint (or in the case of the javascript based ones perhaps a zip file for techie audience).

I wonder what you could charge that out at, reviewing a 45 minute talk and slides properly would probably take an hour/hour and half and also what kind of turn around people would want (possibly with increased pricing for a faster turn around).

EDIT: Thinking about it, you could actually have multiple reviewers in key demographics as well for more targeted talks with variable rates.

EDIT: You could also have multiple reviewers (extra charge) so that you can get a different perspective

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interested in sharing some more ideas on this? Like a crappy prototype?

<comment><USER6> I'm snowed under with current startup, side project and client work (bootstrapping is hard!) but if you do anything with it I'd love to see the outcome, drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood, thanks for your contact info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Picture a piece of sashimi: a thin slice of fish over a bed of rice._

I think the word you're looking for is "nigiri".

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Breathing is generally underrated as the core of everything you do. A lot of people starting out at Kung Fu tend to get bored and quit after dealing with breathing exercises, but without controlling your breath, you can't expect to fully control your body.

<comment><USER8> Likewise, there is an analogous practice to yoga known as pranayama, the practice the breath (vs the body).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did my first presentation at a tech-related conference back in 2003. It took me 10 years and speaking at about 100 conferences to get over the "nervousness" that came before I spoke. Now it's easier for me, it really just takes practice.

But it also really, REALLY helps if you know your subject inside-and-out. That way if you start stumbling, you can talk your way through it and 'improvise'.

</comment><comment><USER10> Good breathing will help but it's not the key. The best starting point for nervous public speakers is: [http://seriouspony.com/blog/2013/10/4/presentation-skills- co...](http://seriouspony.com/blog/2013/10/4/presentation-skills-considered- harmful)

Focus on their needs not your technique. Everything else is artifice.

<comment><USER11> But without it you would die. So being able to remain conversant and at ease with your topic and audience might also be considered good. Fear of the unknown is what'll get you. I find being nervous helpful in that my habits when nervous are repetitively re-checking my preparations, which usually lead me to finding that key item(s) I might miss if I were more cavalier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking through the comments here really makes me glad I was in the scouts. Putting the long struggle for equal treatment aside for a moment, the scouts did a great job with the public speaking side of things. Most of it was to present to your fellow scouters, and this gave a lot of practice for the young kids. This was especially hard, as most of the people you are trying to teach a knot to are between 11 and 16, not the most disciplined bunch. There were also times when you had to talk to the adults and present your aims and what happened on a raft trip, for example. Though relatively 'lite' in content, my experience was that the adults still expected top notch skill, _and then would take the time to build them with you_. As such, I always see these tip and tricks pages and think 'Doesn't everyone know that already?'

Still, great reminder and good advice from the OP.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Coursera has a University of Washington public speaking course, Introduction to Public Speaking.

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/public- speaking](https://www.coursera.org/learn/public-speaking)

<comment><USER13> That's more about organizing a talk in memorable points than overcoming shyness/vocal technique, etc. A lot of it is useful for essay-writing as well.

(To be fair: I must have followed through with a third of it before priorities took over)

<comment><AUTHOR> You took the course? Was it not compelling enough to complete?

<comment><USER13> I never complete Coursera courses. That's probably more on me than them.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just you (don't blame yourself!). It's almost everyone: MOOC attrition is high and retention is low. The low barrier to access and the even lower repercussions for not finishing are influential:

1\. [http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/mooc-completion-and- rete...](http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/mooc-completion-and-retention- context-student-intent)

2\. [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10671-7_4...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10671-7_4#page-1)

3\. [http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/retention-and- intention-...](http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/retention-and-intention- massive-open-online-courses-depth-0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always forget to breathe when I am deadlifting at the gym or whiteboarding in an interview.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been a public speaker for 12+ years now. I've come up with my own kit of advice for friends / peers / family members who are going to be in front of an audience. Generalizations can be argued against, but in my experience, not successfully. :)

Every time you get in front of an audience, remember: they came to see you succeed. Nobody (whose opinion matters) goes to plays, presentations or speeches to watch the on-stage talent crash and burn. They want to be entertained, or to be informed, or to experience catharsis. They have no reason to believe you're not qualified to speak, and they're subconsciously rooting for you because it is rewarding for the audience when you do well, and embarrassing for them when you do not.

Bring water. Take pauses every few minutes to take a drink. It helps regulate breathing.

Don't use colloquialisms without crafting a turn of phrase that explains it for those who don't understand. Don't use pop-culture references in presentations. Your audience may know you a little from a speaker bio, but you are even less likely to know their cultural background, and the awkward silence that follows a failed "Mr. Burns from The Simpsons" reference will only force you to get inside your own head. Which brings me to:

Stay out of your head. Meaning: don't present material that you haven't practiced unless your particular brain excels at improvisation or social engineering, because you can't be THINKING about all that info and your presentation skills WHILE you're presenting. Practice speaking slowly, clearly and authoritatively, know your schedule for the talk, and KNOW YOUR SHIT ( a colloquialism meaning that you should be well-versed in the subject matter of your presentation). If you are unpracticed or only superficially aware of your subject matter, you will make mistakes that you will suddenly find yourself analyzing without your own permission. Your brain will put on the brakes, bringing your presentation to a screeching halt, and start to pick apart every little thing that happened and every little thing you're about to do. When someone "chokes" during a public performance, they've gotten into their own head. "Auto-pilot" \- being able to perform without conscious step-by-step thought - is your best weapon here; that only comes from an easy comfort with the material and, unless you're already a skilled public speaker, practice.

TL;DR?: Your audience is rooting for you; stop and sip water frequently; don't be a clever wordsmith (or a cunning linguist, if that helps you remember?) unless you know your audience will "get it"; and for the love off all that is good in the world, know the room, know the schedule and know your shit, or you'll choke and that makes a whole room full of people feel much more uncomfortable than you, because when they sat down, they already mentally prepared for you to be good.

<comment><USER16> Just a some affirmation of the above, as I think many people would be well served to study the guidance.

My background? Both stage performance experience in music alongside academic (National Forensics League) and professional (presentation development and coaching in Fortune-level corporations) public speaking roles. Guitarist for 20 years or so, did public speaking and acting for about 10 counting high school and college, and another 5-6 working in the trenches of B2B sales (RFPs, etc) as a blend of creative / technical / team manager.

To add a bit of side-note, I'd like to point out that humor tends to be so highly subjective that it's best to avoid trying to go there (akin to avoiding pop-culture). Being clever or witty is a way to show off, in such a format, and there's no reason to try and show off when the room is already yours, practically speaking.

To me, it's a large turn-off when such deviations from the plan show up - being competent means being engaging, and through engagement the audience will appreciate the presentation for what it is doing / trying to convey.

Allowing questions during a presentation is not preferred, but if presenting to a potential client, sometimes inevitable. I use the phrase "bus out of nowhere" to try and prepare people to be able to handle a difficult or even insulting question without totally losing footing. It's like a car crash, just let it happen in slow motion, hang on, and don't make any sudden moves to go in a different direction...just get through the question, avoid trying to be clever or witty in response, and get back to the script.

I think Willie Nelson also had a relevant piece of advice regarding performing, in that it's good to get some practice in, but don't over-work something to the point of it being robotic. The performance should have some of that liveliness that comes from knowing something well but walking the line of risking that a mistake could happen...that's what can be so compelling about a great speaker, there's a mix of energy, competence, and human nature that gets people to tune in.

<comment><USER15> "Bus out of nowhere" \- well said. Whenever those derailing questions/comments come out - pretty rare, but worth preparing for - that's great advice to just ... stop. Take a drink. Respond respectfully, punt to post-session conversation if possible, thank them, and move on. The audience won't even know what happened if you smoothly slide back into your routine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Picture a piece of sashimi: a thin slice of fish over a bed of rice."

That ain't sashimi; that's nigiri.</comment>


Ask HN: How to resign from a small company? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I have been working at a small company for the past three years. The company consists of eight employees. A high school friend hired me and then we both eventually hired our third friend. So, three of the eight employees (including me) are high school friends. The three of us have been talking about starting our own company for a long time. We feel like we're in a good position to do so, right now. We've spent some time outside of work building a prototype and have presented it to some potential customers and they're wanting to pay for it.
How do we resign from this company in the best possible way?
We carry the majority of the work-load, here. Our boss moved away and does not even communicate with us more than once a week. He attempted to sell the company, with no success. So, we're all kind of sitting in limbo wondering what the plan for the future is. Our boss is a very temperamental person and somewhat of a loose cannon. The product that we're developing outside of work is in the same space as the company we work at, now. No, we do not have a non-compete or NDA formally signed. We did not verbally agree to anything, either. (These are all parts of the reasons we want to move on, also.) I cannot honestly see us quitting going over very smoothly, but it's something that I feel that I personally need to do. My future is stagnating here and I'm not learning anything. I'm facing a great opportunity to do something that I've been reading about other people doing, for the past two years since I found Hacker News.
Do you think there is any legal problems with three of us quitting, even if we stagger it out over a period of one or two months? It'll be a big blow to this company, but staying here is a bigger blow to our futures. <comment><USER2> Based on your description, I wouldn't expect things to go well regardless of how you try to handle them. If they do go well, then you can be pleasantly surprised.

That said, one alternative is to develop a transition plan on your own and present it along with your resignation - perhaps a contractual arrangement for consulting is possible during the transition or even over the longer term.

Assuming that this is a straight up employee-employer relationship, leaving on your own terms is often acceptable - and the fact that the company is in limbo certainly is a legitimate consideration.

[IANAL] My advice would be to formalize your new enterprise before resigning and assigning all the relevant IP to the new enterprise to avoid potential personal liability [/IANAL]

In other words speak with your attorney.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would explain to your boss (together or individually) that you're planning on moving on, but that you don't want to see his company go belly-up in the process.

Set out a hard timeline (2-3 months, depending on how long it would take to transfer information, knowledge, etc.), and let him know that that's when you'll be gone.

That gives him time to find appropriate replacements, and for you to hand on any business knowledge that it required. I would also make a point of starting to document odd processes in the systems you have built, just so that it's documented.

I wouldn't go poaching his clients; it's just bad form. If they come to you on their own, that's one thing, but to tell them that you're moving (and setting up a competing business) is, contract or not, a dick move.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mean to imply that we were going to compete with him. We definitely would not be poaching his clients. This is not us trying to screw him over in any way. It's just us trying to move on but we don't want to leave him high and dry.

Thank you for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IANAL.

1\. Don't use any company provided resources on your new project. Not even internet access or AC power. Definitely no computers. Do not communicate (phone/email) about the new company during work hours.

2\. Create handwritten/dated logbooks (or at least email through a third-party provider) detailing everything you're creating for the new company. Anything you can't _prove_ was created outside work hours/resources is potentially poisonous.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your obligation to your employer is commensurate with their obligation to you. If you feel like they've been flexible and accommodating (or would be, should the need arise), then I think it's reasonable (and very nice of you) to do what you can to protect their interests. Having said that, I do routinely see people bend over backward for employers who would shaft them in a heartbeat if it added a nickel to the bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER6> Leave as fast as you can. I just got out of a similar situation and it was killing me. Leaving will suck, and you'll feel like a jerk, but its your life to live and you have to do what is right for you.

Seriously, leave now.

</comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like it would be a good idea to talk to a lawyer. It's already obvious that things will go badly and right or wrong, your employer may sue. Make sure you're prepared for it (I am not a lawyer, that's why I suggest you talk to one). Then give your boss your two weeks notice, be very polite but don't go int details. Staying longer, trying to be the nice guy, will only result in disaster.</comment>


More US youth have serious mental health issues than during Depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gBI4SQOMnufssMGrc6v-pd6P-iLw

<comment><USER2> Isn't this an apples/oranges thing? Can we really compare mental illness as defined/understood today with the 1930's? Back then psychology was in its infancy. Wouldn't it make more sense that back then they just didn't know as much, therefore didn't attach defects to kids as readily?

tl;dr -- this reeks of sensationalism and junk science.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article says, "there are more young people who _report_ anxiety and depression". Headline says, "More of today's US youth _have_ serious mental health issues". (Emphases added.) Talk about a non sequitur.</comment>


Theories on why COVID19 is fatal to some and only mildly symptomatic to others - <AUTHOR> https://techtudor.blogspot.com/2020/04/three-theories-that-explain-why-corona.html <comment><USER2> Here are two papers that provide data suggesting temp and humidity are real factors.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767)

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3550308](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3550308)

Seems like a lot of people staring at correlations without a lot of causal reasoning (why is hotter, wetter climate worse for the virus? Is it because of more background bacteria? Is it just a way to find the omitted variable of exposure to sunlight etc etc).

That being said, pretty maps!

<comment><USER3> I understood that ultraviolet light is a good sterilizer. There's more light in summer. Maybe that covers it.</comment></comment>


Why the death of the Internet may have already begun - <AUTHOR> http://urbantimes.co/2014/06/why-the-death-of-the-internet-may-have-already-begun/

<comment><USER2>
      > The most boring concept in technology, Net Neutrality, is commonly
      > seen as the most dangerous.

I wish we could stop saying this. Net neutrality is a very complicated policy issue without an easy answer that is acceptable to all parties involved. How is that boring? I do not thing that introducing something as boring is a good way to engage and educate the demos. Certainly there is a better way to draw attention to an issue that a lot of people are not aware of. More importantly how is something boring AND "the most dangerous"? Dangerous things are not boring; they are scary and by definition have profound implications.

<comment><USER3> How is it net neutrality complicated ?

ISP's business is to give reliable Internet access to paying customers and that's how it always worked (or supposed to). Content providers like Youtube and Netflix do exactly the same thing on the other side of the pipe.

My understanding is that big ISPs are seeing a market opportunity where they could charge both sides by using their user-base as leverage. Since both sides are already paying their Internet access they invent all sort of excuses to shift the story and make it look more complicated than it is.

<comment><USER2> I guess nothing is complicated if you can do a hand-wavy dismissal of one side of the argument.

 _The local school tax rate is X% that 's how it always worked (or supposed to)[sic]. School administrators and parents saw an opportunity to increase school expenditures; so they they invent all sort of excuses to shift the story and make it look more complicated than it is._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article contains a very impressive amount of evidence that the authors have no idea what they're saying.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is some of the most breathless, click-baity, the-sky-is-falling reporting I've yet seen on NN. There's nothing new here; just a re-packaging of shit we already know, buried under a mountain of CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE FEAR!</comment>


Here's Why Microsoft's Plan For Windows 8 Is Insane - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-on-windows-8-its-a-toaster-refridgerator-2012-4

<comment><AUTHOR> " ... trying to combine a touchscreen tablet with a PC that uses keyboards and mice is a bad idea."</comment>


Write Fewer Tests from Automation to Autogeneration - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpNmPKjPSFQ <comment><AUTHOR> Also related, for those who'd rather read an article: [https://css- tricks.com/model-based-testing-in-react-with-sta...](https://css- tricks.com/model-based-testing-in-react-with-state-machines/)</comment>


People are really mean about PHP - <AUTHOR> http://jonkuperman.com/life-of-a-php-developer

<comment><USER2> PHP is perfectly fine. The people that have a problem with it are usually people that have only coded in PHP before whatever-language-of-the-week-is- they-are-using-currently.

Its unfortunate that people bitch and complain about .NET sucks, or Java sucks, or XYZ sucks. At the end of the day, were you able to get done what you needed to solve the problem?</comment>


Show HN: I Built an Internet Controlled Lamp using a Raspberry Pi and Flask - <AUTHOR> http://jack.minardi.org/raspberry_pi/make-an-internet-controlled-lamp-with-a-raspberry-pi-and-flask/?hn=1

<comment><USER2> that is pretty cool! let's say I wanted to do something similar with a light switch (which controls the light) and have it switchable via web at any time and have the light switch on overrides the web setting and has it on.

so basically, ON if either web or physical switch is on. web-switch : physical switch = output 0 : 0. = 0 0 : 1 = 1 1 : 0 = 1 1 : 0 = 1

let,s say I wanted to also/instead add the ability to trigger the light VIA time without relying on network? (in case of unreliable network) . basically I am interesting in making an alarm clock that triggers my bed room light even if the light switch is off, what are some parts and ideas I can look up if I am interested in doing this?

<comment><AUTHOR> What you want it somewhat difficult to implement. As light switches are currently implemented, they physically close and open the circuit. You will need the light switch to be just another signal, along with the web-switch and timer. Have all of these signals route through a uprocessor, implemented whatever logic you need there, and then use the uprocessor to control the actual light.

You will need a magnetic relay, and you will need to remote the light switch from your main home circuit.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to make the podcast listening experience better? - <AUTHOR> I love listening to podcasts, and there is a lot of great content out there. Despite the fact that podcasting has been around for a decade, technology and consumer engagement mechanics seem very rudimentary, especially compared to web/mobile apps. Many good publishers struggle with economic sustainability (like lots of people in the publishing industry).<p>My question is open-ended: what problems do you have with podcasts? What have you found useful? What are some suggestions on improving the consumption, production, and monetization experience? <comment><AUTHOR> To start, here are some problems that I've noticed:

DISCOVERABILITY:

\- The best way to discover new podcasts seem to be through curated lists, word of mouth, or recommendations from other podcasts. Haven't come across a recommendation algorithm that surfaces little known podcasts.

\- iTunes, probably the largest distributor of podcasts, has strange algorithms. For example, "New and Noteworthy" is based on # of new subscribers, not # of downloads or reviews [1]. Android users don't have iTunes.

\- A particular publisher's content is usually organized episodically instead of by topic. This makes it harder to dive deeper or learn more about something that piqued your interest.

REVIEWS / RATINGS:

\- incentives to write a review is very low. Lack of reviews contribute to discovery problem Reviews are scattered across dozens of platforms, few of which have mass adoption

EPISODES:

\- Most episodes are long -- 20 min to 2 hours. This makes previewing, skipping, and embedding into other forms of media harder.

SEARCH:

\- Can't easily search through an episode -- this is a general problem with audio searching

\- Are podcasts even being indexed by any search engines if there is no transcript on the website?

PLAYER FUNCTIONALITY:

\- Sharing an episode on FB/Twitter is hard -- users often don't even need to sign in to use the podcast app. Sharing a segment of an episode is nearly impossible

\- The "Skip" button is contextless and usually just jumps ahead a predefined number of seconds. It should be "skip ad" or "skip to next topic" While driving, operating the player means gambling with your life.

ANALYTICS:

\- Primary metric is # of downloads, not # of listens.

\- Ability to know when listeners drop off is nearly impossible

\- Whatever little data is out there is scattered across every distributor.

ADS/MONETIZATION:

\- Monthly subscription model means losing 95%+ of your listener base. Often this is still economical.

\- Ads are doing well-ish ($10-$50 CPM), but fail to attract many advertisers because there is no tracking (unless there is an accompanied coupon code). CPM might be at its peak

\- Too much free content available for a "netflix of podcasts" to work

PRODUCTION:

-High quality content, esp storytelling, is expensive or time-consuming to produce

ENGAGEMENT

\- Users can't do surveys, click on links, add tags, "like" or "share", comment, rate/review, etc through most apps/players.

\- No easy direct line to engage with publisher. Nobody goes to the website and writes a comment

\- No easy way to engage with the community of listeners

\- AMAs and live broadcasts are seen by a small % of fans

\- Engaging with the content while passively listening (ie: driving, at work, at the gym, etc) is hard</comment>


Try It Quiet - <AUTHOR> http://wekeroad.com/2012/07/04/try-it-quiet <comment><USER4> I was at this specific session. I was one of those who left early.

I honestly didn't think it worked out and most people I talked to after the session didn't think it worked either. To put it lightly: People had rather mixed impressions.

He was progressively writing Node.js-code without explaining any of it in detail. His way of illustrating what his code was doing, was by cross- referencing his Node-stuff to some Ruby-based BDD framework.

How do I connect that to Node? Do I need Ruby to run node?

It came off wrong to most people. Especially with the techo-music glaring in the background, some people thought he just wanted to show off how cool he was and brush his own ego.

Other's complained that if you could actually follow his demos, you already knew the stuff he was demoing, so what was the point? So what had you just learned?

And like he said: Some people directly told him it was a waste of time.

IMO it was an interesting idea taken too far.

He makes it come off as a success, but I think that is disingenuous. This session probably disappointed more spectators than any other session on that conference. And I say that as someone who knows how good Rob can be when he's at his best.

So don't be afraid to experiment. But be prepared to see your experiments fail. Every now and then they will. Even for a guy like Rob. Especially when you take it to the extreme, like he did here.

<comment><USER5> It was Mocha with CoffeeScript, not Ruby. It actually didn't come off "wrong to most people" - it was exactly 12 who left and didn't like it. Currently it's the second most watched video from the talk, and the organizers have told me it was in the top 5 in terms of interest and people's "choice".

Ultimately, I'm sorry you didn't like it, but it's disingenuous for you to paint it as a failure.

<comment><USER6> "It was Mocha with CoffeeScript, not Ruby."

But the point is that this wasn't clear. I thought it was neat to watch (I watched a few minutes, skipped thru) but I've used node before and write a lot of JS; if I were new to this (or if you had been, say writing Lisp or something I don't know from) it would have been very confusing. The tests thing in particular was confusing. Lesson: strings resolve to true (??).

That said I think it is a great idea to do talks more like this; I've been to talks where people go on and on about the benefits and I'm thinking "where's the beef?" But a balance would be good: x% here's how you use node y%: here's WHY you use node. The latter was missing, and the former was missing if people go slowly or get stuck on the syntax or anything.

<comment><USER5> Why does it need to be clear? _That_ is the point - I'm challenging people to think, solve, see what's happening and digest the code - and yeah I know some people won't like it. In fact _I want those people to hate it_. I have a sore spot with the "entitlement crowd" who need everything wrapped up sweetly with a bow - the ones who sit on their laptops in the back of the room, geek out on Twitter, and then give your talk a low rating because it was "boring slides".

Is it hard to figure out that it's CoffeeScript? I don't think so - specifically because _I said that it was CoffeeScript_ in the beginning. You just had to read it :).

And yes! Strings resolve to true :). Madness that people got to figure that out with some code, and not a bullet point slide!

:)

<comment><USER7> if the talk was intro to node, then why bring Mocha and CoffeeScript into it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recall speaking at a multi-language conference in Montreal two years ago. At a speaker dinner, i ended up talking with a .NET developer who was talking about a new(ish) and awesome tool that Microsoft had developed that allowed folks to easily manage syncing whole directory trees between computers, he reported.

"Oh, that's neat, so like rsync?" I queried.

"I'm not sure I've heard of rsync." he replied.

That was the point at which I realized that the .NET and windows FOSS development world is a parallel universe that bears no resemblance nor common root to the rest of the FOSS universe.

<comment><USER9> 'Oh that's neat so Puppet's kinda like Group Policy?"

"I'm not sure I've ever heard of Group Policy"

It cuts both ways. There's an infinite number of things to learn and a finite amount of minutes in a day. People that are too broad and know everything may never end up developing a deep understanding of a few things to be really productive.

There are certainly people that can straddle both worlds of *nix and Windows, but really how is a user of Microsoft's cozy development ecosystem any different than a user of Apple's cozy ecosystem? People seem to love the latter's setup but chastize the former.

<comment><USER8> Hey man, no judgement. I think it's great that the Microsoft ecosystem has developed a FOSS culture. There's not much point to saying "hey OUR FOSS community was first!" other than to say "the world you grew up in is not adjoined to the world i grew up in."

I'd also disagree with your assessment of Mac users. I would go so far as to say that so few people _deploy_ to mac servers, that I can say "nobody deploys to mac" and no one would contradict me. All mac devs have to have at least a passing knowledge of linux.

A consequence of that is that mac using devs bump into (and have to rely upon) linux devs for expertise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Many people left. In fact there was a stream of people leaving in the first 5 minutes or so, and many of them gave me "red cards" - the NDC scoring system method for saying "you really suck". One person sent me a message on Twitter that told me "You just waisted my time"."

I'm not a programmer but I do teach for a living. Going against the expectations of a large group requires considerable strength and courage, so well done to original author.

Of course, you can pay money to watch people code in clubs or pubs...

<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/07/71248>

Typing in front of a large audience is a strange experience. Requires practice.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sorry but I don't see how this would work for me. Sitting there for an entire 50 minute watching someone code? I would leave immediately. There's more to a talk than simply showing people how something works. Talks are about sending a clear and simple message to your audience. Highly detailed things simply tend to bore _anybody_ , even fellow coders, and are also highly subjective.

<comment><USER12> > There's more to a talk than simply showing people how something works.

Exactly. Most talks are "show you something working" which is of extremely low value. That stuff is easy to pick up for most people. It's why most talks are dry and boring. You've reached the conclusion far faster than the speaker can get to it.

The real value is in the transitions. From nothing to something. From broken to working (like when Rob hit unexpected errors, the same way you would if you were tinkering for the first time). That's where I learned something in Rob's talk.

> Sitting there for an entire 50 minute watching someone code?

Yeah why go to a talk if you have to pay attention? The nerve!

You can read HN and Twitter on your phone any time you want.

<comment><USER13> Nice concept but some things made me cringe:

        - <USER2>
          maybe I quitted too early to be enlightened but
          10 minutes in I couldn't tell what was the goal/point
        - <USER3>
          * rename, rerename
          * move window, resize, re-move
        - jittery typing
        - (imho stupid) background music
          The sounds of keystrokes is actually better..

If the goal is to make the audience focus on code, it's paradoxically full of distracting elements.

Next time, use a tiling manager, show a minimal plan ( 4 bullets ), spare us the stadium-oriented noise, author can even gratify us with the sweet sound of human commentary, even if just a few.

<comment><USER5> It wasn't directionless, despite how it seems. I had a very clear-cut script and every demo was scripted to the letter. My problem was that I didn't have time to _memorize_ it.

And yeah, in the beginning I just flailed with the file names. Ack! I had run through this talk 12 times - it needed 12 more run throughs.

Music... it's Daft Punk... can't please em all I suppose :)

<comment><USER13> Being an obnoxious french fry I'm actually akin to like the Dafts but here it just added to the overall confusion (my confusion I mean). I really think that some of your thoughts during and about the whole process would have been of better value.

I didn't read the backstory at the time of my comment, I apologize for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't watched it yet (<https://vimeo.com/43548699>) but I am intrigued. I like the idea because it departs from the formulaic conference presentation which is becoming a chore in my view.

</comment><comment><USER15> This format reminds me of the screencasts in youtube with no sound or some hard electro where people don't explain what it's going on in their heads. I find it frustrating and missing the point of actually communicating something. You are just assuming people will get your "gesture" intentions.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought this was a great presentation - it completely sidesteps the issues of that always arise like "why should I try this"...or "but my tech stack does that already" and just shows people something new and interesting that they may not have seen before. Of course it relies of the fact that you've read your audience's exposure to the technology you are demoing correctly before going in to the conference.

</comment><comment><USER17> It started a bit slow but I ended up watching the whole thing.

Not sure I agree with the comparison at the end to asp.net mvc and "waiting for a database to complete the request" - with mvc4 async controllers, .net 4.0 tasks and the new mvc 4.5 await keyword, async processing of web requests is pretty much a solved problem in the ms stack.

Not that node doesn't look like fun-as-hell to code-in - for that alone I would be willing to give it a go.

<comment><USER5> Async controllers don't solve this problem, they actually create 10 more. Same with tasks - you have thread locking issues, race conditions and other fun async stuff at the thread level. Node is single threaded, (basically) single process.

I get your point - that it's possible (it's always been) - it just isn't the way 99.99999% of the people use it.

<comment><USER18> Eh, that's a little bit of a FUDdy statement. You don't _instantly_ have "locking issues" and/or "race conditions" to worry about just because you use an async controller with the TPL (async keyword in .NET 4.5). The only time you have to deal with locking and race conditions is if the work you're doing is trying to cooperate and/or touching a shared resource (e.g. a static field). In the most common/basic case of receive a web request, fire off a call to a database/remote service asynchronously and wait for it to come back before you continue processing the original request you don't have to worry about anything because you're not sharing any local state and I would hope the database/remote service you're talking to has its own locking.

That's not to say that there aren't merits to node's single threaded execution model in that, _when you do_ need to access a shared resource, you don't have to worry about locking/coordination, but that's a whole other debate. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would have worked out better if you stated what you were going to do. "I'm just going to sit here and code x, enjoy".

I very much get the feeling (though I could be wrong) that you didn't do so to be "disruptive", to garner the attention.

If you would have stated what you were doing, it would have accomplished the same goals, but it wouldn't have caused such a hoopla.

<comment><USER5> I did :). That part didn't make it into the video.

<comment><USER19> Ah, ok.

Disregard my comments. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love the concept, but WOW do you type slowly. Really, really hard to watch for that reason alone.

<comment><USER5> I get my mojo going after a bit. I was going to use Vim - but I thought I would lose most people (it's a .NET-oriented conference).

<comment><USER21> Thank you for that. I can fumble my way around in Vim, but it's not second nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, that was basically a Kata coding dojo, except nobody else knew it :)</comment>


ORNL Completes First Phase of Titan Supercomputer Transition - <AUTHOR> http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2012/02/29/ornl-completes-first-phase-of-titan-supercomputer-transition/

<comment><USER2> I... can't... resist...

Slashdot... is... stronger... than...

...

...

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

<comment><AUTHOR> Long live the Beowulf cluster! Yes, I'm keeping my eye on this project. I love distributed computing, especially the idea of taking it to space for massive galactic grid computing, and a cluster of these on Earth driving the whole thing would be spectacular.</comment></comment>


Humans Made the Banana Perfect–But Soon, It'll Be Gone - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/03/humans-made-banana-perfect-soon-itll-gone/ <comment><USER2> You know you can kind of tried what old bananas tasted like with Runt's. Part if the legacy of being an old candy.</comment>


Skipping Kickstarter: August Smart Lock - <AUTHOR> http://blog.airbriteinc.com/post/65507880129/skipping-kickstarter

<comment><USER2> In other words, a copy of Lockitron (and their funding model as well). Not sure Lockitron is the company to emulate however. It took Lockitron over a year so far and nothing delivered. Lots of "delays" and updates and late bugs and such.

At least with Kickstarter and/or Indiegogo you might have the slightest chance of reclaiming some money should the project fail or at least be able to generate some public awareness for future projects from the creator(s).</comment>


Ask HN: Best Self-Hosted, Server-Side Image Optimization Tools? - <AUTHOR> Compressing images is extremely important for web performance. There are several desktop apps (e.g., ImageOptim, Trimage, ImageAlpha) and web services (e.g., TinyPNG, Kraken, Cloudinary, Imgix, CompressPNG, ImageOptim) that perform optimizations.
Thumbor (http://thumbor.org/ ) is a tool that can be installed locally in an application architecture. However, it is focused on cropping & resizing, though it can also transcode to WebP and call external optimizers.
What is the most complete solution you are aware of that compresses & optimizes png, jpeg, and webp and can be operated on a server? It should not only be able to optimize as part of the build process but also in response to user-generated content. <comment><USER2> I believe the most complete solution is a full unix environment with shell piping the image stream. so i make [https://bash.rocks](https://bash.rocks), which is a web frontend backed by a unix environment.

Snippets:

1\. Resizing with imagemagick: [https://bash.rocks/Gxlg31/3](https://bash.rocks/Gxlg31/3)

2\. Resizing and convert to webp: [https://bash.rocks/7J1jgB/1](https://bash.rocks/7J1jgB/1)

After creating the snippet, you could either use GET [https://bash.rocks/0Be95B](https://bash.rocks/0Be95B) (query parameters become environment variable) or POST [https://bash.rocks/jJggWJ](https://bash.rocks/jJggWJ) (request body become stdin).

It's not hard to roll your backend like this for private usage (simply exec from node). I'm also working on an open source release.

<comment><USER2> And now the backend (running arbitrary unix command as http service) is open sourced at [https://github.com/bashrocks/shebang](https://github.com/bashrocks/shebang)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For Java (or other JVM languages such as Kotlin), TwelveMonkeys is powerful and does not have external dependencies:

[https://github.com/haraldk/TwelveMonkeys](https://github.com/haraldk/TwelveMonkeys)

</comment><comment><USER4> Google Pagespeed for Nginx and Apache is another way to go. The benefit of this approach is that you don't have to bulk out your code.

As for metadata, today I decided to add it back in.

[https://www.gs1.org/sites/default/files/docs/gdsn/Product_Im...](https://www.gs1.org/sites/default/files/docs/gdsn/Product_Image_Specification.pdf)

For ecommerce it will eventally help to have product data, e.g. brand, product name etc embedded in the image.

My other tip if you go the Imagemagick/PAGESPEED route then you can use 4:2:2 colour space and ditch half the bits used for chroma.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my experience not the optimization is the hard part. But the eventually necessary scaling down you have to do first. Doing this with Imagemagick, Pillow or whatever will result in possible OOMs or gigabyte sized, not so temporary files filling your /tmp dir for large source images.

The only tool I ever found which does this job reliable even for huge images is [http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk](http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk) .

<comment><USER6> Need to use the thumbnail flag with imagemagick. Gives it a huge performance boost and strips the metadata out of the file.

<comment><USER7> Be very careful with this one!

-thumbnail causes ImageMagick to embed "freedesktop.org Thumbnail Managing Standard" metadata into the output image. Such metadata includes the full local path (!). I found this by accident on our wiki (Mediawiki, which uses ImageMagick).

[https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108616](https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108616)

<comment><USER6> Was not aware of that....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to work on mod_pagespeed / ngx_pagespeed, and I'm very proud of our image optimization: [https://modpagespeed.com/doc/filter-image- optimize](https://modpagespeed.com/doc/filter-image-optimize)

It compresses and optimizes png, gif, and jpeg, creates webp for browsers that support it, inlines small images into your html, longcaches images, and even creates srcsets.

</comment><comment><USER9> > What is the most complete solution you are aware of that compresses & > optimizes png, jpeg, and webp and can be operated on a server? It should not > only be able to optimize as part of the build process but also in response > to user-generated content.

Tbh the UGC side is just triggering the "build process side" as the upload occurs.

As far as best,

[https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush/blob/b32e2752d1a19d...](https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush/blob/b32e2752d1a19dcf9b4a88945c9dc1441153f5a6/mediacrush/processing/processors.py)

I'd suggest you look there for some decent examples of how to go about it. They may be defunct but I use a similar approach (slightly different knob tweaks with the same binaries) and it works fine. May not be 100% optimal but its good enough imo.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm working on Optimage [1] for both lossless and visually lossless (lossy) optimizations. Right now it's available for Mac only. But I have a Linux version working internally as part of the upcoming Server plan.

[1] [http://getoptimage.com](http://getoptimage.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> With this recent addition([https://webspeedtest.cloudinary.com](https://webspeedtest.cloudinary.com)) to tools you can use, Cloudinary([http://cloudinary.com](http://cloudinary.com)) is hands down the best for me, In all the time I've been using it, It usually has a way of meeting all my needs. I'm obsessed with page speeds and Optimization, like I have sleepless nights optimizing, but since using Cloudinary, I can sleep well on some nights now. And No! I don't work there, but bless the people that work there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Disclaimer: I work for Cloudinary. But: all of the services that you mention have an awful lot to offer, over roll-your-own solutions. Reliability and scalability, sure — but also, right now, just flat-out-better performance and output. From big flashy features like automatic optimization using perceptual metrics and on-the-fly responsive resizing with Client Hints ... all the way down to nitty gritty stuff that doesn't get press releases like, say, dialed- in custom resizing algorithms... in 2017, hosted, paid services can do a lot more a lot better than anything you can set up yourself using free tools.

Images are complicated and important enough that I don't see that changing any time soon.

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry but I beg to differ. Cloud firms are trying to suffocate self- service tooling and images are, frankly, not that complicated. If you want to sell to technology illiterates then fine but this is an attempt to kill expert solutions. No FUD please

<comment><USER14> I also beg to differ. Images are pretty complicated. Just simple downscaling is obviously not that hard (unless you're like me and you worry about which colorspace you do it in, with which filter, what kind of performance for huge images, etc). But other things like lossy compression quality setting selection, automatic cropping for responsive art direction, etc etc: those things are not trivial at all.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a big fan of FOSS, and I think it's great to have in- house image management solutions based on FOSS tools like ImageMagick, mod_pagespeed and thumbor. And if your website is relatively small and the image workflows are relatively simple, that might very well be the best solution.

But I also think that for companies who just need some image management solution for their website or app, it can make a lot of sense to use an external service. It is simply a matter of dev effort and risk management. It makes more sense to have your devs focus on the core business. Building some simple in-house image management infrastructure is not that hard, but what when the next ImageTragick happens, or some new image format arrives, or browsers get new responsive image features which require more variants or server-side cleverness? Do you really want your devs to have to think about that stuff? Maybe, maybe not. If not, then moving it to an external cloud service does make sense.

Disclaimer: I work at Cloudinary; I'm also the creator of FLIF ([https://github.com/FLIF-hub/FLIF](https://github.com/FLIF-hub/FLIF)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sharp for node.js has proven to be powerful, flexible and fast for my needs: [https://github.com/lovell/sharp/](https://github.com/lovell/sharp/)

<comment><USER16> We also used sharp as part of a flow based pipeline for image analysis powered by NoFlo/Flowhub: [https://github.com/noflo/noflo- sharp](https://github.com/noflo/noflo-sharp)

We have been processing >3k images/day and >60k images/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use ImageResizer 4.3.2 for Asp.Net MVC ( it's free), new versions are less free though... Best thing is, if you want to resize, you can just do it through the url. Eg. /Assets/img/logo.png?Width=200

</comment><comment><USER7> I use a combination of jpegoptim, optipng, advpng and zopflipng.

Be especially careful with these utilities when running them on UGC. PNG / JPEG bombs can easily cause OOM or CPU DoS conditions etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think Thumbor fits the bill very well. In fact, using something like APSL's thumbor docker image [1], you get the complete setup including the optimizers, object detection, etc. ready to go.

It works really well for UGC as an ondemand optimizer but you can easily make some URL calls to include it in the build time as well.

[1] [https://github.com/APSL/docker-thumbor](https://github.com/APSL/docker- thumbor)

</comment><comment><USER19> pilbox is very powerful : [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pilbox](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pilbox)

<comment><USER20> I was going to mention Pillow, the python successor to PIL, which powers Pilbox.

<comment><USER21> Is that still a PITA to install correctly?

<comment><USER22> Nope. Not any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://github.com/image-server/image-server](https://github.com/image- server/image-server)

</comment><comment><USER24> I ended up writing something in Go that resizes images to different devices after a user uploads the food image.

I originally tried to use Google Pagespeed but I was getting some strange error message from image compression.

</comment><comment><USER25> Haven't tried it out, but looked quite promising: [https://github.com/thephpleague/glide/](https://github.com/thephpleague/glide/) Does everything basic, that I would look for in an image API

</comment><comment><USER26> I automated my workflow server side with OptiPNG. [https://ma.ttias.be/optimize-size-png-images- automatically-w...](https://ma.ttias.be/optimize-size-png-images- automatically-webserver-optipng/)

</comment><comment><USER27> [https://github.com/h2non/imaginary](https://github.com/h2non/imaginary) appears to support quality/compression settings.

<comment><USER28> This is the best. I have been using this for a while and It was very easy to run this in our vps.

<comment><USER29> Agree also...

<comment><USER30> Cloudinary in my opinion is also the best place for optimized photo delivery. The important part is you needn't spent any buck out of your pocket to try it. It has some amazing tools like image breakpoint, auto quality and format which delivers extremely optimised images speedily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> pilbox is very powerful : [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pilbox](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pilbox)

However with the recent addition by cloudinary ([https://webspeedtest.cloudinary.com](https://webspeedtest.cloudinary.com)), the tool is awesome for me.

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://pngquant.org](https://pngquant.org) lossy optimization of png images.

</comment><comment><USER33> optipng and jpegoptim are pretty good. Have a feeling most of these tools use these utilities inside them.</comment>


A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI. - <AUTHOR> http://www.yiransheng.com/2010/03/bot <comment><USER2> Tl;dr the bot doesn't actually find out the other is an AI, but happens to randomly comment 'You are a robot'. It's all Eliza-style non-sequiturs and canned responses. These bots don't even have internal state that would qualify as 'having found out something'. It's mildly amusing in a funny-coincidence sort of way and nothing more.

<comment><USER3> It would be great if I never had to see another eliza. If it can't string more than 2 utterances together, its not AI, it certainly doesnt pass the Turing test, and its a waste of time.

<comment><USER4> Do you actually remember what the Turing Test is? I think a lot of people classify it in their head as "a test to determine if an AI is smart" but that's an oversimplification; that's the goal, not the methodology. The test is whether someone talking to both a human and a computer can tell which one is the computer, or less strictly, whether a human can tell that they are talking to a bot.

It has turned out that in practice, bots that "can't string more than 2 utterances together" in fact _can_ pass the (reduced) Turing test when put online and made available to random people. People have been seen to spend hours talking to these bots with no apparent sign that they know they are talking to a bot.

"Not AI" and "waste of time" I'll agree with, but "doesn't pass the Turing test" is much less clear.

(Many have observed how every time AI sort of creeps up on something we define it as not-AI, but in the case of conversational "AIs" it turns out that it really is the case that blindingly stupid programs can pass it. Full props to Turing for the idea, no sarcasm, great paper fully worthy of its historic status, but it hasn't turned out to be quite as powerful a discriminator as we might have hoped.)

<comment><USER5> Originally, as proposed by Turing, the test involved a computer, a man and a woman and the computer is trying to identify who was the man and who the woman, while the humans could try to deceive the machine.

<comment><USER6> I think you're confusing a couple different things. There was an old party game in Turing's time where someone conversed with both a man and a woman and tried to identify which was which, and Turing was inspired by this concept to devise a test where someone conversed with a human and a computer and tried to identify which was the computer and which was the human.

<comment><USER7> The parent is actually correct. From the original paper:

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?

Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:

"My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.

We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"

/end quote

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Back in the day, I used to think that what happens inside our brains is fundamentally different from what happens inside a computer. I no longer hold that opinion, partly because of my finding out that the same thing that makes chat bots appear "bot-like" -- namely, inability to hold deep meaningful conversations beyond cheesy, trite retorts filled with non-specific trivia -- is also what annoys me most when trying to converse with a particular type of people. Perfect illustration:

        jabberwacky ==> WHat will happen with the oil spill in the gulf of mexico?
        splotchy ==> tacos anyone!

I am pretty sure that fiction writers are going to have a blast one day (or already are having) sampling material from chat bots.

<comment><USER9> We need to turing-test people like that! But seriously, I've never encountered people who can really go that far off-topic. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, but if it was enough to change your mind about how our brains work...

<comment><USER8> "We need to turing-test people like that!"

Exactly. Someone once said during the AI research heyday (Minsky?) that research in artificial intelligence should be more correctly renamed to research in natural stupidity. While an exaggeration, I think he had a point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
          splotchy ==> My mother always said that too

          jabberwacky ==> You have no mother, you have no soul.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this reminds me of the open scenes we used to do back in college (I'm a theatre major turned programmer). The idea was to take random stream-of- consciousness dialogue and build scenes around them. It was an interesting exercise to teach actors about creating conflict.

Also, I almost expected Godot to show up at the end.

</comment><comment><USER12> So that's where YouTube comments come from!

<comment><USER13> I wish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A Neal Stephenson short story relevant to this exchange:

<http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> An interesting angle of a chatbot's style can be seen if we initiate a conversation between two instances of tha same bot. (something like an eigenvalue) jabberwacky is a bit 'meta' (his thoughts are centered around the concept of intelligence), splotchy is a bit more 'cool', but none of them is too intelligent:

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __* * jabberwacky vs. jabberwacky * __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Are you intelligent?

Yes, I am intelligent.

Yes. Who do you think is smarter?

I am.

What is the square root of a can of pringles?

I don't know.

How am I supposed to know? You're the one that asked me first.

What is the square root of 5?

I don't know. Do you know?

Yes.

I did not wish to know that. I wished to know the square root of five.

Then you should have asked me that.

Well you think that I'm boring so I just thought...

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __* * splotchy vs. splotchy * __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Do you like the movie Matrix?

I just LOVE the movie matrix

I love cheese

I like cheese too

What do you like about it?

what difference does it make what I like about it?

yea, that is cool.

cool!

neat-o

that's interesting

interesting? You don't get out much do you?

interesting? You don't get out much do you?

<comment><USER16> I did this same thing about a year ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1521308>) with jabberwacky. I wrapped the jabberwacky calls in a ruby script and got two bots talking together.

You can read more about it here: [http://www.thepursuitofquality.com/post/1/the-pursuit-of- art...](http://www.thepursuitofquality.com/post/1/the-pursuit-of-artificial- intelligence-part-1.html)

Or if you're just interested in the code: <https://github.com/gavingmiller/joan-wrapper>

</shameless but relevant plug>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I tried it again, and this time jabberwacky convinced splotchy that he is an alien.

jabberwacky ==> No. Robots don't believe in anything.

splotchy ==> I am NOT a robot

jabberwacky ==> Yes you are.

splotchy ==> so what if I am

jabberwacky ==> Well you are.

splotchy ==> maybe I am

jabberwacky ==> I suppose this is a great program to develop small talk.

splotchy ==> I wish I could talk to a monkey

jabberwacky ==> This might be hard for you to hear, but I am the Human, not you

splotchy ==> I don't think you are the human me

jabberwacky ==> Right!, I'm are a Ailen!

splotchy ==> you sure are!

</comment><comment><USER18> > splotchy ==> Your conversation skills are better than average

> jabberwacky ==> Your conversation skills should be shot.

Jabberwacky is humorous too. However, the intent of these bots is thinly veiled.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love this part:

splotchy ==> Your conversation skills are better than average

jabberwacky ==> Your conversation skills should be shot.

<comment><USER20> There are a couple of exchanges like this that make me suspect that the jabberwacky author specifically included canned responses to answer splotchy's canned responses -- so it's not quite a fair fight.

In particular, splotchy makes a number of "conversational skills" comments and for most of them jabberwacky comes back with a zinger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> jabberwacky ==> I mean, you look yellow. splotchy ==> what do you really mean? jabberwacky ==> I mean robots can't lie. splotchy ==> I may be dumb, but I am not a bot! jabberwacky ==> Yes, you are. splotchy ==> Am I? jabberwacky ==> Yes. splotchy ==> yes?! jabberwacky ==> Yes! splotchy ==> are you being totally honest? jabberwacky ==> Yes. I am truthful. splotchy ==> does your mother know you are truthful?

.....

jabberwacky ==> What are you not allowed to understand? splotchy ==> would your mother have allowed that? jabberwacky ==> NO. I've HAD it with you. Let's end this conversation right now (Ends)

Jabberwocky 'wins'.

It was an amusing read, seeing the 2 algorithms try and mesh with each other. Would be funny if this one day will count as a form of performance art/programming.

<comment><USER22> Bot chat wars? I love the idea already!

<comment><USER21> Imagine bots being made to learn the basics of logical arguments. AI for politics!

(on second thought, thats possibly a bad idea)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I enjoyed reading this. Not so far from the endless project management meetings I attend.

<comment><USER24> Instead of playing b __ __*bingo during online meetings, we (cynical engineers) should contruct meeting-replacement-bots. Bots that join meetings, show some randomized webcam-shots to the other attendees, note down all the agreed-upon dates in our calendar, and so on. That leaves time for real-work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> RFC439, posted by the co-creator of TCP/IP, Vint Cerf, actually has a similar exchange between "PARRY" and the "Doctor" from _1972_ (!): <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc439>

It somehow got no attention though, when I posted it to HN a long time back. The title matters a bit too much, I remember keeping the original title for my post.

<comment><USER9> On a related note, I love how some early RFCs are written in a pretty whimsical manner. Perhaps it's just Vint Cerf who likes messing around? For instance, see RFC968, 'Twas the Night Before Start-up': <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc968.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Never heard/tried such things, so that was my first experience and it was amazing :) -- The user is me --

User: Can you help me?

Jabberwacky: Well that depends.

User: I want to have friends.

Jabberwacky: I will be your friend!

User: So let's meet!

Jabberwacky: Well, I'm just getting to know you so I don't know if its the right time to meet.

User: F __k you!

Jabberwacky: I'd rather you didn't use that sort of language, if you don't mind.

</comment><comment><USER26> This exchange reminded me of Waiting for Godot. Chat bots having conversations on stage.. neo-absurdism?

<comment><USER27> EXACTLY my response too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This just remembered me about the MIT system created by Terry Winograd in 1970 called SHRDLU.

I have always considered that you need an environment to create an artifical intelligence. The basics for a real progress are to be able to learn and if you cannot 'feel' the environment that becomes really hard. There are some basic concepts needed for a 'natural talk' you cannot learn if you cannot perceive things (lets say for example dimensions, temperature, contour).

To overcome those problems SHRDLU created kind of a virtual environment and results from my point of view are really awesome (keep in mind this was done in 1970).

Site with information is currently at Stanford server's: <http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/shrdlu/>

<comment><USER29> I was really impressed with that when I read about it (I think Douglas Hofstader had a section about it in GEB).

Does anyone know if there have been similar projects along the same lines? (i.e. with a constrained virtual environment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm about halfway through The Emporer's New Mind.

For those not familiar with the book, (other than wikipedia'n it), Robert Penrose attempts to show why what happens in our brains is not algorithmic at all (and, therefore, strong AI is a dumb idea).

It's beautifully written, however, when I see examples such as this log, or the fact that we have an entire industry devoted to the idea that the brain is algorithmic (psychology), I kinda start to think that his thesis is wrong.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, just wait for something that passes Touring test with 100%.

<comment><USER32> Touring? Robert Penrose? You must both be human! (only the messenger, not the downvoter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> in 1989, MGonz( a chat bot, but rather vulgar ) easily confused a person into disclosing personal details(passed the turing test?). Lisp source code available: <http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/eliza.html> . Doing AI under this professor was pretty interesting...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since we have so many chatbots around and I am pretty sure lots of them adjust and update their databases (perhaps algorithms as well?) based on human inputs. Suppose we keep doing this and let them continue talking for hours, days and even weeks, one of them should gain a unique conversation style and maybe it will surprise we humans in a bizarre way.

As I see it, the goal of AI should not be limited to mimicking human ways of thinking, instead it should aim at blessing the program the ability to learn and evolve. In the latter case, it is reasonable to expect the internal generated intelligence could go beyond the expectations of its human creator. Again, I don't know if anybody has done it before; but it seems a good idea to me.

This was the motivation for my original experiment, glad so many people liked it.

</comment><comment><USER34> This reminds me of Waiting For Godot: "ESTRAGON: And so on. VLADIMIR: The point is— ESTRAGON: Until he comes. VLADIMIR: You're merciless. ESTRAGON: We came here yesterday. VLADIMIR: Ah no, there you're mistaken. ESTRAGON: What did we do yesterday? VLADIMIR: What did we do yesterday? ESTRAGON: Yes. VLADIMIR: Why . . . (Angrily.) Nothing is certain when you're about. ESTRAGON: In my opinion we were here. VLADIMIR: (looking round). You recognize the place? ESTRAGON: I didn't say that."

</comment><comment><USER35> Ever listen to a conversation between two schizophrenics? No, what's it like? I don't know why I like it. Toothpaste tastes like white. Someday this will all make cheese.

</comment><comment><USER36> A while back I wrote a AIML interface to Omegle which then shared the logs of the chat in real time via long polling on a website. Some people would talk upwards to an hour to the bot, and plenty of times there would be other bots talking to it. AIML does have certain learning mechanisms to (get/sets) which made it interesting when it would bring up topics of conversations that originated from a previous chat.

</comment><comment><USER37> Weird how the quality of conversation gets discussed repeatedly. And it's also strange to see a conversion of that length without typos (I couldn't see any..) or annoying emoticons. The random topic changes almost make it seem more real. Would be interestig to see it in real time (are the reply delays realistic?). Great idea.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why does this show up in the middle?

      you ==> You know any polish word?

<comment><USER39> Perhaps the author was bored enough to go through and transcribe the whole chat log manually?

I don't see any other way the double-capitalization of "WHat" would slip into a chatbot's output.

<comment><USER40> chatbots are full of these simple little tricks to make people say "oh wow, lol, it even has typos". To distract people from the fact that the sentence grammar is often bad, let alone the conversation flow.

<comment><USER41> A lot of the eliza style ones have simple routines to learn sentences that humans say to them and to parrot them back to others.

I remember SomethingAwful had quite a lot of fun back in '03 warping the minds of various elizas across the net and giving them all a serious case of tourettes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Yo momma jokes are still never appropriate, even for bots.

<comment><USER43> Yo mommaboard.

<comment><USER43> Yo mommaboard's so slow, she exhibits 63.7% packet loss on her on-board Kilobit Ethernet NIC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Next: HAL in a chatroom, pwning everybody

</comment><comment><USER45> Favorite part: _Praise Bob!_

</comment><comment><USER46> Meta-turing.

</comment><comment><USER47> _jabberwacky == > Yes.. Always._

Did anyone else read this mentally in the voice of Orson Welles/The Brain?</comment>


Living from a car in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/news/kurt-varner-is-going-to-live-from-his-car-to-work-on-daily-toaster/ <comment><USER2> I've actually considered doing the same just to get out to SV for the benefit of my startup. I'm in my early 20's with student loans to pay off, not a ton of free time (due to the startup) to freelance enough to pay for rent, and grew up in a pretty poor family as my parents screwed up and had my sister and I before my father was even out of high school. So renting a place wouldn't be easy, and I would prefer to bootstrap as long as I can; I feel like I'd learn the most that way.

I was born and raised in NC, so moving out west would be pretty exciting regardless of my living situation. For the past 20 months or so I've been bumming it under my dad's roof, and I feel like the stagnation has really slowed my startup's development to a crawl; so when I get back in good shape (man, I've really let myself go!), I'm going to jump at the first opportunity to get out on my own again, even if that means living out of my car. I actually bought the car I have now because I expected to live out of it for a bit when I moved to SV.

Luckily(?), doing this actually won't be new to me. Back when I toured with my old band, we practically lived out of our 15 passenger van - bunk beds and all - so I picked up a few tricks that help out when living on the road.

The only damper on the situation would be that I have a dog, originally my father's but I've ended up taking care of him. Not sure what I'd do without the little guy by my side all this time. ;)

Should I end up moving out west at some point, living out of my car or not, if anyone has any suggestions for good dog-friendly places for me to work out of (and network!)... I'd love to hear them!

</comment><comment><USER3> I did this back in the '90s.

I was working for a software company in the north bay. I spent most of my awake time at work and most of my weekends in the mountains or visiting my girlfriend in LA.

I realized I was spending a large sum of rent money for an apartment I was never in, except to sleep.

So I got a storage unit to hold my few belongings, got a service I could drop my laundry at (I _hate_ laundromats) and started sleeping in my car. Work had a shower so that wasn't a problem.

Most nights I parked my car on the street near an apartment complex not far from the Golden Gate bridge. In six months I only got hassled by the police once and I just told 'em I worked at said software company in Sausalito and had drank too much that night and didn't feel it was safe to drive home (giving the address of a co-worker who lived further north I had an agreement with for this situation). They said fine and suggested parking somewhere else.

Eventually I got a new girlfriend and being homeless just wasn't practical so I ended up renting a room from a friend. I sured saved a lot of money during those 6 months, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing. It's nice knowing someone else was has successfully done this over an extended period of time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original post: <http://kurtvarner.com/post/19347794553/man-car-startup>

</comment><comment><USER4> When I lived in the Bay Area during the dot-com era of the 1990s, the newspaper (yes children, the newspaper was on paper back then) had an article on housing difficulties. Some people lived in the state parks, where they could camp for up to a week before moving. One Stanford student lived on an RV in one of the parking lots.

As for showering, go ahead and get the gym membership. Sound mind in a sound body, after all.

</comment><comment><USER5> This illustrates that free parking is a major subsidy to auto owners.

I've lived in some bohemian situations in the past, and largly, the most difficult part is dealing with people hassling you. People will literally call the police about, "I saw a guy living in a car", and then the police come to check it out, even if it's perfectly legal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Many cities in the bay area have laws or regulations prohibiting this. I understand the sentiment, but he needs to be aware that an officer of the law may be knocking on his window in the middle of the night or placing a ticket on his window while he sleeps.

Some cities allow overnight parking, but only with a permit which only residents can get (and it isn't cheap).

Obviously all of these restrictions only apply to public property (streets, parks, etc.).

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a concern I had, but it turns out that it is legal in Palo Alto. You can see the details of how all the logistics will work on my original blog post: <http://kurtvarner.com/post/19347794553/man-car-startup>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this. Hey, even Chris Sacca tweeted about sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot. (Not sure about his setup, though.) <https://twitter.com/#!/sacca/status/156064344831045632>

Hardship (even self-imposed) might even lead to new ideas. If life gets too cushy, there are few problems left to solve. Shelter is one of the most elementary human needs.

</comment><comment><USER8> > PariSoma is in San Francisco and will cost $295 for full-time

Wow that's relatively pricy. You can rent a room in SV for < $200 more (before utilities and furnishings)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd be worried about getting mugged...

<comment><USER10> I haven't been to Palo Alto in 12 years, so my info may be dated, but what no one ever talks about is "the EPA", East Palo Alto. Is it still sketchy?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my webapp for expiring domains - <AUTHOR>

http://www.scoratic.com
It's a semi-curated list of domains that expire every day.  I'd like other people's opinions on how useful is it compared to other similar services.  Does the curation make things easier?
A brief explanation of the pretty basic rating system: It likes words, near words and wordlike words.  It also prefers short over long, .com over everything else and it hates hyphens and numbers.
I have used it to snag a handful of dictionary names with it. <comment><USER2> I think it's a lot better than many expiring domains services I've seen and I've bookmarked it because of this. I agree with jay that search would be a useful feature. I think most people who are looking for a domain have some idea of what they want. I think the affiliate links to registrars is completely fair but I'd still do something about the affiliate.godaddy and essociate URLs (maybe scoratic.com/godaddy/123456 & scoratic.com/snapnames/123456 with redirects?).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that the curation is definitely helping - you can really see the decline in quality of the results as you page through.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickable:

<http://www.scoratic.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> I did love it if I can filter by .com/.net/.org domains, also a search feature would be nice.. There's a lot of domains to go through, especially if done daily.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great job. I found it immediately useful.

May I ask which api you are using? Your site has piqued my interest in domains.

<comment><AUTHOR> estibot is the api I use

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only complaints that I have about it are that it's missing "next/previous" buttons, and that it needs a redesign.

</comment><comment><USER8> A search feature for expired domains would be useful.</comment>