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Hipku – encode any IP address as a haiku - gabemart
http://gabrielmartin.net/projects/hipku/
======
e12e
Two notable addresses:
::1
Ace ants and ace ants
aid ace ace ace ace ace ants.
Ace ants aid ace apes.
127.0.0.1
The hungry white ape
aches in the ancient canyon.
Autumn colors crunch.
We can see that ipv6 adds ants to the traditionally monkey themed localhost...
------
lmm
Reminds me of
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list)
, which is less poetic, but designed to be unambiguous when read over the
phone.
~~~
e12e
The ideas behind that list is good, but I think they went overboard with their
machine learning approach to find words that were as far apart as possible in
pronunciation. Considering one would think that such a list will be used in
international contexts, basing it off of Basic English[1] or something would
probably have been a better idea. How many non-native speakers (that aren't a
fan of Dave Sim's "Cerberus") will know the word "Aardvark" ?
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English)
------
falcolas
I love it. The practical side of me, however, would recommend increasing the
name space a little bit and adding checksums; human memory is not perfect, and
having built-in error correction would help immensely.
~~~
gabemart
Great idea. Thanks. I need to find some extra space for fitting in a version
number anyway, to preserve backward-compatibility.
~~~
e12e
I've been thinking about something similar to this for secure passwords. And
your haikus neatly demonstrate both the challenge and viability. I was
thinking of encoding as a phrase, but keeping the two first letters of each
word in a 256-word set unique, so that a phrase could be used for
memorization, but you'd "only" have to type the two first letters of every
word. But 16 characters for 64 bits of entropy is still pretty long (for
password entry) -- and ideally you'd want 96 or even 128 bits. Especially for
passwords/pass phrases that are used to derive/protect encryption keys (the
goal being to avoid having the entropy of the password as the weakest link.
There are still other challenges with passwords, of course. Eg: key loggers).
I'd also thought about having a generic library, that could be used for things
like representing hashes/fingerprints etc (think: an alternative to the ssh
key ascii art).
While I'd considered poetry (especially using rhyming dictionaries) -- my main
idea so far is to just construct grammatically well-formed sentences. With a
limited vocabulary, it should be easy enough...
And as touched upon in this post, it might make a nice alternative for
verbally communicating 64-128 bits of random data -- say reading out a
password while someone across the server room types it into a console.
[edit: eg, using a random haiku:
Hoarse dunes and slim germs
gulp pure ripe foul dead bland sole.
Firm trees bleed short heads.
This would become: "hoduslgegupurifodeblsofitrblshhe" (ignoring the and). If
anyone wonders why you'd not just type in the whole thing: it's hard, even for
a skilled typist, to get something so long, exactly right, when typing blind.
And obviously even the short form here strains typing ability. But then again,
how many can say _with confidence_ that their passwords hold 128 bits worth of
entropy? With a one-to-one mapping between word-lists (or equivalently sets of
two leading characters, and a random N bit integer, assuming the integer is as
random as your other secret/session keys -- it's trivial to demonstrate a
lower bound for the entropy of such a password]
[edit2: I should add that I considered adding a standard transform to the
final password: capitalize the first letter, and terminate with a punctuation
mark. It would add nothing to the entropy of the password, but might allow an
"insecure" lowercase-only password to pass inane "strength" requirements, by
mixing three character classes.]
~~~
Scaevolus
I made this a while back. :)
[http://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/](http://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/)
An interesting fork:
[http://bcaller.github.io/abbrase/](http://bcaller.github.io/abbrase/)
Some comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8059210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8059210)
Letting users pick their passphrases from a list sacrifices a few bits of
entropy in theory, and in practice gives much more usable mnemonics.
I'm not sure grammatical models are a definite improvement over Abbrase's
naive bigram method -- part-of-speech constraints can make sentences more
awkward than freeform associations.
Having 128 bit passwords feels like overkill. I'm not sure on the precise
threat model for sites, but the worst case of someone getting your password
hash should be ameliorated by not reusing passwords between sites and the
password being stretched properly.
If you're actually deriving encryption keys directly from passwords, you'll
probably be okay with 60 bits of password entropy and 30 bits of memory-hard
stretching.
~~~
e12e
Interesting.
I should add, that my idea was to publish an RFC-style standard that worked
both ways (from the password to number and back again) -- which is why mapping
two letters to 256 bits was nice: it makes for short word lists. It might
even, with some care, allow for localizing the actual word list to at least
some other European languages (we're really only concerned with the two first
letters).
> Having 128 bit passwords feels like overkill.
I agree. However, as a user can't be sure sites properly stretch passwords,
I'd say 64-bits feels more comfortable.
For use-cases where one are protecting keys, it'd be good if the password
wasn't the weakest brute-force target with too large a margin. Obviously, if
you can manage to get 64-bits into a password suitable for everyday use,
chaining two together for the (presumably rarer case of) master passwords
should be viable.
But even 64 bits is a lot of entropy to be typing in, no matter how you encode
it :-/
------
w8rbt
Interesting concept. Somehow, humans need to be able to quickly and clearly
say/pronounce an IPv6 address over the phone when talking with Tech Support.
Not everyone knows ITU phonetics (two charlie eight foxtrot...). I bet there
are other, even simpler ways to human encode IPv6 addresses (outside of DNS
names of course).
------
101914
The idea reminds me of S/Key.
64 bits --> 6 English words
[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-
bin/man.cgi?query=skey](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=skey)
[http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?skey](http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-
cgi?skey)
~~~
listic
Your link does not work. This S/KEY?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/KEY](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/KEY)
~~~
101914
Should work now.
------
aareet
This is fun! I'd have liked to have seen my IP address auto-detected and
presented to me as a Hipku so I didn't have to go figure it out and come back
to see the results.
~~~
gabemart
I thought this was a fun idea so I did this:
[http://hipku.gabrielmartin.net](http://hipku.gabrielmartin.net)
------
lachenmayer
Related: proquints (PRO-nouncable QUIN-tuplets)
[http://arxiv.org/html/0901.4016](http://arxiv.org/html/0901.4016)
127.0.0.1 lusab-babad
63.84.220.193 gutih-tugad
63.118.7.35 gutuk-bisog
140.98.193.141 mudof-sakat
64.255.6.200 haguz-biram
------
jmnicolas
I'm looking for flaws to using this as a password remembering scheme.
Basically you remember the haiku but when it comes to typing your password you
convert it in an IP address using Hipku.
I guess an IPV6 address makes a really strong password, not breakable using a
dictionary.
Any thoughts on the validity of this use case ?
~~~
lmm
You might as well use the full length haiku - you wouldn't be exposing it to
an external service, you wouldn't need internet access or a program installed,
and you can probably type it faster than the IPv6 address. Using dictionary
words for a passphrase is actually fine as long as the phrase is long enough.
Figure out how much security you need (128 bits if you're going with the IPv6
example).
~~~
e12e
The problem with using the whole haikus, is that you must type quite a lot,
typically blindly, into a password entry field -- and not make a single
mistake.
I think the more interesting question is: if you manage to memorize the haiku
-- will you be able to retain it longer than the ipv6 address? After typing in
the address a few times a day, you'd have it memorized (at least in muscle
memory). But what if this was something you either used rarely (passphrase for
restoring backups for example). Would you remember the haiku even after you'd
forgot the ipv6 address?
~~~
lmm
If you memorize poems at all you have to remember the exact words; IMO they're
easier than memorizing numbers. (In fact, the way I can remember the first
50-or-so digits of pi is that someone wrote a poem where the word-lengths
correspond to the digits).
~~~
e12e
It's not that it's hard to remember, it's hard to type in. At least that's my
experience (I use a few 16+ character passwords/passphrases). It might be
easier if it's all lower-case, no numbers etc -- I'm not sure -- I've not
tested myself.
But in writing the above, I had to hit backspace at least once -- something
that's a bit hard to catch when you're typing blind into a password entry
field, like when typing in the pass-phrase for unlocking a LUKS partition, or
logging into a console session. Or even typing in a login password in a
graphical login manager, like the windows login prompt, or gdm/ldm/xdm etc.
And it also takes time. Especially if you only get it right on your third
attempt.
~~~
lmm
Shrug; I find it much easier to write English words than numbers and the like,
but I guess YMMV. If you don't realize when you've made a mistake, it's well
worth spending a bit of time learning to type properly, IMO; I spent a weekend
practising and while I still occasionally typo, I know when I have without
having to check. E.g. I wrote this sentence with a couple of letter
transpositions, backspaced and corrected them, all without looking at the
screen, just to check that it was possible.
~~~
e12e
Maybe. Then there is typing in the passphrase on Android [ed: ie using an on
screen keyboard] to unlock the FDE etc. Fwiw I had a year of touch in junior
high, so I do generally type pretty well - but I still end up having to type
in my pw to unlock my computer a couple of times on average. I'm not sure
which parts I miss - quite possibly I'd be better off with a slightly longer,
all lowercase pw.
------
api
The length of IPv6 addresses is a minor usability problem from a devops
perspective. I don't feel like this is a solution, but something to help ease
the pain of this would be nice.
Another issue is that nearly all terminal emulators are (so far) too stupid to
auto-highlight an IPv6 address on double-click. They all break on : --
highlighting only 16 bits of the address. Annoying.
~~~
_kst_
That's often configurable. For example, in xterm:
> -cc characterclassrange:value[,...]
> This sets classes indicated by the given ranges for using in selecting by
> words. See the section specifying character classes. and discussion of the
> charClass resource.
(I haven't tried using this myself.)
------
adg001
The hungry white ape
aches in the ancient canyon.
Autumn colors crunch.
~~~
stedaniels
The agile green ape
jumps in the ancient mountains.
Autumn colors rest.
~~~
myhf
The weary white wolf
yawns in the wind-swept wetlands.
Autumn colors blow.
~~~
ph0rque
Hey now, who downvotes
haikus? Even if random?
Must be Hacker News.
_(not my actual IP)_
------
blfr
With IPv6, you can give each site a separate address and encode it as a haiku.
Poetry to replace DNS.
And there is no central Internet Corporation for Assigned Haiku. This is what
namecoin was meant to be.
_Chilled apes and fat sprats_
_aid bleak brave prone ace ace ants._
_Ace ants aid sharp beaks._
~~~
lmm
> And there is no central Internet Corporation for Assigned Haiku.
Um, yes there is. It's an address; you get your address space from your
upstream AS (probably your ISP), they get it from their RIR, and they get
their addresses from IANA.
------
krick
I don't find this particular app very useful, but the very idea of encoding
something hard to read into redundant, but easily comprehensible format is
simply great.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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How Did Cool Become Such a Big Deal? (2014) - pshaw
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/julyaugust/feature/how-did-cool-become-such-big-deal-0
======
dluan
Cool is one thing I feel like robots will never understand. It is so hard to
capture beyond just the physical vocabulary or syntax or body movements, or
even black or white. Because when you see or meet someone, _cool_ , you just
know. James Baldwin was a cool af mfer.
> For black people, to be cool was to be “calm, even unimpressed, by what
> horror the world might daily propose.” Cool was a quietly rebellious
> response to the history of slavery and post-Civil War injustices.
Cool is kind of the anti-reactionary, laissez-faire attitude, but it's also
using that attitude to create. To use slang in creative, liberating ways. Or
music, or art, or drugs, or whatever.
Now give an algorithm that's been trained with all of human history and
society. Would it also disregard the past horrors, but use the memory to
create? What would it create? Would it be cool, even if you didn't know that
it came from a human or a robot?
~~~
lisper
> Cool is one thing I feel like robots will never understand.
They said computers would never be able to beat humans at chess. Then IBM
built Deep Blue.
They said computers would never be able to beat humans at go. Then Google
built AlphaGo.
They said computers would never be able to understand natural language. Then
Apple built Siri.
It's a matter of when, not if, computers will understand cool. But when they
do, they will probably be too cool to care.
~~~
schrodinger
> They said computers would never be able to understand natural language. Then
> Apple built Siri.
I think it’s a stretch to say that Siri understands natural language. You need
to form your sentences very specifically to have any luck, dramatically
different than talking to a human.
~~~
noirbot
And even then, it occasionally "corrects" what it thought it heard to instead
be some clearly nonsense sentence. Just the morning I asked Siri to "Remind me
to set beers aside for the party" and now I have a reminder to "Set Beer's
aside for the pantry." after clearly seeing it have the exact right sentence
for a second before adjusting to that.
~~~
mikestew
Every year I attend a bluegrass music festival called Wintergrass. Siri knows
about Wintergrass, she sees it in my calendar and I've seen her recognize the
spoken word before. Even though I live down the road, this year me and some
jamming buddies thought it would be nice to have a room to stash instruments,
nap, whatever.
"Hey, Siri, remind me to get a room for Wintergrass."
"Okay, I'll remind you to get a room for one in the ass."
One would also think that Siri has figured out my sexual preferences by now.
(To be clear, she obviously has not.)
But to the point, the hype of speech recognition over the decades, and the
state of the art today, are why I am not convinced I'll live long enough to
see true self-driving cars despite the current hype of that tech.
------
Alex3917
In jazz the aesthetic emphasis is on the empty space in between the notes. In
the 30s you had a bunch of folks mixing weed with heroin in a way that
seemingly unlocked the ability to create art out of these interstitial
moments.
As a social term cool just means the same thing, referring to things whose
positive qualities come from what they lack.
------
swingline-747
I would suggest it's not cool, but the meta concept of status, that became the
big deal. When essentially everyone became materially-comfortable in Western
life circa post-WW2, society got flatter and flatter. In order to break up
that flatness, the main driving social-differentiator signals emphasize
appearance and attitude.
~~~
growlist
> the main driving social-differentiator signals emphasize appearance and
> attitude
Indeed, pushed hard by the advertising industry etc. with the idea that we are
defined only by the products we consume.
I see cool as similar to the phenomenon of less well off people spending money
on designer labels, i.e. reaction to a position of relative social
inferiority. Chavs buy Burberry, whereas Prince Charles patches holes in
clothes that he's had for decades.
~~~
coldtea
> _Prince Charles patches holes in clothes that he 's had for decades._
Which is also a status-signal ("hey, I've got good tailored clothes which are
sentimentally important to me and I am beyond consumerism") from someone with
a huge estate...
~~~
growlist
This is probably the first time I've been in the position of being a defender
of Prince Charles, but I think your comment is at best ill-informed, at worst
cynical:
'I happen to mind deeply about the poisoned legacy we are leaving our children
and grandchildren and have been attempting to invest in their futures through
reminding people of the urgent need to work in harmony with nature, rather
than against her.'
~~~
coldtea
> _' I happen to mind deeply about the poisoned legacy we are leaving our
> children and grandchildren and have been attempting to invest in their
> futures through reminding people of the urgent need to work in harmony with
> nature, rather than against her.'_
Yeah, give away your estate you didn't earn but enjoy because of an antiquated
bloodline-based institution to help nature causes then.
~~~
growlist
I'll drag us back on topic by saying that I think it's pretty cool that Prince
Charles is using his power, such as it is, to help spread ideas that might
help us stop ruining the world.
------
yesenadam
Far as I know, Lester Young invented cool.
Here he is just before he died[0] with his old friend Billie Holiday (who he
nicknamed 'Lady Day' \- he called everyone 'lady'). Before him, what everyone
wanted to be was _hot_ , screaming, wailing sax, jumping up on bars, playing a
lot of notes, extreme. Then suddenly _less is more_. He came up playing with
Count Basie, who was also a _less is more_ kind of guy. To oversimplify, _hot_
was about high energy, _cool_ was about beauty and taste. _Hot_ was macho,
competitive, striving to impress; _cool_ was human, content, enlightened.
[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKqxG09wlIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKqxG09wlIA)
------
hfdgiutdryg
That site is extremely uncool on mobile, and I can't even find a way to
contact them about it. Their desperately uncool need for Facebook and Twitter
credit, along with their insistence that you read at a font size they've
chosen, means I see three to five words per line. Ironically, tapping on
'accessibility' and starting to scroll auto-scrolls instantly to the bottom,
then it's 'sticky' until it auto-scrolls all the way to the top!
------
dredmorbius
Cool, blood.
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sang-
froid&yea...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sang-
froid&year_start=1650&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=10&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csang%20-%20froid%3B%2Cc0)
------
xissy
Cool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rutgers Defunded Student Paper After It Called Out White Supremacist Propaganda - iron0013
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rutgers-defunded-daily-targum-paper-after-it-called-out-white-supremacist-propaganda
======
pmdulaney
How can that be? Calling out white supremacist propaganda is perfectly in line
with progressive ideology and all public universities in the US are
progressive.
------
pmdulaney
Oh, sorry. It was defunded by the students. My mistake.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter Displaying Expanded Short URLs Using 301 Lookup - DanLivesHere
http://www.centernetworks.com/twitter-displays-expanded-short-urls
======
brlewis
FriendFeed had this over 2 years ago:
[http://friendfeed.com/steverubel/54df8bf5/short-urls-
shared-...](http://friendfeed.com/steverubel/54df8bf5/short-urls-shared-on-
friendfeed-now-reveal-re)
------
wmf
Hopefully they improve this in the future by not showing the short URL at all.
------
jrockway
_it prevents me from ever clicking on a short link that will take me to
somewhere evil_
There are plenty of ways to trick people with links. For example, you can
register a domain called not-hardcore-porn.com, and then put porn there. Or
you can just poison some upstream DNS cache, and then facebook.com goes to
phishing-site.com.
The Internet is very insecure. Short links are the least of our worries.
------
teye
_"In speaking with a few colleagues, it appears Twitter is using the 301
redirect on the short URL to provide the mouseover with the full URL."_
Is this just a non-technical person attempting to inject a little detail into
the article? My first thought was, "How would I do this in JS?" and it took me
a second to decipher that sentence.
~~~
treyp
kind of. it's not done on the front end (js) but rather using some service on
the backend.
the phrasing of that is a bit weird, but they probably test until they no
longer get a 301 or 302 redirect and save the result. they print this result
on the front end as a title for the link and as an HTML5 data attribute
"expanded-url" on the link.
~~~
jluxenberg
I looked at doing this using Javascript in a browser extension a while ago,
and it's actually not possible to do for a couple of reasons:
1) XHR cross domain policy prohibits requests to domains other than the domain the page loaded from
2) the XHR GET method always follows a 301 redirect and returns the content at the URL. The full URL is not made available.
~~~
RyanMcGreal
You'd have to write something on your server that does this, and expose it to
your client JS via a local URL.
------
DanLivesHere
Hootsuite has been doing this for a while with a + icon. Good to see Twitter
itself doing it.
~~~
treyp
similarly, search.twitter.com has had this using "(expand)" on the end of
links for some time. i'm not sure if this was part of the original acquisition
for that service or if they added it in after.
~~~
dmthompson
Also search.twitter.com matches search terms against both the expanded url and
shortened url.
------
meterplech
I also didn't notice this until today, but this is a great feature to prevent
spam and malware. Usually I feel like my Twitter feed is filled with people
and links that are moderately trustworthy, but that leaves everyone vulnerable
to someone hijacking a twitter account using firesheep or something else.
------
pierrefar
Any clue whether they are checking the destination URLs for malware? Using
perhaps Google's Safe Browsing API (
<http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/> )?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The kernel and BitKeeper part ways (2005) - JDW1023
https://lwn.net/Articles/130746/
======
tannerbrockwell
This is a perfect example of winning a battle, and losing the war. Out of this
was born git [1] and the rest [2] is history [3].
[1]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/131312/](https://lwn.net/Articles/131312/) [2]:
[https://lwn.net/Articles/131657/](https://lwn.net/Articles/131657/) [3]:
[https://archive.is/OnGav](https://archive.is/OnGav)
| {
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Here’s how Google Fi will work with iPhones - AhmadM91
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18116333/google-project-fi-apple-iphone
======
LeoPanthera
"you should know that iPhones won’t be able to make calls or text over Wi-Fi,
use visual voicemail, or be used as data hotspots outside the US at all"
That's worse than a standard T-Mobile plan, which I'm currently on. I don't
see any reason to switch.
Unrelatedly, The Verge's link to the iOS app goes through something called
"go.redirectingat.com", which fails because it's on my tracking server
blacklist. Seems pretty sketch.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
High Arctic relocation - curtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation
======
smcmurtry
Great article. In Canada a lot of people don't know about the injustices the
government has inflicted on the Inuit and other indigenous people. It's all
conveniently left out of the school history curriculum.
~~~
endorphone
While it is hardly "left out" (it has, in fact, been a massive national
discussion for at least two decades), it also suffers from the classic folly
of considering history where one side is assumed to act under only the worst
motives, and the other under only the best.
Reality is, as always, much more nuanced. Right now many aboriginal
communities in Canada are like third world nations, with overwhelming rates of
substance abuse, etc. The government keeps pouring billions and billions in,
and has given in to every demand (self-governance, no accountability), but the
result is something that is absolutely shameful for a first-world nation.
Racism is always blamed, while Canada's largest city is more than 50% visible
minorities, many prospering.
Trying to maintain a "traditional" lifestyle in the modern world is not
sustainable. The world doesn't stop because a people's hang on a grievance
from many years ago.
~~~
HorizonXP
I have lived in Toronto for all of my life. I cannot ever recall meeting an
Aboriginal person, except once as a teenager. I was working retail, and they
provided their ID card when they wanted me to not charge sales tax. They
didn’t fit my stereotype of what I thought they should look like, so it’s
entitely possible I’ve met more without knowing it.
Just because Toronto and many Canadian cities are multicultural doesn’t
automatically make us not racist. I have some friends that share my skin
colour that moved to Calgary, and they have some pretty negative attitudes
towards Aboriginal people.
I love Canada and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But we’re far from
perfect.
| {
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Kakao acquires top Korean music streaming service for $1.5B - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/kakao-korea-melon-music-streaming-acquisition
======
dpflan
“Acquiring [MelOn parent company] Loen gives Kakao a massive music content
library as well as a pipeline for future content. [The app’s] current
businesses are built around K-pop and domestic artists, and they will continue
to build on their success.”
Being a heavy supplier of K-Pop is probably very strategic. K-Pop appears to
be a valuable cultural export, and I imagine domestically it holds up quite
well too.
Here are some links related to global interest in Korean culture and pop
culture:
\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Wave)
\- [http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21611039-how-
re...](http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21611039-how-really-
uncool-country-became-tastemaker-asia-soap-sparkle-and-pop)
\- [http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-
marketing/how-...](http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-
marketing/how-korea-became-the-worlds-coolest-brand)
Just musing...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your 2020 year resolutions? - djebril
======
topmonk
Stop fantasizing about getting something I will never have.
------
furgooswft13
Stop drinking and stop vaping. Not because of any of the recent vaping
hysteria, but because I work from home now and just end up vaping constantly
all day, and it's making my lungs and throat feel like shit. Both vices are
pretty much placebos to me at this point anyway. The negatives far outweigh
whatever positive mental benefit they might temporarily give me. Also
exercise, to hopefully quell the newfound boredom I'll be experiencing, also
to work off this beer gut.
Pretty cliche resolutions I guess, but I gotta do it. Sick of feeling like
shit all the time. Check back in a year...
~~~
quickthrower2
Good luck, giving up or reducing alcohol consumption is great for your health.
------
WheelsAtLarge
Less HN. I love reading the news so HN is a time sink for me. There's no way
for me to read everything but HN sure lets me try to do it.
------
santa_boy
\- Read atleast one book at month \- Write atleast one post a week \- Spend
more quality time with family \- Exercise 5 days a week. Tracked via Fitbit \-
Go to market and sell. Learn and iterate \- Meditate \- Do more selfless good
\- Reduce drinks if possible
Kinda sorted I think ;-)
------
methusala8
Get fit. Read more. Start my own blog. Increase my network. Meditate daily and
Move into a Deep Learning role.
------
codingslave
Exercise, therapy, yoga, organic food
------
quickthrower2
Need to lose some weight, gain some upper body strength, do yoga regularly.
------
Ruth_K
Buying an apartment and getting the driving license.
------
BookPage
Abstain from ordering in
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: what are your favorite JavaScript APIs? - Tichy
I'll start a new project for a client soon, and my task will probably be to design a JavaScript API. So I gathered it might be a good idea to look at some existing ones for inspiration. There are so many possibilities in setting up a JavaScript framework (from very "perly' to very 'javay') so I wonder what most people prefer.
======
bdfh42
What would your JavaScript API be an API to? Or alternately what language
would be calling the JavaScript API and why?
~~~
Tichy
I think it is for serving ads - or describing multimedia ads. Not sure yet.
Could be called from a variety of environments.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons - bifrost
https://medium.com/@hamed/github-blocked-my-account-and-they-think-im-developing-nuclear-weapons-e7e1fe62cb74
======
bifrost
I'll add in my $0.02 - the author set himself up for this.
Here's his GitHub Profile:
[https://github.com/Hameds](https://github.com/Hameds)
Not only is he accessing SaaS from an embargoed country but it looks like he's
forked repos which contain calls to embargoed crypto libraries. Does this mean
he's doing something conceptually bad? Probably not, but he's still in
violation of the embargo.
The fact that he's been able to participate in GitHub at all is basically an
oversight on GitHub's part and people are wrongly blaming MSFT for this.
Does it suck for him? Yup. This guy was deplatformed by GitHub there's
basically zero he can do about this. Well maybe he could defect, thats where
I'd have to defer to an expert...
------
katttrrr
Couldn't they have blocked it for another reason listed in their terms?
Wouldn't it make the most sense to ask them in an appeal?
~~~
bifrost
GitHub doesn't want to be in violation of ITAR, its a bad thing to get stuck
under.
------
bifrost
Related to this other post ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20526039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20526039)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eigenface - breck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface
======
dandelany
I always thought that "Eigenman" would make a cool superhero. A man derived
from the covariance matrix of the probability distribution of the high-
dimensional vector space of _all of mankind_. His superpowers would be instant
recognition of anyone he meets, self-supervised learning, and the ability to
do a Karhunen–Loève transform in his head.
~~~
tdoggette
5-part miniseries written by Joss Whedon and Randall Munroe. Dark Horse can
publish it.
You'll be rich.
------
levesque
Principal component analysis at it's best. Works awfully well on most machine
learning problems. Often PCA is not just enough by itself, so you run it
before you run a more sophisticated algorithm (say k-Nearest-Neighbors, or
Support Vector Machines). It helps in reducing the training time and execution
time of those algorithms.
------
phsr
Seeing the word Eigenface brings back chills from my senior year computer
vision class. It wasn't that the class was not useful, it was just that the
professor was painfully horrible. Although, the eigenface project at the end
of the year was VERY interesting. If I can pull up the old code, maybe I'll
put it up on github. It was MATLAB code
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Hack an Expensive Camera - pi-rat
https://alexhude.github.io/2019/01/24/hacking-leica-m240.html
======
ggm
Excellent work. Almost forty years ago my first paid job on graduating was
clean room reverse engineering a spec of a binary dump of somebody's code. You
put me in awe of how well you did this.
As a former chdk user on canon and a Fuji x20 owner I hope somebody carries on
your amazing work!
------
getorix
Heh, I feel like I need to clarify something. Don't get me wrong, it was not
24/7\. Instead it was occasional work with huge several month long gaps :)
~~~
syntaxing
If you don't mind me asking, what do you do for a living? Your expertise in
this is seriously impressive.
~~~
CamelCaseName
He has 15 years of experience as an embedded software dev/security researcher.
Looks like he's worked on a lot of really cool, low level, stuff.
~~~
getorix
Correct, and I have also spent 7 years making Cinema Cameras in Blackmagic
Design. This helped a lot with Leica research.
~~~
contingencies
You seem to be in Melbourne. Any relation to Felix Hude of Mr. Pumpy fame? I
believe he used to teach at RMIT.
[http://www.mrpumpy.net/](http://www.mrpumpy.net/)
------
ndnxhs
I am absolutely blown away by the dedication of this person. I can't imagine
spending so long working on this.
Somewhat unrelated but I wonder if we will make the move to open hardware like
we have done with software. Having access to schematics and firmware source
does wonders for the reparability and upgradability of hardware.
------
ackbar03
This is crazy, how on earth do you have the patience and persistence to work
on something like this??? It took five - six years?
~~~
sho
This comment is kinda snarky and borderline facetious but man, I can't help
but agree. After 10 years hanging around this site if there's anything I've
learned it's that I am nowhere fucking near "max geekiness". I couldn't stick
with a project like this for 6 hours, let alone 6 years. And yet literally in
the last week I've been (gently) ribbed for being nerdy enough to think
reading books for pleasure is an acceptable leisure activity.
This is orders of magnitude of geekiness beyond anything I could possibly
accomplish, and I mean that in the best possible way. Kudos to the author and
thank god for the real nerds.
~~~
ackbar03
Dude it wasn't meant to be snarky at all. It was literally like wtf how is
this even possible.
~~~
sho
Sorry snarky was the wrong word. But I'm on the same boat!
------
ComputerGuru
Amazing work, clearly a labor of love. You never know how standardized of an
approach embedded developers take depending on the constraints on developers
and hardware, I’m glad he lucked out with a lot of the binary resources. I’ve
bookmarked this, it’s such a delightful resource.
------
dharma1
This is why we need open source cameras - so people don't need to spend 6
years reverse engineering and still not getting much out of it
~~~
ndnxhs
This is part of the reason I can't get in to reverse engineering. It takes an
incredible amount of time to get a little done when in the same time you
probably could have written your own camera firmware. I do remember seeing an
open source camera but it was a really high end one and very expensive.
~~~
gntheprogrammer
> I do remember seeing an open source camera but it was a really high end one
> and very expensive.
Might be AXIOM from the Apertus project:
[https://www.apertus.org/axiom](https://www.apertus.org/axiom)
~~~
dharma1
I really like what they are doing, but they have been working on it for 4
years and have no users. The camera costs 6000 euros and has no internal
recording capability.
------
bicubic
Would you consider doing this for sony cameras? Shit, open a kickstarter for
it and you'll get funded in a few days if the word gets out.
There were some initial promising efforts to build the equivalent of Magic
Lantern for sony alpha cameras, but it seems to have quietly died.
~~~
mschuster91
Oh yes. I've got an A7S2 and while I'm pretty satisfied with it in general
(especially after jailbreaking it and killing that annoying 29 minute video
limit), there are some things that I really miss, mostly related to
networking.
Oh and while one can get a full service manual including block diagrams and
wiring specs for it on the Internet, if someone knows how to access its
bootloader (probably uboot, it runs Linux in any way, with an Android layer on
top for the "apps") so that one can experiment without risking a $2000 brick,
that would be really really nice ;)
------
jimmaswell
"My wife and I always wanted a Leica camera and suddenly we realized that if
we didn’t buy it now, we will not be able to for a while."
Is this the mindset of "better buy the expensive thing before we can't afford
it"? I've seen this expressed before and it's not sound reasoning. If you
wouldn't be able to keep that money in a savings account because you know
you'd later find other uses of the money to provide better value then you
shouldn't be comfortable spending it on a depreciating asset immediately. The
only way it makes sense is if you trust your future self's reasoning less than
you trust your present self's.
~~~
bestham
I don’t think that this is about not having the money at a later stage, but
about spending that kind of money when you have other responsibilities (kids)
being irresponsible.
~~~
sokoloff
Right, but it's not like money has an expiration date on it.
If it's going to be irresponsible _then_ , it's probably just as irresponsible
_now_ , perhaps not as obviously. ("Better hurry up and make that mistake...")
------
zhovner
Unfortunately many other vendors encrypts firmware updates, like Panasonic do.
I dream to hack Panasonic GH5 and G80 cameras firmware to tune some options.
There is a tool to binary patching Pansonic GH4 and GH2 firmware called Ptool.
[https://www.personal-view.com/faqs/ptool/ptool-faq](https://www.personal-
view.com/faqs/ptool/ptool-faq) It decrypts encrypted firmware, patch binary
and then encrypt again. So you can update firmware via default process.
~~~
getorix
Honestly speaking, encryption never stopped me. Doesn't matter if it is
something simple like M9 xor described in this story or fancy AES/HMAC from
Canon or Sony. It just makes reversing more complicated and invasive. You have
to open body, rip off flash or solder wires somewhere to sniff comms. Unlike
Apple, camera vendors are not that paranoid and try to keep firmware
unencrypted on flash to reduce the boot time. In other words this is the part
when your wife can kill you for bricking the camera :)
------
masonic
This is insanely well-written.
~~~
nocturo
I couldn't agree more! Even tho I understood the point, a lot of stuff was so
foreign but the aricle just drives you and it needs some love not just on
techinal part, but also on the writting!
------
arcaster
Still curious as to what his motivation to reverse engineer this camera was?
Extra features? Custom features?
Genuinely curious - seemed missing from the blog post.
~~~
getorix
Actually it is genuine curiosity about how stuff works and constant challenge
if I can run my own code on it :D
~~~
arcaster
Fair enough! I can relate with plenty of my own side-projects, thanks for
sharing yours.
------
mjkpl
Out of curiosity - from a legal perspective, is it fine to publish outcome of
reverse engineering? I'm always sceptical before doing so myself.
------
dfox
One thing that I learned about reverse engineering is that you can often get
very far by just recognizing/guessing what formats and libraries were used by
original authors. The article seems to at least partialy confirm this view.
On vocational school we could elect to do long term project instead of
practical graduation exam. In my case this involved reverse engineering
management protovol used by Merlin Legend PBX in order to port its DOS-based
configuration utility (which was in fact emulator of MLX-20L operator phone)
to something more modern (and multi-user). One of first things we did was
running the binary through strings and ndisasm (I probably still have the
hackedup tool to convert MZ EXE to pseudo-COM that could then be read by
ndisasm, which was motivated by fact that for various reasons we could not use
IDA). What we found out was that it used some weird Unix on DOS emulation
layer from AT&T which included Unix-style ncurses and terminal emulation
layer.
We tried both to analyze the binary and sniff the communication. At first we
thought that disassembling the code would be faster as we had only limited
access to the PBX itself and were somehow afraid of bricking the thing. Oneday
I just gave up and spent few hours hacking up a way to actually look at the
UART data (there were two issues with that: the PBX was somewhat picky about
accepted RS232 levels and then slight logistical issue of having preferrably a
laptop with two serial ports in early 00's). After we had this ugly mess of
wires with four DE9 connectors and active RS232 buffer (powered from
adjustable bench supply, needless to say that our advisor was not too thrilled
that we decided to connect this thing between somewhat irreplacable PC and
still considerably expensive PBX) we found out quite quickly that the actual
configuration protocol consisted of XModem for backup/restore, straight ANSI
terminal emulation for initial session establishment (and in theory for weird
"use PBX as outgoing modem" feature), essentially binary block oriented
terminal protocol (think contents of PC text mode framebuffer with one
attribute byte for not every character, but block of 8, always sent as whole
line) wrapped in weird HDLC subset for the actual interactive configuration
and weird handshake reminiscent of OBDII serial protocol to switch between
these modes (which probably took the majority of time to reverse engineer).
Interesting aside is that the above mentioned binary block protocol was also
used for the UI of almost-ISDN phones that went with the PBX in question. We
had access to ISDN protocol analyzer which worked perfectly for normal call
flows, but reliably crashed (and not with any kind of meaningful error
message, it just overwrote half of its display with random pixels, started
ignoring its keypad or otherwise started behaving weirdly in somewhat random
manner) any time we did anything more complex. Somehow I think that finding
signal that reliably crashes firmware on test equipment which is explicitly
designed to debug problems on such interface is achievement in itself :)
------
adetrest
Very neat, and impressive skills from the author! I wish I could do that
myself... I started learning C so there is hope.
------
sm4rk0
I was expecting to find the debug mode key combo here in comments, but seems
like 8h is not enough time.
------
brokenmachine
Amazing writeup, well done!
------
sealthedeal
Love this!
------
omeid2
A little of topic but the reference as a huge list at the bottom is forgivable
for print media, but for interactive media, there is no reason for such
inefficient method that requires one to click on the reference only to find
yourself skimming through a list trying to remember what the number was and
once you have found it, great, now you have to find your way back to where you
were reading!
Wikipedia's recent reference links are a great of example of how to do
reference right.
~~~
codetrotter
In Safari on iOS you can use the back button of the browser to jump back to
where you were on the page before you clicked the link to the reference. You
should see if the browser you are using does that as well.
~~~
avhon1
This also works in pretty much every other browser I know of.
~~~
codetrotter
Absolutely :) Named anchors in a page have been around for a long time and I
recall that going back from a page internal link would bring you to the place
in the page that you were for as long as I can remember.
Would be interesting to know which browser was the first to keep track of
scroll position for history entries.
Mosaic was before my time but I wouldn’t be completely surprised to learn that
even it would store scroll position.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Angular $http stripping $ prefixed fields from json post body - downtowncanada
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27071259/angular-http-stripping-prefixed-fields-from-json-post-body
======
angersock
Wow, that's some bullshit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google, Apple and AT&T: Enough Blame to Go Around for Everyone - rizzn
http://siliconangle.com/ver2/2009/08/21/google-apple-and-att-enough-blame-to-go-around-for-everyone/
======
jf781
great angle on this story from SiliconANGLE.com lots buzzing on why this
happened. Its an example of the misinformed blogosphere. Thanks for clarifying
the story
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Self-hosted server platform arkOS starts crowdfund for new features - jcook818
https://fund.arkos.io
======
maaarghk
Seems like a good idea in theory, but I know that my ISP sends you a
threatening letter in the post if you have too much incoming traffic - and
it's unbelievably slow anyway. I wish this project a whole lot of luck though,
because I really wish for a future of the internet where you don't rely on
products that bombard you with adverts.
~~~
jcook818
The project plans to expand to other architectures (including VPSes) with a
successful funding campaign, meaning that you don't _have_ to host at home to
get the same easy experience. So maybe that would be an option for you.
Thanks for your support!! :D
~~~
maaarghk
I use bittorrent sync on a (really cheap) OVH dedicated server to much success
and if I could replace it with something pretty like your product then I
almost certainly would.
~~~
jcook818
That is the prime use case for arkOS :) With everyone's support easy and
secure self-hosted file sync will be possible for arkOS.
------
bsimpson
Interesting pendulum going on here:
A big reason we moved to Dropbox and the cloud was to avoid the single-point-
of-failure and security problems associated with self-hosting. Most home users
aren't going to take the time to make sure their arkOS is constantly up-to-
date and configured securely, and anything hosted from one particular location
is liable to data loss from all sorts of physical issues (hardware failure,
theft, natural disaster, etc.).
I have a Dropbox Pro account because I'd rather pay someone a small amount of
money to take care of these things for me than risk my data being destroyed by
a fluke. The ability to access files from across devices is a big benefit too,
but a big part of the cloud push is to move critical data off of individual
devices, and I don't see arkOS handling that in its current pitch.
~~~
wmf
IMO security is solved by sandboxing and Chrome-style auto updates and
reliability is solved by data centers and mandatory backups, but I guess the
plug/RPi people disagree.
~~~
jcook818
arkOS will provide three of those four things. (Obviously not the data centers
part). The privacy implications counter the need for data centers for
interested users, but of course everyone will need to evaluate their own
individual pros and cons.
------
eliteraspberrie
Is there documentation available about the various layers of this project:
operating system, networking, applications, and so on? You will receive much
more and better quality feedback with more documentation.
For example, I would advise that after installing arkOS the web server for the
Genesis application be only accessible from the LAN until the user changes the
default password(s), by configuring TCP Wrapper. But it's hard to tell if this
is already done without actually going through the installation.
arkOS is a great idea. I hope you succeed.
~~~
jcook818
Hi eliteraspberrie - You will find all the documentation you need on
[https://arkos.io](https://arkos.io). There is explanation about the various
frameworks and plugins that work with Genesis, what they do, how to use them,
how to develop with them, and so on.
There is a Security framework in Genesis that can be used to prevent access
from external (non-local network) clients. Genesis does not have a default
setting for this at this point, but I will see what I can do to implement it
as this makes good sense.
Thank you! :)
------
mafuyu
Pretty neat - there's definitely a market for this kind of thing that extends
beyond ownCloud and is easy to set up. Targeting RasPi users initially isn't a
bad idea, but I'd like to see support for other architectures as well, as
maaarghk says.
A tangential point: I like how the BBS and funding are all integrated within
the site.
------
rsync
I don't see email in the list of "what it does now" ... is that so basic of a
arkOS function that it is presumed, and doesn't need to be mentioned ?
Or are you not providing what I would argue is the number one priority for
self reliance, privacy and control on the Internet ?
~~~
jcook818
Hi rsync -- Email capability is in the works, you can find that mentioned on
the site under the "On the Agenda" "The true centre of your self-hosted
Internet" sections.
Thanks!
------
dz0ny
This is around like 6 months, no progress beside nginx and transmission
inclusion has been made in that time. It's nice idea but without community I
don't see this project succeeding.
~~~
jcook818
Hi! A ton of progress has been made beside those things. And the frameworks
behind them (database management, SSL certificate management, webapp
download/installs, etc) are nothing to shake a stick at. Check this out for a
full list
[https://github.com/cznweb/genesis/releases](https://github.com/cznweb/genesis/releases)
The project has already started developing its community at
[https://bbs.arkos.io](https://bbs.arkos.io) and has an active mailing list,
Twitter following and others in diverse social media. I'm working hard to get
people active and involved, and contribution/bugfixes are very easy to do.
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Swedish ISP Protests ‘Site Blocking’ by Blocking Rightsholders Website Too - Vinnl
https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest-site-blocking-by-blocking-rightsholders-website-and-more-181102/
======
CM30
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370446)
------
Vinnl
Apologies for editorialising the title, but HN did not allow the original
title due to its length.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DIY Scanning Electron Microscope - poindontcare
http://hackaday.com/2011/03/23/diy-scanning-electron-microscope/
======
bkraz
I built this electron microscope. Let me know if you have any questions.
~~~
ChuckMcM
About a zillion :-) Building one has been one of my "wouldn't it be neat to do
..." projects for a long time.
Can you say a bit more about the lenses? The Heathkit oscilloscope I built as
a kid had electrostatic plates that were used to focus the beam rather than
anything lens like.
Have you considered using bits of lead type as your test target, they have the
advantage of being asymmetric and recognizable, could help with linearity
measurements.
The SEM I used at Intel a couple of times had the electrons coming in at an
angle and the detector at an angle. have you considered something like that to
improve the signal pickup of your optical tube?
~~~
bkraz
Most commercial SEMs use electromagnetic lenses because they provide higher
power (more drastically change the path of electrons) in a smaller space. The
problem is that they require custom iron pole pieces. It's easier to build
electroststatic lenses, which are just metal conductors and the geometry is
not extremely critical. Search for Einzel lens for details. The condenser and
objective lens in my scope are Einzel lenses made from copper pipe from the
hardware store. I like the idea of looking at lead type with the SEM!
The angle of the incoming electrons toward the specimen is what creates the
viewing angle in the image. The angle of the secondary electron detector is
what creates the apparent illumination direction. It's true that setting the
specimen to split the beam and detector angles will provide a good image,
similar to having a good key light in photography.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Advanced Machine Learning with Python – FREE Until 6/8/17 at 7PM ET - carlosgg
https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning
======
equalunique
Thanks for the link. Was able to take advantage of the offer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete - car
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/us/electoral-college.html
======
hyperpape
There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some
people think that's bad, some people think it's good.
However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral
college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect
is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states
over all the rest.
If you live in Wyoming, the electoral college does not help you, because your
vote is secure. Ditto for Vermont. But if you live in Ohio or Florida,
presidential candidates will spend all their time in your state, trying to get
your vote.
While you can concoct a semi-coherent case for rural voters needing special
protection, no one can explain why Ohio is more or less important than North
Carolina, or Florida than Texas.
[0] Which, if you're paying attention, is at least correlated with being
rural, but only partially--another lazy generalization that surrounds this
subject.
~~~
ShamelessC
I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely
shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g.
California) anyway?
~~~
TylerE
I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet.
This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER
see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.
~~~
rayiner
I totally underestimated the importance of visiting until I went to Iowa
earlier this month. (My wife went to high school and college there and we went
back for the state fair and some campaign events.) It shattered my East-coast
preconceptions about how elections work. Because of the caucus system,[1] you
actually have to meet people in person to encourage them to advocate for you
at the caucus. My wife got selfies with nearly every democratic candidate. I
met the mayor of New York at a Buffalo Wild Wings. (He was just there for a
snack, as were we.) You go to a diner with like 20 people and a presidential
candidate has to sit there and field rambling questions from 80 year old
ladies. It’s completely nuts, but the people who engage in the process (and
they are completely ordinary people) are incredibly committed to their role.
The other thing I came away with from the whole process is a newfound
appreciation for the “who would I like to have a beer with” factor. The issues
and policy proposals you read on the Internet don’t really matter—none of that
stuff will ever get through Congress. Being able to look the person in the
eye, and see how they carry themselves while shleping to half a dozen events
every day—that really makes an impression.
[1] In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, registered party members in a precinct
get together, discuss the candidates, take a first round vote where some
candidates are cut, discuss the candidates some more, and then take a final
vote.
~~~
rapind
"None of that stuff will get through Congress"
I have a different opinion. Sanders and to a lesser extent Warren have created
massive volunteer networks that do have a pretty big impact, like everywhere.
Obama had that too, but it was dismantled when he took office (insanity).
There's a good argument to say Obama would have been far more impactful had he
kept it going.
Sanders has no intention of shutting down his "revolution" (not my words)
whether he does or doesn't get the nomination. There's going to be some
serious pressure (like there already has) on congress in the years to come. I
don't think the same ol' same ol' will continue much longer.
I don't mean to be a fan boy, but it's pretty phenomenal what he / they have
done since 2016, and it resonates with a lot of people. CNN and MSNBC don't
talk about it too often, but it's very real.
Don't take my word for it though. Easily researched.
~~~
tptacek
It's a 50/50 country. It would be _alarming_ if, after one election, which
will at best be decided 60/40 in their favor, a radically different (from
their immediate predecessor) President was actually enable to enact their
agenda. The system we have is literally designed to prevent that thing from
happening. "Volunteer network" or not, Sanders isn't passing his agenda. If he
was serious about doing that, he'd stay in the Senate.
~~~
rapind
Let's agree to disagree. I actually think big _alarming_ changes are coming
(and have already happened). I'm just a Canuck though, and not out to convince
anyone. I'm really fascinated with the political changes I see happening (or
think I see happening at least).
~~~
caseysoftware
After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very
little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most
of the show.
If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of
them aren't new and some of them are decades old.
Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking
"why?"
~~~
noir_lord
> After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very
> little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most
> of the show.
Maybe but aren't you in danger of missing the big changes coming precisely
because you are inside the bubble?
A political equivalent to "let them eat cake".
As an outside observer to the US it does seem like the pressure has to give
somewhere soon at some point (and in a few other western democracies including
my own though I think the US is further down the pipe on this one).
~~~
caseysoftware
Valid line of reasoning but I'm 10 years out from that world specifically
because the bubble was/is ugly.
I think you're 100% right that there's building pressure and something will
give but that's precisely because things haven't changed much. If the general
populace decides "no matter how I vote, things don't change" some will lose
hope and give up.. while others will look to other approaches.
(And those other approaches aren't usually good.)
------
rayiner
Debates over the electoral college tend to conflate two different things. The
original purpose of the electoral college was a compromise between those who
wanted the president directly elected, and those who wanted Congress to elect
the president. While very small states have a modest edge as a result of using
the number of members of Congress to decide the number of electors, the real
purpose of the system is to add a layer of indirection to the election of the
President, where the states have a say in their capacity as states.
That layer of indirection continues to exist today. Article II provides that
“each state shall appoint” electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof
may direct.” So Minnesota could decide to have the state legislature appoint
its electors, without a popular vote. (That would raise the importance of
state government elections, which might be a good thing.)
At the same time, that layer of indirection could exist even in a purely
proportional system. You could assign electoral votes based on population or
number of house members.
So the debate over getting rid of the electoral college actually involves two
different issues. Should the number of electors be proportional? And should we
reduce the independent status of the states even more by taking away their
intermediary role in electing the President?
~~~
gthaman
Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college,
secede.
To mess with the electoral college in this point in time - when its basically
49% vs 51% - and at such a level of divide in the country is not exactly a
testament to how empathetic the two sides are. It would be a disaster.
Everyone thinks Trump himself is the problem but this awful idea to change the
goalposts literally to win elections would do way more damage than Trump could
ever do but I guess it doesn't come in an 'easy to hate' package with agenda
serving talking points, etc.
I don't know where these idiots think this whole "OK - we'll follow these
laws, but not those" thing is going but it is incredibly damaging and at the
moment only one side is picking and choosing which laws to obey and not obey
(then writing publicly about it) but soon enough the other side will be
picking and choosing which laws to ignore.
Get your helmets on once we are on _that_ slippery slope.
~~~
pasquinelli
By your logic there can never be a suitable time for democratic reform. The
current political situation can only get worse until the united states becomes
more democratic or more authoritarian.
~~~
rayiner
That doesn’t follow. Even in recent history, most Presidents command large
electoral vote majorities. In my life time, 7 of 10 elections ended in a more
than 60-40 margin in the electoral college, including both Obama wins.
~~~
pasquinelli
What difference does that make? It's either moving the goal posts so your team
can win if they're out of power or it's entrenching your team's position if
they have power. Either way is an outrage to someone, and so any reform comes
at the wrong time.
I really don't see the point you're making.
~~~
rayiner
I took the OP’s argument to mean that, even if you can get a consensus that
the electoral college should be changed, people should hesitate to do so where
close races mean that the change will be outcome determinative for particular
races. My point is that we still routinely have candidates winning massive
electoral college majorities. If people otherwise were in agreement that a
change was warranted (note that more than 50% of republicans supported
abolishing the electoral college as recently as 2012), there are still
opportunities to change the system where it won’t change the result of the
current election.
------
WarDores
It's not about division of power between rural/urban or big states/small
states. The Electoral College is about buffering purely democratic power. The
President doesn't represent "the people." He/she represents the interests of
the states. The Legislative Branch represents the will of the people (most
directly through the House of Representatives). One of the biggest problems is
vesting too much power and importance in the Executive, which was never
intended. Throw the balance of power out of whack, and we get these
conversations (the President has to represent "the people" and therefore
should be elected by popular vote)
~~~
vturner
I wish someone with $$ would start plastering this message everywhere the
absurd "get rid of the elctoral college" debate comes up. We are not a
democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus. We are a
federation of states that is supposed to have most of the control in their
region and sacrifice a little bit of control to the federal government for
purposes of defense and commerce. Your "democracy" should be your state
legislature, but sadly authoritarians of the past have taken that away.
~~~
dahart
Your argument seems confused to me, but maybe I don’t quite understand, can
you elaborate? We do have state level democracy. The electoral college’s
purpose is solely for presidential elections, not for local elections. Why
shouldn’t we have a democracy for presidential elections? Your reasons given
(local control) don’t apply to federal elections. Even with the electoral
college, we’re pretty close to democratic representation for president anyway,
and the discrepancy between what we have, a federal republic, and a pure
democracy doesn’t serve the same purpose that it used to. So why should we
keep it? Why is the proposal to get rid of the electoral college “absurd”?
What do you mean about authoritarians taking away state level democracy?
~~~
kd5bjo
The structure of the Federal government is fundamentally geared towards
mediating the relationships between the various states, as that was its
original purpose. Actual governance of the populace was the purview of state
government.
Over time, however, decisions about domestic law have increasingly been made
at the Federal level. At this point, the interstate commerce clause in the
Constitution is used to justify almost any regulation that the Federal
government wants to pass. When that doesn’t work, availability of Federal tax
money is made contingent on states aligning their laws with whatever national
policy is.
Also, the legislature has been ceding its rule-making authority to the
executive by passing broadly-worded legislation and leaving the details to
administrative rules committees that work for the executive.
I suspect that ‘vturner is suggesting the correct fix is to shift the overall
balance of power back towards the more democratic parts of government instead
of reforming the election process of the government’s chief clerk.
~~~
dahart
Thank you for the very reasonable and rational explanation! That does broaden
my interpretation of vturner’s comment.
Your comment seems broadly true and open minded as well. I have a couple of
questions, possibly from a devil’s advocate perspective, purely for the sake
of discussion because I’m curious:
When you say the government was originally geared to mediate the states and
that real governance was supposed to be states, what does the Supremacy Clause
in the constitution mean to you? It was there originally from the start, and
it declares the federal government the winner of conflicting state and federal
laws.
Second, while I am personally a fan of states’ rights in a bunch of specific
scenarios, it makes little sense to me to talk vaguely about who should be in
control of most laws without a specific list of regulations in mind. Where can
I find a list of federal laws that are broadly viewed to be overreach by most
people, that most people agree should be in state control?
Acknowledging that there is politics here, that it’s a fight over control, and
your point that the Federal government is leveraging tax money, is it possible
that the natural order of things is for laws to drift in the federal direction
anyway - as travel across state boundaries has become faster and faster, as
the internet blurs the lines, as state laws individually become closer
together, as we see more needs for consistent standards nationally, etc.? When
the constitution was written it took a minimum of _days_ to even communicate
with another state, let alone spend money, purchase goods, or visit. The
geographic, financial, and communication boundaries between states has
literally almost disappeared compared to what it used to be.
~~~
kd5bjo
Unfortunately, Aside from identifying general trends, I haven’t looked into
the issues enough to hold any strong opinions, nor am I in a position to cite
any specifics without significant research. I think you may be right about
increased interconnectedness naturally leading to a larger federal role in
everyday governance.
As far as the supremacy clause goes, it’s necessary for the treaty to work.
The states are agreeing to give up some of their sovereign rights to be
executed by the federal government instead, in the interests of the union. The
bulk of the Constitution describes exactly those rights that the states are
giving up, and this clause confirms that they can’t pass legislation to opt
out of individual federal decisions they don’t like that fall within those
bounds. Without it, the federal government would in practice only be able to
make suggestions— a situation that led to bankruptcy under the Articles of
Confederation.
I’m actually more concerned about the shift in power from the legislature to
the executive. As the role of the federal government has grown, it feels like
every executive agency has grown its own miniature legislature and judiciary
that are primarily beholden to the executive. Agency regulations are law, so
why aren’t they drafted and approved by an arm of the relevant congressional
committee?
------
peapicker
Firstly, I'm an independent - I actually have a great deal of issues with both
major parties. My concern with abandoning the college starts with this
observation:
Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if
divided government is good for anything, it is accountability. So with the
Electoral College system, when we do wind up with a razor-thin margin in an
election, it is likely to happen in a state where both parties hold some
power, rather than in a state controlled by one party. The Electoral college
system focuses a great deal of energy on states in this condition when an
election is close.
National Popular Vote (NPV) rewards states with high population - the higher
the turnout, the more power for that state. Additionally, under NPV, each
state would certify its own "national" vote total. What would happen when
there are charges of skullduggery? Would states really trust, with no power to
verify, other state’s returns?
I have other concerns as well but feel the EC system is superior. Just as an
observation, the parliamentary systems of the UK, Canada, Israel, (& others)
have the parliament elect the Prime Minister and likewise don't elect their
leaders by popular vote.
[edited: removing poor wording about 'lax laws', seems I implied things in a
FUD way that I didn't mean to]
~~~
sp527
Nothing you said provides an argument against equally weighting each citizen’s
vote at the federal level.
States have select powers over the federal government that are specifically
provided by our Constitution:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights).
When you vote in local elections, you are in effect in control of certain
outcomes within your state, as accorded by our Constitution.
The federal election determines representation for every single person in the
United States and, in part, how federal governmental power is exercised on
their behalf. There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any
particular state should have more or less say in such matters than those in
any other. The electoral college system is an absolute sham that deprives a
significant number of people of their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to
fair representation at the federal level.
I’d welcome any well-formed argument to the contrary. I’ve yet to ever hear
one.
~~~
hnburnsy
> There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any particular state
> should have more or less say in such matters than those in any other.
So should we abolish the senate too? Not being snarky just wondering what
those who support NPV think.
~~~
chillwaves
Mitch McConnell represents 6.8M people in TN and he is the most powerful man
in the Senate, and one of the most powerful people in the country.
How difficult is it to corrupt a man like Mitch McConnell? How robust is our
system of representation when one senator holds so much power?
~~~
briznian
McConnell is from Kentucky
~~~
chillwaves
Thanks. Doesn't change the substance of my comment except that Kentucky has
even less people in it than TN.
------
mshirley
I want to point out this article was written in May, and is a bit out of date.
For example, Nevada (heavily mentioned in the article) never adopted the
National Popular Vote compact because the governor vetoed the bill after the
legislature passed it.
FiveThirtyEight published an article last week on the current state of the
compact: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-movement-to-skip-
th...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-movement-to-skip-the-
electoral-college-may-take-its-first-step-back/)
~~~
Izkata
> Unsurprisingly, given that almost every state government to pass the
> National Popular Vote compact was completely controlled by Democrats,
It kinda feels like this part keeps getting glossed over when people talk
about this. I don't think those signing on have really thought it through, and
are just reacting to the 2016 election results. Of course the party that lost
wants to change the system in a way that, that time, they may have ended up
winning - especially with all the open hate for Trump.
~~~
cosmobot
It's worth noting that the same thing happened to the Democrats in 2000, and
hadn't happened in the US at that point for over 100 years. Looked at from the
perspective of the Democratic party: they have won the popular vote 4 out of
the last 5 elections, but only won the presidency twice. It's not surprising
the party's frustration with the Electoral College would continue to grow.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote)
~~~
drak0n1c
Interestingly in 2008 Hillary Clinton won the popular vote to be the
Democratic Nominee but did not become the Nominee. The Democrats criticize the
EC, but also don't mind using a form of it internally.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presiden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries)
~~~
hannasanarion
Both of those are untrue.
Super delegates have never decided a Democratic primary, and Obama got more
votes in 2008 (the official tally excludes Washington, Michigan, and Florida,
who went for Obama but didnt publish vote tallies)
The delegate system is proportional, not winner-take-all, it is utterly unlike
the electoral college.
------
not_a_moth
An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't
have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be
accountable to rural territories. That basically makes sense. The EC is the
only thing that really gives rural territories any stake, as the majority
population has shifted to larger urban centers.
People who want to get away from the big cities and live a different kind of
life with different priorities (and different legislative interests),
shouldn't be totally shut out, should they? Even though I live in a giant
urban area, I wouldn't want to feel pressured to due so due to lack of
political stake if I move elsewhere.
~~~
thomascgalvin
The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much
power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy.
For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in
California.[1] The people in California are not represented in the
Presidential election; it would be more accurate to say that one-quarter of
the people in California are represented.
"Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in
a tyranny of the minority. People are choosing to actively leave rural
communities and congregate in urban areas; this does not on its face mean that
their concerns have become less important.
Moreover, people congregating in urban areas tend to be center- and left-
leaning, so skewing the Presidential vote towards urban areas also results in
US politics _as a whole_ shifting to the right. It also results in a judiciary
that is more conservative than the population as a whole.
There are only eight _states_ in America that have more people than Los
Angeles _county_.[2] Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less
important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it
about their geography that makes their issues unimportant?
[1] [http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-
th...](http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-
electoral-college-74280)
[2]
[http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po04a.php](http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po04a.php)
~~~
mc32
This is somewhat balanced by representation in the other house of Congress.
It’s not only the US which has to balance rural vs urban electorates. Some are
even further down the spectrum like Japan where rural areas have even larger
influence than cities compared to other democracies.
But in a way it makes sense. Without people in the countryside the people in
the cities would have little to eat. Most countries go to some lengths to
ensure some modicum of food security/self-sufficiency.
~~~
illvm
It would be somewhat balanced if there wasn't a cap on the number of
representatives and there was 1 rep per N population. But that's not the case.
So even in the House there is an imbalance.
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>On Tuesday, Nevada became the latest state to pass a bill that would grant
its electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote across the country, not
just in Nevada. The movement is the brainchild of John Koza, a co-founder of
National Popular Vote, an organization that is working to eliminate the
influence of the Electoral College.
I don't think this will survive constitutional challenge, because it is not
the voters of the state who are deciding how the state's electors are decided.
For example, would it be allowed for a swing state such as Florida which now
has a Republican governor and state legislature, to pass a law stating that
their state's electors would be allocated based on how Alabama votes? That
way, even if the Democratic candidate won a majority of votes in Florida, the
electors would still go to the Republican candidate if the Republican
candidate wins in Alabama.
~~~
twoodfin
It’s a shame most of these comments are debating the merits of the Electoral
College, skipping right past the much more interesting & relevant argument of
whether the NPV compact is constitutional.
I agree with you that it’s not. States can indeed choose electors with any
constitutional method they wish, but if they hold a statewide election, it has
to be a fair election or it will run afoul of the 14th Amendment.
~~~
hannasanarion
How is NPV "unfair"? It is more in the spirit of the 14th than the winner-
take-all system, where your vote means more or less depending on where you
live (which was a core part of the 14th amendment logic of Gore v Bush)
~~~
twoodfin
States don’t get to hold elections for statewide officials (e.g. electors)
where some votes are effectively discarded because of some fact external to
that state election. Adding up votes from other states isn’t materially
different in that regard than performing an augury.
For the same reason, the Western states couldn’t engage in a pact to elect
their governors by party slate (especially without triggering the interstate
compacts clause).
~~~
hannasanarion
And why not? The constitution says that the states can choose their electors
for President any way they see fit. They can be named directly in the law if
the legislature wanted them to: "Our Electors are Joe Bloggs, James Jameson,
and Person McPersonface". There is no constitutional limit on how a state can
choose its electors.
When states started switching from the original plan of "electoral districts"
to "winner-take-all", Hamilton and Madison decried it as contrary to the
spirit of the Constitution, but recognized that they couldn't do anything
about it because the text of the constitution says "in such Manner as the
Legislature thereof may direct", and Hamilton's amendment to strike that
clause and replace it with an explicit by-district electoral process failed.
------
CptFribble
The Electoral college exists because of slavery.
The original idea going into the Constitutional Convention was to have
Congress pick the president. A majority of delegates going into the Convention
supported this, but discarded it after debates established it would violate
the separation of powers.
The popular vote wasn't an option, however, because it would mean the southern
states with their large, non-voting slave populations would have vastly
reduced influence. The southern delegates would have never supported a popular
vote. Thus, the electoral college.
Madison wrote about it here:
[http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif](http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif)
~~~
twblalock
That page you linked
([http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif](http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif))
contains that argument from Madison followed by a non-slavery based argument
made by someone else.
To say that the electoral college exists "because of slavery" is an
oversimplification. It ignores the misgivings about a popular vote that are
mentioned in the page you linked, and it also ignores the desire of the state
governments to exert control over their representation in the Federal
government -- senators were not directly elected for the same reason.
If you want to point to part of the Constitution that exists purely because of
slavery, the 3/5 compromise is a better example. The decision to adopt an
electoral college was certainly influenced by complications introduced by
slavery, but there were a lot of other arguments in favor of an electoral
college that were persuasive at the time.
------
gfodor
I'm really confused about this because I don't understand the incentives
politicians have to adopt this in their own state. It clearly undermines their
state's power in national elections.
My (cynical) assumption is that this will be obeyed insofar as it helps bring
about the desired outcome by those in power. It will be disregarded if it
would shift the outcome in the other direction.
~~~
outside1234
Does it? What if there state votes for the popular winner and that popular
winner is not the winner?
Remember, this will work both ways - eventually we will have a democrat that
doesn't win the popular vote as well in the current system.
~~~
rootusrootus
It will only ever tip that way for a Democrat when Democrats become the party
of rural voters.
~~~
outside1234
Why? There are plenty of small democratic states too - Rhode Island, Hawaii,
etc. etc.
~~~
throwaway2048
They are vastly outnumbered by rural republican states.
------
cletus
The electoral college achieves one very useful function thats ignored by
everyone calling for its abolition in favour of the popular vote: it produces
a clear winner and contains the contagion of litigating and delegitimizing the
outcome of an election.
Think about this: there are a number of elections that have a very small
popular vote margin. What if this gets less than, say, 20,000? That's entirely
possible. In a strictly popular vote election, what's to stop each side from
scrounging up votes or invalidating votes in every county in the country?
The most contentious and litigated election is probably the 2000 election. The
electoral college contained those shenanigans to Florida alone (and largely to
Miami-Dade and Broward countries, specifically).
There are four main problems with the US election system as I see it:
1\. Voting needs to be mandatory. Americans who love "freedom" chafe against
this but optional voting undermines democracy. You can see this in the
organized efforts to suppress voting and disqualify voters by US political
parties.
2\. The US needs preferential voting. Third-party votes are otherwise largely
a waste.
3\. Paper ballots with optical recognition only. No punch cards, certainly no
electronic voting. You need the paper trail of actual ballots. This could be
filling in a ballot and validating it with a machine or using a machine to
print out a ballot. These have an exceptionally low error rate.
4\. Stop politicizing the election process. Like, why is the supervisor for
elections an elected political position? This is the case in Florida, for
example. Likewise, you have the Senate majority holding up election reform
because of there is suspicion this will help the Democrats in the House who
passed it. Seriously, Mitch McConnell needs to go to jail.
5\. I'm fine with states being represented in the US system. The problem is
that this system was designed at a time when populations were rural and cities
were small. I don't think anyone predicted the disparity between ~40M people
in California and ~150k people in Vermont having 2 Senators each.
You'll note that none of these are having the popular vote. IMHO that's fixing
the wrong problem.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Stop politicizing the election process. Like, why is the supervisor for
> elections an elected political position?
The alternative is that it's an appointed position. That won't be less
political.
~~~
cletus
Patenntly false. Chairman of the Federal Reserve is largely apolitical. Judges
have philosophies that tend to reflect the wishes of the President who
nominated them but other than that are largely independent.
Look at how other countries handle election. In Australia the Australian
Electoral Commission ("AEC") is responsible for running elections and I can
tell you that none of the problems with politicized elections that exist in
the US exist in Australia.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Very well. Appointed people are not _always_ political. I bet that an
appointed election supervisor would be political at least some of the time,
though. (Source: human nature.)
------
40four
I always hear people complain about the electoral college, but I've never once
heard a detailed, objective argument as to why they think a popular vote would
be a better system.
Friends I've talked to about just seem to default to a majority system because
it seems more 'fair', or its easier to understand? I dont know.
In the USA, I think we are conditioned to belive in the democratic process, so
I guess it feels 'natural' to just tally up the votes, & majority wins.
We've done it countless times in our personal lives. Anytime there's a
disagreement, or a group decision to be made, "Ok, lets vote on it". Majority
wins. Simple.
This is a fine & easy way to decide things in small groups, but is it really
the best way to decide something among 300 million?
I'm not convinced. I'm not saying the EC is perfect, I just suspect a simple
majority wins vote could cause other serious problems that are not immediately
obvious.
~~~
zhoujianfu
There’s a lot of reasons for it on the movements official site:
[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-
explanation](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation)
~~~
40four
So after looking it over, the idea is to eliminate get rid of the 'winner take
all' system in the participating states. Seems fine to me. It's definitely
hard to argue for winner takes all electoral votes.
I'm not really a history guy, but I wonder why states decided to move in that
direction to begin with? Guess I'll have to look into it.
What I don't get is if there are this many states trying to push this idea,
why do they need a bill like this to do it. Why don't those states just take
it upon themselves to change their laws individually. What's stopping them
right now?
Moreover, it seems one of the main points is that the current system causes
candidates to only focus their campaign in a few battleground states. I'm
struggling to see how the National Popular Vote system would change this.
Maybe it would break up the current pattern, if so, I have a feeling another
similar pattern would emerge.
The battlegrounds would just shift. For example, it might just redistribute
the candidates focus to the greater metro areas where 2/3 of the population
lives, and republican/ democrat distributions are more even (according to the
site). If the city centers are strongly democrats, and rural strongly
republican, the I imagine the same problem emerging since those areas are a
'done deal'. Why would the candidates spend any resources there is there is no
chance of swaying them?
------
munk-a
The Connecticut Compromise is good and all, but I think it's about time we
discard it as an artifact of the days when communication was difficult and
states had expectations around operating as semi-autonomous bodies. States
used to be a strong identity tie than the nation but our general mindset has
shifted toward identifying as Americans before Delawareans.
~~~
human20190310
In a related anachronism...
> In [Republican CO State Senator Sonnenberg's] view, the Electoral College
> was created so that “people in rural areas did not get overrun by the
> masses.”
This can't be true since in 1790 (roughly the same time period the EC was
created), "the masses" were rural; at that point only about 5% of the
population was urban[0].
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States)
~~~
Scramblejams
In the US they were rural. The founders and early lawmakers took much
inspiration from the histories and travails of other governments around the
world.
~~~
hannasanarion
Which were also predominantly rural. There was no country on earth with a
majority urban population until well into the 20th century.
~~~
Scramblejams
Nobody said cities needed a majority to inspire fear of the way they
concentrated political power.
The founders’ concerns about that are well-documented. A cursory search
yielded a decent starting point:
[https://www.planetizen.com/node/18841](https://www.planetizen.com/node/18841)
~~~
hannasanarion
And nowhere did the founders say that the electoral college was intended to
counteract it.
Unlike most people today trying to come up with justifications for an
obviously broken system, the founders knew that minority rule is worse than
majority rule.
In every document where the framers discuss "tyranny of the majority", it is
clear that their solution is not minority rule, it is _CONSENSUS_. That is why
the most important functions of government: constitutional changes,
impeachments, censorship, rule changes, and veto overrides, require
supermajorities.
You don't overcome tyranny of the majority by letting minorities win. That's
just regular tyranny.
------
pseingatl
It's in the Constitution. If you don't like the Constitution: \--amend it.
\--call for a Constitutional Convention. These are the agreed methods to
change the document. "End runs," state compacts and attempts to game the
system are unconstitutional and doomed.
~~~
hannasanarion
Winner take all is not in the constitution. When states started arranging
their elections this way in the early 1800s, the chief creators of the
Electoral College Madison and Hamilton, called it an abomination and sued, and
when that failed, tried to amend the constitution to get rid of winner-take-
all.
The constitution says that states can apportion their votes however they want.
If they want to give them to the national popular winner, that's their
prerogative.
------
Schnitz
The electoral college was just a kludge to allow elections before modern
instant long distance communication became a thing. The gold standard for
democracy was always "one person, one vote", but nowadays there's a lot of
people that consider their personal gain more important than being democratic
and those people (the Republican party mostly) will try to hang on to the
electoral college, no matter the cost apparently.
~~~
0xB31B1B
“The gold standard for democracy has always been one person one vote”: it’s
much more complicated than that. At least for US legal history, the idea of
“who has the right to vote” has changed significantly, from land owning white
males to citizens who haven’t committed felonies (and a few other exceptions
like residents of Puerto Rico or citizens who live abroad and a few more). If
you look even further back, Athens, the creator of democracy, would generally
view our government as oligarchy (rule by the few) as popular vote elections
were viewed as possible to be games/bought by the wealthy or connected. You
can see echoes of that in today’s politics with dynastic families (Clintons,
Bushes). To solve the problem, the Athenians employed the concept of “sortion”
or essentially a civil service lottery where the ruling council of the city
was chosen at random from all eligible citizens. A modern example of something
close to sortition today is Jury Duty.
~~~
baggy_trough
If the House was chosen randomly from the population, it would be a big
improvement.
------
zw123456
I have often thought that part of the rationale for the electoral college was
that in the 18th century they did not have the internet, TV, Radio, even
newspapers were pretty scarce. So it just wasn't all that practical for a
candidate to ride a horse around all 13 colonies to meet each voter. The
logical solution would have been to have a parliamentary system whereby the
congress would select the president for you. The problem there was that the
president would be beholden to the congress and you would lose some of the
checks and balance features because he would be less likely to veto something.
So they developed a "shadow congress" that did not have law making
responsibilities but sole purpose was to travel to Philadelphia or DC and hear
the speeches and so forth and select the president for you as your
representative.
Looking at it from this 18th century perspective highlights why it is
completely unnecessary today. Obviously the voter has many ways of getting to
know the positions of the candidates themselves and hence able to elect the
president directly. There is no need for it today.
~~~
fastball
On the other hand, the electoral college, like congress, gives actual weight
to the idea that a state is more than just the sum of its population, by
automatically getting two votes for being a state.
Whether or not _that_ is necessary is a different conversation from the
information dissemination purpose of the EC.
~~~
ianai
That isn’t a reason for a single state to be able to hold the entire progress
of the majority back.
~~~
fastball
How can a single state hold back progress in this case?
Individual states can apportion their EC votes however they want. 48/50 states
are all-or-nothing states (arguably the actual problem), which is decided at
the state level.
~~~
ianai
Mitch McConnell
~~~
fastball
Not sure I follow.
------
will_pseudonym
If people are up in arms about the electoral college giving small states
outsized influence, wait until they hear about the senate.
~~~
WarDores
That's the literal point of the Senate, though, to be fair.
~~~
will_pseudonym
Yes, and it's part of the point of the electoral college. It's a weighted
average of the number of congress members from your state*
*and also includes Washington D.C.
------
cgb223
Why cant states just give out percents of electoral votes based on who voted?
Example: Lets say CA has 10 Electoral Votes (for easy math) 60% vote Dem, 40%
vote Republican. California then Gives 6 Electoral Votes to the Democrat and 4
to the Republican instead of all 10 to the Democrat.
Feels like that would more fairly represent the voters of each state no?
~~~
sanxiyn
Yes, I also think this is the simplest way to make it more fair. States can do
this unilaterally without pact. That's why I feel the pact is not about
fairness.
~~~
hannasanarion
The pact is necessary because whoever changes the system first loses out on
influence. You never hear of presidential candidates appealing to Maine or
Nebraska. It only works if everyone does it together.
------
ultrablack
Most modern countries have similar systems, where smaller areas are
disproportionally represented in the legislative power. Its only when you
loose that is a problem?
~~~
hannasanarion
The President is not a legislative body.
------
larrydag
When looking at political methods I like to look a first principals from all
points of view.
Here is a conservative or traditionalist political point of view in favor of
the Electoral College
[https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/danger-attacks-electoral-
coll...](https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/danger-attacks-electoral-college/)
Here is a liberal or progressive point of view against the Electoral College
[https://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/the-case-
against-t...](https://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/the-case-against-the-
electoral-college/)
These are but two opinions. Politics is ultimately creating policy on opinions
from a large community.
------
tmux314
"Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by
voters, not farms or cities or economic interests." \- Justice Earl Warren
There's a long history of the US electoral system favoring rural areas over
urban areas. Typically, the courts had to intervene in order to remedy an
issue where clearly the legislature has a conflict of interest. The most
famous is Reynolds v Sims (1964), which stated that electoral districts of
state legislative chambers must be roughly equal in population [1].
Hopefully, we can see similar change happen in the Electoral College.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims)
------
paco_sinbad
Isn't it interesting that minority opinions matter and must be treated
equally, until your state has the minority of the population...
------
reaperducer
Up next: Abolishing the World Series. Make it one big, long game and count
only the total number of runs.
~~~
currymj
this is the cricket approach. baseball typically plays multi-game series
instead.
i agree in spirit though. i have long thought it would make sense to abolish
the playoffs. give the pennants to the teams with the best records. then, have
them play a 21-game World Series in the fall.
~~~
bdcravens
That's closer to how baseball used to be, but there were also less teams at
that time.
~~~
dwighttk
yeah, they never had 21 games, but the winningest team from each league played
in the World Series until 1969. They did have a few 9 game World Series, but
most were 7.
------
tgafpg
If this happens, Democrats will be very unhappy with how many Republicans
there are in Upstate New York, Southern Illinois and Rural California who's
vote now counts for something.
~~~
_bxg1
It'll mostly balance out I think, and even if it doesn't, that's hardly the
point
~~~
AnimalMuppet
No, it kind of is the point. Democrats aren't doing this because it's more
_fair_ , they're doing it because they think they'll win more elections.
~~~
_bxg1
But regardless of what forces are actually pushing for it, it is more fair.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Perhaps. But when I know that there are people with a partisan axe to grind
pushing for it, I think arguments for "fair" should be regarded with a certain
amount of skepticism...
~~~
zhoujianfu
The NPVIC board actually has more Republicans than Democrats on it.
[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about)
------
sokoloff
The electoral college also serves as a “firewall” of sorts to contain any
local election fraud to that state (such that the will of the voters in that
state is compromised, but the compromise doesn’t extend beyond that).
For all I care, CA could pick their votes out of a lotto machine and it
wouldn’t affect the power of my vote (as a non-CA resident). The fact that my
vote is meaningless (deep blue state) is a collateral issue, perhaps.
~~~
SmirkingRevenge
This is an interesting point. The EC provides a kind of process isolation, in
theory.
Election fraudsters and hackers hoping to control the outcome of an election
have to make big splashes in small ponds, so to speak. It seems intuitive
then, that their shenanigans are more likely to be noticed - and are at least
somewhat contained if they aren't.
If we're going down the "1 person, 1 vote" road, that isolation vanishes. No
more big splashes needed - only very small droplets in a vast, vast ocean.
------
bena
It's like we've been trying to destroy the electoral college almost since it's
inception. And every step makes it worse.
The electoral college was supposed to be a sort of bulwark between the public
and the highest office in the nation.
State governments choose their electors. Those electors are _supposed_ to be
tasked with choosing the best among the candidates for president and vice-
president.
But instead, state governments threw that decision to the public. Effectively
making the electoral college a proxy popularity vote for a state. And that's a
big fucking ask of any person. Choose the person who is capable of running the
country and making all these decisions, whose policies will guide your nation
to prosperity, etc.
Hell man, I'm just trying to get _my_ budget straight. Do I look like I have
time in between everything else I do to also seriously investigate every
single candidate? And I'm not a complete moron either. And I know I cannot
actually make a completely informed decision here. But I know complete morons.
And they get a vote just like me.
------
car
The National Popular Vote (NPV) initiatives website has a lot of good info and
background on the issue, and takes on the myths around it.
\-
[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/)
Explanation - [https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-
explanation](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation)
Myths - [https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/answering-
myths](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/answering-myths)
As for the compact being a partisan issue, losing the presidency despite
winning the popular vote can happen in either direction:
_A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry
despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes._
Edit: C-SPAN interview with NPV co-founder John Koza from March 2019:
[https://www.c-span.org/video/?458502-6/washington-journal-
jo...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?458502-6/washington-journal-john-koza-
discusses-popular-vote-movement)
------
RyanAF7
No he isn't and he won't.
But, it's a good social engineering mechanism to discuss these issues so the
next gen and others who don't understand the US thanks to pop culture can
learn why the EC is important.
Repeal the 17th Amendment while you're at it and then increase the house reps
to 5000 and triple the senators.
Then we'll see how effective or profitable lobbying, campaign finance or
gerrymandering is.
------
quaquaqua1
For 32+ years, the fact is that the Democratic candidate has won the popular
vote 7 times in the last 8 elections.
I am not saying whether this is good or bad.
But, I think the two party system would crumble very quickly if the Electoral
College were removed, and something else would come into place instead.
Disclaimer: I do not vote despite being an American citizen. I am also an
anarchist.
~~~
AsyncAwait
If this means viable 3rd parties, am all for it.
~~~
quaquaqua1
Personally I think it does, and I also think it means that there would be a
spectrum shift among the candidates to more "left of center" positions.
For example I think you would still have a broad selection of candidates who
differ greatly on economic ideas. But, I think that social ideas that
currently are still being debated (abortion, church and state, drugs) would be
resolved. I am willing to estimate that maybe 70% of Americans agree on these
social issues, compared to economic issues being more 50/50.
------
akulbe
I could not be more opposed to the abolishment of the Electoral College. The
founders had a very good rationale for putting it in.
That said... I think there's a solution for this. Hard term limits for
everyone, in all the branches.
It already exists for the Executive branch. I think it should be instituted
for both Legislative and Judicial as well.
~~~
mikeash
The rationale for the EC and every other compromise in the Constitution was
simple: it’s what was required to get the states to actually sign up.
There was the very real possibility that the individual states would go their
own way if they didn’t like the proposed Constitution. Larger states could
have easily decided that they didn’t need to be part of a larger country.
Smaller states could have easily decided that they would be ruled by the
larger states and that they’d be better off independent.
The electoral college was needed to convince everyone to stick together. Same
with the different structures of the House and the Senate, the 3/5ths
compromise, and more.
Things are completely different now. There’s no realistic possibility that any
state will exit the union. The major purpose of so many elements of our
federal system is completely gone.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's fair. We have a set of rules, and the rationale for many of them is
gone. Therefore... what?
Throw them all out? If so, replace them with what? Worse: How do you get
everyone to _agree_ on what to replace them with?
As it turns out, there's a mechanism for getting everyone to agree, and to
prevent changes that everyone does not agree with (for certain values of
"everyone"): Amend the Constitution.
~~~
mikeash
It turns out that there’s another mechanism to accomplish this: a collection
of states adding up to a majority of electoral votes can agree to cast all of
their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Hence the subject of
the article.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't think it will "accomplish this", because it's too low a threshold.
This mechanism doesn't add up to "getting everyone to agree". It adds up to
"getting 50% + 1 of the electoral votes", which is not the same thing. It's
going to leave far too many people feeling bypassed and marginalized. In
today's political environment, those people might become problematic.
~~~
mikeash
Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to
change the rules.
At any rate, people may well feel bypassed and marginalized, but hopefully the
ones outside of swing states will come around once they realize that their
vote actually matters for once. And if they don’t, well, lots more people feel
bypassed and marginalized _now_.
If it’s a bad idea, what do you propose to do about it? The Constitution
allows states to cast their votes as they see fit.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to
> change the rules.
That too. This "compact" approach bugs me partly because it's a hack to get
around the appropriate way of doing this, which they know they can't get
enough support to do.
> The Constitution allows states to cast their votes as they see fit.
That may be correct. But the Wikipedia article on this
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact))
indicates that the constitutionality is at least in question. I'd really like
to see the Supreme Court decide on the constitutionality of this approach
_before_ the first election where it would be in force.
~~~
mikeash
What makes it a hack, but amending the Constitution isn’t? I agree it feels
like one, but it is entirely above board. I’m sure the authors of the
Constitution didn’t anticipate states choosing to allocate their votes this
way, but they didn’t bother to specify how they could or couldn’t do it.
From the Wikipedia article, the only question I see is whether the agreement
requires Congress to approve it or not. There seems to be no question that the
agreement is allowed and would work.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
And, under current circumstances, do you see congressional approval to be
forthcoming? For myself, I rather doubt it.
[Edit: Why isn't amending the Constitution a hack? Because it's the recognized
mechanism for changing the rules.
What makes the compact a hack? I guess it _feels_ like a hack because the
expectation is that, if you're going to change the way the president gets
elected, you have to change the Constitution - and therefore having to
withstand the full level of scrutiny that such a change would involve.
Changing it within the parameters allowed - just barely - by the Constitution
is not technically a hack, legally. But it's still _feels like_ a hack to make
the change without as much scrutiny, and without the need for the massive
majority. At least, so it seems to me.]
~~~
mikeash
Right now, no. Next time the Democrats have control of both chambers, though,
it seems possible.
In any case, my point is just that a constitutional amendment isn’t required
and this is totally above-board. The odds of an amendment being ratified are
far lower.
------
squirrelicus
The electoral college was created to strike a balance between valuing a
diversity of perspectives and popularity of perspectives. The probability that
a geographically restricted monoculture gets it right is very close to zero.
~~~
hannasanarion
That's not what the electoral college does. It's a post-hoc justification your
high school teacher probably came up with on the fly, and you clearly haven't
thought about it critically since.
The only thing the electoral college does is give the voting power of local
minorities to local majorities.
3 million people in the state vote for A
4 million people in the state vote for B
B gets 7 million people's worth of electoral votes, A gets nothing. Repeat 47
times.
There is no explanation for this that makes sense. It wasn't designed this
way, it happened by accident. The framers tried to stop it in the 1790s and
1800s, but there was no political will: everybody wanted to exploit the
antidemocratic loophole in the constitution instead of fixing it.
~~~
squirrelicus
Woo there buddy, slow down there a gorsh durned second.
The nature of our republic and bicameral system is a recognition that both the
elites (in the form of states, in this case) and the population have important
things to contribute. If your fundamental theory of politics is that the elite
don't have anything extraordinary to contribute, then how about you start by
cleaning your own house and getting rid of superdelegates before you go on
trying to change the entire country to match your pet political power
distribution
------
markvdb
Use a condorcet method [0] to elect a US president that represents common
ground.
Needs of specific groups of people can be taken into account as transparent
supplementary conditions. Sparsely populated areas constitute one potential
parameter. Maybe the opinions of poor and ill people can also be taken into
account for while respecting their privacy.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method)
------
frankbreetz
I turned 30 this year,and the Republican candidate has won the popular vote
once in my life,and he was an incumbent. There has been a Republican president
14 of the 30 years of my life. Now,the first president of my life ( Bush 1)
won the popular vote before I was born, but if we don't count him, no
Republican has entered office with the popular vote in my life. Regardless of
political beliefs does this seem right to everyone?
~~~
philliphaydon
If you removed only California from the popular vote then Hillary lost. The
share number of people there still cause Hillary to get the popular vote. Is
it fair that 1 state has a controlling share over every other state?
~~~
hannasanarion
And if you remove Texas, Hillary would have won by an even larger margin.
What is your point?
~~~
philliphaydon
EC works as intended.
~~~
hannasanarion
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the people who designed it, called it
their greatest mistake, an abomination, and presented constitutional
amendments to abolish it in the 1800s.
------
Consultant32452
I'm interested in hearing arguments from anyone who genuinely believes that
California and New York are over all politically underprivileged.
~~~
zhoujianfu
Every non-swing state (including Texas and Wyoming) is when it comes to
electing the president.
------
fastball
[https://i.imgur.com/wpOIGxq.png](https://i.imgur.com/wpOIGxq.png)
That's a nice number of comments.
------
achenatx
Right or wrong, the only thing that matters is the constitution.
It is easy to imagine that a purely democratic system would be better, but I
find it easy to imagine that it would be substantially worse.
The founding fathers rightly believed that most people were ignorant and
relatively stupid so the people vote for the house, but senators and electors
were appointed.
The agreement to get small states to join was that they would have an equal
number of senators. If you want a different system change the constitution. Im
skeptical that a democratic system would be better.
They setup the system to be a collection of states with a weak federal govt
with limited power. The federal govt over time has taken more and more power
from the states.
When california joined the union it had 33X less population than the most
populous state (new york). Californians were happy to have the
overrepresentation when it benefitted them.
Overall a strongly federal system is worse than a system where 50 states each
try something different. In a 50 state system we get many chances to find the
best policies. For example when marijuana is illegal at the federal level the
antis predicted wholesale mayhem. There was no way to test to see what would
happen until some states defied federal law. Once one state showed that it was
fine others could come on board.
The same goes for open carry. Antis claimed there would massive increases in
crime and shootings. It turns out not to be the case.
~~~
throwaway827364
My problem with the electoral college is that it doesn’t seem to matter who I
vote for or which way my state goes.
The election comes down to some key battleground states, which is where the
candidates spend the vast majority of their time campaigning.
The constitution shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. The men who wrote that
document were flawed just like any other human. Many of them owner slaves. I’m
not saying we should disregard our laws but I am saying we should keep an open
mind to amending the constitution as needed.
------
chkaloon
> "Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Texas
> at Austin, is sharply critical of the Electoral College system, but does not
> believe the interstate pact would solve all of the problems inherent to
> America’s election design."
Same argument as we can't try any gun restrictions because none of them will
stop all shootings.
------
wmgries
What if Congress revoked all (or nearly all) implicitly and explicitly
delegated powers to the Executive? The jockeying over who runs for President
and how we elect them always seems to miss the point that the modern Executive
is much too powerful.
Make the Presidency weaker, and then let's have this discussion about how we
elect them.
------
EGreg
In much more recent news:
[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/faithless-
elector-a-...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/faithless-elector-a-
court-ruling-just-changed-how-we-pick-our-president/)
------
freen
About the same number of people live in public housing in NYC as Wyoming.
Either land area matters or people matter.
Choose.
------
amaccuish
Questions like this push me more and more to the idea that places like China
have got governance nailed. Why bother about all this? It's disorder for
little gain.
------
lolsal
Every time this debate comes up I can't help but wonder if we are letting the
office of the president have too much power. To over-simplify a bit: the
president should be executing the will of Congress, right?
------
rootusrootus
This article is from May. Oregon has since joined, becoming the 16th state to
do so.
~~~
5555624
The current number is 15. Nevada didn't join. Although passed by the Assembly
and the Senate, the Governor vetoed it.
------
will4274
The electoral college is a fault domain for voter fraud, and scaler to
mitigate differences in voter accessibility, which cannot otherwise be fully
mitigated given differences in geography.
------
mythrwy
I'd be curious how this holds up to court challenges because it seems like a
deliberate circumvention of the constitution.
Not that the current system is completely equitable.
------
tedmcory77
Democratic candidates have won the popular vote 4/5 times in the most re ent
elections, but only won the Presidency 2/5\. That’s an issue.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Teams with the most yards lose some football games, too. Is that an issue?
Run to win the election under the rules that are in force.
~~~
gnulinux
This does not make any sense to me. Elections is not a game, it is people's
inalienable right to have equal representation compared to others. If
politicians decide that State X doesn't matter since it's not powerful with
respect to EC, this is blatantly undemocratic and needs to be fixed asap.
------
ur-whale
The real core issue is the president and the federal govt has way too much
power. There is no reason why a centralized authority should decide on policy
for both rural and urban communities and for states as deeply different as
Louisiana and Washington state.
If political power was surrendered back down to where it naturally belongs,
i.e. to the state, or even better to the city level, and the fed was stripped
and left with little to no political power, this whole electoral college
charade would become entirely moot.
------
ananonymoususer
Obviously only the "blue" states want this change. Fortunately there are more
"red" states than blue states, so the original purpose of the electoral
collage, as created by the founding fathers, will be preserved. Otherwise we
would be in "tyranny of the majority" mode, which we are anyway, but at least
not with regard to presidential elections.
~~~
zhoujianfu
It’s really not a blue state vs red state thing as much as a swing state vs
non-swing state thing. Right now it’s more blue because trump is in power, but
if democrats take the White House (and especially if it’s without winning the
popular vote), red states will be jumping on the bandwagon. Before 2016 red
states were terrified of the electoral college “blue wall” and many were very
close to joining the compact before the 2016 election made it politically
infeasible.
------
shmerl
Another thing to abolish - winner-takes-all system, which prevents wider
parties variety.
~~~
chrisseaton
Would you have multiple presidents? How would you break their roles up? Which
one gets the nuclear code or do they all?
~~~
jjeaff
Winner takes all refers to the fact that in most states, the winning candidate
gets 100% of the electoral college votes. Even though the candidate may have
gotten just 50% plus 1 of the votes.
This is the main reason a popular vote winner can still lose.
You could be the 51% winner in most states but lose by nearly 100% in the more
populous states and still win. Which is why this keeps happening to Democrats.
They win by landslides in NY and CA but then eek out a loss in some of the
swing States.
~~~
chrisseaton
I don't understand how you can have all electors voting for the national
popular winner, and also somehow not have first-past-the-post?
~~~
shmerl
"Winner takes all" problem refers to the Congress, not presidential elections.
------
bensonn
1\. Even if NPV is a good idea, this is the wrong way to do it. Doing it the
wrong way means legal chaos. Doing it the wrong way means it can probably be
undone or made worse the wrong way.
2\. George Mason vs. Elisabeth Warren. James Madison vs. Jay Inslee. These
match-ups aren't even close.
3\. I don't think the results will match the intentions.
For point 1 this seems like parts of Obamacare. Whether you support it or not,
enforcing/creating parts of it via executive order means it can be
unenforced/dismantled via executive order. This isn't a direct comparison, my
point, if you base something on legally weak and questionable methods you will
end up with weak and questionable outcomes.
Another way I look at point 2, can Justin Beiber rewrite Mozart and improve
upon it? There are very few political intellectuals I would put on par with
the founding fathers, and sadly most of those are not politicians. The
founders' system has worked very well for centuries, the USofA has faults
sure, but from ragtag rebel colonies to world super-power, this part is
working fine. We have many problems, isolate the variables, I don't think the
EC is the cause.
Point 3, this is mostly a party issue, Democrats support it, Republicans do
not. Of the 16 states to pass it through legislature 15 had Democrat
governors, the single Republican governor vetoed. I think it is safe to say
the elections of Bush and Trump, without winning the popular vote, are the big
driving factors for the NPV. I don't think NPV will have the intended effect.
I think people are wrongly taking new rules and applying old stats but if you
change the rules of the game you can't expect players (candidates and voters)
to play with old strategies. A lot more Republicans will show up to vote in
solidly blue states where currently voting for an R is a waste of time.
------
cabaalis
The United States bases way too much of its identity on who is its president.
~~~
hannasanarion
Because the United States invests way too much power in who is President.
------
_bxg1
> Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican state senator in Colorado who opposed the
> bill, said he believed the change would weaken the electoral power of
> sparsely populated rural states like Wyoming and Utah, while strengthening
> states like California and New York.
States. Are. Not. People.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
No. But states' representatives will often work together across party lines to
try to do something that benefits the state. "Political power of a state" is
not a totally idiotic concept.
------
whenanother
the electoral college system has become a scam to give the presidential
election to the wealthy. they can, during the election year establish
residency in the swing states and in affect have more of a say as to who
becomes president. people here claiming that it gives the rural population
more of a say, that's a lot of bs. with national popular vote the urban and
rural states will have just as much of a say as each vote will count for one
vote. none of this crap of increasing the representative count and taking
advantage of the numbers being rounded in favor of one party vs the other. now
if a party wants to rig the election, they will have a much harder time.
------
smsm42
Wake me up when it's 35 states. Before that, it's just a political stunt -
blue states promise to vote for popular vote winner, thinking it would be a
Democrat, which they'd be voting for anyway.
------
JackFr
It's quite likely that without the electoral college, Donald Trump would have
won the popular vote. Republican turnout in NY is terrible for presidential
elections, because they all know there vote won't matter. Registered Democrats
out number Republicans in NY by more than 2 to 1, and yet there are more
Republicans in NY that there are people in New Mexico and Vermont combined.
It's definitely not a given, but predicting what would happen is not a clear
exercise. You can't change the rules without changing peoples behavior.
------
jacobsimon
You misspelled obsolete :)
------
sabana
How is this tech related?
------
remarkEon
Most of these comments are about the structural issues with the electoral
college.
I’m not really concerned about that. What concerns me is this insistence that
a popular vote for President in a country of 350M people is a good idea. Does
anyone actually believe this? The executive branch these days has essentially
become a proxy for what laws one wants passed, and you end up voting
accordingly. This might be fine, if the results were restricted to being local
- and by the way, the original design of this country accented on exactly that
point. But we don’t live in that country anymore, I guess. Now we want more
democracy, all the time.
So I find it really hard to believe that introducing _more_ “democracy” in a
nation as divided and diverse as this one is a good idea. This, I thought, was
supposed to be one of the reasons that people wanted to move here ... the
whole Federalism thing. Taxes can be different between states. So can Social
policy. The extension of this is of course the Electoral College.
Spare me the criticism of “slippery slope” but getting rid of the Electoral
College seems like we’d be on the road to a government “of the majority, by
the majority, and for the majority”. That is categorically absurd, at least in
my view.
The cynic in me says that the only reason we’re even talking about this is
because Trump won in 2016 via the EC. Sure. He did. And Clinton won the
“popular vote” because of LA, SF, and NYC.
For those in SF (or whatever proxy): do you want folks in Sioux Falls or Fargo
making your economic and social policy? No? I didn’t think so. So why is it
okay to institute the reverse?
The point I’m trying to make here is this country, as diverse as it is, is
best run as a distributed network. And centralizing the election of the
Executive into a singular popular vote will help destroy what’s left of that
network.
------
m0zg
News flash: Trump would still have won, just with a different campaign
strategy and a different platform. Promise a little more of what CA and NY
want, and a little less of what everybody else wants, and he'd get the popular
vote, too.
In fact I think this would make it _easier_ for a populist to win, not harder,
because all they'd have to worry about is crafting a campaign message that
resonates with the majority and portrays their opponent as Satan in the flesh.
~~~
outside1234
I mean, if he had won the popular vote, then fine, he is the winner.
All this is asking is 1 person 1 vote.
~~~
m0zg
This would lead to e.g. Wyoming being run by California though. I'm sure
Wyomingites would totally love that.
~~~
outside1234
Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your point.
If you are saying that each person in Wyoming would have 1 vote towards the
presidency and each person in California would have 1 vote towards the
presidency, then I agree.
~~~
felipemnoa
>>Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your
point.
It means that California would have more influence at the federal level than
it does now. And since federal laws apply to all states it means that
indirectly California would have more influence on Wyoming.
~~~
Taniwha
so? California has more people - it should have influence proportional to it's
population - remember that in most states (except for Wyoming) electoral
college votes are dominated by house seats (which are proportional to
population).
~~~
m0zg
If you want the US to stay whole, that's a big problem. Technically states can
secede, or form a separate union if they so desire. That's also why Senate
representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I suspect that'd be the
next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this actually succeeds.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Technically states can secede, mlor form a separate union if they so desire.
_Technically_ , they can't. There is no provision for secession in the US
Constitution.
_Practically_ , well, the one notable attempt didn't work out, so not that,
either.
> That's also why Senate representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I
> suspect that'd be the next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this
> actually succeeds.
Well, you can't do that through coordinated state action.
Or even a Constitutional amendment. Maybe two amendments, because the
provision prohibiting amendments which alter the equal representation in the
Senate isn't itself explicitly protected the same way. Of course, small states
can easily block a Constitutional amendment, so that's not going to happen
unless they are on board.
~~~
m0zg
>> There is no provision for secession in the US Constitution.
There's no provision forbidding secession either, so they technically very
much can. All that's not forbidden is allowed.
~~~
dragonwriter
> There's no provision forbidding secession either
The Article IV Sec. 4 guarantee cannot be interpret as even coherent if a
state can secede; once a state is admitted to the union, he federal government
is irrevocably obligated to preserve it as a subject and republican
government; if a state government could escape this oversight by secession,
the guarantee would be empty.
Further, there is ample historical evidence that the idea of reserving the
right to secede when ratifying was raised by New York, and rejected because it
was understood that it would be viewed by the Congress as an inconsistent
condition attached to ratification and thereby nullify the ratificstion.
The Supreme Court has also ruled on the issue, in _Texas v. White_. So your
concept of a right to secession is inconsistent with the text, historical
evidence of intent and case law of the Constitution.
~~~
m0zg
>> Article IV Sec. 4
Says literally nothing about secession.
------
sevenf0ur
The democrats crucified Trump in 2016 for not accepting the outcome of the
election. Today they want to amend the constitution to abolish the electoral
college. Maybe it's a good thing that we can't change these things on a whim.
~~~
clintonb
This campaign doesn't require changing the constitution. States can decide how
to divide their electors, which is exactly what is going on here. See
[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-
explanation](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation).
------
PorterDuff
re: California
It's also worth considering the distortions that illegal aliens put on
electoral college numbers.
~~~
hannasanarion
If there was any evidence at all, the administration would have presented it.
------
gamechangr
Wouldn't that push housing up in big cities?
------
crb002
This is absurd populism. IMHO electoral college votes should come from US
House district winners instead of winner takes all.
~~~
bdcravens
Probably a move in the right direction, but then the issues of gerrymandering
come into play.
------
garrickvanburen
My issue with the electoral college is that winner take all - rather than each
electoral vote being counted and rolled up, only the winner is. There are a
couple states that do this, I’d like to see the others adopt this.
------
ryanmarsh
Anyone proposing this is doing so in the blind. Nobody knows how this would
change the complex executive and legislative systems we have. Nobody could
know, for decades. So why the confidence that this is the right thing to do?
------
huffmsa
1) the presidency has grown too powerful and imperial with a bureaucracy so
massive the Qing emperor would be jealous.
2) 15 States can do what they want, but unless they meet the provisions in
Article 5, the college is here to stay.
Thank goodness the Framers had the foresight to include the process for
amending the Constitution in the document.
~~~
hannasanarion
The states have the absolute right to assign their electors as they see fit.
The framers intended for them to be locally elected or proportional, like
Maine and Nebraska today.
~~~
huffmsa
Oh I know. There is no Federal notion of a popular vote for the presidency.
It's entirely up to each state how they wish to nominate their Electors.
------
baggy_trough
Let's imagine a state signs this and is a tipping point state for the
presidential election. If this compact has any effect, it will be for the
state's electors to vote against the popular vote in that state, resulting in
the election of the undesired president according to the state's voters.
Nothing wrong with that constitutionally, but I suspect the politicians will
feel differently after the voters express their opinion of the matter.
~~~
jeremysalwen
If this actually does pass the tipping point, nobody will even be counting
electors any more, they will only be counting the popular vote. The electors
will be considered just a formality.
~~~
pwinnski
Vote counts will still be reported at every level, but electors will all cast
their votes for the national popular vote winner.
It will be easy enough to note which states' vote counts favor candidate B,
despite the national popular vote favoring candidate A.
As parent says, that's the design, but I'm sure there will be upset people in
those states.
~~~
dragonwriter
> As parent says, that's the design, but I'm sure there will be upset people
> in those states.
There are people upset with the plurality winner getting all the states votes,
too.
~~~
baddox
Not to mention a plurality of voters in _the entire country_ in 2000 and 2016.
------
innocentoldguy
This is stupid. The entire point of the electoral college is to ensure small
states have a say and the country isn’t ruled by the majority mob. Small
states would have to be pretty ignorant to make themselves irrelevant like
that.
~~~
jeanperrot
Are you thinking of the US Senate? The electoral college is not meant to give
a proportionally larger weight to small states.
~~~
bdcravens
Except it does. Smaller states do get more votes per capita than larger
states.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Advantage_based_on_state_population)
------
033803throwaway
If trump is re-elected it may be the last time a republican wins a
presidential election in the current system, due to demographic changes in key
states (FL, TX, NC, etc.)
If the electoral college is abolished, it could actually end up getting
another few republicans elected, since it would incentivize republican turnout
in solidly democratic states like California.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
I doubt it. The Republicans will just have to move their platform just enough
to the left to appeal to whichever state has the 270th vote.
~~~
whenchamenia
The left has gone so authoritarian they may not have to. Left and right are
illusion. Freedom and despotism are what you experince as a citizen.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
All right, the Republicans have to move their position just enough to appeal
to the median electoral vote _just a bit more_ than the Democrats do. If the
Democrats go full off-the-deep-end leftist (as seen by the bulk of the
voters), then the Republicans may not have to move at all.
------
crusso
The states agreed to the Constitution with the Electoral College provision. If
there's national will to change it, it should be through the amendment process
described in the Constitution.
Having some states band together to subvert the intention of the EC
fundamentally breaks the compact of the Constitution. What is the authority of
a President chosen through subversion of the Constitution?
~~~
sanxiyn
Constitution does not specify how states should implement EC. In fact, Maine
and Nebraska do not use winner-take-all used by other states.
------
waynecochran
Great. With no electoral college, Wyoming would have 1.44% of the weight
California would have towards who was elected. The only thing keeping Wyoming
in the Union would be their two senators. Maybe then Wyoming folks should have
to pay 1.44% of the Federal Income Tax that Californians pay.
Campaigning for President? Just go to New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix,
and maybe a few other cities.
Maybe city folks can start making their own food while they're at it.
~~~
georgeecollins
Guess what? Wyoming pays less than 1.07% <1> of the federal income tax that
California does so you have gotten your wish.
Also California grows about 100x <2> the food of Wyoming so yeah we can eat
our own food, thank you.
The most important reason the electoral college was invented was so that
states with large slave populations could count 60% of them for representation
without actually giving them the vote. You don't hear about it that much
anymore for obvious reasons.
<1>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state)
<2> [https://www.farmprogress.com/management/what-us-states-
produ...](https://www.farmprogress.com/management/what-us-states-produce-most-
food-ranking-1-50)
~~~
waynecochran
Nice response. With actual data. Of course I am not sure the folks in the San
Jaoquin Valley (who produce all that food) would be colored blue if they were
an independent state.
I don't buy the slave argument -- I think the electoral college was created
for the same reason we have two senators per state. Of course those states
with large slave populations would have been colored blue, but that is another
history folks ignore.
~~~
georgeecollins
And if the San Jaoquin Valley became its own state conservative votes in San
Jaoquin valley and San Fransico would count more if they were seperate states.
Which is the whole point. It's telling that my point about economics and
representation got turned into a blue / red thing.
>> I don't buy that slave arguement.. And you are a historian? The slave
states that were large like Virginia wanted the electoral college,
contradicting your argument.
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/electoral-college-
slav...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/electoral-college-slavery-
constitution) [https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-
slavery](https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/electoral-
college...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/electoral-college-
slavery.html)
~~~
waynecochran
It seems the electoral college was exploited by slave owners, but what I
challenge is that is was created for that purpose. It articles see the
electoral college was a vestige of slavery, but that does not seem like a
reasonable conclusion. The sources you give all have a serious bias and a
vested interest in seeing the electoral college disbanded.
~~~
georgeecollins
It was supported by the largest state at the time, so the idea that it was
created to "help small states" makes no sense. It served that purpose but that
is not why it was made.
You provide no evidence and when I site sources you say they are biased. If
you believe the sources are biased please note that they site books, experts
etc. If you just reject every piece of evidence you will always be right.
------
cybersnowflake
I wonder how many people arguing for the abolishment of the EC would like it
if India and China automatically had the most votes in whatever supranational
government arises in the future and got to decide everything that happened
across the world. The US is still supposed to be a federation. The EC was part
of the deal the US made with smaller states to become part of the Union
precisely because they were afraid of being drowned out by the big states.
Don't like it? Convince the smaller states. Might not be that hard. There are
plenty of dumb people in the smaller states willing to permanently consign
their land to irrelevance because they don't like a President who's going to
be gone in a handful of years.
~~~
komali2
That only matters if our international government gets an elected god emperor.
The president is one of three branches of government. Congress/Senate balances
the power across states.
------
Spooky23
I think this is both a dumb move and unconstitutional.
Present day politics aside, allowing for pure demographic voting in this day
and age is even more dangerous than it was in the early days of the republic.
States and regions have different needs that need to be considered in the
governance of the nation. You can already see warning signs, the Democratic
Party platform has been so brain dead, they even managed to marginalize union
voters. Kansas and Wisconsin were progressive strongholds.
Changing the way we count isn’t a fix for that issue — fixing how candidates
and parties approach the people is. A more productive approach would be to
reduce the carnival nature of the election process... candidates shouldn’t be
picked based on their ability to shuck and jive in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Direct popular vote is basically a beacon for reactionary politics. It’s easy
to churn out old people to vote.
~~~
lonelappde
What is unconstitutional about a state using its constitutional authority to
cast its votes for President?
Why should fictional state borders take precedence over actual humans when
allocating voting blocs? If different states have difference needs, then those
states residents will vote for leaders who serve them.
Your problem seems to be that that giving supreme power to an arbitrary
majority is flawed. And it surely is. But giving supreme power to an arbitrary
_minority_ is surely as bad or worse.
Old people live in every state.
If you have a problem with old people exercising their sacred voting right too
much, surely the solution is to enable young people to vote, not give rural
state citizens extra vote weight?
~~~
Spooky23
Don’t put words in my mouth.
My problem is that this is a solution looking for a problem. In fact, it’s a
solution that will make the problem that some people want to solve far worse.
------
JakeAl
I think before we change the system we might want to get politicians to
actually do their job and represent the people in their district. With all
these people voting by mail and all these government provided or subsidized
phones and internet connections it's not only trivial but should be mandatory
to quantify and qualify what each person who votes wants as a matter of a
public record of accountability rather than having some party line being
towed. If the politicians were doing their job and not serving some party or
political agenda, the electoral college I think would work just fine. Popular
vote/mob rules? I don't think so. The majority should never rule over the
minority, and the only good government is a democracy where the majority vote
in the best interest of all citizens and compromise in order to do so. Or as I
like to sum it up, don't confuse a coop game with a competitive game.
------
zaroth
A hypothetical situation;
An amendment is proposed on the floor of the House to change the formula in a
bill for how funding is allocated.
The amendment presents a pro-urban allocation which provides a greater share
of funding for larger cities compared to a baseline per-capita allocation.
Urban center representatives stand up and argue how their cities need a higher
reimbursement rate because the issue at hand is costlier to fix or more
prevalent in their environment.
Rural representatives stand up and argue they need the baseline funding to run
an effective program.
A vote is taken, and 54% of votes approve the amendment, urban center reps
effectively pooling their votes to enact the funding paradigm that most
benefited their constituents.
——
The moral of the story is that it’s a lot more complicated than 1 person 1
vote.
Often times policies may benefit a rural area over and urban environment or
vice versa. One type of community benefiting and the expense of another.
Cities already carry a massive voting advantage, because, that’s where most
people live!
When bills pass on a majority vote, urban already wins over rural every time.
The rural areas maybe can form blocks to help push otherwise divided city reps
one way or another, but policy debate is already dominated by urban voters,
despite the claim of urban votes “counting less”. The simple math belies the
reality that urban center reps vote for pro-urban national policies and the
rural states with 1 rep sit on the sidelines.
The last place these votes matter, even in the slightest, is in the EC in a
closely contested election, and in the Senate. Frankly I’m not convinced more
populism is any benefit, or that cities are particularly hurting from a lack
of representation.
~~~
positr0n
The thing I've never understood about this argument is why the urban/rural
divide is so special that it needs special rules? There are a bajillion other
types of ways to categorize people that there is a majority and a minority
besides the population density of their state.
~~~
zaroth
It’s a hypothetical, of course it’s contrived. Thankfully things break down
much more chaotically than just an urban/rural split! That’s not to say there
is not a general effect present.
Here’s another way to think of it. How many congressional votes does Los
Angeles get before it’s people are adequately represented? Right now I believe
it’s 18.
Even at that level their vote per capita is technically 3:1 less powerful than
a person in WY. But whose interests are being served better in Congress?
Is the population of LA really disenfranchised in Congress due to WY getting a
representative, or because LA didn’t get 30?
There’s a power effect which is very much non-linear due to the individual
votes in Congress being decided on a win/loss by majority or super-majority
and this effect already greatly benefits these so-called “disenfranchised”
voters.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Adventures with cgo: Part 1- the Pointering - spooneybarger
https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2018/04/adventures-with-cgo-part-1--the-pointering/
======
spooneybarger
Hi y'all.
I'm the author of the post. Will be checking the discussion from time to time
today and will try to answer any questions I can.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Numeral Systems of the World - bookofjoe
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Numeral_Systems_of_the_World.svg
======
skovorodkin
Maybe the link to [1] would be more interesting.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numeral_systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numeral_systems)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What sort of advice can you offer to a 20 year old? - mrlurker
Hey there guys, it's been a few years since I graduated and things haven't been working out too well for me, nor do I see them working very well in the future.<p>I'm very poor. I'd like to turn my life around. I want to become successful and have a good career.
======
SatvikBeri
I'm going to assume you're at least open to the idea of computer programming.
I was in a very similar situation at 20. I had a very hard time finding a job,
and when I did it didn't pay very well. I later moved, and repeated the
experience. Finally I figured some things out, and 3 years later I'm making 3
times as much and jobs are applying for me.
Here is my step-by-step advice: 1\. Look at the job postings in your
geographical area and try to find out what languages/technical skills they are
looking for. There should be a fairly common job title, such as "SAS Analyst."
You are going to paint yourself as the ideal candidate for this job title-it
should be pretty common amongst different companies, but also specific enough
that anyone will know immediately what you're looking for if you say "I'm
looking for a position as an XYZ." Being overly broad ("I'm looking for a
position as a programmer") is the kiss of death here! 2\. Learn at least one
of those languages/skills really well, and try to get some proof. This may be
a certification or some sort of app you build. I recommend SAS if it's
desirable in your area-it's very easy to get SAS certified and get SAS jobs in
my experience. 3\. Follow this approach to applying for jobs: i. Network. Talk
to people in your local area, especially those who are interested in the skill
you learned. Tell them you're looking for a job as a XYZ (your chosen job
title). Since you have a specific position in mind people will very easily be
able to refer you if someone they know is looking for a person in that field.
ii. Learn how to write a good resume. One very important tip is to add the
keywords related to that job. I found the advice at this site [1] very useful,
although beware that some of the other content on the site is a little out
there. iii. Apply to jobs using your improved resume and network. Note that
even with a great resume maybe 10% of job postings will reply-don't be
discouraged, this just means you have to apply to a lot and network a lot.
This advice is not optimized for getting you your ideal dream job-it's
optimized for getting a $50k job that will help improve your situation and
give you the resources to continue improving your life from there. Feel free
to ask/email me any questions.
------
impendia
One lesson I have learned:
Embrace failure, embarrassment, confusion, pain. Don't go seeking them
exactly, but don't avoid them. If you are at all ambitious and adventurous in
_anything_ \-- entrepreneurship, grad school, dating, whatever, then you will
fail spectacularly and often. It will hurt. Badly.
But don't flinch. Consider it a good thing, it means that life has not
forgotten you. As my Buddhist friends like to say, experience what it's like
to feel pain. Remember that it will make a good story to tell your
grandchildren, and try again.
~~~
leslyn
I second this advice! In every experience there is opportunity for insight -
especially those in which we feel that we failed. I will encourage you to
spend some time considering your strengths. In my day job, I am a
therapist/coach and am happy to have an email exchange with you if you want in
an effort to help you think about your future and what you want it to look
like. A number of people have payed it forward to me and I am happy to do it
for you! email me at [email protected]
------
glimcat
Manage your priorities like you're going to die at 30.
Take care of your health despite the cost and inconvenience. You may be able
to get away with a lot of self-neglect at 20, but it's much harder to repair
later.
------
devs1010
graduated from high school? well, maybe consider going to college, you can
probably qualify for aid, etc. If you want to become a developer, all you need
is a somewhat decent computer and an internet connection and you can go from
there with all the online learning resources out there.
------
yogrish
You need to open up, for someone to understand your problem and suggest any
solution. What is your specialization, your interests, expertise etc.
------
jrubinovitz
Can you be more specific? Please let us know your skill set and what you'd
like to be doing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on? - jlevers
I know there are lots of really interesting problems out there waiting to be solved, but I haven't been exposed to much in the software world besides web technologies.<p>I'd love to hear about what interesting problems (technically or otherwise) you're working on -- and if you're willing to share more, I'm curious how you ended up working on them.<p>Thank you :)
======
sgtnoodle
I'm helping to build a scalable system for delivering high value and life
saving medical supplies to hard to reach places via autonomous aircraft. The
system is currently operating in Rwanda and Ghana, and aggressively expanding
over the next couple years.
Specifically, I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing embedded
software. The aircraft is fully autonomous and needs to be able to fly home
safely even after suffering major component failures. I split my time between
improving core architectural components, implementing new features, designing
abstractions, and adding testing and tooling to make our ever-growing team
work more efficiently.
I did FIRST robotics in high school where I mainly focused on controller
firmware. I studied computer science in college while building the embedded
electronics for solar powered race cars, and also worked part time on research
projects at Toyota. After graduating with a Master's degree, I stumbled into a
job at SpaceX where I worked a lot on the software for cargo Dragon, then
built out a platform for microcontroller firmware development. I decided to
leave SpaceX while happy, and spent a couple years working on the self driving
car prototype (the one that looked like a koala) at Google. Coming up on my
third year, I was itching for something less comfortable and decided to join a
scrappy small startup with a heart of gold. Now it's in the hundreds of
employees and getting crazier and crazier.
~~~
johnmorrison
Are you working on Zipline [1] ?
[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c)
~~~
iandanforth
Pro Tip: Search "<HN handle> \+ github" frequently gets a real name, and if
not current job, then look on linkedin.
The answer to your question is: Yes.
------
syllable_studio
Solving the world's trillion-dollar energy storage crisis. (multi-trillion,
actually.) [https://www.terramenthq.com/](https://www.terramenthq.com/)
About a year ago, I started spending more time researching about climate
change. I learned how important energy storage will be to enable renewable
energy to displace fossil fuels. The more I read, the more fascinated I became
with the idea of building underground pumped hydro energy storage. I found a
research paper from the U.S. DOE written in 1984 showing that the idea was
perfectly feasible and affordable, but it seems that nearly everyone has
forgotten about it since. (they didn't build it at the time because the demand
wasn't there yet. Now energy storage demand is growing exponentially)
A year later, I'm applying for grant funding to get it built. I know that
nearly everyone will tell me I can't do it because this or that reason.
Because people don't like change and they're scared of big things even if the
research shows it makes perfect sense. But I'm doing it anyways because no one
else is getting it done. The idea is too compelling and too important to
ignore. So here goes nothing!
~~~
johnmorrison
I hope to convey this in the least volatile manner, but I must bring it up.
> I learned how important energy storage will be to enable renewable energy to
> displace fossil fuels.
The above is a reasonable statement, however, your website says the following:
> We can’t quit carbon without energy storage. To stop climate change,
> renewables must replace fossil fuels.
> Without energy storage, renewables will fail to reach even 25% of the energy
> market by 2040. This will cause global temperatures to rise over 3°C, a
> level which will cause catastrophic climate damage.
Those are not only misleading but outright lies. Now, I won't hide my bias
here: I work on nuclear fission. But here's the reality: there are many
possible pathways to net-zero carbon and limiting global temperature rise to
well below 3°C (below 1.5°C in fact)
To just list a few:
* Massive adoption of nuclear fission alone
* Development & massive adoption of nuclear fusion alone
* Shift from coal&oil to natural gas, cleaner fossil fuels + scaling carbon capture/sequestration
* Shift from fossil fuels to renewables + storage (probably not alone)
Or any combination of those, in addition to a number of alternative
approaches.
\---
Edit: Also, it should be noted that the energy sector alone only represents
about 1/5 of the emissions problem. In order to get to net-zero GHG and stop
anthroprogenic climate change, the clean energy sector needs to expand well
past the current global TPES and supply net-zero electricity that allows for
the decarbonization of the other main contributors:
Agriculture, steel+cement+plastic, transportation, buildings&appliances, and
flora loss leading to lost carbon stores (deforestation etc)
Even if renewables and storage could supply 100% of our electricity or even
total power supply, you would still only be 1/5 done solving climate change.
There is no unitary solution.
\---
Acting as though renewables are _necessary_ , instead of one of multiple
options, is denial or malicious. In reality, renewable energy is nowhere near
capable of reliably and safely taking on a large portion of our energy supply
globally. It is expensive (you can make claims about unit cost, but what
really matters is country-scale - look at German electricity prices vs. just
about everywhere else), it is dangerous, it takes a lot of land area, and it
is the least reliable.
I don't want to spend a lot of time here stomping on renewables, but there is
plenty of reason to, and my main point is that I feel it is unjust and immoral
for you to claim that renewables "must replace fossil fuels" if we are to stop
climate change. It's just not true, and you need to admit that.
The energy industry is arguably one of if not the most important backbone of
our modern society, and responsible for the safety and health of billions of
people. Whether you're working on the generation or storage side, it is all
our responsibility to be honest and make true claims - not to spread biased
misinformation when it benefits your particular solution.
I'd like to finish by making it clear I'm very happy you're working on your
tech and I hope you succeed in making it the best it can be - renewables are
certainly trending to higher adoption and we need reliable, efficient,
scalable storage solution in order to avoid dangerous outages and other grid
issues.
You bring up valid criticisms of existing solutions, although I do think you
should also be fair to those. Most things in life are a trade-off: maybe
pumped hydro is a better majority solution for the grid, but lithium ion is an
incredibly important, successful and expanding technology that needs to be
given credit for its wide range of great applications.
I hope this response has not been inflammatory: I just very much care about
maintaining a truthful public discussion around energy. I wish you the best of
luck, and I hope you can take something useful from this.
~~~
dangerface
> Without energy storage, renewables will fail
but none of the below are renewables
* Massive adoption of nuclear fission alone * Development & massive adoption of nuclear fusion alone * Shift from coal&oil to natural gas, cleaner fossil fuels + scaling carbon capture/sequestration
~~~
amdavidson
You're clipping the wrong part of the sentence.
Parent is primarily disputing: "To stop climate change, renewables must
replace fossil fuels." and if renewables fail, "this will cause global
temperatures to rise over 3°C"
------
i_haz_rabies
Alerting people when proposals are put before municipal councils to develop
natural land. I found out too late that a huge, beautiful forest where I live
is going to be ripped up and turned into investment condos. So in the interest
of giving natural land a fighting chance, I'm setting up a system that will
notify users when an address they've submitted is being rezoned.
The challenge is obviously scaling, since every municipality is different. For
now it's going to cover my region and we'll see from there.
~~~
zaphodX
Sounds challenging..and agree that adapting this to each municipal area would
suck big time of effort.
I tried something similar but mostly to figure where the land is being
purchased recently in a region. But then land/parcels/addresses system is all
over the place and, even that info is not consistent across cities.
have you looked at data providers who may have this data?
~~~
jlevers
Agreed, the differences between municipalities makes this really hard to
scale. If data providers like the ones you mention don't exist, the two ideas
that immediately come to mind are a) becoming that data provider (obviously),
or b) building a platform for municipalities to store their land ownership
data on.
Both sound like interesting problems, and it would be awesome if municipal-
level land data was available at scale.
~~~
MetalGuru
How do you become that data provider? You need some scalable way to get all
that data, right?
~~~
jlevers
I'm not sure how to do it scalably, other than by becoming the host for that
data, which is why I included my second option. It seems much easier (and much
more profitable) than figuring out how to access the data in its existing
format.
------
troquerre
We're trying to improve the security of the Internet by replacing Certificate
Authorities with a distributed root of trust.
DNS is currently centralized and controlled by a few organizations at the top
of the hierarchy (namely ICANN) and easily censored by governments. Trust in
HTTPS is delegated by CAs, but security follows a one of many model, where
only one CA out of thousands needs to be compromised in order for your traffic
to be compromised.
We're building on top of a new protocol
([https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org), launching in 7 days!!) to
create an alternate root zone that's distributed. Developers can register
their own TLDs and truly own them by controlling their private keys. In
addition, they can pin TLSA certs to their TLD so that CAs aren't needed
anymore.
I wrote a more in-depth blog post here: [https://www.namebase.io/blog/meet-
handshake-decentralizing-d...](https://www.namebase.io/blog/meet-handshake-
decentralizing-dns-to-improve-the-security-of-the-internet)
~~~
geonnave
This is really interesting. Are you using concepts from self-sovereign
identity¹²? Do you think there is a relevant intersection?
¹ [http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-
sov...](http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-soverereign-
identity.html) ² [https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-
primer/](https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-primer/)
~~~
troquerre
Yes! It's funny you mention that I just bought The Sovereign Individual —
haven't read it yet but from cursory glance I think there is a lot of
intersection. Would love to discuss more — we have a discord I can invite you
to if you're interested, just ping me at the email in my profile.
------
davehcker
I'm growing the freshest lettuce, iron-rich kale, and a lot of other leafy
greens!
While in college (CS & Math), I got heavily interested in growing food in the
most efficient and healthiest way possible. I was a dreamer when I started so
I thought more of how to grow 'earthly' produce on Mars, but then I realized
that my own planet Earth is so massively underserved.
It's basically like this- I mastered growing leafy greens in indoor closed
environmenet, then I tried to cover all the major physical and biological
markers, then I try to optimize the most optimal levels of 5-6 variables
(currently) that I can fully control and may produce the best phenotype- CO2,
O2, Light, Nitrate, P, K. These parameters have their own sub definitions.
So far I have had great results. I am trying to raise investment so I can
finally make it a reality. Check the numbers here: hexafarms.com (no fluff)
~~~
stef25
> THE FINAL PRODUCE IS THE ULTIMATE MANIFESTATION OF THEIR PLATONIC IDEAL
> FORMS
How's the taste?
Not denying it's possible to grow food very efficiently indoors but a vastly
oversimplified opinion is that plants need sunlight to be tasty. Is this
wrong?
~~~
davehcker
You'll have to buy my words- but taste wise (based on my surveys too) it's the
'best' they have had (mostly city dwellers I'm talking about).
Yes, you don't really need sunlight whatsoever. I was myself shocked until I
recalled high school biology concept of genotype and phenotype i.e. the
genetic structure that manifests itself given the right physical conditions
(at least of plants.) As for the plants' nutrients, here's a classic- Teaming
with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener's Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition, by
Lowenfels. I was amazed to find how complex, yet simple plants are.
------
rikkipitt
I'm working on pacing emails to a more manageable, calmer schedule. I'm doing
it with essentially a UI-less system which is a rather fun way to produce an
app. It simply requires a user to update their email of the website that
emails them too frequently with a paced.email alias. E.g.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
At the end of each period, a single email is sent to the real email address
containing all of the messages the alias received over that timeframe.
[https://www.paced.email](https://www.paced.email)
I'd love to hear how you'd use it.
~~~
thewarpaint
Great idea. My suggestion: why not use the Gmail-style johndoe+spotify@
suffix? Just because people would be more used to it. That way johndoe@ also
would work.
~~~
rikkipitt
Thanks thewarpaint. Good point. Having read the below counterpoints though,
I'm not quite sure now! I'll look into it.
~~~
thewarpaint
On second thought they have a point, I have never had an email address with a
dot being rejected, but I've seen it for the plus alias several times.
------
cedricium
I'm tackling the issue of managing Reddit saves.
Across all platforms (not just Reddit), people including myself like to
save/bookmark interesting content in the hopes of getting some use out of it
later. The problem arises when you start accumulating too much content and
forget to ever check that stuff out.
I'm working on a solution to help resurface Redditors' saved things using
personalized newsletters. I'm calling it Unearth and users get to choose how
frequently they want to receive their newsletter (daily, weekly, or monthly).
The emails contain five of their saved comments or things and link directly to
Reddit so that when viewing it, they can then decide whether or not to unsave
it.
Basic functionality is all there, just needs some more styling and the landing
page could be spruced up.
[https://www.tryunearth.com/](https://www.tryunearth.com/)
~~~
SCM-Enthusiast
Signed up, and I love how fast it was to create an account. Literally two
clicks and 5 seconds as my password is saved in google crome and you sign up
through reddit. I think you're on to something with that onboarding process.
Kinda different, kind of the same but i'd love to use an app with much better
search than the 'direct search' currently in most aggrogrator/ note apps. If i
searched 'quotes' it would rip out and return all the things in italized, in
quotes, or things that the algorithm deems as quotes based on it's scrape of
the internet; Kinda like google but 'personal search' based on my notes,
articles, all my different emails (work, and my 37 different gmail accounts)
and websites I frequent (like reddit, hacker news comments, etc.) There was an
HN article the other day that got me thinking about this problem, but i can't
seem to find it. However, it approached it from a much deeper technical level,
utilizing emacs and searching through his code. If you could bring that into
an easy to use, consumer facing GUI I think it'd have potential to be pretty
game changing.
'Personalized Search, and we don't have to steal your data because you
willingly give it to us' \- Google
~~~
kahkeng
I believe this is the HN article you're referring to:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22160572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22160572)
------
nmfisher
I'm building an AI agent to help develop foreign language skills through
realtime (spoken) conversations.
It's funny how we're all working from different definitions of the word
"problem" \- I'm certainly not changing the world with medical supplies for
developing countries, renewable energy, payment systems and so on.
But it's something I'm really passionate about, and I'd be over the moon if I
came anywhere close to the picture I have in my mind.
Back when I was studying German and Chinese, I would spend hours and hours on
rote practice with little to show for it. My brain almost felt like it was on
autopilot - the eyes would read the words and the hands would write the
sentences, but the neurons weren't really firing. It didn't feel like I was
properly building the synaptic bridges necessary to actually use those words
in conversation.
On the flipside, after just 20 minutes speaking with a tutor, my proficiency
would improve leaps and bounds. Being forced to map actual, real-world
thoughts/concepts to the words/expressions I had learned - that's what made
everything clicked. It felt like the difference between just reading a chapter
in a maths textbook, and actually doing the exercises.
So after keeping track of progress in NLP and speech recognition/synthesis in
recent years, it seemed like a logical time to start. Progress is
slow/incremental, but it is there.
~~~
davedx
I think it’s a great idea. I first started learning Dutch with Michel Thomas
audio course which is very much about being in a simulated small language
class, and you need to say sentences when prompted by the “teacher”. Later in,
I learned almost all the Dutch I needed to pass the citizenship language exam
just by conversing with friends and family in Dutch, gradually building up
fluency. Let me know if you need a beta tester, email is [email protected]
~~~
nmfisher
That would be fantastic, thanks. I'll jot your e-mail down and will reach out
when I'm getting close to something testable.
~~~
camelite
I'm an English teacher. Sign me up too?
~~~
nmfisher
Sure! My email is in my profile, feel free to shoot me a note with your
contact details.
------
tobmlt
1.) A solver for the unstructured Euler equations. ...I was intending to
volunteer time for an local university project investigating parallels between
Holographic light with orbital angular momentum and hydrodynamics (in this
case the Euler/Madelung equations). Not sure what happened as... volunteers
get lost in the shuffle? Anyway, the solver is fun.
2.) Porting my Python code for nonlinear gradient driven optimization of
parametric surfaces to C++. Includes a constraint (propagation) solver based
on Minikanren extended with interval arithmetic for continuous data (interval
branch and contract). This piece is a pre-processor, narrowing the design
space to only feasible hyper-boxes before feeding design parameter sets
(points in design space) to the (real valued) solver. Also it does automatic
differentiation of control points (i.e. B-spline control points) so I can
write an energy functional for a smooth surface, with Lagrange multipliers for
constraints (B-spline properties). Then I get the gradient and Hessian without
extra programming. This makes for plug and play shape control. I am looking to
extend this to subdivision surfaces and/or to work it towards mesh deformation
with discrete differential geometry so I've been baking with those things in
separate mini-projects.
3.) Starting the Coursera discrete optimization course. This should help with,
e.g. knapsack problems on Leetcode, some structural optimization things at
work, and also it seems the job market for optimization is focused on
discrete/integer/combinatorial stuff presently so this may help in ways I do
not foresee.
4.) C++ expression template to CUDA for physical simulation: I am periodically
whittling away at this.
~~~
jlevers
Would you be willing to explain what the applications of (2) are? I'll admit
that I only undersetand a fraction of what you said in that section, but I'm
curious what you're using it for.
~~~
tobmlt
Sure: the automated design-by-optimization of ship hull form geometry which
meets constraints and is smooth according to some energy measures.
Build a functional to describe your ship problem, minimize it: if the solver
is happy, you have a boat.... uh, or if you haven’t solved the entire problem,
you have some geometry which can be stitched together with more optimization
to make a boat.
More broadly, “why a boat?” Answer: because boats have a lot of constraints,
and a lot of shape ( Gaussian curvature, non rectangular topology, a need to
be cheaply produced, etc etc)
So it’s a good problem to tax your generative design or design space
search/optimization capability.
------
coderholic
Creating the worlds best IP address and domain name APIs and data sets, at
[https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io) and [https://host.io](https://host.io).
We've solved scaling and reliability (we handle 20 billion API requests a
month), and we're now focusing almost all our efforts on our data quality, and
new data products (like VPN detection).
We're bootstrapped, profitable, and we've got some big customers (like apple,
and t-mobile), and despite being around for almost 7 years we've still barely
scratched the surface on the opportunity ahead of us.
If you think you could help we're hiring - shoot me a mail - [email protected]
~~~
aliclark
Why/how is this better than existing IP solutions (e.g.
[https://www.maxmind.com/en/home](https://www.maxmind.com/en/home) or
[https://www.digitalelement.com/](https://www.digitalelement.com/))?
~~~
coderholic
Here are some reasons why someone might choose to use us:
\- We're super developer friendly - you don't even need an access token to
make up to 1,000 requests per day. We have a clean / simple JSON response, and
official SDKs for most popular libraries
\- We have a quick, reliable API. We obsess over latency and availability, and
handle over 20 billion API requests a month. (here's a technical overview of
how we reduced rDNS lookups by 50x: [https://blog.ipinfo.io/reducing-ipinfo-
io-api-latency-50x-by...](https://blog.ipinfo.io/reducing-ipinfo-io-api-
latency-50x-by-making-rdns-lookups-blazingly-fast-5200d0289024))
\- We obsess over data quality. We have a data team that's constantly striving
to make our data and accuracy even better than it already is.
\- We're innovating. We've launched and are working on exciting new data sets
and products in the IP and domain data space (VPN detection, the host.io
domain API, and more).
\- We care about our customers. We have people working on customer support and
customer success. If you run into an issue or need help, we'll be there to
answer your questions.
~~~
aliclark
Thanks! Do you have a work email I can contact you on? We currently lookup >1
million IPs per second and are in the middle of evaluating IP-geo solutions.
~~~
coderholic
Sure, would love to be part of your evaluation! [email protected]
------
a_diplomat
I'm a diplomat working on international norms for cyber and information
warfare. I'm trying to get countries to agree on how to use and not use their
capabilities, the influence on global democracy, the connection to armed
conflict and the future of interstate relations. In practice, this means
meeting a lot of people and spending a lot of time negotiating with other
countries in scrappy conference rooms in the UN and elsewhere, sometimes in
weird anonymous locations.
On the side, I'm an advisor to an impact investment foundation that is
expanding their operations to East Africa. They're setting up an investment
fund and accelerator programs to help companies tackle development challenges.
I'm also involved in a startup that is working to develop a new fintech app to
create more data and access to credit for small-scale businesses in East
Africa. It's a basic PWA app, not released yet, which has some real potential
of scaling up and addressing some pretty substantial development challenges.
(If anyone is really good with writing a bare-bones PWA based on Gatsby
optimised for speed and low-bandwidth environments, please give me a shout).
I've had a weird career. Started out as a programmer in the late 90's, did my
own startup in the mid 00's which was a half-baked success, moved to Africa
for a few years and worked for the UN, moved back home and had kids, moved
back to Africa and worked as a diplomat covering lots of conflicts in the
Great Lakes region, moved back home again, worked for the impact foundation
for a year and then rejoined diplomacy to do cyber work.
~~~
jlevers
> I'm a diplomat working on international norms for cyber and information
> warfare.
I didn't know any such norms existed. What are some of the existing
agreements, and if you can talk about it, what are some of the new ones you're
trying to push forward?
Your career sounds crazy...in a good way! Was your initial involvement with
the UN in a technical role?
~~~
a_diplomat
There are several negotiations ongoing in various committees of the UN, where
the issues that surface in the "real world" are negotiated: information
warfare (such as election interference), responsibility for information across
borders etc. [https://www.cfr.org/blog/united-nations-doubles-its-
workload...](https://www.cfr.org/blog/united-nations-doubles-its-workload-
cyber-norms-and-not-everyone-pleased)
Basically, it's about trying to defend international norms from an onslaught
of attempts to make states the primary defender of the informational realm,
and thereby legitimise opression.
Yeah, first job for UN was coding a shitty CRUD system in order to keep track
of HIV infections in East Africa.
------
davidkellis
I'm trying to build a programming language that might best be characterized as
rust - ownership + GC + goroutines (coroutines with an automatic yield
semantic).
My rationale for starting this project was that I like specific features or
facilities of many individual languages, but I dislike those languages for a
host of other reasons. Furthermore, I dislike those languages enough that I
don't want to use them to build the projects I want to build.
I'm still at a relatively early point in the project, but it has been
challenging so far. I'm implementing the compiler in Crystal, and I needed a
PEG parser combinator library or a parser generator that targeted Crystal, but
there wasn't a PEG parser in Crystal that supported left recursive grammar
rules in a satisfactory way, so that was sub-project number 1. It took two
years, I'm ashamed to say, but now I have a functioning PEG parser (with
seemingly good support for left recursive grammar rules) in Crystal that I can
use to implement the grammar for my language.
There is still a _ton_ more to be done - see
[http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/DMS/LifeAfterParsing...](http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/DMS/LifeAfterParsing.html)
for a list of remaining ToDos - but I'm optimistic I can make it work.
~~~
atheiste
Maybe check out the [https://vlang.io](https://vlang.io). It might be similar
to what you are doing and personally I admire the ideas and decisions the
author made so far.
~~~
davidkellis
I saw vlang.io a few months ago. Every time I come back to the site, my jaw
hits the ground again. I am utterly impressed by Alexander's productivity - it
blows me away every time I consider it.
I think V is an impressive language, but it isn't quite geared toward my
vision of what a language ought to be.
I am more a Rubyist than a C, Rust, or Go developer, and so my preference is
for a higher level language that's a little more pleasant to use and doesn't
make me think about some details that I consider "irrelevant". I'm firmly in
the "sufficiently smart compiler" camp, and think that I shouldn't have to
think about those low level details that only matter for the sake of
performance - the compiler ought to handle that for me.
------
joelthelion
I've been meaning to improve "news" for a number of years now, with limited
success so far. The current news industry is broken beyond repair: all you get
are bite-sized irrelevant factoids. A good news service would be:
\- Relevant to you and your interests...
\- ... but diverse enough to feed your intellectual curiosity
\- Delivered in a timely fashion: apart from once a year big events, most
things can wait for a few days, no need to require you to read the news every
day
\- Include some analysis to allow you to see the big picture
When I started a few years ago, I thought naively that a little machine
learning should do the trick. But the problem is actually quite complex. In
any case, the sector is ripe for disruption.
~~~
johnmorrison
Oooh, this is a great one. You're absolutely right "the sector is ripe for
disruption"
Your list of points is great, if you can figure out a way to deliver a service
like that it would be incredible.
I think one of the biggest challenges for current publications is the tie to
advertising model - advertising business model forces products to decrease in
quality over time. Same thing happening to Google and Facebook, but super
apparent in news sites. They're fucking awful these days, I can't read a
single article without ten huge popups and a paywall.
~~~
raihansaputra
I'm not sure to reply to the parent comment or this one, but as you mentioned
advertising model, I'd like to reply here.
All the points mentioned in the parent comment has been done before: magazines
and newspapers. (Some) people used to subscribe to multiple publications to
get their intake of information. The wide ranging, impact based news is the
daily publication specialty. The newest in your specific interest is the
magazines' playing field. News special reports used to be in longform and
discusses all the finer points, including analysis and graphs to see the big
picture. Magazines with themes serves the intellectual curiosity.
Somehow in the age of niche creators, these companies die out. I think the
saying 'the sector is ripe for disruption' is true, but not in the way of
software or automation. Better business model is really needed. The business
model has been done before; the evolution to bite-sized factoids is the
consequences changing to more heavily advertising-based business model.
The limiting factor of paper space and physical distribution seems to strike a
balance: news to be printed and distributed need to be worth it for the public
to pay. Maybe bundling also made it work[0]. The specific 'small' niches in
newspaper/magazines can be fulfilled by sharing the cost with the mass of
subscribers.
There is a tradeoff in the wide influence of gatekeepers, but even in that
time independent publications managed to survive.
I think finding this balance again is really the key. Should we go back to
tax-funded publications? Or will people welcome a microtransaction for
articles? Or should the publications deliver curated, less frequent summaries
to make customers happy? I think the disconnect between the customers and
paying for content is driving down the quality and demand (in revenue) of
these publications.
The recent years have shown that subscribing to the publications themselves
are not optimal. Putting up a paywall angers people, but The Guardian have
never wiped their donation banner off their pages. The need to find the
correct business model for publication is urgent for the masses too; democracy
that actually follows the people's will depends on this.
I don't follow the current landscape, but what The Athletic is currently doing
is pretty interesting for sports.
Me, personally, really like the 'The Espresso' concept from The Economist.
They curate 5 stories each day and deliver it in the morning directly in the
app. No space to switch tabs and disengage but space to dig deeper in the
story through the links.
[0]: [https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-
sellers-...](https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-and-
buyers)
------
tmamic
Dental treatments, besides being very expensive, are often (up to 28%)
unnecessary. This happens because no-one keeps dentists in check. I am trying
to make dental treatment and diagnosis reviews easy, cheap, reliable and fast.
~~~
unexaminedlife
I've been wanting to disrupt orthodontistry for quite a long time. With the
state of 3d scanners, 3d printers, 3d software modeling, why hasn't the market
price of orthodontist treatments dropped to cost-of-materials yet? As soon as
at least one satisfactory / integrated open-source stack exists I think it's
only a matter of time before it does...
~~~
asiachick
I don't know if this is what you mean but in Japan many dentists have machines
to make tooth crowns. Not sure how common that is in the west. I went to a
dentist in SF, they did something and then I had to come back in 2 weeks after
they made the crown. Been to several dentists in Japan where they could make
the crown while you wait 20-30 mins
~~~
Ry4N4ejc-9K_ZfQ
They do happen in the west as well. It is faster/cheaper to print crowns/etc,
but I don't believe it's generally on par with an expert Dental Technician
yet.
------
eivarv
Persisting your OS state as a "context" \- saving and loading your open
applications, their windows, tabs, open files/documents and so on.
Started because of frequent multitasking heavy work with limited resources.
Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and delta updates.
[https://cleave.app](https://cleave.app)
~~~
jlevers
I didn't know I wanted this until now, and now I _really_ want it. I often
open a ton of related applications, and then avoid restarting my computer
because it's incovenient to reopen everything.
I'm on Linux, so I won't be able to use your app, but great idea and good
luck!
~~~
segmondy
You can explore running everything in a Linux Container, LXD. Then freeze the
LXD if you wish to shutdown, and unfreeze when you're ready to restart, it's
how container workloads can be moved from one system to another.
~~~
jlevers
Interesting, I'll look into LXDs. Thanks for the pointer!
------
in1tiate
Somewhat of a departure from the rest of the current comments. I'm a
dataminer/rom hacker mainly working on Nintendo handheld systems from the DS
onward and I've recently resigned myself to learning the sort of ASM code
needed to reverse engineer compiled assets (since obviously I have no way of
getting a pre-compiled version of those assets). I've been looking into the
legality of reverse engineering and I've always found it to be a fascinating
subject.
All because I can't get a 3DS game to load modified videos.
~~~
jlevers
That sounds awesome! Are these things you're doing for work, or on your own
(or both)? I'm not much of a gamer, and I don't know what the market looks
like for Nintendo systems...what are the applications for custom ROMs on DSs
and other handheld systems?
Some excellent free reverse engineering courses for Windows[0] and Linux[1]
were posted in another HN thread recently, and a couple other HNers and I
started a study group for the Linux course. We have a Discord group, and we're
meeting for the first time on Thursday, in case you're interested. (It sounds
from what you're doing as if you might already be past those resources,
knowledge-wise.)
[0]
[https://github.com/0xZ0F/Z0FCourse_ReverseEngineering](https://github.com/0xZ0F/Z0FCourse_ReverseEngineering)
[1] [https://beginners.re/](https://beginners.re/)
~~~
saghm
> what are the applications for custom ROMs on DSs and other handheld systems?
Having played around a bit with a jailbroken Switch, the primary reason is to
be able to either run mods for games (e.g. there's a surprisingly viable set
of tools for converting/bundling Skyrim mods for PC for use on the Switch
version) or to run homebrew apps, the common ones being emulators. Previously,
I had played around with GBA emulators on PSP/PS Vita, but the Switch form
factor and screen size are a lot nicer to play on.
That being said, you could also go the route of putting a completely foreign
OS instead of just modified Switch firmware. Android seems to run flawlessly
on a Switch from my testing; even though Android doesn't seem to be able to
access the joy cons directly when they're attached, you can still pair them
with bluetooth and they work fine even when they're slotted in. Android even
seems to have pretty good built-in support for that kind of input device; you
can easily navigate through the icons on the home screen, hit "A" to select
whatever's highlighted, etc.
~~~
jlevers
Fascinating. I'm going to have to do some reading about this -- it's a whole
world I didn't know existed. Thanks for explaining.
------
dabreegster
Creating a [traffic simulation]([https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/#ab-
street](https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/#ab-street)) that's both
realistic enough to generate results meaningful in the real world, but easy
enough to use that anybody living in a city could use it to experiment with
some change to cycling or transit infrastructure. Some of the problems hiding
in there:
\- Getting a representation of a city that cleanly divides paved areas into
distinct roads and intersections, and understands the weird multi-part
intersections that Seattle has plenty of.
[This]([https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cF7qFtjAzkXL_r62CjxB...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cF7qFtjAzkXL_r62CjxBvgQnLvuQ9I2WTE2iX_5tMCY/edit?usp=sharing))
and
[this]([https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/master/docs/art...](https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/master/docs/articles/map/article.md))
have some details about how I'm attempting this so far.
\- Inferring reasonable data when it doesn't exist. How are traffic signals
currently timed? No public dataset exists, so I have heuristics that generate
a plan. If I can make the
[UI]([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dabreegster/abstreet/maste...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dabreegster/abstreet/master/docs/videos/fix_traffic_signal.gif))
for editing signals fluid enough, would it be worth trying to collect this
data through crowd-sourcing?
\- Figuring out what to even measure to demonstrate some change "helps a bus
run faster." Should people try to minimize the 99%ile time for all buses of a
certain route to make one complete loop over the whole day? Or to reduce the
worst-case trip time of any agent using that bus by some amount? Or to
minimize the average delay only during peak times between any pair of adjacent
stops?
\- Less technical: How to evangelize this project, get the city of Seattle and
advocacy groups here using it, and find contributors?
~~~
asdff
I think a good way to define a bus running faster is to perhaps measure the
average change in eta between any two stops across all stops per day, in other
words the mean pairwise difference between original and changed routes. then
maybe stratifying that for peak, off peak, evening, night, morning, however
granular you'd want to go.
you can then think about optimizing routing for commuters, or late night
service around a random event with increased traffic, etc.
~~~
dabreegster
I like this as a single aggregate measurement to base scores on. Some of the
difficulty comes from displaying this score as the simulation runs through the
day. At first the average might look great (a change helps the bus in the
early AM), but then rush hour hits, and the change actually makes things
worse. Or maybe a re-timed traffic signal helps buses going northbound in one
spot, but hurts the southbound buses, so also seeing the change between each
pair of stops is important.
[https://imgur.com/Fk1GfKG](https://imgur.com/Fk1GfKG) is what I've got for
this so far, but I think a different way to visualize this is necessary. :)
------
beatthatflight
Flight search. I hunt deals for Aussie travellers
([https://www.beatthatflight.com.au](https://www.beatthatflight.com.au)), but
an inordinate amount of my searching for deals is manual.
\- initially, all manual
\- secondly, timers - I know when some airlines do deals, so I go look
\- thirdly, I found other sites indexing unusually cheap flights, but they're
not always the same price on my site
\- fourth, built a script to search my own site for a route, but the number of
combinations rockets with the increase in date ranges. If you're taking
different stopovers etc, it becomes ludicrous.
\- it's growing at least, but finding ways to make it less hands on and less
mind-numbing is a never ending quest. Although I still enjoy it :)
~~~
jlevers
As some of the other responses mention, this is an insanely complex
problem...as evidenced by the large number of businesses in this space. In
your eyes, what are the best flight search engines at the moment? Aside from
[https://www.beatthatflight.com.au](https://www.beatthatflight.com.au) of
course ;)
~~~
stef25
Kayak?
~~~
beatthatflight
I'm a big kayak fan for their flexible search, and am sad hipmunk is shutting
down this month :/ Grabaseat.co.nz is brilliant for NZ specific deals.
------
spodek
The environment and how to lead people to enjoy acting sustainably long-term,
so they spread that joy and sustainability to others, not coerce.
I've found a strategy I think believe will work -- my _Leadership and the
Environment_ podcast.
Here's the podcast:
[http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast](http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast)
Here's an episode clarifying my strategy: [https://shows.acast.com/leadership-
and-the-environment/episo...](https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-
environment/episodes/224-clarifying-my-strategy)
Here's my corporate strategy: [https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-
environment/episo...](https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-
environment/episodes/274-applying-leadership-and-the-environment-in-
corporations)
~~~
oddsockmachine
> "enjoy acting sustainably long-term, so they spread that joy and
> sustainability to others"
This sounds great, can't wait to check it out. After taking a Permaculture
Design Course, I fell in love with the ideal of living a better, more
"luxurious" life that has not only a lower impact on the planet, but a
positive impact. I'm on my way down that path, but still figuring out how to
make it replicable.
------
boyter
Interesting to me, your mileage may vary.
Working in my spare time on a command line terminal UI application that
searches over source code and ranks the results.
It came about from watching a work college constantly opening VSCode when
trying to find things in a codebase. I mentioned he should use ripgrep/silver
searcher which he tried, but said he preferred to get more context and wanted
ranked results. The context was possible using -A and -B but he didn't want
that.
I had always wanted to make a terminal application and it seemed like an
interesting problem to solve. I had also always wanted to implement BM25/TFIDF
ranking algorithms myself and I was curious to see how well this could be done
without pre-flighting and building an index.
Still a work in progress
[https://github.com/boyter/cs](https://github.com/boyter/cs) but coming along.
Its usable now (with bugs) and is being used by my work mate.
~~~
galacticdessert
Hey! Looks cool, I tried compiling it on Windows (at work ATM, hehe) but so
far it does not seem to find any files. If I start it in a folder, the search
always says 0 in 0 files.
Is windows a supported platform?
~~~
boyter
Yes it is, or should be. I’d need more details to really work it out for your
case. I will have a look at potential issues in the next few hours.
EDIT I tried and no issues on Windows. I would need more details to
investigate. Please raise the issue on github and I will investigate.
------
tezzer
Characterizing the effect of near-surface humidity and wave action on Ka/Ku
band satellite transmissions from a surfboard-sized autonomous swimming
vessel. I have a little sensor platform, and customers that want it to do a
whole lot more. Bandwidth can be hard to come by 6000 miles from the nearest
human.
Also, working on how to integrate a small team of hackers into a big team of
production oriented engineers. Making the first of something is such a
different skill set to making thousands more.
I got here by getting headhunted for a neat-sounding job after a project
elsewhere ended, and then assuming more and more duties until my title had to
change to match my responsibilities.
~~~
mrfusion
I’m surprised there’s so much demand for that.
Also I bet you’re excited for starlink.
~~~
tezzer
The ocean's a big place, and really hard to operate in. I'm looking forward to
seeing how low power the terminals end up consuming!
------
dabockster
I'm currently working on ways to disconnect better at the end of the day. So
far, I've figured out how to create an "inverse Screen Time" on iOS so it
locks me out of most of my phone except for a 3 hour window in the evening
that ends one hour before bedtime. I've also began using timers to keep track
of how much time each of my daily tasks are eating up.
Also the usual stuff. Hitting the gym (30 min a day, 5x a week), clearing out
junk I don't need anymore, multivitamin, etc. 2020 is going to be the year of
wellness for me.
EDIT: Forgot to mention this, DELETE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA APPS. All of them. Use
the mobile websites if you need to read them. Not having the icons on my home
screen or app drawer made all the difference and really helped fix my
cyberaddiction.
~~~
ricattierger
Same. Focusing on wellness this year and it is great. Have read so much more
after forcing less screen time
~~~
dabockster
My challenge to you is to try to disconnect from HN as much as possible. I
logged off for six months last January to detox from the neurotic comments
that this place gets and it totally reset my mind. I plan on logging off for
another long period of time after I check tomorrow on some Ask HNs I posted.
Come outside, it's wonderful.
------
marcelag
Not trying to change the world here... I just want a good way to look at my
bottle caps
site: [http://collectibleapp.com/](http://collectibleapp.com/)
project:
[https://github.com/marcelaguiar/Collectible](https://github.com/marcelaguiar/Collectible)
~~~
jlevers
I dig it. Problems don't have to be world-changing to be interesting.
------
MCompeau
Alleviating homelessness using technology and data.
I recently learned that homelessness is not just about the people you see on
the street every day, but that homelessness is in fact a funnel that people
fall deeper into as their situation becomes increasingly desperate. At the
bottom of the funnel are the aforementioned group known as the "chronically
homeless". The top of the funnel however, looks a lot different, it consists
of people who might be couch surfing with friends, sleeping in cars or moving
between motels. This group is known as the "hidden homeless". We likely
encounter this group every day, at work, in the coffee shop, at the gym, but
they look just like you and I so we fail to recognise their situation.
The "hidden homeless", at the top of the funnel, actually make up the vast
majority of the homeless population. What's even more surprising is that this
group overwhelmingly has access to technology, 90% have access to a smartphone
or laptop with internet access.
The not-for-profit organisation I am involved with called Ample Labs
(www.amplelabs.co) is working on developing chatbots to more rapidly connect
this group with essential services. This allows us to get a better
understanding of their behaviours, what services they use and how effective
they are. This has two benefits - first by connecting the 'hidden homeless'
with essential services quickly, we make it less likely that they will fall
further down the funnel into chronic homelessness; secondly, it provides us
with essential data that we share with cities to inform policy making.
The long term hope, is that by using data to prevent at-risk populations from
falling deeper into homelessness we can combat the problem at its source and
start to eliminate homelessness before it even begins.
~~~
jlevers
Thank you for working to fix a problem that would materially improve people's
lives. I have a lot of respect for that. Finding a way to have both a
technological and social impact in a single project is one of my longterm
goals.
Homelessness is a topic I know embarrassingly little about. What has the data
led you to recommend to cities, policy-wise?
It seems like large-scale data collection should be (but isn't) used to inform
many public policy decisions. Another area where I think data could have a
huge impact is studying how the punishments that criminals are served in court
affects their outcomes later in life, and requiring judges to factor that data
into their verdicts.
------
gwbrooks
I'm leading a startup nonprofit exploring policy solutions for America's 100
largest cities.
Of course, there are plenty of national and state-level policy organizations;
some even dip their toes in the municipal policy scene. But in the cities,
most gropus are self-interested or focused on a single issue.
We're trying to fill the gap with original research and projects that
operationalize the research of others -- taking, for example, good research
and popularizing it, developing components for model ordinances, etc.
~~~
jlevers
Do you have a website? Public policy is an area that seems almost ridiculously
unoptimized, so I'm really interested in any organizations that are trying to
fix that.
This is the first time I've heard of doing research with the express goal of
creating actionable plans, but now that you've brought it up, it seems like
that's exactly how policy-focused research should be.
~~~
gwbrooks
It's not so much laziness or lack of vision as it is different skill sets.
Additionally, the big university-based research players (Brookings, Hoover,
Mercatus) are all prevented from anything that looks too much like advocacy,
so they stay away from things like model ordinances out of an abundance of
caution.
------
servercobra
A meal planning app for weight loss. I lost 50 pounds using calorie counting a
few years ago. The thing that frustrated me most was trying to come up with
meal plans every week. It's quite tedious to constantly find new recipes if
you get bored with eating the same meals over and over. The weeks I planned
ahead of time, I lost weight quickly. When I didn't plan I would stop losing
weight, sometimes for months. So I'm trying to build an app that automatically
builds a meal plan for you that you can then tweak.
There's a ton of problems when you're dealing with food though. Calculating
calories of a recipe you find online can be tough. On one side, it's a natural
language problem to extract the ingredient, the amount, the unit, and the
prep/notes. On the other side, it's a data/data matching problem, where you
need good data on a ton of ingredients, and then need to pick a reasonable one
for "1 cup of milk".
And of course everyone eats and prepares food so differently that suggesting
meals they'll actually enjoy is hard without asking them a bunch of questions
first.
~~~
snarf21
Not to discourage you but this seems like a tough sell. Most people gain
weight because they don't want to plan out or make nutricious meals. The
strategy I've always used is to figure out some small number of meals and then
just pick one of them. It removes any mental load for shopping and cooking and
you only have to figure it out once. It _would_ be useful to suggest very very
quick meals that are Y calories or less.
~~~
servercobra
It's definitely not for everyone! But I know there are some people who just
want to be told "go to the store, buy this stuff, you're going to be cooking
these things these days if you want to lose weight". The same as a lot of
people don't want to put in the work to do calorie counting through
MyFitnessPal/others, but some people (including me!) swear by it.
Worst case, I developed an app I like using more than MyFitnessPal just for me
and I'll still be quite happy.
------
db1
I'm working on a personal project that allows you to add notes to youtube
videos, and be able to skip quickly to specific sections.
I started this because I'm learning guitar mostly from YouTube, and I find
myself constantly seeking videos to specific sections.
I'll probably launch the site on ShowHN soon. Feel free to DM me if you can
think of other uses for this, or if you're interested to know when this
launches.
~~~
mdonahoe
I want this for annotating drone footage that our customers post to YT so that
I can have slack conversations with support and engineering more precisely.
------
tjansen
I am working on a natural language parser using symbolic AI (no machine
learning...). It's working a bit like a multi-pass parser for programming
languages, but with the ability to handle multiple ambiguous meanings of a
sentence at the same time. An English sentence is translated into an
intermediate representation. Or rather, depending on the complexity, hundreds
or thousands of intermediate representations for the same sentence. Then there
will be several passes to eliminate interpretations, until it finds the most
probable one. It's tightly integrated with a database for human knowledge to
evaluate the different interpretations. The goal is that you can add data to
and query from the database using English language. I started working on it 3
years ago, and there is still a long way to go. I have done most of the
infrastructure (including a high-level programming language for pattern
recognition that can seamlessly handle asynchronous database accesses) and I
am close to completing the first pass....
~~~
dzink
I’ve been working on merging statistical deep learning with a knowledge graph
like representation of the data. I run a consumer site focused on privacy and
build nlp secret sauce underneath to serve users. Ping me at hn username
@doerhub.com if you want to chat.
------
waychukucha
Am working on a travel site focused on showing places with activities and
having detailed information from how to get there to pricing since most of
information on google is outdated. I had stopped working on it after reading
some threads here on why disrupting travel is very difficult but seems easy to
a texh person looking for ideas and I almost shelved it. Then I remembered
most commenters on here are from western countries that are probably reaching
a saturation point of ideas in that almost any app imaginable already exists.
Anyway, the renewed interest has made me start from scratch trying to collect
the data. Anyone who would be interested in joining me and be the coder while
i focus on the rest, i’d be glad to team up. Focus is on building an extensive
trip planner which you can view a location and add to “cart” and at the end
see the total coast of the trip. This can be helpful a lot for solo travelers.
East Africa is still a popular destination. Reach me on ninaformke at g mail
------
nikij
This problem will only apply to very few people. But over the past 2.5 years
I've been tracking everything and deriving insights on my activities. This
produced some astounding results. e.g. Chewing gum makes me more comfortable
in a conversation. Recently I've found a community of robot-like people on
reddit who also do this. So I decided to build a platform. It's still in its
early stages but feel free to check it out: simplelifedata.com
~~~
mrfusion
Can you point us to the community?
Any other insights you’ve discovered? I tracked my data for a year and
discovered strawberries were a potent mood enhancer.
------
bpizzi
We're (team of 2) rewriting an old enterprise ERP system made of ~1M of C89
non-portable loc, tens of thousands of handwritten PLSQL loc, thousands of
business rules carefully abstracted in sql data, tens of complex screen
designed and scripted on a no-name RAD software that was the current fad back
in the days, and some companion pieces in VB6 because, you known, 'C89, not
anybody can do it'.
That's _fun_.
The new system is a quiet simple SOA arch with a dull, only-real data db
layer, backend in Go with code-generation, frontend in es6 migrating to elm.
That looks the IT guys have when we say 'no really, we don't need IIS or
Java', its priceless :)
The interesting part actually lies in handling both product management and
sales for the new version while handling the day-to-day coding part.
Sometimes I think I should write a book on those subjects :)
~~~
rkangel
I'm also in the planning stages of re-writing ~1M lines of C doing hardware
control for a telecoms system. It's going to be replaced with Elixir
(basically Erlang) because it's the perfect fit (which is unsurprising given
its a telecom system).
My prediction is that it will be 10-20k lines of code when I'm done because
there's so much obsolete cruft to remove. Plus ~1k of C as a shim layer to
allow an incremental transition.
~~~
bpizzi
Nice, glad to know there's other brave souls that choose the Big Rewrite path,
despite the latent idea in our industry that every one of those projects are
meant to fail.
~~~
rkangel
My approach is that there are a few things that the default answer for should
be "no" and then you have to justify (maybe just to yourself) why they're
appropriate in this case. Macro Fu in C, template meta-programming in C++ and
rewriting from scratch are all examples of these.
In this case I am avoiding the 'throw it all away and start from scratch'
approach. It would be infeasible for the intervening period. I am putting
together an approach that would get us there in a year or so, but we can lop
off smaller chunks to rewrite (the existing architecture is a series of
daemons, which helps us there).
------
johnmorrison
A while back, I posted a list of my long term focus problems here [1]
Short list:
* Pollution and the climate
* Privation
* Avoidable death
* Interplanetary settlement
* Liberty and communication
* Transportation
My primary focus is developing and commercializing reliable clean energy,
because I believe that is the most effective way to further progress in the
majority of the above problems.
To that extent, I've come to terms with an inability to spread my focus across
all of them simultaneously and drive great results so instead I've taken an
approach of working on a few of them full time myself and investing in efforts
that work on others. My intent is to keep ~100% of my net worth invested in
these main problems (either in my own or somebody else's projects) in
perpetuity.
In my personal life, I've also recently been spending a lot of time thinking
about health and purpose: how to build discipline, how people can/should
decide what to do with their life, how to stay healthy and built fitness, etc.
Side project: in my free time over the last few weeks I've also been thinking
more about how to create lasting models for information and media, and so I'm
building a markup language / static site generator in that pursuit [2]
[1]: [https://jwmza.com/long](https://jwmza.com/long)
[2]: [https://jwmza.com/polymath](https://jwmza.com/polymath)
~~~
Chris2048
All those things are pretty much industries, let alone fields of study.
Also, consider that "keep ~100% of my net worth invested in these main
problems" may not be the better strategy for funding those problems, versus
"put net worth in growth investments" that can fund the same problems later
on.
~~~
johnmorrison
You have a good point but of course the split is adjusted to that
consideration.
I don't believe in profiting from life-saving medication or anything like
that, so my intention is to drive rapid growth with my activities in the
energy, software, and automotive sectors to fund the less immediately
profitable goals.
Make money solving the problems I _can_ first, and later use that money to
fund the further-off ones.
Currently this strategy is working well, as my assets are growing at above
2000% annually.
------
abhgh
I am working on something I am calling "compact models" (as part of a PhD):
techniques to pack more information into Machine Learning models when their
size is constrained in some way. I have put up some of our work here [1] - it
has been interesting so far, and the results are promising. I would like to
release a Python library soon, well, ...in a few months - my PhD is part-time,
I have a full time day job and time management is a pain.
[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01520](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01520)
~~~
SJSque
Interesting name. :) I worked on developing compact models for the first few
years of my employment at NXP Semiconductors, which is (for me, at least) the
top result of a Google search for "compact models", defining them as
"mathematical descriptions of semiconductor devices used in analog circuit
simulators".
~~~
abhgh
You're right, thats what the term seems to stand for (I had Googled too, when
I was thinking of names). "Compact models" is something I am considering
calling this work - its by no means standard :)
------
Lemmih
I'm writing a 2D animation library inspired by 3b1b's manim. It's written in
Haskell, fairly well documented, and is meant to be used together with
external tools such as latex and blender. Design concepts with examples:
[https://reanimate.readthedocs.io/en/latest/glue_tut/](https://reanimate.readthedocs.io/en/latest/glue_tut/)
Source:
[https://github.com/Lemmih/reanimate](https://github.com/Lemmih/reanimate)
------
dhruvkar
standardized tracking for shipping containers
currently tracking is limited either by A) type of transportation (ships,
rail, trucks) or B) by the Freight Forwarding company.
If you use multiple freight forwarders, you're stuck entering data from PDFs
into spreadsheets to create your own custom usable dashboard.
If you use one freight forwarder, you have access to the main journey points,
either as a spreadsheet, or if they're more sophisticated, through a web app.
But I've only found one (silicon valley backed) Freight Forwarder [0] that
gives the last-mile data -- e.g. last free pickup dates, pickup numbers, last
free dropoff dates, return locations etc. -- through their web app.
This is critical for managing warehouse operations, especially for companies
that handle their own last-mile (like we do), and it's been an absolute pain
as we've scaled.
0: [https://www.flexport.com](https://www.flexport.com)
------
cdiamand
Im aggregating stock chatter from the worst parts of the internet
(wallstreetbets, 4chan), summarizing it and sending it out as a newsletter
here: [https://topstonks.com](https://topstonks.com)
~~~
avl999
Why is this a newsletter that you need to give your email address even to just
sample the content? It would be much nicer if the website showed you the
content with an option to subscribe to the newsletter or rss feed.
~~~
cdiamand
Hey sorry for the confusion! There is a link "read a sample" that you can
click on. Ill make that more prominent.
------
Aweorih
Currently working on 2 projects which would solve problems for me:
\- a jdbc driver for interacting with google sheets
\- a cross OS application which lets you share easily data
The first one is almost done and requires mostly documentation and some clean-
up. It supports at the moment simple SQL queries like select * from, insert
into foo() Values () and an update where I currently not remember the syntax.
It also has already a Datagrip integration.
The second project shall work wireless and with minimal setup. The original
idea was that devices search each other in the local network (via broadcast)
and connect then. Further ideas which rised while development where:
\- play sound on another device (which I initially thought would be super easy
but seems like it is not)
\- provide a possibility to define outside applications (like you provide a
configuration file how I communicate with your application and this lets you
show information on other devices)
\- Not just device-to-device but also something like groups
\- messaging with other devices
\- more communication possibilites, ie via (outside) IP or Wi-Fi direct
------
kvz
Downloading has been resumable since HTTP/1.1 but people uploading content
have a less reliable experience. Worse: typically upstream bandwidth is much
lower so they are exposed longer to unreliable connections.
Trying to fix uploading through tus.io (low level protocol) and uppy.io (user
interface). Both open source and free to add to any project.
~~~
WD-42
I’ve been using uppy with Transloadit on a recent project and it’s completely
changed how I think about file uploading from the web. It’s no longer a huge
undertaking. Love the service, amazing work. Now if the video/concat robot was
fixed I could use it 100%.
------
DanielGeisler
Writing Mathematica software with Stephen Wolfram's support to extend the
hyperoperators beyond exponentiation - tetration, pentation and so on, from
the natural numbers to complex numbers and even matrices. I do this by
extending the iteration of any smooth function to real and complex iterates.
[http://iteratedfunctions.com/](http://iteratedfunctions.com/) and
[http://tetration.org/](http://tetration.org/). Physics has two mathematical
methods for it's representation, partial differential equations and iterated
functions. My work is more general than physical systems or even the universe
because I can consider both measure and non-measure preserving systems. I am
looking at AI applications as a system that is tuned to solve for physically
possible models.
~~~
jlevers
I won't pretend to fully understand this, although I do understand the basic
theory of higher-order hyperoperators. I'm curious, though -- where/what are
the applications for this?
~~~
DanielGeisler
The Universe is a hierarchy of orders; quarks and gluons, atoms, molecules,
cells, multi-cellular and on. So hyperoperators form a natural hierarchy to
model multilevel systems. Feynman's Path Integral with the integral removed is
just tetration. So I believe the higher operators through self
organization/renormalization are directly associated with specific levels of
reality, but except for QFT I have no suspicion as to which hyperoperators
might be associated with levels of physics. Here is how it might work.
Hexation might model chemistry while heptation could model simple biological
systems. Thanks for asking. This is fun stuff to work on.
~~~
jlevers
That explanation was surprisingly accessible, thank you! It also blew my mind.
I'd never thought of the building blocks of the universe as forming a
hierarchy before, although in retrospect, it feels obvious.
Were you being literal when you gave the examples of chemistry as hexation and
biology as heptation? If so, why are they those levels specifically? Or were
you just using those as examples because they're roughly one "step" apart on
the hierarchy (i.e., molecules -> cells)? Sorry if this is a dumb question.
~~~
DanielGeisler
I strongly believe that quantum field theory is at the level of tetration or
pentation. The others were possible examples. Thanks for the question.
------
marikio
Most folks have been reading about the psychedelics renaissance.
A humongous problem is the absolute lack of data that many psychedelic
assisted therapists, guides, spiritualists have, to be able to point to their
specific types of therapy as effective.
You come across folks that make humongous claims about the specific modalities
they use, but don't track the progress of their patients and therefore don't
have the data to prove it. We're working with volunteers at
Tabularasa.ventures to develop some simple applications to both screen clients
and also allow for practitioners or individuals to record progress (reductions
in depression, PTSD, etc.) over time whether treating with microdosing, self
administered, or more standard psychedelic assisted therapy (PAT) methods.
Happy to collaborate -> [email protected]
------
iKlsR
In the Caribbean, because of scamming and fraud, opening an account at any
financial institution or like place requires several documents and oft making
a visit to an authority figure (Justice of the Peace) to verify address and
for character reference. On average you will need your TRN (Tax Registration
Number (SSN basically), some form of photo identification, address
verification, references, proof of income) and the list can go on depending on
what you're trying to accomplish.
We're basically trying to make an opt in service that can make procuring these
relatively painless by grouping all relevant parties and then keeping these on
record. A glorified KYC of sorts and then looking to use these as means of
authenticating (I should be able to use my profile to sign up anywhere or
transfer to my data (or parts thereof) to another party. Lots more to flush
out but we have a good grasp of where we're going and what we want to achieve.
Our government has tried to do this in the past but failed at getting it past
the courts due to privacy concerns and are set to try again. I skimped on some
details but the idea should be clear.
As well as new data protection laws introduced/proposed with more amendments
to come, it's a simple but interesting problem at this point in time in
navigating everything including how we do our own verification, security and
eventual licensing to achieve the desired outcome.
~~~
omarhaneef
Where in the Caribbean are you?
Wouldn’t that just make a juicer target since a hacker would have one place to
go?
I notice a lot of people help each other against the perceived government
inflexibility so they’ll lend ID cards etc. won’t this just increase the
amount of identifiers leaked when they do so?
------
makeee
I'm building a tool that helps people scaffold React apps really quickly
(everything from auth flow, payments, DB, form handling, etc, to an actual
nice looking UI). It's at least interesting to me because I think a ton of
time is wasted on all this and I'd like to help more people get their idea out
there rather than reinvent the wheel. If you're interested in taking a look
and giving feedback it's [https://divjoy.com](https://divjoy.com)
~~~
tylerrobinson
I really like this idea and the execution. Great job.
~~~
makeee
Thanks Tyler!
------
roknovosel
I've had an idea for some time now to create a website that would act as a
better codereview.stackexchange.com. It would incorporate some of the features
of the GitHub Pull Request system like inline commenting and reactions.
I arrived at this idea from two directions. The first direction is that I
sometimes try to code review some of the questions over at CodeReview SE, and
the whole thing feels unergonomic. I dislike scrolling up and down to check
the code and constantly losing track of the things I'm reviewing. This is
where I think inline commenting would help. Also, there is not a lot of room
for discussion. You only get those comments below the review, where you only
have a few characters to argue your point. The second direction is that I
produce code snippets (programming homework, short snippets at work, etc.)
which I would like to submit for review. I don't always want to submit it to
the entire internet for review. I just want to get a private link to the code
review, which I can share with my colleagues so they can review it. Kind of
like a reviewable PasteBin.
Some of the features I would like to add: importing files from GitHub for
reviewing and users could import their unanswered CodeReview SE questions for
another review.
~~~
itsArtur
I thought about the same thing! I think having your code reviewed is one of
the fastest ways to improve and at the same time, it's currently very hard to
have it done.
I really dislike CodeReview SE for many reasons though, I don't think this Q&A
format is suitable for doing CRs
~~~
roknovosel
Hey, what kind of things do you dislike about the CodeReview SE and what would
you like to see in an improved code review system?
------
adreamingsoul
I believe I could be working in solving bigger problems, but first I need to
focus on my mental health, a healthier work-life balance, and providing the
primary income for my family.
~~~
jlevers
Don't discount how important those problems are! Kudos to you for being
intentional with them, and good luck. I wish you the best.
~~~
adreamingsoul
Thanks!
------
justinweiss
For hobby development, I'm trying to speed up the unofficial PlayStation
emulator on the Nintendo 3DS. There are all kinds of interesting problems
there, like SD reads being so slow that it tanks the framerate any time the
emulator hits the disk (so I might be writing a read thread + precache?), and
some apparent room for hardware-specific optimization in the lighting and
blending routines.
It's been fun to work around the constraints on an underpowered device. It's
also an excuse to learn ARM assembly, and a nice break from all the JavaScript
I've been spending my time in lately!
------
mrpoptart
Building a personal budgeting system that reduces the complexity of the
process to paying attention to 1 number and about 5 minutes per week to be
sure you're on budget all the time. I came up with a solution to this problem
about 5 years ago and have been testing iterations with friends and family. In
process of building an app to manage it for me.
~~~
peter303
I got budgeting down to two numbers: Total take-home pay past 12 months vs
total expenditures past two months. Try to avoid the latter going over 85%.
~~~
mrpoptart
It's awesome that you have a budget, and a process for doing it. Would you
find it useful to know whether or not you can afford something you're about to
buy, be it a taco, a couch or a car? Your budget works well in as a reflection
process, my budget gives you the constant knowledge of how you're doing right
now and how you'll probably be doing in the future.
~~~
peter303
I use a spreadsheet with rows bulk spending categories and columns months,
plus a few summary columns. More than 15 years ago it was just a table on
graph paper. I know within a few dollars how much I have earned spent in the
past 12 months. The 'budget' is awareness of such spending and trying to keep
not much more than the previous year. Stuff happens like a dead car, hospital
stay, job change etc. so its not always firm.
------
dejv
NIR spectrometer for assessing ripeness of wine grapes. It is palm sized
device that you take to the vineyard and by scanning many bunches you get
numbers you need: brix, pH, acids.
There are many research papers talking about it for many years, but till
recently there was not cheap enough hardware available so it just get stuck in
university laboratories.
It is still tough project to pull out as it combine hardware, cloud software,
machine learning and there is quite some laboratory work required as well.
Doing all of this as a single person and bootstraping is extra challenge but I
guess I don't know better.
I've got into it 5 years ago, when I decided to quit technology, bought small
farm and build winery. At first I wanted to analyze the wine itself, basically
to make traditional method obsolete, but performance of this kind of
instruments are not good enough for liquid that complex. It turned out grape
analysis is much easier target to tackle.
------
surfertas
Problem:
The hassle of splitting proceeds from a service/event/product sale after the
fact related to sending/collecting your % share, timing and details of wiring
the proceeds.
Solution:
Pre-set allocations and create a customized checkout so that splits happen on
a per-payment basis. Members dont have to wait to get their share.
[https://www.korabo.io](https://www.korabo.io)
Idea kind of came about after watching my wife, who is a yoga instructor/
studio owner try to split proceeds from a workshop she hosted with a few
collaborators.
Another example: allows you to create a shield to a checkout that will split
proceeds on a per payment basis.
[https://github.com/surfertas/deep_learning/tree/master/proje...](https://github.com/surfertas/deep_learning/tree/master/projects/chestxray)
Working on this on my spare time. Any advice from the community would be
greatly appreciated.
~~~
tylerrobinson
Is this using Stripe Connect behind the scenes? They are trying to solve a
similar problem. I tried to register on Korabo but after I signed up and went
to login I got an error saying I needed to confirm my email. Haven’t gotten
the email confirmation though, so something may be broken into your onboarding
flow.
~~~
surfertas
Thanks a lot for the response. Yes exactly, its using Stripe Connect and
related APIs.
Basically just leveraging a lot of Stripes features which are great. Their
support has been super helpful as well advising on what can and can not be
done.
Noted on the onboarding issue. Will check whats going on there. When I signed
up myself, gmail classified it as junk/spam, possibly rightfully so.
Thanks again.
------
geocrasher
I'm working on figuring out four different ways for somebody with a light
background in electronics (basic soldering really) and has a Technician or
General class ham radio license to get on the air, from scratch, for $100. No
added expenses. It's possible, and a fun challenge. Its research for some
writing I'm doing.
~~~
Chris2048
What kind of band are you thinking?
------
Aperocky
I wrote a browser based simulation game on my spare time:
[http://aperocky.com/prehistoric](http://aperocky.com/prehistoric)
It's already got a pretty sophisticated production logic, and also a unified
market.
Looking to add a few functionality like child support, new resource types and
maybe eventually a governmental system. Can even try out different government
strategies.
If you have any ideas please share. It's been my passion for 2020 so far.
~~~
TACIXAT
On the first turn I ran, the first person I moused over had my aunt's name.
~~~
cambalache
All the people generated seem to be females with Anglo/Western names.
~~~
Aperocky
One of the area that can be improved...
------
DanielBMarkham
I started off seven years ago wondering why backlogs were so bad. It seemed
like both small teams and large organizations always suck at them. I had read
tons of how-to books and watched lots of videos. Many of the instructions
conflicted with one another, however. What I wanted to know was _why_ , not
_how-to_. If I understood the why I wouldn't need the how-to.
Being a good hacker, I pulled at that thread until I had another, and another.
Now I'm writing about semiotics, language, lambda calculus, and philosophy of
science stuff. It's all related to my original quest for a better explanation,
and it affects everything from AI to coding practices. I'm about done now. Now
the trick will be getting it all in a format that's consumable by the average
programmer.
~~~
jlevers
I'd love to read some of what you've written, if you're willing to share.
------
robterrin
Helping fintechs and other startups access temporary cybersecurity defenders:
[https://www.getblueteam.com](https://www.getblueteam.com)
Having run a cybersecurity services business for three years and previously
working for federal clients, I know that government and large banks are
sucking the talent up, leaving fintechs two options: ignore security or
overpay.
On the reverse side, there are lots of talented independent providers who
simply need somebody to vouch for their skills. We meet with and vet everybody
on our platform to make sure they have the capabilities.
Will be launching a prototype to replace this landing page shortly. If you're
in the New York area and are either looking for cybersecurity contractors or
looking for a project, I would love to get your input!
------
flybyair2038
I work on software that's used by NASA (and other organizations) to model
spacecraft missions. This project spans the gambit of interesting problems in
computer science: numerical methods, high-fidelity orbit modeling, orbit
determination (using Kalman filters to estimate spacecraft state), complex 3D
visualization, language parsing, IDE design, and many more topics.
It's definitely one of the most interesting projects I've ever worked on!
~~~
on2k17nm
Which project is that ? I'm also looking for something of this sort ..
~~~
flybyair2038
FreeFlyer: [https://ai-solutions.com/freeflyer/](https://ai-
solutions.com/freeflyer/)
------
RobinL
Building a library to deduplicate data at scale in Apache Spark, where there
is no unique record identifier (i.e. fuzzy/probabilistic matching).
[https://github.com/moj-analytical-services/sparklink](https://github.com/moj-
analytical-services/sparklink)
It's currently in alpha testing, but the goal is for it to:
\- Work at much greater scale than current open source implementations (the
ambition is to work at 100 million records plus)
\- Get results much faster than current open source implementations - ideally
runtimes of less than an hour.
\- Have a highly transparent methodology, so the match scores can be easily
explained both graphically and in words (it isn't a 'black box')
\- Have accuracy similar to the best products on the marketplace.
~~~
manishjhawar
I'm currently working on a solution involving larger data sets to match a
record with a binary score (0/1). I'm using Redis with the Bloom Filter
module. This works in that the query results are sub-second, but the data
ingestion/filter population part is quite slow comparatively (<100 MB/s).
Another block for me is if having to use multiple filters to query across
multiple sets which just multiplies all the resources needed. Does Spark have
any advantages or specialized filters for this use case? (I have nil
experience with Spark, but am ready to dig up if it would really help.)
------
franze
Company alignment. I am working on a systematic framework ("way to think
about," "a way of doing things") to establish company value alignment.
Most companies at one point are internally not aligned, marketing fighting
product fighting development fighting design fighting sales.
All are wanting to contribute value, all hindering each other in the process
of doing so.
The goal is one framework where a) an initiative can start from any
group/team/individual within the company b) every other part of the company
can rally behind - with their own expertise and point of view.
I always start with a talk (gave the first about it last Thursday
[https://jtbd.ws/](https://jtbd.ws/)), then I take it from there.
~~~
bethanvincent
This sounds really interesting and as a marketer, I am constantly butting
heads with other departments simply trying to my job. I'd love to hear more
when you've developed the framework!
------
yeutterg
Working on the problem of "blue" light affecting circadian rhythms and sleep.
We launched our MVP, Bedtime Bulb [0], in 2018, and it's now the most popular
product in the category. We're expanding out of North America to Europe in the
next couple weeks.
We've had a ton of great feedback from customers, and we are working on
several new sleep technologies that we plan to release this year.
It's also been interesting to apply the lean methodology to hardware.
Iteration cycles are long, but I'd argue that lean is just as important for
hardware as it is for software.
[0] [https://bedtimebulb.com/](https://bedtimebulb.com/)
~~~
TACIXAT
I have had sleep issues my entire life. I've cut out sugar, caffeine (both for
other reasons), and used blue light filtering applications on my devices. None
made a significant difference. I think another issue worth looking at is
people not getting a daytime light signal. I've purchased and ultra bright
light that I saw in this post [1] and it seems to have helped more than
anything I have tried before.
1\. [https://www.benkuhn.net/lux](https://www.benkuhn.net/lux)
~~~
Chris2048
Have you tried a cold shower/bath followed by warm bed, or a hot bath followed
by a cold fan?
Big core temperature changes usually make me feel sleepy.
------
escot
Using constraint programming to schedule generic experiments in an automated
lab. Experiments are complex and fragile so we expose a dsl for describing the
constraints and objectives of each task so that the biology/chemistry doesn't
go awry. One of the hardest parts of this isn't the optimization but the
upfront work of defining what is/isn't necessary to be able to encode about an
experiment. You want the api to provide as much control as possible without
allowing the author to over constrain the problem, or introduce irrelevant
steps into an experiment just because that's how they're done by hand.
~~~
dcardoza
That's really cool! I just started learning about constraint programming using
Z3, and scheduling is the first area I'm looking at. Do you have any advice or
resources you found useful? Much of the underlying theory goes over my head,
but I'm not sure how much of it I need to be productive.
------
Entangled
Paysapp, a worldwide payment system that allows you to send money as simple as
texting a message like "pay 100 to George", available right now in Whatsapp,
Telegram, Keybase, Matrix, Discord, Slack and Twitter, just add the Paysapp
bot to your chats and type 'help' to start.
We're at a very early stage and looking for investors.
~~~
wtmt
Which countries is it available for? Are you compliant with all the complex
and sometimes tiresome regulations on cross border transfers?
~~~
Entangled
Worldwide, all 200 countries wherever there is internet.
Regarding regulations we are studying two possible scenarios, comply with all
or simply Uberize the model and let people sell money for a fee. For the
former we need tons of money, attorneys and on/off ramps with the banking
world. For the latter we only would be the messaging transport and people
would buy and sell money informally, that's the long tail of the unbanked and
informal merchants.
------
mhluongo
Wrapping Bitcoin trustlessly for use in Ethereum smart contracts.
[https://tbtc.network](https://tbtc.network)
~~~
lazzlazzlazz
I've been following your project — very interesting and exciting.
------
gguenerais
I built a chatbot to fight loneliness and social isolation for seniors. It
started with my grandma. She doesn't have a smartphone and internet, so it
basically transforms photos into real postcards. She receives it directly in
her mailbox, and it makes her really happy. The chatbot also reminds me to
send when I did not, so she keeps updated regularly. I released it to the
public last week. you can find it here
[https://postcard.im](https://postcard.im) (the link open a fb messenger
conversation with the chatbot)
------
markk
Reimagining what a phone interface could look like. If you have an interest in
this too, send me a note. ([email protected])
I just like reimagining things, trying to elucidate first principles and go
from there.
~~~
diveintothe9
Amateur product designer here, I'm really interested in what you would
consider to be first principles when it comes to expected
appearance/behavior/functionality of a phone, especially nowadays when the
"phone" part of such a device/interface is almost an afterthought.
I'm also interested to hear what you think are the shortcomings or limitations
of our current idea of a (smart)phone interface.
------
tagami
I'm working on scaling up a network of devices connected to our laboratories
aboard the International Space Station for K-12 education. Our 7th mission
launches on the Cygnus resupply NG-13 on 2/9.
As we connect classrooms and scale across different countries, the problem set
has grown exponentially.
------
sathishvj
I'm making YouTube content to help people learn Google Cloud and also prepare
for the GCP certifications:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIGDDqu5DzlaaC4XzXj_4-A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIGDDqu5DzlaaC4XzXj_4-A)
There is an unlisted sample video in there that I've put out for feedback, and
I'm making changes based on that. Will also be putting together related
content around GCP.
p.s. do subscribe to the channel.
~~~
vlttnv
Hey, I wasn't sure where to leave the feedback so I'll leave it here: it might
be a good idea to get a microphone to improve the sound quality and clarity.
It's a bit hard to hear. Keep it up!
------
vector_spaces
I'm trying to finally learn parsing properly. I run into a lot of little
problems in my day job and have a lot of ideas for side-projects that I think
would be served by having a better handle on it. So I'm creating toy languages
and writing toy parsers for them.
One reason I'm targeting parsers in particular is because I've been finding a
lot of modern programming language books are a bit anti-parsing these days.
EOPL avoids parsing altogether by using a parser generator, effectively saying
that it's a hard problem. PLAI outright calls parsing a "distraction". SICP
(not strictly a compiler book, I know) and Lisp in Small Pieces just use the
triviality of parsing () languages, which I feel doesn't generalize well.
I emailed the author of PLAI (Shriram Krishnamurthi) about this. His response
was effectively that modern books come off anti-parsing as a reaction to old
books, which were parser heavy, and tools like YACC -- "Yet Another Compiler
Constructor" \-- even though it's just a parser generator, not a compiler
constructor! He went further to say that, given parsing is roughly trivial in
() languages, it sort of seems parsing is only incidentally a
compiler/interpreter problem, and users of () languages view non-trivial
parsing as signalling a design flaw. I found this to be an interesting take,
but in my day job I generally don't have much say in the design of "languages"
of semi-structured text that gets thrown my way.
Anyway, I know the Dragon Book covers parsing in some detail but for some
reason it's been kind of impenetrable for me -- it feels a bit more abstract
than I like. I can follow it, but while reading it I can't help but wonder --
"is this actually going to help me in practice?"
I recently have been reading Niklaus Wirth's stuff though, like the last
chapter in his algorithms book and his Compiler Construction book, and those
have been absolutely fantastic.
I also asked a question on SE about a particular parser I'm working on -- if
anyone has some thoughts I'd love to hear them :)
[https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/236222/recurs...](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/236222/recursive-
descent-parser-implementation-for-a-recursive-language)
------
mynegation
Working on a concept of how one would crowdsource a wikipedia-like site with
the purpose of gathering information about how technology and tools progressed
from the Stone Age to today. Sort of manual for bootstrapping the civilization
from ground zero.
------
cmos
I am working on an underwater recording studio. We are building a "3D
Telescope" underwater to listen to the ocean. 28 hydrophones mounted on five 5
meter beams connected like a starfish. It will then compress the data and
telemeter it home real time.
[https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/whoi-
awarded-1-...](https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/whoi-
awarded-1-million-3d-acoustic-telescope/)
Additionally I just won a grant at work to begin designing and building an
open source underwater glider. Underwater gliders are one of the best ways of
carrying instruments to sample the ocean. They can last 6+ months and be
directed to interesting area's. The billion dollar companies that make and
sell underwater gliders are focused on oil+gas+military business and are not
giving the service, support or product depth the science community needs. They
are in dire need of a tech refresh - they fail a lot for an old technology and
run DOS. The only way we have a chance of understanding the ocean is to make
sampling the ocean more affordable, reliable and accessible.
~~~
sitkack
Does the surface buoy generate power? How is it powered?
I thought of doing something similar but based on a single vertical line, it
probably needs to be flat to account for flows and thermal gradients
refracting sound.
What cpus does it use? Is there a local backup of the sound field on the buoy?
Is the full sound field sent up, or does it have to be "pointed at" something?
------
evsamsonov
After reading recent HN post [1], I’ve started to work on my own
implementation of open source fast file transfer client-server application.
It’s in a very early stage now so it’s nothing to show yet, but I’ll be very
glad to announce it when MVP will be ready. [1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898072)
~~~
jlevers
I remember reading that post and the surrounding discussion, and thinking it
was a really tough (and worthwhile) challenge. Good luck, and I'm excited to
see the first version when you release it.
------
burmecia
I am building an encrypted file system that runs inside application
([https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox](https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox)). It focus
on security, privacy and reliability. The interesting part is it can utilize
different storage, such as memory, OS file system, RDBMS and object store. I
learned a lot and enjoyed working on this project.
------
WilliamHurst
I am working on giving solo entrepreneurs and micro business owners back more
of their valuable time by eliminating menial admin tasks. Time is typically
your most valuable resource but when you are working alone or on a small team,
someone still needs to take care of the admin, eating away at your valuable
time.
I’m starting with the sharing of common information with clients and partners.
Organizations are often required to supply information on a regular basis to a
wide range of clients and partners (bank account details, company, company
registration details, tax clearance documents, certifications, charity
registration number, etc.). A lot of these documents need to be renewed on an
annual basis so there is a constant stream of requests for updated versions.
For bank accounts, the ability to verify a bank account automatically can
prevent invoice fraud.
I’m looking at a model where a piece of business information is uploaded to a
central platform and then provide permission for others to access it and to
receive notifications when a new version is available.
In the first startup school batch for 2020 and working on validating the
problem with actual users.
------
BrandiATMuhkuh
I'm helping build a mathematics tutoring system. Compared to classic math
learning, we are trying to mimic the strength of a real tutor. Which is,
identifying the lack of math skills and teaching those.
From our experience the biggest issue students have is, they can't solve an
issue because they didn't understand a concept they have already "learned" in
the past. It's simple, yet powerful.
~~~
lovetocode
I would love to learn more about this product.
~~~
BrandiATMuhkuh
Sure. Here is our demo page. [https://demo.amy.app](https://demo.amy.app) We
usually white label our product and try to work with bigger companies like
publishers to get our products into the hands of students.
But, we are still a very small start-up.
------
mister_hn
Make security authentication in Government and Public services more secure.
At the Moment, I'm fighting with a monolithic, untouched Java 8 / JavaEE6
service which has lots of old dependencies and that uses old cryptographic
ciphers, some of them classified as unsafe (e.g. brainpool512p1).
None knows how to make a reproducible build, since everyone gets a different
and working or not-working package and some modules are not even released
(using the infamous -SNAPSHOT) in maven and there's no documentation.
Unfortunately, there's little testing, so everything can be broken easily and
none can know it.
Some developers are also really undisciplined, touching code but not running
end-to-end (manual) testing, not even running the installer.
If I had the decision power, I would throw this thing away and start from
scratch, probably without Java too or, if Java, at least the latest one and
maybe Spring, not JavaEE: Wildfly moves too fast and each release breaks
compatibility with the previous one, concerning settings (RedHat: why do you
do this??)
------
ckok
I'm trying to write a drop in LLVM codegen replacement, ie something that
takes bitcode (Which I already have) and generates x86_64, arm, object files
etc. Back story: I've done compilers for most of my professional life but
never did the actual native code generation myself, always using .net, java or
llvm to do that part.
As a fun project, as I already had code to generate llvm bitcode from .NET, I
now do mem2reg (convert stack spots to SSA registers), dead code elimination,
constant folding and other small optimizations. That part now works, and I
managed to create a simple x86_64 coff object file (with everything needed to
link to it, including pdata, xdata) that returns the "max" value for a given
integer.
That is about all that works for now, and I don't get to spend much time on
it, but the end goal is to have a "good enough" codegenerator for non
optimized cases, that could potentially be faster than llvm (to emit). The
primary goal is to learn how to do this though :)
------
clevelandguy
I’m building a highly customized, web-based inspection data and quality
management system at a medical device/aerospace manufacturer that is
essentially replacing a lot of old VB code, with some additional stuff.
Having previously worked at a marketing company and a startup, it’s been
fascinating to experience a legacy manufacturing company growing (or trying to
grow) into the future.
Yes, the engineering problems are fun and all, but I think the most
fascinating part has been thinking about what American manufacturing will look
like 5, 10, 20 years down the road.
In my experiences, I believe American manufacturers will NEED to invest in
industry 4.0 tech in order to mitigate costs associated with rising wages,
shortages of skilled machinist labor, and greater demand from
consumers/regulators/OEMs for information and transparency.
I’ve also been quite amazed at how much paper is still used and the lack of
industrial software products with quality UX.
And I don’t think American manufacturing will ever cease to exist.
------
sideproject
I’m working on Newsy.
[https://www.newsy.co](https://www.newsy.co)
I have quite a few domain names that I have purchased over the years that I am
not doing anything with at the moment.
I wanted minimal amount of work to make a good use out of these domains.
So I built Newsy. It turns your idle domain into a news aggregator.
I’m nearly there. You can sign up and I’ll invite you to check it out!
~~~
waychukucha
I like this and all the best. I have access to close to 50 idle domains I will
try see how I can put them to use. Is there a way to customize the news such
that it is relevant to each domain?
~~~
sideproject
Yep! That's the idea! :) Via RSS feeds + keywords.
~~~
waychukucha
If by any chance you would like help better testing it, I have so many parked
domains that I would like to have them on asap. Is there is any other way I
can contact you or you can reach me on nash at hoopsup dot com
------
Findeton
I'm trying to bring light-fields to the masses, as the next level of VR
immersive experiences. I'm building a cheap light-field video-camera and the
software to process it automatically and reproduce the videos with a VR
headset. BTW, not it's not just like a normal VR video because you have
parallax.
~~~
jiofih
How do you deal with occlusion? I had the impression that’s the main issue
with VR video, unless your recording rig has a massive horizontal offset to
capture the sides.
~~~
Findeton
You record the video from a matrix of cameras each at a slightly different
pov, then use a light-field algorithm to generate novel images. As you said
you only solve occlusion if your cameras are separated enough but in my case I
only expect/want the user to twitch his head around. We can add more cameras
if this tech starts get adopted.
------
vrajat
I am creating a couple of open source tools for data governance. The first one
is a data catalog (1) with tags for PII data. The second one is a data lineage
application (2). The goal is to keep these as simple as possible to install
and use.
IMO the current options are too complicated or expensive and appropriate for
the largest companies. I cannot hack a simple application for data discovery
or usage statistics. So I am building a dead simple data catalog that I can
reuse. The data lineage app is the first app on it.
(1)
[https://github.com/tokern/piicatcher](https://github.com/tokern/piicatcher)
(2) [https://github.com/tokern/lineage](https://github.com/tokern/lineage)
------
taurath
Why I can’t get through a day without anxiety. Many years of research,
consulting with experts, running experiments and correlating data. It’s a hard
problem.
~~~
spython
Have you tried a non-verbal approach? I.e. 'authentic movement', guided
dreamlike meditation, ecstatic dance? In a sense reversing the Moravec's
Paradox (1) and letting the older, bigger, more complex brain take care of
things.
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox)
------
adamnemecek
IDE for music composition [http://ngrid.io](http://ngrid.io)
Launching soon.
~~~
diveintothe9
I'm guessing this is different from a DAW? Also, cloud-based music making
applications is an area I'm generally interested in, and I find it somewhat
crazy that a lot of mainstream music software companies haven't stuck a foot
in. I'm aware of some, like Cubase having cloud collaboration, but it's mostly
blue ocean.
~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
I'm the lead author of Ardour, a cross-platform open source DAW. Just last
night, I was helping out a user who was having issues (eventually traced to
their AMD graphics stack). Their session wasn't particularly large - about 1
hour of recorded spoken word and some backing music. The whole data set came
to 6.5GB ... non-trivial for "cloud-based" anything, even today.
Yes, there are ways to be clever about this stuff, but for "real music making"
the typical size of the data involved makes cloud-based collaboration less
immediately appealling than you might imagine.
~~~
diveintothe9
Agreed, data volumes are definitely the biggest hurdle in this scenario. Any
of the cloud DAWs I've seen mostly offer basic features, and a handful of
recording tracks at best.
Just checked out Ardour, looks great! Being able to work with videos and (I
presume) work on additional audio and eventually mix the two audio sources
back into the video is a fantastic feature.
------
varjag
An acoustic system for poor-visibility tunnel evacuation assistance using
psychoacoustic effects. Massively distributed, self calibrating, microsecond
scale synchronized system with a bunch of interesting problems in software,
electronics, acoustics and mechanical engineering.
~~~
sillysaurusx
Could you go into detail? Or explain what that means? It sounds interesting,
but none of the words seem connected.
~~~
varjag
We use sound effects to evacuate people from fires in tunnels when they can't
see any direction in the smoke. Which involves detecting the fire in the first
place, and establishing binaural effects that are directional _and_ suggestive
of the direction you should take.
Explaining the implementation would take a wall of text, just listed the
aspects that make it interesting.
------
sm001
I'm working on mobile apps to help researchers study dolphin acoustic
communication, such as DC Dolphin Communicator 2019 which is free and open
source on gitlab:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sm.app.dc&hl=e...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sm.app.dc&hl=en_CA)
During a sabbatical trip in the Canadian Arctic in 1975, I came in close
proximity with a beluga in Hudson Bay and was impressed with the unusual
vocalizations which was in-air and about 3 feet from me. The beluga was
tragically killed by Inuit a few minutes later. That's how my interest
started. I later learned the basics from two people who were leaders in this
field.
------
maddy1512
I working on a personal project which tries to solve Traffic congestion
problems using live feed cameras. Feel free to connect with me on linkedIn if
you are interested. [https://bit.ly/2RE3omt](https://bit.ly/2RE3omt)
------
erulabs
I'm building a product that aims to get people hosting software again. The
internet used to be bi-directional, in that people could host content as
easily as they could consume it. We're currently a Kubernetes hosting
platform, but I'm working hard on a system that will allow developers to
extend our cloud with their own machines at home, in a data-center, or
anywhere! From learning to host Minecraft servers at home, to Fortune 10
Software delivery, we don't see a reason why you should have to jump to
different vendors and different platforms. Democratize server-side software!
[https://kubesail.com](https://kubesail.com) (YC S19)
------
msaharia
I am trying to build a flood forecasting system for India using satellite
remote sensing, hydrologic models, machine learning, crowdsourcing etc.
~~~
on2k17nm
Nice
------
davedx
Working on [https://LightSheets.app](https://LightSheets.app), a spreadsheet
application allowing high performance data science type tasks like cleaning
big chunks of data. I'm also doing a lot of exploratory coding around how far
the spreadsheet concept can be pushed to "augment human intelligence", which
has led me to read a lot of papers about this area. One thing I'm very
interested in is how we can allow machine intelligence to "take the
initiative" during the course of human work.
Hopefully in 2020 this means more than simply resurrecting a clone of MS
Office's Clippy...
------
contingencies
Aggregating virus spread data to visualize for Wikipedia. Hacky but working.
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/2019-wuhan-coronavirus-
data...](https://github.com/globalcitizen/2019-wuhan-coronavirus-data/)
Increasing food safety and security plus availability and choice in urban
environments using robotics to automate food preparation and software to
manage operations and logistics. Hopefully also make money. Differences from
web stuff: includes embedded, mobile, electronics design, mechanical design,
fabrication, business, cross-border operations, food safety regulations, etc.
------
opsgal
Still thinking pretty loosely about the trust space, but a few conclusions on
my end: LinkedIn is frustrating because people connect even though they don't
know each other very well. I spend a lot of time meeting up with strangers
(Craigslist, meetups, dating) and generally hoping that the world is good
(though it pretty much always turns out to be). Phone number seems to be
something that people only exchange when they have a fairly meaningful
interaction - could that be used as a way to show you know someone/vouch for
them? I feel like there's something in that space that would resonate with a
lot of people.
~~~
oddnearfuture
Hmm, similar thoughts but less about trust and more about the psychology of
personal networks.
I'm interested in what value we place on connecting people in our network. Say
you meet two persons in your travels that might benefit from being connected.
What value do you place on making this connection? How does it make you feel?
Does it have to have an obvious personal utility?
These are the types of questions I would love to investigate further. Maybe
they're kinder, calmer tools that we can build for this specific purpose.
~~~
dzink
I’ve been prototyping in this space as well. Let’s all chat. Ping me at my hn
username at @doerhub.com
------
fabianlindfors
Trying to make it easier to prove your identity online. Essentially by
creating an ID for use on the web.
When signing up for services that require real identities (banking, insurance,
etc.) the standard currently is to require a picture of a passport, a video of
yourself, or copies of some paperwork. These methods are all high-friction and
provide dubious security and privacy. This is already a solved problem in some
countries and I'm working on the equivalent on a larger scale, without the
geographical restrictions.
If there is anybody else here working in this space then feel free to reach
out!
~~~
slx26
With online fingerprinting, big companies seem to have the problem of
"identity", bots and spam prevention decently solved, but at the cost of users
privacy.
There are many opportunities that could really use a good mechanism to
uniquely identify users, know for sure they are real people. This is pretty
hard to do (or outright impossible) without the collaboration of governments.
But governments will f*ck it up in a number of ways if we leave it to them. We
have to think bigger than what some countries have already solved.
First, we need something like credit cards. A physical object (identity cards
could work on many countries, but they tend to suffer from beyond horrible
usability when it comes to their digital chips / functionality) with a
password that can be changed. We would also need a place to see all the
"transactions" or actions done with your identity, as we have with credit
cards. India and their Aadhaar project has shown that biometric identification
is not good. But it sounds very nice and sci-fi, so it sadly sticks. Nothing
new yet.
But what we really would need are manageable permissions, so you can always
prove that you are an actual human, but not necessarily revealing anything
else and being a completely anonymous user, or choosing to reveal some data
(country, real name, etc).
If something like this was global and effective, not only we would have many
more opportunities through the internet, we could also come much closer to
things like direct democracy. Password management and online identity
management would also become much easier. Obviously there also are many
problems. Starting with the access to the internet itself. And all this
identification system does sound very dangerous from a privacy-minded
perspective (but the alternatives will end up being much worse, and worse
systems will be imposed on us). And I'm still completely ignoring the
political will to do something like this.
~~~
fabianlindfors
I think you really hit the nail on the head, thanks for sharing!
Privacy is definitely at the center of what I'm building. My approach is to
put full control of their own data in the users hands. Data is only shared
with a service when a user explicitly allows it and the user is always aware
of what that data is. Your idea of being able to share nothing at all is also
something I've been thinking a lot about. Being able to verify an identity
without leaking any PII is one of my main goals.
I also agree with you on the issue of governments. There are very few who have
managed to introduce a digital ID locally. A large amount of countries coming
together and building a common solution seems very far-fetched currently.
Where I'm from, Sweden, we have a well functioning digital ID used by
everybody. Funny thing is that it was created by the private banks and only
later adopted by the government.
It's definitely a hard problem but judging by the evidence it's solvable, just
hope I'm on the right path. If you have any more thoughts I'd love to hear
them!
------
beaconstudios
2 projects at the moment:
\- a graph-based task manager that incorporates dependencies between tasks and
infinitely-nested subtasks - IE maps to how we actually think about tasks
being related and broken down. Aiming to get this one shared with the world in
early Feb.
\- a visual programming environment that represents how we model software in
our heads, not how it runs on the computer/s. This is my longer-term, much
more experimental project.
Drop me an email (in my bio) if you're interested in either! I'll be
commercialising the former quite soon and I'm putting a lot of effort into
pleasant to use.
------
kop316
Interesting to me:
[https://github.com/ikorb/gcvideo](https://github.com/ikorb/gcvideo)
GCvideo has a way to convert the digital signal on the N64 into composite
video, and has VHDL to create an HDMI signal With Audio. So I have been
working on finding the digital Audio out on the N64, and converting the whole
signal to HDMI.
In not so many words, I am recreating this from scratch:
[https://www.retrorgb.com/ultrahdmi.html](https://www.retrorgb.com/ultrahdmi.html)
Mainly because it is impossible to find that.
------
arkadiyt
I'm building a service that fetches the audit logs from all your SaaS tools
(think GSuite, Okta, Dropbox, Zendesk, Salesforce, Github, etc) and pushes
them into whatever logging pipeline you use.
I built a similar tool internally at my last company and we used it to alert
on things like employees making google drive files public to the internet,
okta configuration changes, github ssh deploy keys getting added, employees
logging in from foreign countries, etc.
If anyone wants to check it out you can reach me at arkadiy{at}logsnitch.com
(or just sign up at the same domain).
------
Waterluvian
I'm trying to learn how one writes a rules engine for a digital card game.
That is, the system for defining valid moves and combinations and such that
isn't just a crap ton of bespoke code.
------
plahteenlahti
I'm trying to get people to sleep better by providing them relevant sleep
coaching by combing their sleep tracker’s data with CBT-I derived sleep
coaching program. Been working on this project for a year now, and it’s
finally starting to take the shape I wanted it to have.
Been a really tough journey. I’m was the only coder and designer in the
project for the longest time, and my development skills weren’t really that
good when I started building this.
Here’s a link to it [https://nyxo.app](https://nyxo.app)
~~~
noitsnot
*tough
Nice start! Is there any fitness trackers you believe outperform in terms of
sleep tracking? It's an interesting idea for an app. because I have personally
found specialists are booked 3+ months in advance.
~~~
plahteenlahti
Oura seems to be the most accurate at the moment, but only by a small margin,
and that is mostly because it's the only one that uses also temperature to
measure sleep (in addition to heartbeat and movement).
Detecting when person is asleep has become quite good, but there's still a lot
of work to do in also detecting sleep stages. I would not trust any wearables
deep sleep readings too much.
------
spangry
I'm trying to figure out the appropriate discount rate and methodology that
governments should use when doing cost-benefit analysis of big expenditure
projects (e.g. infrastructure). It would seem that economists have been
arguing about this for many decades now with no end in sight.
There are some interesting value-judgements that have to be made here (e.g. do
we value the consumption of future generations more/less than present
consumption?), so I suspect there will never be an objective answer to this
question.
~~~
mojomark
Interesting. For my data mining class I took NYC Open data - merging temporal
Crime Data and Capital Expenditure data by geographic district/precinct, to
see if there was evidence that spending money in a region had a positive
impact on crime reduction. Then to see if I could use that model to see if I
could predict how much crime would be reduced given a specified funding
injection into the region. We assumed there was some lag (e.g. 6 mos. or 1
year) between funded project completion and community impact (reduced crime).
The model was only a little over 70% accurate, but the data was sloppy because
we had to get creative mapping precincts to districts since their boundaries
don't overlap exactly. However, I think this could be significantly improved
since crime data is geo-tagged, so you can get much more specific about where
crimes occur with respect to funded projects.
I think that model can be made to help inform where funding could be most
beneficial from a social perspective. I realize there are other factors in
infrastructure investments than crime - I was focussed on community
improvement projects (e.g. blight removal, green space development, school
construction/repair, etc.)
------
loa_in_
I'm reworking the (already pretty old) concept of literate programming, basing
my research on the implementation written originally by Dr Ross Williams in
70's called funnelweb. Given new hardware of modern times all the ugly hacks
and compromises of the C implementation (including ugly delimiters,
unnecessary terse syntax, not using a recursive descent parser but relying on
byte values while parsing text) a new take on the subject might bring it to
today's tool chain.
~~~
nekopa
Do you have anything available for public consumption? I'm a fan of funnelweb
and would love to see it updated.
~~~
loa_in_
Since you asked, and since people who can use those tools are few and far
between... I have made my own take on funnelweb syntax. I would like your
opinion. Unfortunately not really documented, so please look at sample
(complete) input file.
It's currently in working state. [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/loa-
in-/python3-dreamwork/...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/loa-
in-/python3-dreamwork/master/tests/inputs/rendertest.txt)
You can see current output here: [https://github.com/loa-
in-/python3-dreamwork/tree/testout/te...](https://github.com/loa-
in-/python3-dreamwork/tree/testout/tests)
------
hef19898
My current longshot is the development of dropship fulfillment solution as a
service. Kind of a managed dropship network for every single dropship vendor
and every single dropship retailer out there. The solution should basically
take the pain of daily logistics management of the retailers back. Kind of
what Amazon does for their own Dropshippers. As a retailer you get full
tracking and cost transparency, as a dropship vendor you get a platform that
directly integrates with your ERP-system, gives you shipping labels and so
forth...
Funny thing is, the basic software more or less exists already. At least on
the fulfillment and logistics side of things. The tricky thing now is to
create the physical network (also companies like DHL ship for everyone, even
next day) and come up with the processes to match n retailers with m
dropshippers (some of them shared between retailers) and a basically infinite
amount of consumers.
I said long shot. First step is to get my 4PL company of the ground. A 4PL is
a nice first step, I tke care of daily logistic operations for clients. Which
also includes pretty early on a Dropship component. So once the 4PL is earning
some money, the next step will be to define processes for a scaleable Dropship
solution, identify software gaps and then create the platform. Talking about
longshots...
How I got the idea? I worked for Amazon running, among other things the
Amazon.de dropship network. After that I worked for a producer of solar
modules. That company sld some of the modules through a webshop and had some
dropshipping. Totally inefficient, intransparent and expensive. So I told
myself, that can be done better. Took me three years to take the leap into
startup world.
~~~
stef25
Amazon.de has a dropship network?
~~~
hef19898
Yeah, called direct fulfillment. Roughly 400 vendors a couple of years ago for
Amazon.de alone. Should be more by now. Quite interesting, so. Not sure why
Amazon never really pushed that instead of own fulfillment centers, would have
reduced fixed costs by quite a bit IMHO.
------
pxue
sustainability in fashion.
there's a lot of "greenwashing" in the industry driven by opaqueness and lack
of measurable data.
step #1 is to get more brands on board. step #2 make it easier to monitor
supply-chain and have actionable and measurable KPIs built around data.
~~~
dublinben
This is an interesting challenge, because reducing consumption is the most
effective way to increase sustainability. This is antithetical to selling more
clothing though, so you won't find much traction with fashion brands.
That being said, Poshmark does have a $600m valuation, so there is a market
here.
~~~
jlevers
Patagonia's also done a great job with this. I have no idea if all their
advertising around _not_ buying things you don't need has increased the number
of items they've sold, or just the price they can charge for them.
------
dopamine101
I am trying to create a metasearch engine for apparel in India. Apparel
shopping is different than commodity shopping and requires lots of browsing
before selecting your final product to buy. A user will know about a limited
number of vendors and will search for products only on them. A central web/app
is needed to give results from the long tail of vendors. This product can be
extended to furniture and lifestyle domain too.
~~~
wewake
By vendors, you mean brands right?
~~~
dopamine101
Brands, Niche e-commerce websites, boutiques
------
stewfortier
As somebody with broad interests, I've long been fascinated by what it means
to be a "generalist" and understanding when a wide, varied skillset is an
advantage over a hyper-narrow one.
I've been reading about this for years and recently started sending out short
summaries of what I've learned (typically geared at how the lessons can by
applied practically).
Last week I shared how Nobel laureates are 22 times more likely to have a side
hobby as a performer than their peers.
Ultimately, I am trying to land on a succinct answer to "how do you channel
broad interests and talents into an impactful career?"
(this is my email:
[https://stewfortier.com/subscribe](https://stewfortier.com/subscribe))
~~~
jlevers
Whoa, I just signed up for your newsletter a couple weeks ago. Small world.
I'm enjoying it so far, keep it up!
I too have really broad interests...I find basically everything interesting,
which is both a blessing and a curse, as I'm sure you've experienced. I'd love
to talk about this more...do you feel you've come to any kind of answer on how
to focus your wide interests?
~~~
stewfortier
Excited to have you on the list! Definitely hit reply every once in a while as
I'd love to chat more about all of these topics one-on-one.
One theme I'm starting to converge on is the idea of a generalist as an
"expert" at a) maintaining a wide range of mental models and skillsets and b)
developing a sense of which type of problems to apply each to.
In other words, effective generalists become good at knowing which speciality
or approach should be applied to a problem, even if they "only" grasp the
basics of any one discipline.
Example:
A software engineer wants to develop deeper friendships. They may think that
building an app that reminds them to keep in touch with friends will help.
Of course they think that... software is what they know best.
But a generalist may take a different angle and see that the root cause isn't
an automation / information problem, it may be a human psychology issue.
"The real problem is that you don't believe you're worthy of love. If you work
on that, you may feel confident enough to want to reach out more."
The next email is going to start outlining the most practical, effective mini-
mental models that generalists can use to solve practical problems.
~~~
jlevers
I'll definitely start hitting reply, thank you!
That's a really interesting, but sensible, conclusion to come to. It seems to
follow that generalists would make great business/personal coaches, as they're
good at pointing people in the right direction. I'd be curious to look at
great coaches and see if they had a ton of different interests.
I'm stoked for the next email :)
------
akdas
1\. Trying to make hiring in tech a better experience by sharing my knowledge
and experience with both job seekers and those doing the hiring. The really
hard part about this is influencing some change in how hiring is done, because
I strongly believe the current hiring process selects for the wrong skillset.
I'm publicly committing to write about this topic weekly with a newsletter
that I just launched: [https://hiringfor.tech](https://hiringfor.tech)
2\. At work, I recently completed a really long project with a large team. I'm
trying to make the lessons learned accessible to others in the company because
they'll also be undertaking similar projects soon. That means documenting my
learnings at a level of abstraction that allows others to not make the same
mistakes as us, but still have enough flexibility to tailor their
implementation based on their team's needs. The hard part is the intersection
of technical and people-oriented knowledge dissemination.
This year is going to be focused on a lot of teaching, which I'm excited
about.
~~~
JimDabell
Is it possible for you to add an Atom feed for #1? I try to reserve email for
real communication and use feeds for reading periodicals. I would subscribe to
it as a feed, but it doesn't belong in my email.
~~~
akdas
Absolutely! The feed will be available at
[https://hiringfor.tech/feed.xml](https://hiringfor.tech/feed.xml) when I
start publish content (probably next week).
------
paulorlando
I'm working on improving the understanding of systems through research,
writing and presenting. I write this regular set of articles about unintended
consequences coming from tech, politics, and business:
[https://unintendedconsequenc.es/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/)
------
pulseflexer
I am working on Site that helps people, who are in teaching profession, track
fees. Often times, small-time tutors are left with using multiple tools like
google docs, calendar etc. to track contacts, fees. This is attempt to provide
one stop to manage all things.
[https://tracfee.com](https://tracfee.com)
------
killjoywashere
I work on things like the datasets you can find here:
[https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/search?query=whole...](https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/search?query=whole%20slide%20image)
Teaching machines to diagnose cancer with superhuman sensitivity and
specificity makes it easy to sleep at night.
------
pragmaticpirate
I am working on a solution for people to defeat procrastination. Here's how it
works, you select a time slot for work, and we assign you an accountability
assistant who will get on a call with you and keep in touch as often as
necessary to keep you from procrastinating by holding you accountable for the
task at hand.
~~~
addisonl
Sounds expensive
~~~
wheelerwj
Lets think about it and come back to it later.
------
atheiste
I am working on a blogging platform that does not need any backend (in terms
of an app listening for http connections). The overall architecture is an web
app that is talking to WebDAV and then pages get build by a static site
generator. I use getpelican.com but you can use Hugo or Jekyll based on your
preference.
~~~
Chris2048
How would that work? surely something needs to serve the static content to a
http request?
~~~
atheiste
You are right of course. There is still nginx taking care of everything. The
point is that you need nothing but nginx/caddy/Apache.
Currently, I don't know any way how to initiate execution of scripts over http
server so there is a systemd timer checking changes in files and recompiling
the whole site. This has lot of downsides. The easiest would be if the static
generator reacts on existence of a specific file - recompiles the site and
removes the file afterwards.
------
kstenerud
I'm building a new general purpose RPC mechanism to replace the current
HTTP/REST technology, as well as the whole TCP port thing. What service you're
talking to on the host will be completely hidden from prying eyes, and
unblockable.
You call an endpoint anywhere on the planet and give the name of the service
you want, which then gives you access to that service's published API (similar
to how you'd use import and gain access to a library's API).
To start, it will operate over port 80/443 to allow seamless integration into
the current world infrastructure, but I'm also hoping that in maybe 10 years
it could replace HTTPS entirely, possibly even TCP.
The first step is an encoding mechanism that supports the most common data
types natively, which I've defined here [1], and am currently writing
implementations for in go. It's a parallel text and binary encoding so that we
don't waste so much time generating bloated text that's just going to be
machine-parsed at the other end, but also allows converting on-demand to a
text format that humans can read/write. I ended up developing new encoding
schemes for floating point values [2] and dates [3] to use in the binary
format.
The next layer above that is a generic streaming protocol [4], which can
operate on top of anything from i2c to full-on HTTP(S), and supports
encryption. It's designed to be as non-chatty as possible so that for many
applications, you simply open the connection and start talking without even
waiting for the other side's acknowledgement. It supports bi-directional
asynchronous message sending with chunking and optional acknowledgement on a
per-message basis, with tuneable, negotiable message header size.
The final layer will be the RPC implementation itself. I want this as a thin
layer on top of streamux because many of the projects I have in mind don't
need full-on RPC. This part is still only in my head, but if I've designed the
lower layers correctly, it should be pretty thin.
[1] [https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-
encoding](https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding)
[2] [https://github.com/kstenerud/compact-
float](https://github.com/kstenerud/compact-float)
[3] [https://github.com/kstenerud/compact-
time](https://github.com/kstenerud/compact-time)
[4]
[https://github.com/kstenerud/streamux](https://github.com/kstenerud/streamux)
------
gumby
Symbolic AI with common sense and explanation built on top of NNs. Here’s a
talk I gave last year though I’m no longer with that company and am working on
the tech elsewhere.
[https://youtu.be/thmkaYOayCM](https://youtu.be/thmkaYOayCM)
~~~
deepnotderp
Hey! I saw your talk at EE380, mind getting in touch over email?
~~~
gumby
Sure, send me a note.
------
benologist
I am working on software that makes building web apps faster, easier and more
secure.
You host a copy of my web application, and it handles all your user account
stuff with modules that add organizations, Stripe Subscriptions and
marketplaces powered by Stripe Connect. You write your application with its
own web server in whatever language and the two servers form one site.
At the moment I am trying to finish automating my documentation based on the
test suites including API details from API tests and screenshots from UI
tests.
I am looking for testers if you are building a SaaS or a Connect marketplace.
[https://github.com/userdashboard/dashboard](https://github.com/userdashboard/dashboard)
[https://userdashboard.github.io](https://userdashboard.github.io)
~~~
tylerrobinson
I’m interested in this type of idea and would be willing to help test your
flows and give feedback. Email me at my username @ gmail!
------
catchmeifyoucan
Our current computer GUIs are not conducive to productivity. Daily things like
too many tabs, distracting notifications multiple windows are “symptoms” of
our computers not being able to understand context. Context meaning - what we
actually want to accomplish.
Whenever we begin to do something, our computer just sees a bunch of apps and
windows. It never tells us how to get better or does things on our behalf. At
Amna, we’re working on a natural interface structured around the way people
think. We believe it will change the way you interact with computers, and the
way computers learn from us.
full problem: [https://getamna.com/blog/post/amna-solves-
problems/](https://getamna.com/blog/post/amna-solves-problems/)
------
invonto
Our software development company is working on an ongoing issue. In our
experience, we find that virtual reality and augmented reality advancements
are not happening within our state, New Jersey. Late last year, we set up the
Virtual Reality Roadshow. It was our goal to help general consumers and small
businesses become more familiar with the benefits of virtual reality
technology. We shared our experience and our thoughts on VR in 2020 in a
recent post: [https://www.invonto.com/insights/virtual-reality-
trends-2020...](https://www.invonto.com/insights/virtual-reality-trends-2020/)
In 2020, we plan to continue the VR Roadshow and brainstorm new ideas to bring
more awareness to virtual reality tech.
------
ChuckMcM
Polyphase channelizers. I got interested in software defined radios, which
lead me to getting a HackRF one, and that lead to learning how to build SDRs,
and that lead to joining a company that was building cutting edge SDRs for
really diverse tasks, and that lead me to diving into DSP and the mathematics
of radios, which lead me into modern protocols and modulation schemes which
lead me to various people doing experimental RF work and started noodling on
what an SPU (Spectrum Processing Unit analog to a GPU) might look like and
that lead me to Dr. Fred Harris' work on polyphase filters and channelizers
and now I'm internalizing all of that so that I can build a device that
processes spectrum in new and novel ways.
------
yetihehe
Prototype for new kind of stirling engine, it's different from others like
two-stroke to four-stroke gas engine. That would make solar thermal efficient
even for low temperature difference (sub 100°C) or allow for storage of energy
by using liquid nitrogen tanks for low-temperature side. I'm currently
aquiring better home with garage to develop this idea.
Professionally - change IoT into one big robot, make platform to connect ALL
devices with one system, essentially what Bruce Schneier warns us about[0].
[0]
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/the_internet_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/the_internet_of_1.html)
------
kirso
I started my job search recently and realized its a trade-off between earning
a good income and being terrible bored of a company mission. I can't believe
in 2020 it's hard to find something awesome and exciting to work on whilst
being financially secure. Obviously it's not only about company product but
also values, culture & people but I realized the major driving force for
making career decision was always intellectual curiosity.
Hence I started a website to curate cool & impact projects that people are
building that nobody knows because they are small or unknown (yet). So kind of
discover amazing companies / make impact kinda thing. Hoping to launch this
month.
------
alanbernstein
I'm trying to create a program that can procedurally generate regular plane
tilings, in a way that allows them to blend into each other over space and/or
time. It makes sense in my head, but I think it won't end up working quite as
well as I hope.
~~~
helltone
Check this out
[https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse](https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse)
~~~
alanbernstein
Thanks! I've seen WFC before and I think it's brilliant. I'm trying to do
something with a little less randomness to it. I want to animate transitions
between archimedean tilings
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_tilings_by_convex_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_tilings_by_convex_regular_polygons#Archimedean,_uniform_or_semiregular_tilings)).
There may be a connection with WFC that I'm missing. My approach is more, uh,
direct, I guess.
------
losthobbies
I am hoping to get people back into hobbies that they have lost interest in or
have fallen out of the loop.
I have build a VERY basic landing page but I am struggling to get time to
spend on it.
[https://losthobbies.com](https://losthobbies.com)
------
acwan93
Pivoting my parents' homegrown ERP business from the traditional software
sales model (one-time sale with annual support contracts) to a SaaS model with
MRR to grow and scale the company. This also comes with changing the
organization’s mindset and tools used.
I have to say that the technical challenges of bringing in modern web
technologies to interface with legacy systems has been an interesting (and
frustrating at times!) experience. After working as a software dev for a
number of years before taking this on, I’ve been jumping between sales,
marketing, devops, management, and actual software development all in a day.
~~~
jlevers
That sounds really cool -- I'd be interested to hear more about some of the
hurdles you've encountered integrating modern web tech and old enterprise
software. Any particularly notable challenges you'd be willing to share?
~~~
acwan93
It comes down to working on a project that’s been continuously changing over
the span of three decades. Over the years my parents have customized their
offerings to account for numerous clients (our focus is on wholesale
distributors). Keeping track of inventory gets especially complicated when you
start dealing with variants such as colors, sizes, perishables, and pre-
packaged goods (our customers sell in pallets or individually).
Because of this the systems end up become getting fragmented over time to
handle all these different cases and specific needs for customers. Before I
joined, the developers have attempted to unify as much as they could, but the
business need wasn’t quite there to justify it as much as it should.
Building out our initial SaaS offerings have helped a lot for us since there’s
the concept of only having one set of code running on an instance. Because of
that, we’re able to abstract away all of the different nuances of each system
such that the cloud servers don’t end up in a fragmented state as well, but
leaving the on-premise legacy system as it is for now. The plan is for the
core ERP to eventually move in that direction, but so far we’re chipping away
all the edge add-ons and functions first, such as API integrations with
Shopify, Amazon, etc. and building e-commerce storefronts for our customers in
React/Node.js.
------
rexelhoff
We're building an implantable device for blind patients that delivers
electrical stimulation to the optic nerve via the retina.
The implant helps patients perceive visual information about their
surroundings.
Pretty cool tech and fun to work on, too.
------
dnautics
not as interesting or as world-changing as many of the other problems here,
but it scratches that 'language itch' for me: I'm building an interop bridge
between Elixir and Zig that makes calling Zig from Elixir safe, elegant, easy,
and comprehensible:
[https://github.com/ityonemo/zigler/](https://github.com/ityonemo/zigler/)
On my plate currently: Figure out how to make a long-running zig function run
in an OS thread alongside the BEAM so that it doesn't have to be dirty-
scheduled.
------
artembugara
I'm building a Python package to get the latest news from most popular news
publishers without any external API use.
So, for example, the input is 'nytimes.com' and the output will be the last
headlines.
Plan to release it in a few weeks.
------
naresh_xai
Working on XAI for complex computer vision tasks. We’ve built a toolkit which
provides the following:
1\. Heatmaps based on all popular gradient based explainable AI techniques
(plus our own) for classification, regression and semantic segmentation tasks.
2\. Uncertainty modeling for classification, segmentation and regression
tasks.
3\. Concept Discovery/ Pattern Discovery (and dependence) for patterns learned
within a deep neural network. (Loosely based on TCAV)
4\. Using network internals for optimal pruning and model compression.
Send us an email at [email protected] if you’re interested in trying out our
toolkit. We offer 30 day free trial period.
------
PhilipA
Building a modern headless commerce platform with the focus of developers, and
making it fast, and easy to get started.
It might not be as impressive as some of the comments, but it does seem like
something the market is needing.
~~~
ibeckermayer
What does “headless commerce” mean?
~~~
JosephRedfern
Presumably it's the backend side of an ecommerce setup, where you provide an
API around which others can implement a UI.
------
mfalcon
I'm working (at Chequeado.com) on automated fact checking using Machine
Learning and NLP. Our first product works in Spanish (it's already been used
in Chequeado's newsroom) and we're working towards a Portuguese version for
fellow brazilian fact-checkers.
I'm also working as a contractor on automated valuation systems for real
estate properties, mainly for the argentinian market. The company have already
sold the service to a big international bank to periodically update their
mortgages.
And now I'm pondering about starting a research+prototype AI consultancy.
------
abrax3141
Helping biomedical science efficiently search treatment x biomarker space by
replacing the horrifically inefficient clinical trial system with a globally
coordinated adaptive Bayesian active learning system.
------
RMPR
I'm working on an automation app
[https://github.com/rmpr/atbswp](https://github.com/rmpr/atbswp) to make
automation accessible to non technical people. I used something like that
called tinytask back in time on windows (mostly to play automatically my
Asphalt 8 airborne races :p) but when I switched to linux I noticed that
nothing like that exist, so this is aimed to address that. Right now the
practical use I saw is for automating live demos during conferences for
example.
------
motohagiography
A few things, separately:
\- how to do digital identity in health and public services for ~15m people
\- replacing enterprise/waterfall security risk assessment with collaboration
and iteration.
\- applying product management methods in the public sector
------
coolvision
Working on computer vision & perception system that allows delivery robots to
drive autonomously 99% of the time, with only occasional remote human
assistance. Making sure robots need less and less assistance, and this is
while having hundreds of robots in production doing commercial deliveries.
[https://www.instagram.com/starshiprobots](https://www.instagram.com/starshiprobots)
Technology and business do work, so we probably will have thousands of robots
within a year, and millions not long after that )
------
ahi
Parsing enumeration and chronology data for serials. E.g. "v.1" is obviously
volume:1. But throw in years, parts, editions, copies, supplements, numbers,
page ranges, etc, shit gets weird.
------
monkeydust
Building a VR application that a domain professional could use to uncover
insights from high dimensional data. The goal being to prove that doing this
in VR beats 2D screen or 3D plot on 2D screen.
~~~
TACIXAT
I'm curious to hear what your approach is and how this turns out. I've heard
offhand (at a university) that 3d UIs had performed more poorly than 2d every
time they had tried. I guess this is not necessarily user interfaces though.
There may be some academic research on this worth looking up (maybe not though
because people don't often post negative results).
------
caviv
We are working in my company on trying to combine and solve route-optimization
problem with scheduling and transportation problem for the Electric Vehicle
drivers [https://www.makemydayapp.com](https://www.makemydayapp.com) Think of
an EV driver. Where and when should we charge the car ? why not to charge the
vehicle according to your schedule and go to your meeting while your car is
charging ? and of course. Pre booking your charging station.
------
gwicks56
Seeing if mental health crises can be predicted by gathering passive data from
your phone. ( Accel, gyro, GPS, music choices, keyboard entries, app usage,
sleep, facial expressions etc)
~~~
wheelerwj
i think we’re doing this already arent we? at least foe AdHD and depression. i
think its a great use case but the privacy risks are massive.
~~~
gwicks56
Yeah the privacy issues are bit scary. Our app can only be installed by people
who are in IRB approved studies, but the nature of the data collected means
de-identifying it is impossible. There is also the issue of what happens if it
turns out we can predict things, it's a bit pre-cog ish. Depression and
suicide are such massive problems though that new methods are absolutely
needed.
------
jimkri
Working on building a system that can be used in urban areas to help fight
climate change and water treatment issues using Algae. There has been so much
research on the uses of Algae and how effective it is at using CO2 to grow and
now I'm just trying to think of the most effective way to launch a venture.
The hardest part has been deciding what to fight first and meeting other
people who have experience working with algae. I would love to connect with
anyone that wants to talk Algae!
------
erikbrodch
Currently at YC's startup school, trying to solve the unemployment and
underemployment problem autistic and Aspergers people experience. Currently
validating assumptions and it looks like a freelancing platform for autistic
people is the most promising direction. Started accepting application from
potential autistic people: [https://www.spectroomz.com/work-from-
home](https://www.spectroomz.com/work-from-home)
------
lbutler
I simulate water distribution networks.
I create computer models of water networks and calibrate them so utilities can
do what-if and growth scenario planning. (e.g. what happens if this pipe
burst? how would the network cope with 20k new houses in 40+ years)
I'm also developing software to help water engineers build and run models,
some of it opensource and some of it commercial.
I'm currently pushing most of my effort into an opensource javascript library
to simulate water networks.
------
bogdanu
On a OSS sideproject, I'm working on a DI container for TypeScript that can
autowire interfaces, Array of types and generics.
Since the type information is erased at compile time, it uses the compiler API
to extract the data needed and generates TS code for the interface and
constructor mappings.
The library is on GH, but not really much to show. I've posted on /r/node and
it got some positive reactions, but it didn't got that much attention.
------
Jaruzel
My 'paid job' is boring - Identity Management for Blue Chip companies.
My fun stuff at the moment:
1\. Learning Windows IoT on a Raspberry Pi 3B
2\. Working on proof-of-concept Search Engine Indexers for specific datasets
and/or local file-systems (on network servers).
3\. Exploring a new paradigm of allowing people to easily publish train-of-
thought type content without having to post a long series of tweets or silo it
inside Facebook/LinkedIn/Gist etc.
~~~
Chris2048
wrt #3, see [https://thoughtstreams.io/](https://thoughtstreams.io/)
------
trevett
Creating a directory of all WhatsApp-using businesses in the world. In dog-
fooding I must say it's pretty nice booking a dentist without calling and
waiting on hold.
Business listings are fairly sparse in some countries. Many owners do not
bother creating even a google maps profile and just rely on word-of-mouth for
new clients. Acquiring the bottom of the data-iceberg will require some
creativity going forward.
~~~
monkeydust
Doesnt WhatsApp provide a eta for businesses to publish themselves on a public
directory? I am guessing not given that your looking at this but why wouldn't
they...
------
manx
I'm researching ways to scale deliberation and qualtiative decision making in
the number of participants. I think this is the base for making politics work
and tackling big wicked problems like climate change. It's slow, since my time
is limited. But talking with lots of interesting people about ideas and
approaches is promising. If you're interested to talk, please contact me.
~~~
jlevers
I'm extremely interested, but I don't see your contact info in your profile.
My email's in mine, if you want to get in touch.
~~~
manx
Ouch, thanks for telling me. I always thought having filled the email field
was enough for others to see it. Fixed now.
Anyways, just sent you a mail.
------
austincheney
I am working on exposing the file system to the web browser using OS like GUI
controls and then selectively sharing parts of it to specified users with
security controls. It’s kind of like turning your computer into a private
cross-OS shared drive.
The problem this solves is sharing. Sharing between devices/users should be as
simple as copy/paste initiated by either user like everything is local.
------
Zaskoda
I've been learning how to design game play mechanics for the Ethereum EVM by
building a game dapp with features I haven't seen before.
------
tmaly
I am building a Scratch programming course for kids.
But its more than just that. I want to take the material and make it more
entertaining as well as educational.
I am observing that more and more kids are learning things on their own by
just going online and searching for videos on how to do X. We are on the cusp
of online learning overtaking traditional in classroom learning in terms of
quality and presentation.
------
manx
I recently took a few days apart to implement my own SAT solver. The idea is
to describe the solution space of each clause by a dnf. Then intersect the
solution spaces (dnf1 and dnf2).to_dnf() in a way such that the intermediate
solution space representations are small. In the end it is solving ALLSAT, by
converting cnf to dnf.
I'm happy that it works well for many small sized problems.
------
aberry273
Automation of work. I believe as the number of daily applications we use
increases and the number of available APIs increase, the need for automation
across these applications increases.
[https://bustl-app.com](https://bustl-app.com) \- A SaaS product that acts as
a personal assistant that will integrate with a range of different apps.
~~~
tylerrobinson
Would this be something like Zapier?
------
ratsimihah
I'm working on strong AI using natural selection and reinforcement learning to
develop an intelligence not necessarily modeled to ours.
What I can't figure out is what to use as inputs, similarly to the human
senses, so that it doesn't become too specific, i.e. weak, but instead remains
general and able to understand the binary language computers use.
------
yhoiseth
I'm trying to improve people's abilities to predict the future.
Predictions are a critical part of decision-making, and it's possible to
improve – see, for example, Philip Tetlock's work. But that requires the right
tools, which we are building:
[https://www.empiricast.com](https://www.empiricast.com)
------
RangerScience
I'm re-implementing Chrome extensions for Electron. The existing
implementations are specifically for dev tools extensions, and/or so aren't
working for the extensions we want in our Electron app. I'm finding working
through the various inter-process communication models (and resulting
implementations) really interesting.
------
dchuk
I’m building a simple, opinionated tool to create and manage roadmaps the
right way (IE not features on a Gantt chart). Think of the opinions that the
basecamp guys bake into their products, but targeted at roadmapping. Going to
use it with my own internal product team for a while, but could easily see it
being a good standalone product.
------
brenden2
Working on a new company, one which (I hope) will turn the restaurant industry
on its head. I want to make in-restaurant ordering, payment, and service pure
joy.
I'm mostly heads down coding every day, building an MVP. Also trying to find
some investor interest where possible, however fundraising has never been
something I'm good at.
~~~
buzzert
This seems like something everybody wants but I’m surprised it hasn’t happened
yet. What are some of the (assumingly non-technical) challenges in such an
enterprise?
~~~
brenden2
The biggest problem I'm facing right now is credit card processing costs. The
restaurant business is a high revenue, low margin industry. The fees are
higher for online transactions (no card present) vs. in person transactions
(card present), on the order of 1-2%. I think this is the biggest reason it
hasn't happened yet. However, I have a workaround which I think will work.
~~~
dublinben
Shouldn't an in-restaurant ordering solution be processing card-present
transactions as opposed to card-not-present?
~~~
rs23296008n1
I was wondering that. Why would you to to a restaurant without an ability to
pay?
------
ryanmercer
Trying to get companies to give me a chance without a 4-year degree. Even my
own employer won't promote without a 4-year degree.
While this sounds like a complainy pants problem, this isa very real problem
for a very large percentage of the United States. Without a 4-year degree as a
de facto dues card, you are severely limited on your options.
At 34 years old, I could maybe have a degree by 40 while working full time and
have to take on 30-60k dollars of debt to be competing for entry level jobs
against 20-22 year old applicants (many schools now have programs so students
can graduate simultaneously with a high school diploma and an associates
degree). At my current income, if a degree could get me an extra 15% within a
year of graduation, I would be in my 50s before I paid the loans off at
current rates. That means I sacrifice the last half of my 30's to break even
in my 50's and _maybe_ make some extra money in my 50's and 60's losing out on
20-30 years of compounding interest because I don't have that arbitrary degree
in _anything_ as a dues card to say I'm worth hiring/promoting.
Blah.
Last year I made about 10% less than the year before because of zero overtime,
our annual merit-based increases often are break even (sometimes not even
break even) once you factor in inflation and insurance cost increases, throw
in the constant nagging pressure of cancer risks (father died of it, mother
had it, father's mother died of it), climate change, international trade
issues which could see me laid off, automation possibly replacing jobs in the
near future, it can often be quite crushing. Especially when you're trying to
maintain sobriety and just want to run off into the woods with a cask of high
proof alcohol and try and befriend a bigfoot to help provide food and shelter
for you so you can die from Lyme disease or exposure living as a refugee in
Bigfootville.
Meanwhile you see people with YouTube channels buying what equate to mansions
(What's Inside, Jenna Marbles) and taking international trips monthly (What's
Inside, Casey Neistat used to, on aircraft with seats in the tens of thousands
of dollars a flight) and even crazy domestic trips frequently (What's Inside)
and you're like, "Dude, I just want to make more than 34k a year".
I truly can't imagine what it is like for people that are consigned to working
fast food/retail/service jobs as their sole source of income. It has to be all
but crippling.
------
tixocloud
As a co-founder, we’re building a scalable AI deployment system for banks. On
the outset, not as sexy, but our system is meant to highlight deficiencies and
problems with AI like bias, fairness, etc so hopefully people are aware and
will have the impetus to fix things. Looking to impact change from within.
------
memset
I’m working on making email SaaS providers behave reliably as a side project.
I’ve written a piece of software which is self-hosted that does failover,
retries, queuing, logging, and monitoring for sending mail via SMTP so that
people don’t have to spend time implementing all of that plumbing themselves.
------
bwb
We are working on how to match engineers with engineering teams based on the
work environment and team values/culture.
I've had too many friends and family members end up at companies that were not
a match and watched the massive stress pile up. I want to help people find the
right team/culture for them.
~~~
joshschreuder
Sounds interesting, I always like to see good ideas in the hiring space.
How do you differ from something like
[https://www.keyvalues.com/](https://www.keyvalues.com/)
~~~
bwb
Thanks! I love what Lynne is doing!
We differ in a lot of ways, but the biggest is that we are trying to profile
the actual eng team and how they work / what they value. And, then match you
with teams that are a good fit + high satisfaction in key areas.
For example, say you are motivated by big tech challenges, we would match you
with teams that are motivated by similar and report satisfaction in that area
from their current eng team.
------
sharmi
There is plenty of data lost in Google Search Console due to the limit of max
1000 records for any time period. The real value is in the long tails and they
are lost.
I am working on creating a solution that gathers the data normally not seen in
console dashboard and discovering actionables that help the user.
------
bjourne
Right now I'm working on electronic music generation. That is, how neural nets
and other technologies can be used to generate electronic music. It works
roughly similar to text generation using Markov models, but there are a lot of
problems not found in text that are specific to music.
------
bovermyer
Procedural fictional world generation.
~~~
mrfusion
Explain? Can you make it for vr?
~~~
bovermyer
I'm not quite ready to reveal it here just yet, but no, it's not meant for VR.
------
bebopsbraunbaer
i am working on a similar project to lotrproject.com or a newer example would
be www.witchernetflix.com but my project would be for any book (or universe)
in general. (e.g. my fav. book series malazan book of the fallen). You could
describe it as wiki with fancy UI i guess
------
edhu2017
Data-driven robot control methods for solving furniture assembly.
It's an interesting problem, requiring both dexterous manipulation and long-
term planning. It's also compositional, so I believe some form of hierarchical
control and planning can solve it.
www.clvrai.com/furniture
------
yewenjie
1\. A tiny script for getting top N posts of past week from a subreddit into a
telegram channel. This can be extended in so many ways and I couldn't find an
existing solution.
2\. An all-encompassing personal knowledge management solution that is
effortless and universal.
------
invalidOrTaken
Symbolic math for students. More generally, UI principles for tree
manipulation.
Why am I still using pen and paper for math homework? Why do I have to rewrite
the _whole friggin thing_ every step?
And there's a hope that whatever I learn might be useful for lisps, too.
------
psp219
Working on a free lease trading website. Tried SwapALease/LeaseTrader but the
fees were WAY too expensive for just posting. Going with a freemium model with
posting being free and additional ID/verification checks charging money.
------
Gys
Making people connect offline
~~~
dang
I've often thought about trying to use HN to facilitate more of this.
~~~
Gys
Bringing an online community to offline is very challenging. HN has many
members, but spread out around the globe. An interesting challenge. There have
been some initiatives in the past, I think? Not by HN but by members I mean.
------
fredgrott
I choose something that probably is not solve-able, the shortlist:
1\. 4-manifold problem, while you can see it should be the surface volume of
the shape is equal the math proof is the impossible rub. 2 Prime number
generator
------
navyad
I am building movie-macther for alerting user for their IMDB's watchlist.
[https://github.com/navyad/moviematch](https://github.com/navyad/moviematch)
------
256lie
Models to detect strokes in medical images to be deployed in a hospital.
~~~
jcims
Could you add thermal imaging support to pick out folks with a fever in a
crowd?
------
letorruella
I am trying to translates Andrew Yang's policy site into Spanish.
------
remi_o_p
I use statistics and machine learning to study the physiology of human pain
and stress.
This can lead to ai-suggested interventions that people can apply to
themselves or to support someone else.
------
bethanvincent
I'm trying to challenge the current model of hiring which heavily relies on
CV's and frankly awful job ads.
It's a complex problem, but there must be a better way of doing things!
------
kleer001
How to write a compelling story in the form of a book.
Sounds easy...
But it's the most difficult thing I've ever tackled. Even considering I've
read books like water since I was a kid.
------
thirtythree
Nothing at the moment unfortunately. I've started creating a web app for
news/social/groups/dating but it's not that far along yet.
------
Irene
Community medicine; precision medicine - all self-funded.
~~~
mrfusion
Sounds interesting. Can you explain more?
------
cicinema
app to help me track my due payments (always forget things like monthly fee
for piano lessons or similar not automated payments, plus helps get an
overview of upcoming expenses).
released recently as my first app in google play
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.due.core&h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.due.core&hl=en)
------
m00dy
Im working on [https://carboncredit.io](https://carboncredit.io)
It is a next generation carbon offset marketplace.
~~~
TheFiend7
I fail to understand what your product offering is by looking at your site.
Could explain what exactly is trying to be achieved by this product and why I
would even want a carbon credit cert?
~~~
m00dy
You would want a carbon credit certificate to save this planet basically.
~~~
mkl
I don't think clicking a green run button will save the planet. I don't
understand either. Your site doesn't seem to have any actual information about
the carbon offsets or who does them or where or how it relates to the API.
What do you actually do?
------
vahid4m
Im trying to suggest different Docker properties for each service in a
multiservice system in order to maximize the performance of the system
------
cjfd
I am currently writing a future in C++. We were using the future of the stlab
library but that turns out not to work 100% reliably.
------
Madmallard
Multiplayer networking for a turn-based role playing game. Lots of
difficulties I didn't foresee at all beforehand.
~~~
yetihehe
Could you list some of them?
~~~
Madmallard
Some difficulties are because I'm doing it in the browser. Things like
connection/reconnection logic and how to handle duplicate clients and
authentication and the decisions surrounding that because my game isn't a
'drop-n-go' game like Slither.io.
------
ILOVEPIE
I'm working on a HTML 5 renderer for the most complex subtitle format in the
world (that is actually in use).
------
farazbabar
A truly anonymous anti-social network and an anonymous but verifiable identity
to go along with it.
------
skwb
I'm working on automating the acquisition of cardiac MRIs using deep learning!
~~~
mrfusion
Where does deep learning come in?
~~~
skwb
We use heatmap localization to identify the cardiac landmarks that define the
viewing planes.
~~~
jobseeker990
Is there are way to get involved in something like that? It sounds so
fascinating.
------
DantesKite
Trying to figure out why learning how to cook is so tedious in a software
world.
~~~
learn_more
I'd like to know of a good book for the science of cooking. I hate blindly
following recipes.
Like a poor man's version of this book by Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold.
[https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-
Cooking...](https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-
Cooking/dp/0982761007)
~~~
charliemil4
[https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering-
ebook/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering-
ebook/dp/B01HMXV0UQ)
!
------
danielkay
I'm working on aggregator editing software for the site I recently launched.
This is a LAMP stack. If someone wants a source code, please contact me via
email.
[https://www.trumpsdaily.com/](https://www.trumpsdaily.com/)
------
BaitBlock
Baitblock ([https://baitblock.app](https://baitblock.app)) here:
We help you avoid distractions while working on websites and the internet by
installing our Chrome extension. For example, Baitblock removes recommended
videos on YouTube while you're working.
It also deals with 1st party cookie tracking. It clears cookie/storage on
every page load as long as it detects that you're not logged in to the website
(upcoming version removes many bugs) using machine learning (NLP).
Since there are too many cookie/gdpr popups now a days, Baitblock
automatically hides them while you're working.
You can also add summaries/TL;DR for any link on a website (right click) so
others dont have to click.
The end goal of Baitblock is to block all possible distractions in a webpage
and save everyone's time.
The latest version of Baitblock 0.1.0 is awaiting approval with many fixes and
new features.
------
sqreept
Leader election in a distributed system of unknown size.
------
kayge
Trying to get hired in infosec with 10+ years of web dev experience, and
failing miserably even though there is a "desperate need" for more people from
all backgrounds to enter the field :)
------
dillonmckay
Helping car salespeople sell more vehicles.
Lots of webscraping.
~~~
Sil_E_Goose
I'm helping dealerships better communicate with customers during service. The
automotive world is a wacky one.
~~~
dillonmckay
That seems a bit more ‘wholesome’ than me.
Maybe we can compare notes?
------
abrax3141
Bringing up two kids.
------
thirdsurf
I’ve discovered a new class of surfboard fins, they’re also the first ever
designs that can be simply 3D printed, sanded and surfed. This means that a
person in a developing world surf town could affordably obtain a 3D printer
and begin producing $50-$100 of fins per day; costing 1/10th that price in
filament. My site: [https://techfins.surf](https://techfins.surf) (still a bit
to go in completing it)
My Open Collective page (I’m ballin’ on a slim budget here)
[https://opencollective.com/techfins](https://opencollective.com/techfins)
You can see more of my fins effort on my instagram page, @stormfins
I recently decided to use the techfins name instead.
I ended up working on this thanks to a passion for surfing, and knowledge that
new airfoils could radically improve my surfing ability by augmenting my
surfboards’ capabilities. I learned CAD four years ago just to do this - make
fins based on new airfoil templates. This ‘new class’ is essentially high lift
fins. Compared to the current surfboard fin standard (6mm thick fins), my 16mm
thick fin designs provide radically more drive, traction and stability to
surfing at the lower speeds. Making normal to pumping surf more accessible and
enjoyable to novices and experts.
These fins are not only empowering for surfing ability, they’re also safer
because of their thicker, more rounded edges, and when 3D printed the fact
they break before your skin does. Also, if these fins could be fitted with an
internal floatation during printing, they could be recovered and glued back
into place using automotive plastic glue.
These are also literally the first high performance Wavestorm fins to be
created as well. Anything else out there is a boring, simple fin design.
Some past feats I can be proud of that you all may appreciate:
• created BeelineReader.com’s first working app, helping them get off the
ground. Helps you read much faster using a novel, internationally patented
innovation.
• Created a web browser with T9Space.com that empowered 10s of thousands of
Nokia phone users around the world to access the desktop only internet back in
‘07-‘10
Earned a bachelor’s in CE at UCSC 20 years ago.
My moniker thirdsurf is about a P2P ‘school of surfing’ project I want to get
going next. There needs to be a more dynamic connection between those with the
knowledge and those who’d like to learn.
If this fins thing gets off the ground, it’ll open up other possibilities.
Nucleos.com is an example of a company that’s been developing a cheap school
software server that can operate in developing world conditions. I want to see
3D printing fin labs sprouting that use a computer that can serve out edu apps
to anyone nearby who has a wifi device.
I also aim to set up a P2P market for people who could fabricate the digitial
fin designs I’ll be making available. This could open up a market of
innovation, empowering people to tout novel materials and fabrication methods,
helping advance greener, safer and more economical ways to make these fins,
and other goods.
Also, in places where it may be difficult to obtain filament, the machines
[https://preciousplastic.com/](https://preciousplastic.com/) and others are
developing could turn plastic refuse in devloping world areas into a precious
commodity.
------
stdsdl19
I recently launched Homematchx.com as an interactive way to connect future
home and buyers at similar stages of the real estate process. Unlike other
real estate listing platforms that shows move-in ready homes in less than 30
days, Homematchx list future homes and buyers at various stages of the real
estate process to empower users to find the right match to close when they’re
ready. Everyone has a plan and a price! Why wait until you're 30 days from
buying or selling when you can find the perfect match to extend the closing
date at your convenience.
According to bankrate.com over 60 percent of millennial home buyer regret
their home purchase. SHOCKING! In our industry this stat is overlooked and it
has made me wonder why. I was working with someone who's lease was coming up
and wanted to explore buying a home. They had two choices, rush into a home or
wait another year. They decided to move and lease in the area they wanted to
purchase. Being unfamiliar of the housing market after signing a 12-month
lease there is no way to identify future homes that will come to the market
when their lease is up. This story led us to a problem in our market. To avoid
the traditional move-in ready market in less than 30 days, our users can match
to homes that will be available for sale at their expected time to purchase.
This is a perfect way to build confidence and prepare for the journey head.
Let's keep it 100 percent! We don't have access to who is planning for the
future which could produce a better outcome. As a real estate professional
over 10 years I’ve noticed soon after buyers move into their new home better
homes in the neighborhood were listed for sale around the same price. We often
times think we purchased the best home at the right time, but everyone has a
plan and a price,That’s real estate right!
Would you be willing to wait if you found the home worth waiting for or made
the seller an offer they can’t refuse for your one of a kind? Homematchx
assures you never miss out on wishing you could have purchased the home next
door, the home across the street, or the home around the corner. Our platform
allow consumers to see available homes for sale up to three years out giving
you access to more inventory than today.
I think seller are at a serious disadvantage when they need to sell. Days on
Market is a huge issue and its a growing concern in real estate. They are
unsure how many buyers fit their home's description and would be willing to
purchase it at their desired time. To time selling your home perfectly is
unpredictable. Our platform allows you to see all the buyers, their
compatibility to your home, and if they have been qualified or not. Never will
a seller list a home for sale without know who will actually purchase it.
We are heading into the new construction industry to help home builders better
understand the real estate market and who's available. There is so many
missing things that buyers don't have access to in order to time their new
construction journey perfectly.
I'm excited about the many problems we can solve but I know we cannot be
successful without the users knowing it exist. I'm on a Godly mission to
finally change the real estate market and make it accessible regardless of
your timeline.
Stephen L.
------
photawe
I've been working on a video editor ([https://phot-awe.com](https://phot-
awe.com)), for more than 1.5 years.
Biggest challenge has been speed: first proof of concept was a prototype that
was kinda' slow (C#/WPF/Windows). I've re-written it using the lowest level
possible stuf from WPF, and that took me a looot (roughly 3-4 months, to also
make it easy to extend/modify). That was an improvement of roughtly 3-4 times,
but for non-trivial stuff, it was too slow (and especially saving the final
video was insaaaanely slow). So, I did another rewrite in UWP, and this took
another 4+ months.
Now, I'm really happy about the speed - it's 3-4 times faster than before, and
at saving, it's 10-12 times faster.
In order to make it happen, I've worked insane hours (and still am) - but
that's that. Right now (the following 2 months) I'm focusing on stability and
some improvements. Hope to have apretty cool new feature ready in roughly 3-4
months, and we'll see.
Challenges: countless, probably I could write a book ;)
1\. Parsing existing videos - in WPF that was insanely hard, and it took me a
lot of time to come up with a viable solution (which when porting to UWP, I
ended up throwing away)
2\. Estimates - I was pretty good at estimating how long a task would take.
But due to the fact that everything was new to me (basically, animating using
low level APIs was close to undocumented), so pretty much everything took 4-5
times more than I expected. This was soooo exhausting and depressing, since at
some point I just stopped estimating, because I knew it would take me longer.
3\. Changing the UI due to user feedback - basically, I ended up redesigning
80% of the UI to make it easier to use. What I thought would take me 1 week,
ended up taking me 1+ months.
4\. Tackleing everything at once: trying to implement a new feature, while
dealing with bugs people would find or dealing with issues that would come up
when trying to implement the feature. And dealing with issues that came up
from the photographers I collaborate with (those that create the app's
effects/transitions).
5\. Porting to a new technology (UWP/WinRT). This is something that I hope I
never have to do again - I was forced to do it, because of the speed gains. I
had to reimplement / retest every control I initially developed - that's one
thing. The other one is dealing with the idiocracy of WinRT - which loves
async stuff / and also loves limitations. Also, the UWP documentation is soooo
bad compared to WPF - and there are very few resources, because most people
are put off by it (not going to go into detail as to why, that's another book
I could write). Not for the faint of hearted. 6\. Compilation times - on the
old technology (WPF), everything was insanely awesome. On UWP, compilation
times are roughly 6 times slower. That is baaaaaaaaad. I'm doing all sorts of
workarounds to make things faster.
------
lichtenberger
I'm working on a versioned, temporal DBMS[1] called SirixDB in my spare time,
which is the most exciting thing :-)
It's based on a university project on which I was working basically since day
one in 2006.
I know it's crazy to work on such a large project initially alone. Lately,
however, I'm getting the first contributions, and maybe I should start
collaborating with the university or with the company of my former supervisor
(who began the project for his Ph.D.).
I'm now more than convinced that the ideas are worth to work on, especially in
the advent of modern hardware as byte-addressable NVM :-)
Currently, I'm working on the storage engine itself, to reduce storage space
consumption further and to make the system stable. I'm experimenting with
larger data sets to import (JSON and XML currently up to 5GB) with and without
auto-commits, enabling/disabling different features, for instance, storing a
rolling merkle hash for each node, storing the number of descendants, a path
summary and so on.
Some of the features:
- the storage engine is written from scratch
- completely isolated read-only transactions and one read/write transaction concurrently with a single lock to guard the writer. Readers will never be blocked by the single read/write transaction and execute without any latches/locks.
- variable-sized pages
- lightweight buffer management with a "kind of" pointer swizzling
- dropping the need for a write-ahead log due to atomic switching of an UberPage
- rolling merkle hash tree of all nodes built during updates optionally
- ID-based diff-algorithm to determine differences between revisions taking the (secure) hashes optionally into account
- non-blocking REST-API, which also takes the hashes into account to throw an error if a subtree has been modified in the meantime concurrently during updates
- versioning through a huge persistent and durable, variable-sized page tree using copy-on-write
- storing delta page-fragments using a patented sliding snapshot algorithm
- using a special trie, which is especially good for storing records sith numerical dense, monotonically increasing 64 Bit integer IDs. We make heavy use of bit shifting to calculate the path to fetch a record
- time or modification counter-based auto-commit
- versioned, user-defined secondary index structures
- a versioned path summary
- indexing every revision, such that a timestamp is only stored once in a RevisionRootPage. The resources stored in SirixDB are based on a huge, persistent (functional) and durable tree
- sophisticated time travel queries
Besides the storage engine challenges, the project has so many possibilities
for further research and work:
- How to shard databases
- Query compiler rewrite rules and cost-based optimization
- A brand new front-end
- Other secondary index-structures besides AVL trees stored in data nodes
- Storing graphs and other data types
- How to best make use of modern hardware as byte-addressable NVM
[1] [https://sirix.io](https://sirix.io) or
[https://github.com/sirixdb/sirix](https://github.com/sirixdb/sirix)
------
bashwizard
My lack of sleep.
------
ronilan
Not sure it’s interesting. But it did become a problem :)
Anyway...
This summer & fall I wrote a JS core lib and a set of compatible packages that
together greatly simplify the creation of terminal based node apps and games
(in the realm of blessed, blessed-contrib and ink, but with no dependencies
and with a novel api/architecture)
I got into it because my son did this node project where an animated car drove
in a forest of cellular automata generated trees. Yah. You read it right.
Things spiraled from there...
It is not a small project and it is pretty close to release form. I’ve used
the lib and components to write a couple of small but non-trivial things. So,
yes, it works.
In December, though, I stopped actively working on it. There are various
reasons. One of which is that there is snow on the mountains. There are other
reasons, none of which is code related.
More curious? More question. Cheers.
------
fhcgffgfxgfgfd
Raising a child.
~~~
lqet
How did you end up working on that?
~~~
wheelerwj
tag this NSFW
~~~
thedevindevops
Surely that would be 'making a child'?
------
_myles
The past several years I've been trying to find some tangible philosophical
ground to stand on. This (desperate) search is and has been the produce of
mental illness I've dealt with since my adolescence (I'm 32 now).
Quite a long story short, I managed to get the mental illness under control;
something I thought I'd be living with the rest of my life.
My research has included mostly standing/walking meditation, and reading a lot
on philosophy, religion, psychology, and such.
This is a personal project I've only just sort of revealed, after some
persuasion by my peers. I didn't really have much intention on putting out in
the public but it has turned out to be something significant. There is a lot
to say about it.
EDIT: If you're curious, here is what I came up with after I started recording
my research. DISCLAIMER: there is some personal stuff I talk about.
[https://github.com/myles-moylan/head_project](https://github.com/myles-
moylan/head_project)
~~~
tuesday20
Could you please elaborate on meditation? How has it helped you, how much time
do you spend, what is walking meditation etc?
Thank you
~~~
_myles
When I meditate all I'm trying to do is keep my attention in the present
moment; if my mind starts to wander I bring it back, and so on.
I've always loved going on walks, and they've just turned out to be a good way
to work through mental/emotional stuff. Walking helps you stay in the moment
as well, and when you're focusing your attention on the moment there's always
new things to sense.
Let me know if that's not clear enough.
EDIT:
Another important part of meditation is the analysis of your thoughts and
emotions. Whatever comes up, try to understand why it did as well as you can.
~~~
tuesday20
I go on long walks, this is something I will try. I usually listen to podcasts
while walking, maybe it is time to try something different.
About analyzing thoughts - I tend to over analyze everything. How do you not
fall into this trap?
~~~
_myles
It's vital that you're honest with yourself in order to find some sort of base
cause to any given thought/emotion. I honestly end up catching myself lost in
thought after a minute or so more often than not.
It's really a best effort sort of thing. But the more you practice, and the
more effort you put forward, the stronger you'll get and the easier it will be
to filter the signal from the noise.
------
graycat
How to find an accurate numerical approximation to e, the base of the natural
logarithm? Last weekend stumbled onto a shockingly easy and effective way!
Google query
"base of the natural logarithm e"
reports
e = 2.718281828459
that is, 13 digits.
The calculator with Windows 10 reports
e = 2.7182818284590452353602874713527
that is 32 decimal digits.
Last weekend found
e = 2.71828182845904523536028747135266250
that is, 36 decimal digits.
The math and code are below and could just as easily get e to, say, 500
decimal digits!
How'd that happen?
Last weekend worked on some short but relatively careful notes to get a nephew
of 9 started on calculus, and part of that was Taylor series in just two pages
with large fonts!
The code and the core of the Taylor series derivation are below.
In TeX, Taylor series is
f(x) = \sum_{i=0}^n {(x - x_0)^i \over i!} f^{[i]}(x_0) + R_n(x_0)
with R_n(x_0) as the error term.
To _derive_ the Taylor series, really just find the error term
R_n(x_0)
and for that just differentiate f(x) with respect to x_0 where then nearly all
the terms cancel, simplify, integrate from x_0 to x, and apply the mean value
theorem. That's all there is to it!
The results are, for some s between x_0 and x:
R_n(x_0) = (x - x_0) {(x-s)^n \over n!} f^{[n+1]}(s)
As above, the final output of the code:
e = 2.71828182845904523536028747135266250
From R_n(x_0) the error is less than
3 x 10^(-40)
The numerical output of the code is curious: Get a little over 1 decimal digit
of accuracy for each term of the series! So the output shows two big
triangles, one for the values of n! and one for the number of correct digits
in the estimate of e.
A key to why this code is so simple and works so well, Kexx can do arithmetic
with 1000 decimal digits of precision!
"Look, Ma, here's the code -- dirt simple":
macro_name = 'NATLOG'
out_file = macro_name || '.out'
'nomsg erase' out_file
Call msgg macro_name': Find natual logarithm base e'
numeric digits 1000
n = 35
sum = 1
factorial = 1
Do i = 1 To n
factorial = i * factorial
sum = sum + 1/factorial
Call msgg Format(i, 5) Format(factorial, 50) Format(sum, 2, 35)
End
error = 3 / factorial
Call msgg macro_name': The error is <='
Call msgg Format( error, 59, 50 )
Call Lineout out_file
Return
msgg:
Procedure expose out_file
Call Lineout out_file, arg(1)
Return
~~~
Hitton
That's Calculus 1.
~~~
graycat
Yes, to quote, as I wrote,
> notes to get a nephew of 9
I'm writing the notes for my 9 year old niece. So, the notes are for a boy of
9. And it's calculus, for a boy of 9. Of course it's "calculus 1".
I thought I mentioned it was for a boy of 9.
So, I omitted (1) a real valued function of a real variable with a compact
domain has a Riemann integral if and only it is continuous on a set of measure
zero, (2) for such function, if it is differentiable, then it has no jump
discontinuities, (3) there is such a function that is differentiable but whose
Riemann integral does not exist.
But, still, it is amazing how easy it is to get 36 decimal digits of e, and
500 if want.
I've been through calculus, advanced calculus, advanced calculus for
applications, differential equations, local series solutions to the Navier-
Stokes equations, exterior algebra, real analysis, measure theory, and more,
have taught calculus in college, applied it in US national security and
business, and published in it, and still I'd never seen a clear treatment of
how easy it is to get so many digits of e from Taylor series.
The results I found are amazing, and my good and long experience indicates
that only a tiny fraction of calculus students appreciate that.
And as we know,
e = lim_{i \rightarrow \infty} (1 + 1/i)^i
and it turns out that that iteration is painfully slow, and from my experience
this fact is also amazing and poorly known.
It was amazing stuff and a productive weekend.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Interesting Startup Idea: Photo Sharing (etc) for Couples... - cosgroveb
http://www.cupcaking.us/
======
pamelafox
That is indeed an interesting idea. I'm not sure about this promise though:
"YOU remain in control of them, so you never end up starring in your own sex
tape scandal if a nasty breakup occurs."
I'm guessing most people would be uploading video from their hard drive or
camera, as opposed to having the site capture it live via webcam, so that
means that the media still resides somewhere besides the online site. I'm not
sure people would actually delete their hard copy, and thus there'd still be a
risk of a sex tape scandal.
~~~
proexploit
Even without a hard copy, how would you be able to view the video but not
download it? YouTube, Vimeo, etc. are all downloadable with a variety of
Firefox plugins & desktop applications.
Let's say that you can solve that problem, perhaps there's a solution out
there that I'm not aware of. You still have the ability to record it at the
same quality it plays using CamStudio or any other kind of screen recording
software.
Ok, so let's pretend you've managed to block any kind of downloading, any kind
of screen recording program and any kind of site vulnerability. If I were the
kind of person who wanted to download photos to start a scandal, I'd just take
a picture of the screen with a digital camera. Sure, the resolution might
suffer slightly but with a tripod and a little trial and error I bet I could
get them pretty nice.
I like the idea of being in control of when they're deleted from the server or
having a time limit, I just don't think it's possible to control where the
content ends up.
------
zoomzoom
Pretty big privacy risk, no matter what the website says.
------
jasonkostempski
"YOU remain in control of them, so you never end up starring in your own sex
tape scandal if a nasty breakup occurs." How so? If an image, video, text or
audio of any kind, in any format reaches someone else's computer, THEY are now
also in control of it if they really want to be, no matter how hard you try
and protect it. What do you think the MPAA/RIAA fussing is all about?
------
ecaroth
I could see these things getting subpoenoed for divorce hearings... (from the
mistress' account of course). Interesting moral thought... I wonder if the
creators of this site allow you to have share videos with more than one
person?? AKA is it intended for couples (married or otherwise), or is it the
next big swinger's tool?
------
dannyr
Does "cupcaking" have any special meaning?
~~~
davej
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cup+caking>
------
robotron
This was here yesterday and got deleted.
~~~
cosgroveb
I didn't know that. Wonder why? The idea is maybe in poor taste. I would also
be concerned about the security of the site... Also not sure what sort of
market there is for it either.. I thought the idea was kind of out there and
thus interesting.
------
qq66
Someone forgot about the iPhone snapshot button. It does make photos harder to
carelessly share though.
------
rwhitman
So this could be summed up as "secure sexting"?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The State of the TclQuadcode compiler (2017) [pdf] - blacksqr
https://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2017/assets/talk101/Paper.pdf
======
nothrows
TCL is fun to write. And with Tk desktop apps are fast and easy to whip up.
Kicks Atoms Ass for internal apps and doesn't eat all your ram. I don't get
why its gets so much flack. It's sort of a fun mix between lisp and perl. I
hope it never dies.
------
patrickg_zill
Lots of people hate on TCL, yet, it is still a scripting language used in
routers and in NaviServer, which is used by TU-Wien to teach over 40K people,
with Gustaf Neumann spearheading it [https://dblp.uni-
trier.de/pers/hd/n/Neumann:Gustaf](https://dblp.uni-
trier.de/pers/hd/n/Neumann:Gustaf) . It is used heavily in many other places
as well to do useful work.
And don't forget "expect" which is based on TCL also.
~~~
enygmata
F5 Networks uses it too.
------
KasianFranks
This quote sums it up for me "I believe Tcl has been mischaracterized and has
suffered in terms of open popularity. But for insiders, it remains as one of
those secret indispensable Ninja tools that is used over and over again for
competitive advantage."
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218)
------
aogl
The whole thing that it is an ahead-of-time compiler, that is, it runs in
advance of execution rather than generating code when a procedure is first
executed.. Is very cool.
------
rkeene2
I hope there will be another update next week at the Tcl Conference in
Houston, TX !
------
fithisux
I have mostly good words on TCL. But I would be more interested in having a
lisp compiler that is adapted to TCL. Tcl faces significant competition these
days.
------
fake-name
Upsides: It's neat!
Downsides: Oh god TCL is _horrible_.
~~~
gaius
_Oh god TCL is horrible_
Think of it as a C library with a very flexible configuration file... TCL is
amazing and was doing what Lua and Node do a decade or more before they badly
reinvented a subset of it and called it new.
~~~
tomcam
What makes Lua worse than TCL? Not a TCL expert.
~~~
pmarin
He is not saying that Lua is worse. Tcl was doing event based programming
decades before Node and lua make it trendy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN – What do you do to stay fit while working? - kzisme
While working in the tech field (misting sitting) how does everyone stay fit or active, or maybe how do people get to a state of fitness?
======
busterc
Tldr; eating salads
In the past I did crossfit. I enjoyed the short time commitment: 30 minutes, 3
times a weak & it allowed me to become very fit. However, I hurt my hip & have
never wanted to go back to that level of extreme exercise for fear of further
severe injury. I'm not a paid athlete & don't really need to be that fit.
In the past I've tried 2 types of dieting that made sense to me and each
worked very well: Zone & Atkins. The catch is that Atkins is hard to sustain
with little variety and a lot of temptation; while the Zone is enjoyable & not
hard to stick with but you must be active much more so than when on Atkins.
For the last 2 years I've been very fit, with no more exercise than random
walks and general stretching every few days. I got married and my wife, and
now I, eat a salad before almost every meal. It's had an astounding affect on
me. I still eat the yummy, high calorie high carb goodies, but much less than
before. Btw, my wife makes amazing salads, nothing too exotic but nothing too
boring.
From a Texan who eats his fair share of BBQ, salads can be very enjoyable.
------
stintaril
This might not work for you but it works for me:
I do intermittent fasting (16 hour fast and an 8 hour feeding window) every
day. I workout in the last hour of my fasting and then eat my biggest meal of
the day.
My typical schedule goes like this: -My last meal (usually a protein shake or
cottage cheese) right before 9:00pm. -I wake up and have tea -At 11:45 I head
to the gym and workout for an hour or more -At 1:00 I eat my biggest meal -For
dinner I just try to have a regular sized portion of food
I try to keep my protein and carb intake around the same amount of grams and
keep the fats somewhat low. On the weekends I fast, but I don’t workout and I
try to lower my carbs (this usually doesn’t happen though).
What I really like about working out at lunch is that I get away from the
office and it makes me feel focused and fresh for the rest of the day.
------
dalore
Keto and stronglifts 5x5
I can eat what I want (as long as it's not carbs). So all the bacon and eggs
every morning.
And then it's 20 minutes of weights 3 times a week.
Seriously so easy, and pretty much hardly any effort but great results (went
down from a 34 waist to 28). Lost over 14kg and in perfect BMI.
------
rainmaking
I use "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe. It's 45 minutes of barbell
training 3 times a week and lots of dairy products.
I've been at it for 2 years and squat 85kg and bench 65kg (3 sets, 5
repetitions). I obviously haven't become a competitive powerlifter but not bad
for a nerd who never gets off the couch otherwise. Never got hurt either.
I've been told with more muscle you can keep your eating habits and not get
fat; it seems to be true. I cut potato chips and sugary soft drinks but kept
burgers, pizza and beer. Works fine.
------
Spoom
Gym three times a week, which includes half an hour of C25K jogging (two weeks
from the full half hour!) and strength training (alternating upper body, core,
legs). On the off days, my wife and I play disc golf or go for a walk. This is
with a ~9 hour workday plus a one hour commute both ways, while my wife's
schedule is a ~13 hour work day plus a one hour commute both ways. It gets
tiring but we're seeing results.
Look into a YMCA membership if you have one near you, it's a bit more
expensive than a plain gym membership but there's a lot of value in it. For
example, you can usually use any other YMCA for free outside of a 50 mile
radius of your home club, and our club has what is essentially a free outdoor
waterpark available to members during the summer.
We also did a Whole 30 a few weeks ago which caused me to make some permanent
changes to my diet (mostly cutting out carbs and avoiding sweetener / sugar
whenever I can). I lost something like 15 lbs on it.
------
Im_Talking
'State of fitness' makes me think of cardio, treadmills, etc which for most
non-fat people is non-optimal. Kenyan marathoners are fit but a strong wind
will blow them over.
The optimal view is 'state of strength' since strength is the most important
physical attribute, and certainly gains even more importance the older we get.
Strength allows the body to operate optimally. People who partake in
resistance training have less instances of death across any reason; accidents,
illness, disease, even violence (you have a better chance of surviving a
gunshot, for example, if you are strong which makes sense), etc.
I'm 54, and I do 2-3 workouts a week on the compound lifts like squats (always
do your squats), overhead presses, deadlifts. I also do prowler and farmer
walks for HIT. I also play basketball and tennis once a week. I have never
felt better.
------
Stubb
I hit the gym two or three times a week to lift heavy (e.g., squat, deadlift,
overhead press) and go for a walk most days. The walks are hardly a breakneck
pace—I'm carrying on a conversation, stopping to check out wildflowers, and
observing what's going on around me. Both are fun and contribute to overall
fitness, but in different ways.
I need to think a lot at my job will get up and wander around regularly.
Food wise, paleo-style eating seems to help with energy levels and staying
lean. So does getting eight hours of sleep every night, which doesn't happen
frequently enough.
I'm not a fan of steady-state cardio. It seems to hurt muscle mass and
contribute to belly fat and joint pain.
I'm 41, 5'8", 175#, 32" waist, 40" chest, and recently squatted 315# for a
single and have deadlifted 430#.
~~~
eshvk
> contribute to belly fat.
Do you have any references on cardiovascular activity directly causing a layer
of fat growing on your gut?
~~~
Stubb
"Relationship between stress hormones and testosterone with prolonged
endurance exercise."
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15618989](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15618989)
More importantly: looking in the mirror. Even though I'm older, I'm leaner now
doing zero steady-state cardio than I ever was running/biking dozens of miles
a week.
------
Oculus
Everyday, I do 100 pushups - 50 when I wake up & 50 before I go to bed. It
takes 2 - 3 minutes from your day so you have no excuse. If I have extra free
time I'll go swim at the local pool.
Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) does a really awesome podcast on which they
discussed fitness/well-being one week[1]. The main takeaway is in order to
become and more importantly stay healthy you have to change your mindset to
always be thinking about what you eat.
1 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A1rpGGqYew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A1rpGGqYew)
~~~
billmalarky
It should be noted that some people get severe tendentious from high reps of
pushups/pullups. But even low reps have benefits over none at all.
~~~
quickpost
Very good clarification. I am indeed someone who got serious rotator cuff
tendinosis from doing 100's of pushups a couple times / week. Took about
18months to fully heal, and my shoulders still aren't quite as good as they
originally were.
Some people can definitely get away with doing tons of pushups, but I am not
one of them!
------
a3n
Gym two to four times per week after work, and squats and pushups every
morning. I can't do 50 pushups, but I can do more today than I did yesterday,
and not as many as I'll be able to do tomorrow.
As for pushups at home:
\- Do as many as I can.
\- Rest my arms by doing ten squats.
\- Do as many knee pushups as I can. This is my "bonus round," that gives me
more improvement than I can get with just strict pushups. Most days I can do
one, sometimes two more strict pushups than the day before.
------
spyspy
Join some type of team or club sport, either one with people you already know
or get to know. Going to the gym by yourself will get monotonous unless you're
really motivated. Getting in shape is easy when it feels more like a social
obligation than a physical burden.
I joined a small soccer team that was always struggling to get enough people
to play each week. I suck at soccer, but I knew my presence was way better
than playing 1 or 2 players down.
------
billmalarky
If you live in NYC, my trick is to go to a gym that in on the way home from
work, but not the same stop as my apartment. Then I just force myself to
always exit the train at that stop even if I really don't want to go to the
gym. Once I've stepped off and the train leaves it's either go to the gym or
wait 15 minutes for a new train.
YMMV but I've never not gone through with a workout once I've stepped off that
train.
~~~
denarson
great idea! I'm going to try this
~~~
billmalarky
It really does work. I'm actually in the best shape of my life right now.
------
noodle
Force yourself to go to the gym on a regular schedule and work out for an hour
a day M-F. Before work, after work, whenever. Just schedule it and do it.
For me, the key has been to realize that I'm not "wasting" or "losing" the
time I spend at the gym. I feel like shit when I haven't done any physical
activity, so I'm investing a few hours a week so that I can get more done in
the normal work day.
------
eswat
My usual fitness routine: Weightlifting for strength, 3 times a week. Hatha
yoga at least twice a week. Bouldering whenever I feel like it (unlike the
other stuff I don’t try to make bouldering a routine so if I feel like not
doing it, I won’t). This seems to work good for me.
Also, not eating shit food, mostly by avoiding the centre of grocery stores
and shopping at local stores and farmers markets as much as possible.
~~~
vram22
>Hatha yoga at least twice a week.
Does that work for you? I would have thought one has to do yoga pretty much
daily to maintain the flexibility to be able to do the asanas. Depends partly
on which asanas you do, of course. Saying it because yoga exercises some
muscles which are not often exercised by other types of workouts.
~~~
eswat
Despite the lack of daily practice I’ve found it has helped with my hip
flexibility, especially when doing squats. All of my yoga sessions are at
least 90 minutes each, some with intensive instructors, so that may be
something to consider.
~~~
vram22
Cool, thanks.
------
georgemcbay
I've got a simple flat weight bench, a 300lbs barbell set and combo squat
stand/safety arm (for bench presses, etc) thing at home. Everything you need
for typical "big move" weight training. Total cost: about $500 which is a bit
less than an average year of gym membership.
Highly recommended if you have the space for it.
Also I do a lot of hiking as part of my photography hobby.
~~~
dalore
Living in London it is the space issue. That's why we pay for gym membership.
Would so much rather have just have squat and flat weight bench.
------
webnrrd2k
I just started one small thing that's improved both my fitness and my work
life -- reading a technical book when I work out on the elliptical.
Right now I'm working through Lisp In Small Pieces. It's not easy to read and
work out, but I like the challenge and it works well enough that I'll keep
doing it. Plus it keeps me from getting so bored at the gym.
------
bowlich
On top of hiking, walking the dogs, bicycling and other after-hours hobbies, I
keep a home made stepping box next to my desk. When I need to really think
through something, instead of sitting or pacing, I do steps. Seems to help get
the creativity working or serves as a good wake up if I'm getting that mid-
afternoon drowsiness.
------
snowbirdsong
I work from home and have an elliptical runner in my office.
When I worked in an office, I biked to work every day and worked out in the
gym directly after work.
Walk and talk meetings are great, so are taking the stairs. I still bike to
meetings:) Just get a nice laptop backpack, while they're 'cool' looking,
messenger bags killed my back on the bike.
------
joerich
I think it is better to get the exercise done before working.
Wake up earlier and go to the gym.
If you don’t like the gym do some pushups and crunchs and go running or do
exercise bike for 30 minutes. Maybe it is hard the first weeks but if you get
a routine it will become easier and you will feel energetic during the day if
you do exercise when you wake up.
------
palidanx
On Monday and Wednesday I go morning surfing. For that, I try not to schedule
any meeting those mornings. If I can't hit the surf, I'll try to sub for a
swim at my local gym. On Thursday I'll do weights at the gym, and the weekends
a hike or some tennis.
Also I cook every day so that helps control what I eat.
------
seanccox
Yoga three mornings a week.
Lifting during my lunch break, working out complementary muscle groups on
alternating days.
Running or swimming on alternate evenings, unless I can find an opportunity to
play Ultimate or slackline.
I also cycle as my main means of transport, or budget the time to walk (if
it's under three miles).
------
3minus1
I go to the gym every day and run for 10 minutes. It's not a long time but
because it's so short it allows me to do it consistently. I've been gradually
increasing the speed to the point that I'm running 8-minute miles, the fastest
I ever have.
------
digita88
I work out 2 hours, 5 days a week via mix of core, cardio, toning, muscle.
While I'm working out, I use the time to listen to music, podcasts, re-listen
to some movies/TV shows. The key is to change your mental habits and build it
up as a routine.
------
spo81rty
Diet is the most important. Highly recommended a paleo type diet. No processed
foods or sugar. Forget counting calories. Just healthy whole foods. Meat,
fruits, veggies, nuts, etc. No breads or sugar. Down 25 pounds. Works great
for me!
------
quickpost
Commute to work 3x week on a bicycle. Long rides on weekends. Lifting 1x /
week.
Working on my diet as well, even though I'm already fairly lean. Trying to cut
out all processed crap and just stick to real foods - paleo-ish diet.
------
SEJeff
Pushups and marine style crunches before going to work in the morning, a ~5
mile (one way) bike ride to/from the office, and don't sit around all day
after work. I write software.
That and Wing Chun Kung Fu classes 3x per week
------
yen223
I use an exercise ball as a chair. Really tighten up the core. "Bonus" point
is that the exercise ball is so uncomfortable I'm forced to stand up and take
a walk every hour or so.
------
mrlyc
I go to the gym every day. I've found that I have to drive to the gym straight
from work as, if I go home first, I somehow never make it to the gym.
------
cpncrunch
Walk my dog twice a day, and also either swim or go for bike ride most days
and also do pushups+situps. I work from home, which helps.
------
mkal_tsr
Powerlifting and rowing, and I make sure to use a workout tracker to measure
my progress. And sleep, definitely sleep.
------
NameNickHN
Golf whenever it's not raining or snowing.
------
a3voices
I run 3-4 times per week, lift weights during those days also, and go walking
7 days per week. Even though I sometimes slack off during these routines, it's
enough to keep me fit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cartographie des permis de construire dans toute la France - based2
https://vigibati.fr/
======
based2
[https://github.com/atelier-des-
communs/vigibati.fr](https://github.com/atelier-des-communs/vigibati.fr)
from [https://linuxfr.org/news/vigibati-un-outil-libre-de-
cartogra...](https://linuxfr.org/news/vigibati-un-outil-libre-de-cartographie-
et-veille-des-permis-de-construire-en-france)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do microservices just shift complexity from app to ops? - quezzle
======
joeblow9999
no. so-called 'microservice architectures' increase the complexity of the
platform in terms of ops AND the code
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Feynman Nobel Lecture "The Development of the Space-Time View of QED" - cgs1019
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html/
======
cgs1019
I love the detail he goes into about different possible approaches that didn't
work out. He gives a real sense of some of the process that leads into these
big, beautiful, polished models.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Xah's Emacs Lisp Tutorial - jackhammer2022
http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp.html
======
jrockway
If you write Lisp like Xah suggests, people will laugh at you. Just read the
Emacs Lisp Introduction that ships with Emacs, that actually teaches idiomatic
Emacs Lisp.
------
superxor
I've been a fairly recent Emacs user, a year and half I suppose. I've found
Xah really helpful in some cases when I was starting with Emacs. He tries to
start online discussions, writes some tutorials in his blog, even starts G+
hangouts where he helps random people, and all this voluntarily.
I have no idea what discussions he has trolled or what controversies he was
involved in. But there is a humble volunteer part of him I appreciate (like
this HN item), and I believe in this way he adds some real value to the
community.
------
winestock
Xah Lee's ErgoEmacs fork of GNU Emacs is a memory hog. On my machine, the
EmacsW32 program uses 23,032 K of working set with three text buffers open.
With the same buffers open, ErgoEmacs uses more than 103,000 K. The most
significant differences between ErgoEmacs and other Emacsen (actually, the
whole point to ErgoEmacs) are user-interface issues. ErgoEmacs uses
keybindings that match Windows conventions. I wish that I were as prolific as
him, but he should include some tips on memory usage in his tutorials.
~~~
agumonkey
Is it a fork ? I thought it was a distribution. I never read that they changed
emacs core, so I thought it was just a vanilla build with
prepackaged/preconfigured bits to reflect their principles.
------
kindahero
Alex wrote this[1] on emacswiki page, and I totally agree with him.
Xah has also been a well known troll on various comp.lang.* newsgroups and played in the same league as ErikNaggum. Just browse some older stuff in the Usenet archives. – AlexSchroeder
[1] <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Xah_Lee>
~~~
jrockway
I kind of doubt Xah is actually trolling; he's just a strange person with
strange ideas. How many people blog about their first experience with a
prostitute under their real name?
------
ghosTM55
Xah is one of my best friends, he's a nice guy :)
------
probably
He's been a controversial figure in many forums but his emacs lisp tutorial is
the best out there. I gave him a donation through Paypal (for approximately
the price of an O'Reilly book) and he personally sent me an email thanking me.
~~~
probably
Well, looks like he's got ads on his site now which I suppose takes place of
the donation button.
~~~
agumonkey
Not sure but I think it's an emergency measure to sustain income.
------
markwong
I'm reading your tutorial. very helpful and informative!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Incumbents, Not Startups, Are Regulatory Arbitrageurs - cjbest
https://diff.substack.com/p/incumbents-not-startups-are-regulatory?r=2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=hackernews
======
asciimike
Not entirely related, but I very much enjoyed the reference to _United States
vs Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola_ [1], which led me to the
category of _in rem_ [2] cases. These are most commonly referenced in civil
forfeiture cases (e.g. _US vs <some amount of money>_), and always struck me
as slightly ridiculous ("what did the money ever do wrong?").
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Forty_Barrels...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Forty_Barrels_%26_Twenty_Kegs_of_Coca-
Cola) [2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction)
------
machinehermit
I was just reading a statarb paper this morning.
We really should have came up with a different word and left arbitrage alone
back in the day.
I can't remember the last time I read about an arbitrage that was actually an
arbitrage.
Now everything is basically "garage sale arbitrage". I bought a piece of junk
at a garage sale and sold it on ebay for a profit. "Risk free profit", cha
ching. Just a total corruption of the actual concept.
I get it though,it is a great word.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How would you validate an idea for SaaS product? - vsolanki19
I've heard of many SaaS companies building the products first and then try to sell it only to fail later due to lack of demand and customers. My question is how would you validate an idea for SaaS is worth pursuing with enough demand and interest from customers?<p>Not asking for a complete strategy but a general idea of where to start at.
======
jason_zig
In my experience the best ideas come from scratching your own itch. Is there
something that you want but can't find a suitable solution for? Build it for
yourself. Once it solves your problem, you will probably be happy to find that
other people also had that problem.
~~~
vsolanki19
Totally! That's pretty much why got thinking about the idea in the first
place.
------
jppope
1\. Start with an Idea.
2\. Go sell it to someone and have them pay you to build it.
3\. This will look mostly like a service at first, very custom.
4\. Now go and sell part of the thing you just built, or the whole thing to
someone else.
5\. Build this second one using as much of the first thing as possible. Add
whatever features the second company/person wants so long as you can sell it
back to person/company #1 or a third company.
6\. By this point you should have talked to a bunch of people... you should
know generally what people actually want. Take the stuff you built, generalize
it, refine it, test it, and then sell it to people in person.
7\. for the last step you don't need my advice or anyone else's... you have a
product and people are paying you for it. You now know what to do.
~~~
seektable
> 2\. Go sell it to someone and have them pay you to build it.
This sounds good, but unfortunately this approach doesn't work for may kinds
of products - especially if you idea is not niche B2B service.
~~~
jppope
which products?
------
rahimnathwani
I would follow the steps in Disciplined Entrepreneurship, which I've just
started reading, after seeing it recommended multiple times, here and
elsewhere.
[https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-
Su...](https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-Successful-
Startup-ebook-dp-B00DQ97TWO)
~~~
vsolanki19
Thanks dude. Link didn't work but I'm adding it here:
[https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-
Su...](https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-Successful-
Startup/dp/1118692284/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=disciplined+entrepreneurship&qid=1558626388&s=gateway&sr=8-1)
------
mindcrime
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=validate%20idea&sort=byDate&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=validate%20idea&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
~~~
vsolanki19
Thanks. I looked into this but many of these threads are very old with very
few comments.
~~~
mindcrime
Try this:
[https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-
Step/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-
Step/dp/0984999302)
and/or
[https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-
Visionaries...](https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-
Challengers/dp/0470876417/)
and/or
[https://www.amazon.com/You-Build-Will-They-
Come/dp/047056363...](https://www.amazon.com/You-Build-Will-They-
Come/dp/047056363X/)
and this:
[https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone/dp/1492180742/)
~~~
techsin101
First book will take a year to finish
~~~
mindcrime
It's worth it though. :-)
------
mapster
I suggest 'scratch your own <business> itch'. I found these by working in new
industries and finding major inefficiencies that could be solved with code :)
------
vebu
General idea is to make MVP webapp and then give free user accounts till you
get traction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Self-inlining anonymous functions in C++ - adg001
http://matt.might.net/articles/self-inlining-anonymous-functions-in-c++/
======
barrkel
This is truly revolting, offensive code. Unless you like C++ template
metaprogramming, I recommend you don't look.
:)
~~~
DCoder
(Edit: fixed formatting) Revolting? I think that's a pretty good, if complex,
example of "pushing the limits". IMHO, the label "revolting" is reserved for
code like this:
Derived() : Base() {
THISCALL(0x535AA0);
*(DWORD*)this = 0x7E1AF4;
}
That's the kind of code I get to write in my hobby project.
~~~
barrkel
It's using the type system to encode an arithmetic expression, with unique
types for every distinct subtree; and then using statically-dispatched calls
to inlined methods to get the compiler to embed the tree in-place, so that the
optimizer's constant folding can evaluate the tree. The amount of code and
data that's being shifted around and manipulated inside the compiler to
generate a rather trivial end effect is what's offensive to me. If C++ were
slightly more expressive, the technique would be unnecessary; but some C++
acolytes actually extol these kinds of techniques as a feature!
~~~
jheriko
The technique is unnecessary, regardless as to C++ - its just a different way
to write code.
------
jheriko
This is pretty cool - the final compiled code looks pretty tidy considering
the hoops being jumped through. :)
------
slug
If you are interested in this subject, you might find the following pertinent:
<http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_42_0/doc/html/lambda.html>
and as someone posted here before:
<http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html>
There's also an interview with a "brief" summary from Scott Meyers at
[http://www.se-
radio.net/podcast/2010-04/episode-159-c0x-scot...](http://www.se-
radio.net/podcast/2010-04/episode-159-c0x-scott-meyers) that mentions lambda
functions.
~~~
jimbokun
Wow. Things that look like expressions, but are most definitely not, through
the magic of operator overloading. So you can translate some expressions
straightforwardly, but other expressions not, with the cases for what works
and doesn't requiring careful thought.
So this works:
for_each(vp.begin(), vp.end(), cout << *_1 << '\n');
This doesn't:
for_each(vp.begin(), vp.end(), cout << '\n' << *_1);
But this does:
for_each(vp.begin(), vp.end(), cout << constant('\n') << *_1);
Considering how complex it is to figure out what works and what doesn't in
that lambda slot, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Of course I'm not a C++
programmer, and this is yet another reason why that might not be such a bad
thing.
(Note: this is regarding Boost lambda, if that wasn't clear.)
~~~
scott_s
_Considering how complex it is to figure out what works and what doesn't in
that lambda slot, I'm not sure it's worth the effort._
I am a C++ programmer, and that's exactly the conclusion I came to regarding
Boost's lambda. I use Boost's bind library all the time, though.
But! C++0x has real lambdas, so we won't have to resort to this trickery much
longer.
------
koblas
Feels like somebody doesn't trust #define's for their C++ code. While you
don't get the type "safety" you get something thats a bit more natural.
~~~
fadmmatt
You can't do this with #define alone. You can pass these "functions" around
arbitrarily, and it still works.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning - EdiX
http://norvig.com/chomsky.html
======
brockf
Chomsky's one paragraph quote at the beginning of this article is more clear
and thoughtful than the rest of this. I feel the author's missing the point.
In the case of language, observing and reporting statistical probabilities in
written/spoken language output does very little to explain the cognitive
systems used in acquiring and using language. Even one statistical anomaly
serves to show that statistical learning is NOT the entire picture when it
comes to language development.
There was another article on HN a while back that had another great quote from
Chomsky that does well to illustrate what I feel is his main point here:
"Fooling people into mistaking a submarine for a whale doesn't show that
submarines really swim; nor does it fail to establish the fact". Creating a
computer that can produce millions of grammatical utterances does little to
show that we understand language systems. Now, if a computer could - like
humans - _learn_ to produce infinite, novel, contextual, and meaningful
grammatical utterances, that's a different story. But that story will take a
lot more than statistical learning to write.
~~~
losvedir
>In the case of language, observing and reporting statistical probabilities in
written/spoken language output does very little to explain the cognitive
systems used in acquiring and using language.
Unless, of course, those cognitive systems are nothing more than some
statistical probabilistic mechanism. I don't know anything about the field,
but the article was interesting to me in that it seemed to at least partly
argue that. I know, for me at least, I'll frequently produce a sentence and
then repeat it to myself a few times to see if it "sounds right." Now, I don't
know what is happening to determine that, but perhaps I'm comparing it to some
statistical probabilistic model I have in my head?
> Even one statistical anomaly serves to show that statistical learning is NOT
> the entire picture when it comes to language development.
1) Does it? Maybe it shows the specific statistical probabilistic model in
question is wrong. Consider, as Chomsky did, a model which predicts zero
probability for a novel sentence. Clearly, as you say, one anomalous novel
sentence is all it takes to disprove such a model. But what about other models
which can handle them? The "anomaly" may not be an anomaly anymore.
2) Do you have some anomaly in mind which shows statistical probabilistic
models don't work?
\-----
The article was very interesting to me, but I don't know anything about the
field. I guess my main question boils down to: Is it possible that language
acquisition and production is nothing more inside our heads than a simple
statistical probabilistic model?
~~~
brockf
If that was true, then why did humans evolve to speak at all? Why, if speech
is simply a reaction to statistics we are tracking and behaviours that have
been rewarded, would the first utterances have been made? And how do we make
completely novel utterances that attempt to express our otherwise abstract
thoughts?
~~~
pygy_
_> Why, if speech is simply a reaction to statistics we are tracking and
behaviours that have been rewarded, would the first utterances have been
made?_
Why not? Look at it from the bottom up:
Communication is a fundament of life, from intra-cellular to inter-cellular to
inter-organism interactions (another fundament is the ability to keep oneself
in a low entropy state, at the expense of the rest of the world).
Human speech is an evolution of mammal communication. It grew up in
complexity, from grunts and other basic noises, along with our way of living,
up to what we have now.
_> And how do we make completely novel utterances that attempt to express our
otherwise abstract thoughts?_
Speech is a big collage. New is either the result of
* a recombination of the sub-parts of past speech
* the definition of a new word in terms of older words, or sometimes arbitrarily (for proper nouns).
Nothing fancy AFAICT.
~~~
brockf
There's a big difference between "grunts and basic noises" and language. Or at
least, that's my opinion. In this same line, I don't believe
dogs/monkeys/birds/bees have language, despite the ability to communicate.
This view is just to simplistic to hold its weight when you really look at the
intricacies of language and its evolutionary history which, by the way, I
would suggest comes from manual gesture and not grunting.
~~~
pygy_
_> There's a big difference between "grunts and basic noises" and language. Or
at least, that's my opinion. In this same line, I don't believe
dogs/monkeys/birds/bees have language, despite the ability to communicate.
This view is just to simplistic to hold its weight when you really look at the
intricacies of language and its evolutionary history which, by the way, I
would suggest comes from manual gesture and not grunting._
Mu![1]
But you're probably right about gestures.
Wild chimps have a vocabulary of about 66 signs. We can also observe tribes
with languages more primitive than ours (no pronouns, for example). But
there's a missing link of several millions of years of evolution between both.
What are the (known) intricacies of the evolution of our ability to
communicate?
There's no definitive proof for the statistical argument, but a growing amount
of (neuro)scientific evidence points to it. What's (are) your alternative
hypothese(s)?
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)>
[2] <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21533821>
~~~
brockf
This is where the debates really begin :)
I think that most people who believe in some form of the motor theory of
speech perception will also believe that speech evolved from manual gesture.
Others scoff at the motor theory. In fact, I'd say I'm in the minority by
bringing it up with any regularity.
If the question, what is "known" about the evolution of our ability to
communicate, I wouldn't have much to point you towards. Most is theory based
on modern evidence, somewhat like armchair psychology. Other people point to
our ability to integrate non-verbal gestures into our comprehension,
activation of our motor cortex prior to semantic/phonetic network activation
when disambiguating difficult speech sounds, our ability to synthesize
visual/auditory sources of information when the visual information relates to
speech gestures (mouth/tongue movements), etc.
~~~
pygy_
What's the link between the motor theory of speech perception and your
criticism of losvedir's post?
Aren't these issues completely orthogonal?
------
Jun8
This is not a new debate. Within Linguistics there has been a continuous push
against statistical NLP models. Read the introduction of Manning's book, even
he seems to be defensive about NLP.
Chomsky is a colossus, his achievements are well-known. However, at one point
in many disciplines it comes to pass that the pioneers who pave the way in
time become the very impediment to new ideas. His emphasis on Semantics have
warped the minds of _many_ generations of researchers (and some other ideas on
universal grammar, too).
I experienced this first hand, my advisor, Prof. Raskin, a great researcher on
semantics, nevertheless thought that statistical approaches were not the way
to go. Sadly, in many Linguistics departments people are just not equipped
with the statistical tools necessary to have a basic understand of what's
being done in the NLP field. So NLP is generally taught under CS, EE, or
CompE.
~~~
adavies42
i saw someone once compare chomsky to freud, as a foundational figure whose
discipline can't/couldn't progress during his lifetime.
~~~
ordinary
Einstein would be another example.
------
christianpbrink
"If Chomsky had focused on the other side, interpretation, as Claude Shannon
did, he may have changed his tune. In interpretation (such as speech
recognition) the listener receives a noisy, ambiguous signal and needs to
decide which of many possible intended messages is most likely. Thus, it is
obvious that this is inherently a probabilistic problem, as was recognized
early on by all researchers in speech recognition..."
This is the money shot especially since speakers are aware of the interpretive
activity of listeners, and effective speakers play constantly on the
ambiguities in their statements - structural (i.e. grammatical) ambiguities as
well as semantic ambiguities. Listeners in turn are aware of speakers'
awareness of this.. There is, effectively, an infinity of mutual awarenesses
of structural ambiguities. In any instance of communication.
I think most technologists and (especially) businesspeople see this
intuitively. I think many academics do not. Not sure how to articulate what I
mean but I think I am saying something non-trivial about academics and their
perspective on language.
~~~
cma
Freeman Dyson earlier this year on this type of ambiguity as expressed in the
drum language of the Democratic Republic of Congo:
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/how-
we-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/how-we-know/)
------
CWuestefeld
Server's down. Here's a cached link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fnorvig.com%2Fchomsky.html)
EDIT: stop giving me upvotes. I've got 11 points now for nothing more than a
link. I don't deserve them. Stupid hidden points...
~~~
norvig
Sorry about the intermittent access. My hosting service provides me with
sufficient bandwidth, but only provides a version of Apache that forks a new
process for every GET, and thus runs out of processes and denies access to a
portion of visitors when I get slashdotted/redditted/hacker-newsified. If
anyone can suggest a more reasonable hosting service, let me know. -Peter
Norvig
~~~
alphamerik
[cough] I hear Google has pretty good bandwidth and scaling. Ever try App
Engine? [/cough]
------
PaulHoule
It's funny. Lately I've been working with NLP systems and in the last few
years there are a few really good parts-of-speech taggers that are about 99%
accurate. All the ones I know of are based on hidden markov models, which
definitely would disappoint Chomsky.
Part of the trouble w/ Chomsky is that real language doesn't draw a clear line
between syntax and semantics. Even though an HMM doesn't correctly model the
nested structures that are common in natural language, it makes up for it by
encoding semantic information.
~~~
sharmajai
Another trouble is that human beings are innately probabilistic when it comes
to language. A sentence written/spoken by humans does not have to be
gramatically correct, to convey it's meaning, and does not always follow the
strict rules that Chomsky talks about.
It's not the language that defines how we communicate, it's how we communicate
defines the language.
But I also disagree with peter when he says the why is not important, it is
this why or the understanding of the matter that separates us from the
machines like watson, since our sole purpose in life is not to win at a game,
but play/enjoy the game and most importantly "reuse the understanding" gained
in some other facet of life, a feat that I beleive no machine is capable of.
------
wccrawford
"O'Reilly is correct that these questions can only be addressed by mythmaking,
religion or philosophy, not by science."
... My jaw is on the floor. It drives me nuts when people go from 'We can't
explain that yet' to 'The only explanation is God.'
The tides are incredibly complex when you insist on 'why' all the way back to
the beginning of the universe. Everything is!
~~~
torstein
>He doesn't care how the tides work, tell him why they work. Why is the moon
at the right distance to provide a gentle tide, and exert a stabilizing effect
on earth's axis of rotation, thus protecting life here? Why does gravity work
the way it does? Why does anything at all exist rather than not exist?
O'Reilly is correct that these questions can only be addressed by mythmaking,
religion or philosophy, not by science.
Science doesn't really aim to answer the 'why'-questions, but rather the
'how'-questions. The scientific method boils down to falsifying hypothesis,
and it's a lot easier with 'how does the tide work?' than 'why does the tide
work (the way it does)?'.
Science can't say anything about 'Why does anything at all exist rather than
not exist?', because there is no way to test any of the answers. So it's left
to mythology, religion or philosophy to answer.
~~~
T-hawk
> Why is the moon at the right distance to provide a gentle tide, and exert a
> stabilizing effect on earth's axis of rotation, thus protecting life here?
A possible answer to this stems from the anthropic principle. We evolved in a
place with a moon because the moon helped us evolve. We don't see no moon
because complex life such as us would not have developed without it. A stable
rotation and gentle tide are conducive to the evolution of complex organisms;
tides were instrumental in getting life out of the seas and onto land.
"Why is the sun the way it is?" can be answered similarly. A smaller star has
too small a habitable zone where liquid water can exist. A larger star would
have burned out sooner than the 4.5 billion years it took to develop sapient
life. A double star has a much smaller set of stable planetary orbits. That
the sun is an appropriate star for our life on earth is not divine providence
or an enormously unlikely coincidence; it's the result of a universe-wide
scenario of statistical multiple endpoints.
~~~
borism
_it's the result of a universe-wide scenario of statistical multiple
endpoints_
totally agreed with you up to that point which I have hard time understanding.
so you say universe is kind of fractal and we happen to be in the right place
on that fractal, where all the ingredients come together?
~~~
T-hawk
Yes, but there's a causal relationship that I think you're not quite
expressing. We are where we are _because_ here is where all the ingredients
came together.
------
T_S_
The handshake example was illuminating. Three "equivalent" theories:
Theory A: Closed form formula function.
Theory B: "Algorithm". Still a function.
Theory C: Memoized function (constant time!)
According to the article "nobody" likes C, especially the article's Chomsky
straw man. If one had a procedure to convert C to A, then this whole issue
would become hairsplitting. Such a procedure would aim to convert a memoized
function back into a form that uses more symbols from a mathematical language.
A good criteria of success would be the description length of the resulting
procedure in the preferred language. One reason this could be useful to
science is that once you identify a value that is useful in many theories it
becomes part of the language. Making it available to the next problem may
speed up the search for a "good" description of the next phenomenon. Identical
procedures that appeared in various algorithms might acquire a special name.
One such value might be called "pi", another "foldr" and so on.
Of course there may be many good descriptions, just as there are many
languages. Also, the example could be extended to statistical modeling
situations by adding room for error terms in the suitability criteria.
So if, you have a general procedure to convert a table into a definition you
can make money and science at the same time!
------
stcredzero
_My conclusion is that 100% of these articles are more about "accurately
modeling the world" then they are about "providing insight," although they all
have some theoretical insight component as well._
Before you can figure out _why_ , you have to make sure you can accurately
characterize the _what_. So there's a lot of science that is focused on coming
up with a descriptive tool like an adhoc curve, before the underlying
principles are discovered.
I think Chomsky is afraid that statistical models will cause people to stop
looking for the underlying principles.
------
sethg
This essay made me think: Lojban (<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/la+lojban.+mo>),
among constructed languages, is the categorial language _par excellence_.
Every word has a well-defined range of meaning; the grammar can be parsed by
the same kinds of parsers used for programming languages; potential sources of
ambiguity, like plural references, associativity of modifiers, and negation,
have been rigorously (or tediously, depending on how you roll) nailed down.
Can there be such a thing as a conlang that demonstrates the ideal
_statistical_ grammar and semantics? (“All the words in this list are 60%
likely to be used as nouns and 40% likely to be used as verbs....” But in the
absence of a pre-existing linguistic community, how could you get students of
the language to use them in the right proportions?)
------
cma
Chomsky's April 8th lecture at Carelton University on language had several
thoughts on machine translation:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbjVMq0k3uc>
(I think it even had the same bee-dance example)
------
double-z
The commentary has nothing to do with what Chomsky proposed. The author
defines success as "being successful at accomplishing a task". That has
nothing to do with science. Full stop.
------
macmac
Are Norvig's comments on the "I before E except before C." really vaild? Why
would one use a corpus for analysis of the rule, and not a dictionary? It
appears to me that "CIE" (P(CIE) = 0.0014) is more common than "CEI" (P(CEI) =
0.0005) because the words that contain the "exception" "CIE" are used more
frequently in the corpus than the words that follow the rule "CEI". Once you
know the limited number of exceptions (in the dictionary sense) the rule
appears to preserve its relevance.
~~~
jimbokun
I suppose a the most useful corpus for this rule would be spelling tests.
------
noahlt
Strangely appropriate is today's XKCD: <http://xkcd.com/904/>
~~~
kenjackson
Hmm... I never thought of it that way. That sports are a weighted random
number generator,but the various weights are unknown. And the commentators are
discussing theories as to what the weights are, and how derived. (Although the
cartoon seems to be saying the narratives are just about the numbers
generated, which is more cynical, and frankly less interesting).
~~~
yourcelf
Actually, Larry Birnbaum over at Northwestern is doing exactly that:
<http://infolab.northwestern.edu/projects/stats-monkey/>
They take the coded sports results, and automatically generate narratives
using statistical speech models. They have a startup that is doing it too,
don't recall the name of it....
EDIT: I believe this is it: <http://narrativescience.com/>
------
_grrr
I've been monitoring the page this post points to with a bookmarking tool
we've just released in beta. Here are the latest set of changes:
[http://app.bookmarkerpro.com/changes?fmt=html&id=2573](http://app.bookmarkerpro.com/changes?fmt=html&id=2573)
Quite a few revisions since first posted to HN!
~~~
_grrr
More revisions... <http://tinyurl.com/3sabdc9>
------
niels_olson
This whole theory vs observation argument exists at the very pinnacle of human
thought, expressed in the Copenhagen interpretation. If you want to contribute
to the human understanding of this, you'll have to beat Bohr and the
uncertainty principle.
~~~
Create
Fourier was there first.
~~~
niels_olson
My claim wasn't first, it was top. You up-end the Copenhagen interpretation,
show the universe really is deterministic, and every other argument on this
subject, in every discipline, collapses. As it is, the arguments are almost
certainly failed, but it's not quite a cinch. Because probability admits
determinism as a special case. One of the deep points of Norvig's essay.
------
galactus
It is interesting than on a completely different debate, chomsky takes
norvig's position (he is accused of not looking for a "theory" and "whys" and
he replies that it is pragmatic results that matter):
[http://mindfulpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/01/noam-chomsky-
on...](http://mindfulpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/01/noam-chomsky-on-derrida-
foucault-lacan.html)
------
davidmathers
Chomsky called the Watson computer that won Jeopardy "a bigger bulldozer." He
goes into more detail about his AI opinions here:
<http://www.framingbusiness.net/archives/1366>
------
borism
_And while it may seem crass and anti-intellectual to consider a financial
measure of success_
Why are other metrics Norvig provides like articles published or prevalence in
practical applications are considered more intellectual?
And besides, I don't think "accurately modeling the world" is the end of it.
Classical Newtonian mechanics correctly describe 99% of our activities in the
real world and were considered pinnacle of scientific achievement for several
centuries. Yet we know today that they're just a subset of General relativity
and Quantum mechanics.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Poll HN: Is TechCrunch Doomed? - philco
Jason Kincaid, Sarah Lucy, the list goes on. Is TechCrunch over?
======
rvcamo
Realistically.....yes. There are so many new tech blogs popping up everyday,
one of them is going to nail content and insight; but at this point TechCrunch
is a sinking ship. Even Mashable has been extremely flakey with content
lately. It's all "oh check out this meme" or "top ten comments this week";
there's no real value or insight. It seems like Mashable keeps hiring these
flakey interns who have no idea how to write insightful content. TechCrunch on
the other hand has been trying out multiple writers every weekend with guest
posts. Some of them are really well written, others are not so hot.
------
benologist
Yes, AOL will turn it into another pointless blog like Engadget where all the
news is just 2nd or 3rd hand link-bait stuffed with SEO-bait.
No, because the authors are smart enough to realize The AOL Way of journalism
doesn't have to be a one-time payment so they're setting up new sites for AOL
to buy. Those blogs will carry the TC torch until they return to AOL.
------
staunch
It will lose its status as the "paper of record" for Silicon Valley. It won't
actually die for a long time.
------
pestaa
My previous employer insisted that I read every single article on TechCrunch.
I could not possibly imagine better ways to bore myself. Avoiding it ever
since (both of them, actually.)
------
jordhy
No. The brand is pretty strong and AOL will bring more traffic to the site.
However, I think the profile of the average reader will change significantly.
------
hodder
In what sense? Will news quality go down? I think it already has. Will ad
revenue follow? I'm not so sure.
------
philco
No. They'll find a way to keep their readers engaged.
------
philco
Yes - TechCrunch is over.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Robots Are Ruining Your Driving Skills - mcone
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/as-robots-take-the-wheel-driving-skills-begin-to-hit-the-skids
======
warrenm
95% of driving is not operating the vehicle: it's interior distraction,
tiredness, weather, other drivers, animals, mechanical issues, etc.
Inside-the-vehicle distractions (conversations, checking a map (or GPS), the
stereo, eating/drinking, phone, etc) is what makes people bad drivers. IOW,
being human is what makes people bad drivers.
Drivers weren't ever "good" (as a group) - there were just some who weren't as
bad as others.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The hiring process to become an Apple Store "Genius" - jseliger
http://www.macblogz.com/2008/09/26/leaked-apple-genius-position-hiring-documents
======
jm4
There is not anything particularly remarkable about this interview process or
offer letter. I am not sure why the author would even write about this. If
anything, I think it only makes him seem like a jerk. This guy applied and
interviewed for a position he had no intention of accepting just so he could
blog about it. This not only wastes an employer's time and money, but also
robs another potential candidate of the opportunity for consideration.
~~~
unalone
Yeah. It's a pretty trashy blog, judging by this article. And here I expected
something really interesting.
------
hugh
I can't escape the feeling that while seventeen bucks an hour is pretty good
for a retail position, it's pretty lousy for anyone with the word "Genius" in
their job title.
~~~
cperciva
The word "genius" falls into the "if it's in your job title, you're not it"
category.
~~~
eru
That's the same with 'science' in the name of fields and 'democratic' for
countries.
~~~
cperciva
Yes, I was thinking of the comment that "if the name of your field includes
the word 'science', it's not a science" when I wrote that.
------
cookiecaper
Sounds just like the hiring process to become anything else. Send in a resume,
go to an interview, get job offer. Cool?
------
mattmaroon
I'm astounded it pays that well. That's $34k a year plus benefits to tell
people which iPod they should pick. I wish they had Apple stores when I was in
college.
------
sant0sk1
I've struggled with deciding which job I would abhor more.
A) Apple store genius
B) Geek Squad member
Sounds like a fun poll opportunity.
~~~
mattmaroon
I'd bet the Geek Squad doesn't pay $17/hr. Also, Apple doesn't make you drive
around in a VW Bug painted in such a way as to somehow be even more
emasculating than that car is normally. I always wonder what those cars burn
faster, gasoline, or the self-esteem of the man behind the wheel.
Plus, I know the number 1 question people ask me when they find out I "work in
computers", as they say, is "how do I make this Dell I got 7 years ago run
faster?" At least with Apple, nobody owns one that's over 2 years old.
Even though I loathe the fanboys, I think I'd take the Apple store hands down.
~~~
josefresco
Customer question: How do I make my 7 year old computer run faster?
Apple 'Genius': Buy a new Mac. Geek Squad: Uninstall bloated apps, remove
startup programs, buy (cheap) memory upgrade, run optimization utilities etc.
Which answer takes more 'genius'?
~~~
nihilocrat
Ok, I'm calling foul here. I had a friend who was trying to buy some new RAM
for his older system. He is not super-nerdy so he took the RAM stick to Best
Buy to see if they sold a similar module, or could at least tell him what sort
of RAM it is. The Geek Squad guy took a look at the module, noticed that it
was old, and immediately gave him a pitch about buying a new computer. The the
PC platform has arguably a better set of tools and third party components out
there to make more use out of old equipment, but Best Buy is still a company
that sells computers, and thus make the most money by convincing people to
throw out their old systems.
It ended up being an RDRAM module and thus could only realistically be found
online, but people who are trying to upgrade an old system don't appreciate
being given a sales pitch, especially if, god forbid, they are poor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rare “positive” lightning bolt caught on video - camtarn
https://boingboing.net/2019/05/11/rare-positive-lightning-bo.html
======
howard941
Not all _that_ rare, yesterday's storms were racking up >1000 strikes over the
course of an hour, around 100 of them were positive. This excellent discussion
of the dangerous strikes holds them at <5% of cloud-ground strikes
collectively
[https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/positive](https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/positive)
------
camtarn
(I'd submit the original source, but the Palm Beach Post website is giving
errors for me)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chapter Two of Peter Thiel's New Book - sama
I asked Peter if I could post some of his new book on HN. Here is Chapter Two, which I think will be interesting to people here.<p>Party Like It’s 1999<p>Our contrarian question—What important truth do very few people agree with you on?—is difficult to answer directly. It may be easier to start with a preliminary: what does everybody agree on? “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad). If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.<p>Consider an elementary proposition: companies exist to make money, not to lose it. This should be obvious to any thinking person. But it wasn’t so obvious to many in the late1990s, when no loss was too big to be described as an investment in an even bigger, brighter future. The conventional wisdom of the “New Economy” accepted page views as a more authoritative, forward‐looking financial metric than something as pedestrian as profit.<p>Conventional beliefs only ever come to appear arbitrary and wrong in retrospect; whenever one collapses, we call the old belief a bubble. But the distortions caused by bubbles don’t disappear when they pop. The internet bubble of the ’90s was the biggest of the last eight decades, and the lessons learned afterward define and distort almost all thinking about technology today. The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.<p>A Quick History of the ’90s<p>The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global
context for the 18 months of dot‐com mania at decade’s end.<p>CONTINUE HERE: http://pastebin.com/NuxLFmW4
======
tlb
I highly recommend the whole book.
The biggest danger with this line of thinking is picking a straw man version
of what everyone else believes. Or of underestimating the difference between
belief and execution.
In this case, few sophisticated investors truly believed that page views were
the ultimate metric. But those were one of the few publicly available metrics
you could compare between websites. Their problem was in execution (getting
better engagement and monetization metrics) rather than mistaken beliefs.
Straw men are common in startup pitches: "Our software will be powerful and
easy to use", as if their competitors had a different goal.
So before proceeding on the assumption that everyone else believes something
silly, think hard about reasons why it might only appear that way.
------
Anderkent
> Consider an elementary proposition: companies exist to make money, not to
> lose it.
I'm not sure I agree with that proposition, at least in the general form in
which it's stated.
Yes, the objective of any particular company is to make money. But is that why
companies exist? We support the concept of a company, build laws and systems
that allow one to be created. And clearly the reason we have those laws and
system isn't so that the company can make money.
So the _instrumental_ goal of a company is to make money, but the _terminal_
value of companies existing is something different. Perhaps it's that they
help us collaborate on issues that outscale any particular mind (though in
that we have to be mindful of the Moloch [1] and keep in mind that
corporations think in alien ways [2])...
If so, corporations exist to solve human issues primarily; and making money is
only a measure of how successful they are at that.
1: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)
2: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/12/invaders...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars.html)
~~~
cubetime
I model people's motivations (and systems made out of their motivations, to a
lesser extent) as tangly, illegible, time-varying weighted directed graphs of
weighted goals, where none of the nodes seems to actually persistently have
indegree == 0 or outdegree == 0. The use of "terminal" and "instrumental" here
isn't very clear to me.
[[http://lesswrong.com/lw/l3/thou_art_godshatter/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/l3/thou_art_godshatter/)]
But, to me, "company" usually means something like "an organization with
higher-level goals that include selling things to customers and making money
for its other stakeholders". When that's not the case, I think of words like
"charity", "non-profit", and "club".
~~~
Anderkent
Well, "non-profit" is just shorthand for "non-profit company", right? At least
that's what I'm used to, though googling now seems to bring up "non-profit
organisation" as the more popular term...
Regarding 'terminal' and 'instrumental', perhaps the better descriptors would
be 'direct' and... uh, not sure, let's take indirect by symmetry.
The direct goals of a company is to make money. The _reason_ we want to have
organisations that focus on making money is because .. (we believe that
organisations with larger positive impact are better posed to make more money,
we want to harness the self-interest to improve efficiency, etc etc). The
point is just having a company that makes a lot of money but doesn't improve
the world is counterproductive.
------
rcamera
Thank you for talking to Peter and sharing this.
For those interested in more, Blake (the co-author from the book) took Peter
Thiel's CS183 class in Stanford, and has class notes freely available on his
blog (the notes generated the idea for the book, from my understanding):
[http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup](http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup)
I highly recommend the book.
~~~
csdrane
I wait with bated breath that this will be more than just a recapitulation of
Blake's existing notes.
~~~
rattray
Time to exhale. Thiel has publicly stated that this is largely a
recapitulation of Blake's existing notes. Just better-organized and refined.
If you want free, his notes will be fine. Personally, having followed along
with the notes, I'm planning to get the book as well.
------
staunch
VCs in the dot com bubble were not confused about whether companies should
make money or not. VCs knew exactly what they were doing: making money for
themselves. They were raking in millions by pumping up companies and dumping
them on the public market. A classic ponzi scheme. Eventually the public
market realized what was going on and the party stopped.
~~~
nerfhammer
a pump-and-dump scheme is not a ponzi scheme
~~~
staunch
Fair enough. I knew it was wrong when I said it but I said it anyway!
------
graycat
It seems to me that Peter describes a lot of mistakes and then proposes mostly
some new ones.
After the initial dust settles, what we want is a valuable, defensible, first
good or a much better, must have and not just nice to have solution to a
problem where such a solution can be the crucial, nearly sufficient means of a
valuable new company.
Okay, now for the lesson: However we come up with such a solution, we have to
evaluate it. Well, we can look around just a little and see that some parts of
our society are very good at technical evaluations of such solutions. With
everything else being assumed, a successful technical evaluation is supposed
to be able to remove about all doubt about the business success. E.g., the
ideal solution would be a one pill, safe, effective, cheap cure for any
cancer. Big company? Sure. Done. And we should expect such solutions in other
areas.
In particular, we are able to plan, propose, and have evaluated just on paper
solutions for major problems. Examples: Hoover Dam. The new World Trade
Center. The Erie Canal. Powered, controlled flight as the Wright brothers were
on the way to Kitty Hawk. The SR-71. GPS. Many more. Evaluated just on paper,
and then executed as planned. Sand Hill Road needs to be able to do much the
same, and that is much of what Peter is missing.
Instead of such solid history of project evaluation, Peter goes off on various
emotional reactions to various irrational flights of triviality in various
headlines, etc.
Peter, friendly advice: Learn how to evaluate research results and their
applications to valuable, practical projects. E.g., borrow from evaluations of
GPS, the SR-71, Hoover Dam, etc.
------
sama
clickable: [http://pastebin.com/NuxLFmW4](http://pastebin.com/NuxLFmW4)
~~~
nicklovescode
What is the benefit of not allowing links in a post? Is it a purposeful
decision or or is it just that no one has bothered to implement it.
~~~
gojomo
When allowed, some then stop submitting primary links, and instead wrap even
more commentary around the (now in-text) link than is possible in an
editorialized headline. This also effectively reserves for the submitter a
permanent "top comment".
------
minimaxir
Another excerpt was posted on Business Insider:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-how-to-create-
inn...](http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-how-to-create-innovative-
companies-2014-9)
------
clairity
the yc app has a form of this as one of it's questions: "what do you
understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?"
one of thiel's general business examples is "capitalism and competition are
opposites". although his point is sound (business schools explicitly teach you
to look for ways to avoid/eliminate competition), his definition of capitalism
is a bit distorted to make this phrase work. capitalism is a decentralized
economic system for deploying capital efficiently based on supply and demand,
not simply for accumulating/concentrating capital (which is how thiel sees
it).
~~~
jlangenauer
"Efficiently", in this case, means deploying capital where it will accumulate
the most profit. Not where it does the most good, or solves the most pressing
or important problems.
~~~
clairity
at a game theoretic level of you vs. the competition, that's true. you're
trying to maximize profit because profit is used as a proxy for solving the
most pressing problems (or desires) of a set of people (i don't believe profit
is a perfect proxy, but that's another discussion).
but if you want a stable and efficient economic (and political) system, you
want capital to continuously flow through the system, not accumulate.
------
samirmenon
"Conventional beliefs only ever come to appear arbitrary and wrong in
retrospect; whenever one collapses, we call the old belief a bubble."
I couldn't help but feel that, in 10 years, Silicon Valley's current bubble
(which Peter Thiel buys into) will seem this way.
~~~
adventured
Thiel goes so far as to reference Twitter in a recent article as an example of
how the eyeballs / users / etc. type metrics aren't always wrong (he also used
Facebook).
Which falls flat when you consider that Twitter has proven itself to be
anything but a successful business the past seven years or so. It's currently
bleeding money at an epic rate, and if you assume a $30 to $35 billion market
cap, there is almost no scenario in which it can ever justify that by earning
a profit (even if revenue were profit today, they'd still be fairly valued;
best case scenario possible is in ten years they're worth about what they are
now, assuming non-stop growth and that they eventually have a $5b sales /
$1.xb profit business)).
On the downside of this stock market bubble, when cash is harder to come by,
Twitter is still bleeding out, and their growth trails off, the company is
worth maybe 15% of what it's currently trading for. Thiel will of course no
longer be discussing Twitter as a good example at that point (he'll then stick
to only Facebook as the example).
------
iand
I haven't read the book but I'm interested in other people's opinions on how
much predictive power is in his ideas. It's clear he, like many other
entrepreneur writers, has presented something with good descriptive power. He
can describe why something was a good investment or why something else failed,
but does he provide any kind of framework for predicting success?
~~~
analog31
I wish I remember who said this: If you could predict business success
correctly 51% of the time, and acted on your findings, you'd soon be the
richest person ever.
------
olalonde
"Our contrarian question—What important truth do very few people agree with
you on?—is difficult to answer directly."
Didn't this question originate from Peter himself? I recall he claimed so in
an interview from Pando but I can't find the link.
~~~
foobarqux
Did you actually try or that some kind of weird figure of speech?
It's the very first result on Youtube for "Pando Thiel", 6 minutes in.
[http://youtu.be/p6taTMa4nls?t=5m44s](http://youtu.be/p6taTMa4nls?t=5m44s)
~~~
olalonde
I didn't try... was on my mobile phone and crappy 2g connection. Thanks for
linking :) I'm a big fan of Peter Thiel, hope my comment didn't come across as
negative.
------
quartzmo
Thanks for the excerpt. It's not long, but I enjoyed the writing, it's crisp,
fast-paced, and covers a lot of ground. (I imagine Peter's lectures to be
similar!) This gave me the confidence to order the book.
------
uladzislau
The course (CS183) which this book is based on was outstanding and the authors
claim that they extended and improved on the course. I'm looking forward to
the book.
------
eXpl0it3r
Can someone explain to the people that don't understand who "Peter Thiel" is
and what this new book is about? I hope, I don't offend anyone by not knowing,
I usually just use Hacker News to get some News articles and am not too much
involved with YC and the whole community behind HN...
~~~
gorkemyurt
Facebook made him really rich
[http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/20/technology/facebook-peter-
th...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/20/technology/facebook-peter-thiel/)
~~~
skizm
Damn he sold all those shares at the bottom of the dip. $19 - $20... facebook
is now at $74. His shares would be worth more than $3.5 billion now if he held
on to them. Of course the market could behave differently if he holds, but
still fun to imagine.
~~~
staunch
He also managed a $8 billion dollar hedge fund that failed spectacularly.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital)
~~~
eruditely
So what? It's a few big ones that matter. Why all this negativity?
~~~
staunch
He claimed to know things about the economy and raised $8 billion to
capitalize on his ideas. Turns out he was full of shit. He had no idea what he
was doing and lost huge amounts of money over years. He wasn't just bad he was
arrogantly clueless.
Now he's claiming to know things about the economy again.
~~~
DaniFong
Ok, so usually I really like your posts, and I understand how you can believe
this because it is written across the internet in some difficult to assess
ways, but I believe you are very mistaken about this.
During and after the liquidity crunch of 2008 and the recession, Clarium
reduced in capital dramatically primarily because people were withdrawing
their capital, not due to losses. _He did not lose $8 billion,_ instead, most
of the capital under management was drawn down, as it was with many hedge
funds.
The annual returns of Clarium were volatile, but overall, impressive. Here is
a list for the returns pre 2011 (after which reporting was kept to the
remaining investors -- rumor is that it has done well but this is not public).
2002: 29.4%
2003: 65.6%
2004: 5.6%
2005: 57.1%
2006: -7.8%
2007: 40.3%
2008: -4.5%
2009: -25%
2010: -23%
From:
[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-M95ijQ3Mq0/Sw0Tax_AoTI/AAAAAAAAAC...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-M95ijQ3Mq0/Sw0Tax_AoTI/AAAAAAAAACU/kZslYccJB4c/s1600/Clarium+3.jpg)
[http://www.hedgefundinsight.org/the-limits-to-fundamental-
co...](http://www.hedgefundinsight.org/the-limits-to-fundamental-conviction-
clarium-capital)
and from:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-12/clarium-hedge-
fund-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-12/clarium-hedge-fund-
shrinks-90-as-thiel-has-third-losing-year.html)
Here is a good chart, for pre-2010 data.
[http://www.marketfolly.com/2009/02/peter-thiels-clarium-
capi...](http://www.marketfolly.com/2009/02/peter-thiels-clarium-capital-
ken.html)
Even despite the tough losses sustained through 2008, 2009 and 2010, the fund
returned, net, from October 2002 (fund start date) to the end of 2010, 2.53x.
That's an 8.25 year, aggregated annual return of 11.9%.
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281.294+*+1.656+*+1.05...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281.294+*+1.656+*+1.056+*+1.571+*+%281+-+0.078%29+*+1.403+*+%281+-+0.045%29+*+%281+-+0.25%29+*+%281+-+0.23%29%29%5E%281%2F8.25%29)
For comparison, the S&P 500 over the same time period rose from a deep dip of
about 800 to about 1260, a rise of 57%, for an aggregate annual return of
about 5.6%.
It was volatile too, without the strong gains to buffer the losses. If you had
your money in Clarium the entire time, you'd be well ahead, even net of fees
-- you would have more than doubled your money (2.14x return net). Comparing
the two cases, if you held Clarium vs S&P 500, you'd have 36% more capital.
Hardly a fund that's full of it, and has no idea what it's doing.
The tragedy of Clarium is that money flooded in in 2007 and early 2008, and
then largely exited during 2009 and 2010, forcing a major unwind at the worst
time. Macro-economically, Clarium was correct about the recovery being slow
and drawn out. But the financial world, in particular their bets against the
dollar, were not born out in that timeframe.
~~~
staunch
Financial results are the objective test of an investment firm but I'm not
sure you're factoring in the risk involved in what Clarium was doing. Or how
wrong their bets were.
And I do know that Clarium is probably one of the better hedge funds by any
measure. Peter Theil seems like an ethical and good person. That's so rare in
that world it's probably the reason he was able to raise money without any
expertise in trading.
------
icpmacdo
Awesome I really want to read this book but it is sadly over 30$ up here in
Canada.
~~~
porter
My god man, this guy just put everything he knows about startups into a book.
Years of hard-earned experience wrapped up in a neat little package just for
you. And all for only $30. If you get just one insight out of this book it
will pay for itself a thousand times over. Stop complaining about the price
and just buy it.
~~~
JetSpiegel
I have some Kool-Aid for sale, do you want to buy it too?
~~~
porter
If you can show me how your kool-aid will help me or why your kool-aid matters
to anybody, then yes, I'd be happy to buy your kool-aid. Welcome to
capitalism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RethinkDB 1.15: Geospatial queries - coffeemug
http://rethinkdb.com/blog/1.15-release/
======
CitizenKane
I've made a comment to this effect before, but seriously do yourself a favor
and check out Rethink. It's been great to work with, and has been 100% rock
solid. The only complaint I have is keeping up with the change of pace for
everything that's going on has been tricky ;).
It's great and fun to build apps with and all of the guys at Rethink are
incredibly helpful (even with my sometimes naive questions).
~~~
evmar
I tried it out recently. I discovered that the Go client has some important
issues.
[https://github.com/dancannon/gorethink/issues/125](https://github.com/dancannon/gorethink/issues/125)
I feel bad to bring this up because it is not the rethinkdb authors' fault (as
this is a third-party client) but from this user's perspective it took me some
debugging before I realized that rethinkdb wasn't necessarily slow.
~~~
_dancannon
Yeah there was an unfortunate bug with how I was encoding values being sent to
the database. I understand that it was frustrating and fixes should be coming
soon.
That being said this update brings a couple of great new features and I look
forward to see what else comes.
~~~
troyk
Thank you making a go driver, I've played with it a bit and the first thing
that jumped out at me is the documents passed to and from the database use a
special "gorethink" tag instead of the built-in "json" tags. I thought this
was odd since rethinkdb is a JSON database.
~~~
_dancannon
Yeah this is because I encode from json string > interface{} > final data
structure. This is so that I can process any psuedo-types such as times.
I am now looking to do this whole process in a much simpler way in the next
release which will solve the issue mentioned by evmar. I think its also worth
mentioning that both RethinkDB and my driver are not yet production ready but
both projects are getting there.
------
coffeemug
Hey guys, slava @ rethink here. I'll be around all day on HN to answer
questions.
We'll be doing a live webcast[1] today at 1:30pm PT showcasing geo features
and some example apps you can build with them, would love for you to join us!
[1] [http://www.meetup.com/RethinkDB-Bay-Area-Meetup-
Group/events...](http://www.meetup.com/RethinkDB-Bay-Area-Meetup-
Group/events/207435042/)
~~~
jimktrains2
Some of your documentation is 404ing.
How many dimensions are supported?
Also, does this support many projections, or just a few. I see "geoSystem:
'WGS84'" which isn't an EPGS identifier. Along those lines, are distance
calculations done on a geodesic, a plane, or is that configurable (some
projections are a planer, others aren't).
Also, what does this mean? geometry.distance(geometry[, {geoSystem: 'WGS84',
unit: 'm'}]) Does this do a correct interpolation of degrees to meters along
the path (again based on the projection) or is there a fixed constant?
EDIT: Are there commands to export WKT or WKB?
~~~
coffeemug
_> Some of your documentation is 404ing._
Thanks, will fix momentarily! EDIT: fixed, thanks!
_> How many dimensions are supported?_
Two dimensions. The commands are designed primarily with Earth geometry in
mind to help people build location-aware apps.
_> Also, does this support many projections, or just a few._
It supports WGS84 (a commonly used ellipsoid model) or a unit sphere.
Currently you can't use a plane. Check out
[http://rethinkdb.com/api/javascript/get_nearest/](http://rethinkdb.com/api/javascript/get_nearest/)
for an example.
_> Does this do a correct interpolation of degrees to meters along the path_
The implementation is based on the S2 library
([https://code.google.com/p/s2-geometry-
library/](https://code.google.com/p/s2-geometry-library/)) also used by
PostGIS, which AFAIK does spherical linear interpolation.
_> Are there commands to export WKT or WKB?_
No, currently only GeoJSON (which you could later post-process and export to
other formats with existing tools). This is a great idea, though, if there is
more demand for it we'll definitely add other exporters.
EDIT: all great questions, I opened an issue in the doc repo
([https://github.com/rethinkdb/docs/issues/521](https://github.com/rethinkdb/docs/issues/521))
-- we'll address all of these in the docs.
~~~
jimktrains2
> Two dimensions. The commands are designed primarily with Earth geometry
Earth has elevations:)
~~~
coffeemug
Yes, though most location-aware apps typically don't deal with those (yet :))
It would be a great addition, though.
~~~
jimktrains2
Very true:) I just found how you phrased it amusing:)
I don't mean to sound disparaging, for it's use-case it's a great addition:)
------
giulianob
I really appreciate their transparency with their stability report (
[http://rethinkdb.com/stability/](http://rethinkdb.com/stability/) ). It's
even linked right on the front page and shows what type of issues you can
expect at scale.
------
estefan
I wish every software project had a FAQ like this:
[http://rethinkdb.com/faq/](http://rethinkdb.com/faq/)
------
Animats
MySQL has had geospatial extensions for years. They even work. The underlying
table format is an R-tree, which, unfortunately, is only available for MyISAM.
Point in rectangle is very efficient, and other queries that can be expressed
as multiple point in rectangle tests are reasonably efficient. "Nearest" is
not efficient, but for many purposes ("find nearest McDonalds"), generating a
query rectangle for a reasonable driving distance, then sorting by distance,
is effective.
~~~
Gigablah
MySQL didn't properly support point-in-polygon until 5.6 though (before that
it used a MBR and you had to hack around it with a stored procedure)
------
altschuler
What's with the red ball always rolling by in the RethinkDB videos? :)
~~~
jaz46
Joey from RethinkDB here. In our first release video(v1.5), one of our
engineers rolled the ball across the office as a prank. The ball seems to
roll, stop, then magically continue rolling again. Since then, it has become a
tradition.
------
spb
Does Rethink allow arbitrary keys? Looking at the serialization format, it
looks like it has special $-surrounded keys, but I don't know if it also does
some kind of transformation so I can actually _use_ that kind of key name
without it being recognized as a special key by Rethink.
~~~
coffeemug
Yes, it allows arbitrary keys. The only one that's reserved by the database is
`$reql_type$`, and it's used for serialization of data structures that don't
have a native JSON representation (time, binary objects, geometry objects,
etc.)
~~~
spb
So if I try to define `$reql_type$`, it will throw an error? That means that I
can't store arbitrary data / use user data as a key. Can't something be done
about that at the driver / protocol level (eg. translating literal '$' to '$$'
and back again)?
------
imslavko
It is not clear from the changelog for me: do geospatial queries support
"changes feed" introduced in recent releases of RethinkDB? i.e. can I get
notification every time a new document within a range from a point appears in
the table? (w/o filtering data in application level)
~~~
neumino
Yes you can with a query like
r.table("users").changes().filter(function(change) { return
change("new_val")("location").distance( r.point(<someLongitude>,
<someLatitude>).lt(<someDistance>) })
------
jchrisa
Kudos for Rethink getting into geo. GeoCouch has been a huge adoption driver
for public data applications.
I think the real killer mix is geo + sync (because then you can trivially
share civic data). Maybe someday we'll see sync from Rethink?
~~~
coffeemug
What do you mean by sync? Something like
[http://rethinkdb.com/docs/changefeeds](http://rethinkdb.com/docs/changefeeds),
or do you mean something different?
~~~
apendleton
Probably Couch-style master-master replication (and an accompanying protocol
that allowed alternate implementations to sync in the same fashion with Couch,
e.g., PouchDB).
------
jrobn
Any plans for temporal support similar to what postgres does with range types
and exclusion constraints? This would be a great addition to Rethink.
~~~
coffeemug
Yes, this is definitely on the roadmap (though no ETA yet). Lots of people
have asked for this, so it will almost certainly make it into RethinkDB some
time next year.
------
goldenkey
I've continually been impressed by the pace at which RethinkDB improves in
both performance and developer usefulness. Keep it up!
------
cdnsteve
Is anyone offering this in a managed capacity like DynamoDB type setup in AWS
us-east? If so please let me know.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fake Boarding Pass App Gets Hacker into Fancy Airline Lounges - smn1234
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/fake-boarding-pass-app-gets-hacker-fancy-airline-lounges/
======
netsharc
Dear Wired, it's not QR, it's Aztec Code
([http://www.howtobarcode.net/howtobarcode/barcode-
types/image...](http://www.howtobarcode.net/howtobarcode/barcode-
types/images/2d-barcd-image.png)) Call it a 2d barcode if you want to
generalize it.
------
eatbitseveryday
Reminds me of when skiplagged[1] became available, exploiting pricing
differences for long flights of unpopular trips but hopping out half-way
through. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many more such simple hacks
available to exploit in the airline industry.
[1] [https://skiplagged.com/](https://skiplagged.com/)
------
DoubleGlazing
Don't know how well this would work with British Airways or Aer Lingus. No
matter what your boarding pass says, if your name isn't on their pre-printed
list you wont be getting in.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Build Your Own Intellectual Oasis - mastazi
https://quillette.com/2020/01/04/build-your-own-intellectual-oasis/
======
jsilence
Because it is possible!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U. of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory to close after 120 years - wglb
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-yerkes-observatory-closing-20180308-story.html
======
closeparen
Yerkes is a special place. I had the privilege of spending the night there as
a student, and while I know nothing about astronomy, it was one of the
highlights of my undergrad. The gorgeous grounds, the fairytale/museum
architecture, the creepy catwalks and spiral staircases connecting the
telescopes, the computer room filled with VAXen (only time I’ve seen a VT200
in person), and the welcoming staff made it a hell of a trip. Yerkes embodies
the hacker ethos. There’s automation around each telescope still in operation
that’s clearly built by staff familiar with Arduinos and home automation
rather than some government contractor. The platforms of the domes rotate; one
of them is rigged with a handheld barcode scanner to find its place among the
labels taped to the outside wall. Clever mixes of the original early-20th-
century electrical control panels and 2010s electronics abound.
My friends in astrophysics have worked on equipment in its basement machine
shop that is now in space. All of them credit Yerkes with motivating them to
enter or stay in the field. There is enormous backlash on social media, and a
glimmer of hope that Yerkes might operate in substantially the same way
independently or under different ownership.
I’m deeply skeptical of historic preservation, but if there were ever a place
that needed to be landmarked, it’s this one.
~~~
Jun8
Can you provide links to discussion on plans to keep it operating, e.g. under
different ownership? Is there anything the Chicago HN community can help with?
~~~
closeparen
Most of the student outreach is a pathos appeal under #saveyerkes on Facebook
and Twitter, but this comment from one of the directors on its Facebook page
indicates that there might be more substantive plans in the works [0].
[0]
[https://www.facebook.com/YerkesObservatory/posts/10156061540...](https://www.facebook.com/YerkesObservatory/posts/10156061540746420?comment_id=10156062951446420&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D)
------
auntienomen
Rather sad news. I hope they do something better with the place than build
condos. It's a gorgeous tract and a gorgeous building.
------
bobochan
That is a shame. My great-grandfather was an astronomer there when it opened
in 1897. It has a long history of important research.
~~~
rmaus
Fascinating, did he work there long enough to know Edwin Hubble?
~~~
bobochan
Well, after doing a little more research it seems that if they had any
overlap, it would have been exceedingly brief. Hubble was working on his first
paper at Yerkes in 1915 just at a time when a number of older astronomers,
including my great-grandfather, were retiring.
------
blacksqr
Should be turned into a hacker space for amateur astronomers.
------
toomuchtodo
Is anyone interested in having an HN meetup for a science tour prior to
closure? I will be taking my family next month, but wouldn't mind arranging
something for those HN readers in the area.
~~~
hdevarajan
I would and kind of you to propose.
------
ncraig
That's the end of an era - Yerkes has the largest refracting telescope ever
built.
------
bg4
Could they turn it into a museum and planetarium? Such a beautiful building.
------
Jun8
This Chicago Tribune article from 5 years ago
([http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-
ye...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-yerkes-
observatory-20130213_1_yerkes-observatory-research-telescopes-astronomy))
gives more details and actually made me quite pessimistic about the future of
the building. It says the yearly costs were (then) $400k and that the
University floated plans to convert the area and building into luxury condos,
only stopped by the local community. Whenever there’s so much potential for
making money (on the order of tens of millions of dollars) it’s pretty much
inevitable that it will happen sooner or later.
------
Jun8
As others have said this is incredibly sad, I guess the best case scenario at
this point is for it to be a condo, at least the great building can be saved.
But what really puzzles me is that how this great resource cannot be put to
better use. Yes, the telescope may "no longer contribute directly to the
research mission" but it still blows your $300 home telescope _out of the
water_! I, for one, would pay at least $250 a night for a modest room if I am
allowed to use that beast (with supervision, of course). I guess there would
be tons of amateur astronomers who would feel the same.
I understand U of C does not have the bandwidth to do this, but why doesn't a
local startup/philanthropist/whatever step up?
------
astrodust
It's too bad that space-based telescopes are so rare. Imagine if an
observatory like this was just an uplink to a satellite in space. That
preserves the history and institution while keeping it current in terms of
technology.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Make your AngularJS, EmberJS, or BackboneJS website crawlable by Google - chaddeshon
http://www.BromBone.com<p>I posted “Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users” 3 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5386966). Over time, it grew to 150 (free) users, but retention was pretty much zero. I was trying to cast a wide net and offer a generic “headless browser as a service”. It turned out I had make a service that was a little helpful to many people, but didn't really solve anyone's problem completely.<p>I finally took the advise offered in that thread. I focused on a problem I understood, and solved it completely instead of just offering a helpful tool. Instead of a “hosted headless browser” BromBone is now a complete solution for people who want their javascript websites indexed by Google.<p><i></i><i></i><i></i><p>BromBone.com - The javascript SEO problem has been solved.<p>Google can't index javascript driven webpages. The accepted solutions have been:
1. Run your own PhantomJS server to render snapshots and serve the snapshots to Google (a real pain).
2. Accept that your pages won't be listed on Google.<p>With BromBone you don't have to either. You just have to make a small change to your .htaccess file.<p>BromBone crawls your websites, runs your javascript in a web browser, and saves the rendered page. When Google crawls your site, proxy the requests to BromBone, and we'll send the rendered snapshot to Google.<p>Smile. Your javascript driven website is on Google.
======
tech-dragon
You have me wondering about the feasibility of offering this as a CloudFlare
app.
If I was able to throw up a little ajax/client side JS driven app at a domain,
throw CloudFlare over it (like I usually do for most smaller domains I own)
and then have it all happen without even needing to change that .htaccess
file, then your onto something even better.
I also think the pricing model may need some work. Per page seems like it
could cut you off from some potential customers. For instance, I'm already
thinking of a blog engine I wanted to try out more thoroughly by making it the
one i use on my new blog but wasnt prepared to loose "google-ability". I Would
like to be able to use a service like this but when I do my mental math it
doesn't add up. I wanted to use a blog engine that will produce a large number
of pages by pulling in third party service activity into my site. So its not
100% what I want, but damn its tempting.
If your pricing it to cover costs, might I suggest looking to optimize your
stack to bring down those costs down?. If you can cut the price and make it
more of a 'yeah for $X its easier than doing it myself' you'll get more
takers. Right now it feels that your current lowest price per month is too
high for a lot of devs to decide the $ is a throwaway expense to save them
time. Id hazard, below $25, and probably with an order of magnitude more
pages.
All that said... I may still try it out. It looks interesting.
~~~
chaddeshon
Thanks for your suggestion about CloudFlare. I am looking into it.
------
tocomment
Perhaps you could use crawl frequency in your pricing. For example daily (or
even hourly) crawls for the top tier plan.
Most people probably don't have that many pages so I'm thinking the existing
pricing tiers might not work well?
And maybe offer a free plan that only crawls your site 3x per year or
something really slow like that.
~~~
chaddeshon
I almost did that. Ultimately I decided to take an "it just works" philosophy
to crawl frequency (unless you need realtime).
Would you segment the number of pages differently? I think some sites with a
lot of user generated content might actually have a ton of pages. But it is
hard to get real numbers.
~~~
tocomment
Maybe Patio11 will chime in with some ideas for your pricing plans? Everything
I know I got from reading his comments/blogs.
(I think he searches for mentions of his username, so the bat signal is
officially turned on :-)
~~~
patio11
They're undepriced, but I think the first problem is going to be going from 0
users to 10 users (bang down doors) rather than extracting the maximum proper
value from those first ten users. The optimal pricing strategy will still lead
to him having 0 customers until he figures out who needs this and how to reach
them repeatedly.
~~~
chaddeshon
You're right. Getting these first ten is _SO_ hard.
After I have ten customers, I will have much more information to base my
prices and differentiators on.
------
chaddeshon
Clickable: [http://www.brombone.com](http://www.brombone.com)
------
tocomment
Do you think there would be any demand for a separate service that makes it
easy to screen scrape javascript heavy sites? (might be legal issues there
though?)
(Sorry for all the comments, this concept intrigues me)
~~~
chaddeshon
I don't know. That was brought up in my previous posting, and I've had some
people email me about it. It's hard for me to tell. I'm just not in that
community enough to understand their needs.
I'm afraid that every scraping project is just enough different that it would
be hard to write something that offered value to a lot of people.
~~~
tocomment
That's probably a good point. I guess if someone wants to screenscape a
dynamic JS heavy page they'd probably want to interact with the page.
------
tocomment
Marketing idea: How about you offer a free version but insert a link back to
brombone in the crawable/rendered version?
As long as you were very upfront about it, it might not be too offensive.
~~~
swah
Wouldn't that blacklist his own site?
~~~
tocomment
Why would it? I guess I don't know a lot about SEO.
~~~
wikwocket
Some people think that embedding a link to your site in a web product/plugin
you distribute can lead to bad things, especially if it is not a nofollow link
and your plugin is used by nefarious sites.
[http://www.jitbit.com/news/184-how-google-authorship-and-
pen...](http://www.jitbit.com/news/184-how-google-authorship-and-penguin-have-
killed-our-traffic/) has a bit about the Penguin algorithm and this effect.
------
tocomment
That sounds really useful! Will google penalize for this though?
~~~
chaddeshon
This is actually the method that Google recommends for these AJAX powered
websites. [https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-
crawling/](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/)
I am just letting people out source the hard work. Since the rendered page
will be proxied from BromBone, there will be no way to tell that the same it
rendered the file instead of the normal webserver.
~~~
wikwocket
That's very useful info; I had no idea. I thought the Google crawlers were
basically headless Chrome bots so I wouldn't have expected this.
Do you mention this on your site? Seems like a good endorsement, "This is the
correct way to get indexed, as per Google!"
~~~
chaddeshon
I have a section about that. I hope people will read it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the world will change as computers spread into everyday objects - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/09/12/how-the-world-will-change-as-computers-spread-into-everyday-objects
======
modeless
I've said this before, but the "Internet of Things" is a bad vision for the
future. Dystopian, almost. I don't want every little thing to be a computer
running software that is buggy, out of date, insecure, out of my control, and
constantly pestering me for updates.
What I want is _one_ smart device: a robot that can operate all my non-smart
devices. The robot can set the thermostat, unlock the door, flip the light
switches, do the laundry and the dishes, monitor the house while I'm away,
etc. That's the goal we should be working towards. IoT should be seen as, at
best, a stopgap solution. It's not a desirable end state.
~~~
EvanAnderson
Here's the utopia I'd love: The thermostat / door lock / light would present a
simple documented interface exposing all the functionality available from the
physical device. I'd even be okay if it was delivered via Wi-Fi or ZigBee
(though I'd really prefer RS-488, RS-232, or wired Ethernet w/ PoE).
No manufacturer will do this because it limits their ability to engineer-in
planned obsolescence, vendor lock-in, and recurring revenue "cloud" business
models.
There are commercial and industrial-grade devices that do what I want, but
they're priced for their market segment and, infuriatingly, their protocols
are needlessly baroque (MODBUS, BACNET, et. al.) or proprietary.
~~~
leppr
We need the Unix philosophy in the physical world.
Our multitude of small devices themselves can stay "dumb", but it'd be a huge
missed opportunity to totally cut them off from the software world.
A robot turning knobs and pushing buttons as grandparent seems to suggest is a
romantic vision that doesn't hold up well to the real world.
------
titzer
"Such a world will bring many benefits. Consumers will get convenience, and
products that can do things non-computerised versions cannot. Amazon’s Ring
smart doorbells, for instance, come equipped with motion sensors and video
cameras. Working together, they can also form what is, in effect, a private
CCTV network, allowing the firm to offer its customers a “digital
neighbourhood-watch” scheme and pass any interesting video along to the
police."
This is the best they could come up with as an example for the "many
benefits"? Tilt your head only slightly privacy-leaning and this looks like a
terrifying dystopia. Of course the Orwellian nightmare won't come to "law
abiding" middle and upper-class citizens, who will most be tracked as
unwitting lab rats by mega tech firms intent on understanding every aspect of
human life in order to monetize it, usually through ads and Chinese-style
digital karma, but the marginalized groups--ethnic minorities, political
dissidents, and the "mentally unstable" will be persecuted and hounded
endlessly by digital means. With mass shootings all over the US, it's only a
matter of time until they weaponize the already-built surveillance network to
red-flag people. As usual, our own fear of each other is way out ahead, on the
leading edge of technology.
~~~
avgDev
Oof private CCTV network, so they can sell the live video feeds. Imagine the
possibilities with face recognition. Wanna follow your wife everywhere? Want
to follow anyone you want to stalk? No problem for this fee you will have
access to our video feed and face recognition software, which will enable you
to track anyone and anywhere.
Want their DNA? No problem. Want their interests? Sleeping schedule? Work
schedule? If you got the money we got the stuff.
Future is looking really interesting.
~~~
redisman
Think about the botnets you can build from cheap IoT with lousy security to
basically control billions of devices in peoples homes.
~~~
zipwitch
Do you want a _hot_ shower after your long day? Touch here to transfer $1 to
the malware that just hijacked your plumbing. Try to remove it, and it will do
$5000 in damage. A professional home IT security fix will run $1000 and take 3
days, while you camp in your back yard or live out of a motel.
------
amflare
Shockingly, this was published last week. I was expecting a mid-90's/early-00s
article.
I don't understand why this is an article. Its basically saying "Imagine if
the Internet of Things.... wait for it.... had more Things!" Of course you'll
see an increase in efficiency, and the balance of power will shift toward
larger corporations capable of harnessing said efficiency. This has been
happening for 15 years. This is not news to anyone.
~~~
Animats
_Shockingly, this was published last week. I was expecting a mid-90
's/early-00s article._
That's the impression I had. Home automation hasn't gone very far, and seems
to be more trouble than it's worth. Now you have to worry about your "cloud
home animation provider" going out of business, or changing their business
model, or just dropping support on your home devices. Someone faced with
Google dropping support on something recently wrote "My house won't work any
more". "Unauthorised Bread" by Cory Doctorow is close to reality now.
There's the Cameras Everywhere thing, with Ring and that crowd. That's the
telescreen from 1984, privatized.
None of this stuff does any much. All sensing, no actuation. Power windows for
houses, for example, are expensive and rare. Even HVAC systems for houses
which have a controlled damper for outside air are rare. The robot vacuum
cleaners still aren't good enough to just ignore and let them do their job.
Most of the ideas for the Internet of Things can be seen in the 1950s
Whirlpool Kitchen of the Future. Today, you can really buy most of that stuff.
Back then, though, Big Brother wasn't part of the package.
[1] [https://www.inverse.com/article/12064-we-ve-finally-
arrived-...](https://www.inverse.com/article/12064-we-ve-finally-arrived-in-
the-1950s-kitchen-of-the-future)
------
neonate
[http://archive.is/PxJo9](http://archive.is/PxJo9)
------
jaclaz
What I find missing is that the implication of this:
>The cheaper models in Tesla’s line-up have parts of their batteries disabled
by the car’s software in order to limit their range. At the tap of a keyboard
in Palo Alto, the firm was able to remove those restrictions and give drivers
temporary access to the full power of their batteries.
has not been contemplated.
It plainly means that someone in Palo Alto can also _add_ restrictions
(possibly even stopping the car altogether) and that since everything is
remote actuated possibly _someone else_ might do the same (individually or per
area, etc.).
------
noja
Less hand waving, more real examples please Economist.
~~~
beerdoggie
Agreed, this article seems like it was written 5 years ago.
------
zefrenedior
I think every day products will have increased use, life, and other benefits
being able to have a IoT device that enhances our lives as the current
products are just there in our lives.
------
bambax
I don't want Elon Musk high on some substance, being able to control the car I
drive. Or anyone, really. While it's arguably hard to make your own car, it's
trivial to make an ebike, that nobody can control except you.
It's trivial to not rely on cloud providers for anything. I can store mp3s (or
mkvs, etc.) on a NAS and play them from a computer or a Pi. I can certainly
flip switches to turn lights on or off in my house.
In fact, most "home automation" sounds a little absurd. If you can program it
yourself and you like it, good for you. But to rely on a remote provider that
may or may not work when you most need it, or who may "discontinue" devices
you rely on, is irrational.
It seems most people are willing to give away control for the smallest gain in
convenience. We should resist more.
~~~
Drod718
What an asinine way to begin a comment attempting to explain your position. I
think it’s safe to say that nobody wishes another human “high on some
substance” has the ability to disrupt the control of their vehicle. Where did
you even pull that from?
That being said, the people who “should resist more” are the ones don’t find
it “trivial” to not rely on cloud service providers. They grab IoT products
like a Ring doorbell off the shelf and install it one and done.
~~~
bambax
Elon Musk is often high and even when not, says things that are completely
unacceptable. Look them up. He's loved here on HN. But even if you do love him
you shouldn't give him control over your life.
Why does anyone need a Ring doorbell? Can't you just stand up and answer the
door? I don't understand any of this (I do understand I'm in the wrong forum
for saying so).
~~~
Drod718
We can agree to disagree over Elon Musk, but I can give you a good use case
for Ring off the top of my head:
My parents bought a Ring (I am heavily against it for every reason you wrote,
plus I can’t stand the idea of a company owning my family’s video footage, I
asked them to let me set up some sort of CCTV system but they just want the
easy way)and it provides them with a quick, cheap motion activated video feed
of their home straight to their phones from anywhere in the world. This isn’t
even a doorbell function, the thing can be configured to detect motion over a
selection of distances and send you a notification straight to a live video
feed.
Sure that can be manually set up but for a lot of people who aren’t too tech
savvy, grabbing something like a Ring from bestbuy is quick and easy to get
running. Maybe the issue could be helped if a someone sold something like an
arduino based doorbell / cam, with easy to use software or an app like Ring
that didn’t call back home.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unboxing in Guile - jsnell
https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/01/19/unboxing-in-guile
======
marktangotango
This is an excellent post, I found the documentation around Guile
implementation[1] to have a lot of really valuable information about the
implementation details of dynamically typed languages. I highly recommend
perusing it to anyone who's interested.
[1] [http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#Guile-
Im...](http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#Guile-
Implementation)
~~~
nickik
Im building a VM and I am reading this blog (and related resources)
constantly. Its great.
------
vkazanov
An excellent post, and a great blog for anybody interested in modern dynamic
language implementations
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Aza Raskin Leaving Mozilla - twapi
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/leaving-mozilla/
======
baran
Aza is correct. The fundamental problem inhibiting good personal health is
lack of timely feedback. In healthcare, feedback always happens too late. The
beer I drink tonight doesn't affect me until my liver fails. Overeating
doesn't become a problem until your are stuck in a vicious cycle.
With that said, for the majority of the healthy population, the main indicator
of health is weight. Thus for the personal health space, the holy grail is a
device which automatically measures the caloric input/output. When I say
automatic, I really mean automatic. No writing/taking pictures/tweeting about
your food or exercise. Think a watch that tells you how many more calories you
can eat in the day. Anything more complicated will fail.
Aza does point out an example population which would be assisted by better
technology - individuals with chronic health problems. These people are faced
with their disease everyday, whether they want to think about it or not, so
they have the most to gain from new technology. There is a niche in improving
the "diabetes diary", but in my mind the real power comes from a complete
feedback loop. One which encourages care providers (physicians, nurses, etc.)
to be more involved in managing their conditions. Think about giving your
diabetes diary to your physician. Patterns would emerge for the physicians
that would not be seen by the patient. This data could then be the catalyst
for change in how the patient manages their disease.
The problem right now is that no personal health system exists with connects
patients and providers. The data which resides in your medical record is
locked into proprietary systems which are vary reluctant to "open" data.
However, the landscape is beginning to change. Industry is realizing a the
game-changing health applications need the underlying data which is being
housed in clinical institutions to function optimally. Check out SMArt
Platforms if your interested in this push.
Summary
Be very careful in the personal health space. Two things I've learned after
being in the industry for a while (1) it's very difficult to get people to
care enough about their health to take action on it and (2) the most useful
applications are the ones which connect patients and care providers which is
difficult due to lack of data liquidity.
~~~
replicatorblog
The other big problem with healthcare is the opaque nest of regulation, data
privacy laws, physician buy-in, retail distribution, insurance coverage, and
myriad other challenges that get in the way of good design.
There is an elephant's graveyard of cool medical concepts, products, and
initiatives that have died because they didn't factor in the realities of
medical product design and instead focused on disruptive UI/Business
Model/etc.
My company is working on a competitive product
([http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662351/blood-glucose-monitor-
fo...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662351/blood-glucose-monitor-for-the-
iphone)) so I know how much of a challenge it can be. Good luck to them, the
health market needs energy, hopefully they will expend it in the right
directions.
------
shalmanese
I'm friend with both Sutha and Aza and I've been following the progress of
this startup from week 1. I'm incredibly hard to impress when it comes to
startup ideas but this was one I believed in from the start. The idea of using
the smartphone as the new interface for your health information is one with
almost limitless potential and these are to wicked smart guys who have the
execution ability to pull it off.
Mark my word, these guys aren't playing around. They're trying to build the
next billion dollar company.
------
nodata
The Massive Health logo is the Fedora Project logo.
~~~
brandon
I noticed a similarity, too. But it's just that, a similarity.
Note that the Fedora guys superimpose an F over a tilted lemniscate where the
MH guys are superimposing a plus. Nevermind the color differences and lack of
a teardrop background on the MH logo.
~~~
jackowayed
Also, the Fedora logo doesn't spin when you click it.
------
noidi
This is a minor nit to pick, but why is the link to their twitter account on
their website a button? Maybe I'm not representative of the common user, but I
subconciously expect buttons to do something (e.g. tweet the address of their
site on my behalf), as opposed to taking me somewhere (like a hyperlink). Like
I said, this is a very small thing, but it stuck out to me on the website of a
company focused on user experience and interaction design.
------
forsaken
Glad to see startups trying to solve the big annoying problems in society.
Banking (Bank Simple) and Health Care are the big ones that I know about, but
I'd love to know about more.
~~~
fredoliveira
I too am glad to see banking and health be tackled by startups. I also think
projects like Votizen may have an important impact on politics which is a
great cause too.
Interestingly, I think the problem Google has been trying to solve for 11+
years now is (while certainly not as noble as health) quite important. The
ability to find (just about) anything in under a second is amazing - and it
pretty much defines the current generation of people. It ultimately means that
you are not limited by your access to data, but what you do with it. The
impact on innovation/education and most other areas is huge.
I would say one of the major problems we still have as a society is
communication. For those of us in 1st world countries this may not sound like
reality at all, but there's people who have no way to access the internet,
talk to relatives or do emergency (tele)communications. This isn't necessarily
an easy problem for a startup, but the road to free, ubiquitous communication
is only starting to be paved now.
~~~
jasonlotito
> I too am glad to see banking and health be tackled by startups.
Which startups are working to tackle the banking problem?
~~~
ptio
<https://banksimple.com/>
~~~
jasonlotito
Will be interesting to watch that. Thanks! I had forgotten about them.
Any others?
Edit: > We are not a bank. We work with partner banks (soon to be announced)
to provide FDIC insured products.
Still interesting, but less so.
------
endtime
Aza, if you're reading this, you might want to take a look at GlucoVista - I
think they're trying to solve the problem you describe for diabetics.
Also, your website is beautiful, but for some reason it puts me in mind
of...the Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil? I'm not sure, but something
along those lines. Not the best association for a health company.
~~~
ra88it
I agree about the website. It is beautiful but very dark and mildly
depressing.
~~~
j2d2j2d2
I'd like to see the textures applied to the common red and white. Perhaps the
hospital colors can be used while not feeling like you're in a hospital.
~~~
j2d2j2d2
The more I think about it, the more I think the dark red makes me think of
blood.
------
dmpayton
I'm also in the process of building a diabetes related started, and I'm both
scared and excited to see someone else tackling this problem.
Aza, if you're reading this, I'd love to talk! Contact info is in my profile.
------
thisisblurry
Good for Aza. I've been following his work over the past few years and he
really seems to be an insanely smart guy with great intuition (his wikipedia
article does a pretty good job of supporting this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin>). I look forward to see what Massive
Health brings to the world. If it's half as good as Aza's design
sensibilities, we're in for a real treat.
------
ariels
Love that smart people are starting to tackle health problems. This is a huge
global issue in need of significant innovation.
~~~
joebananas
You post is dumb as hell.
~~~
fredoliveira
You're exactly the kind of guy I wish was unable to create an account here.
Why is the post dumb? If not health, what would be the most hard pressing
problem our species has? And if you can answer that question, why are you not
trying to solve it and are being a troll on the internet instead? I know this
post itself reads like a flame, but honestly, I worry whenever I see people
whose main purpose here is to dampen the ideas (or opinions) of others.
~~~
lkrubner
I'm just guessing but couldn't "dumb as hell" be a reference to this:
"Love that smart people are starting to tackle health problems"
Smart people have been working on health problems for several centuries.
Severutus worked out the circulatory system in the 1500s, Lister and Pasteur
contributed to the germ theory of illness in the 1800s. Sir Alexander Fleming
developed the basic idea of penicillin in the 1920s. Smart people have been
working on health issues for a very long time.
~~~
randallsquared
I had the same startled reaction to ariels post that joebananas apparently
did. The idea that smart people are _just now_ starting to look at health is
just... astonishing. Fortunately, joebananas took the karma hit to show us all
that HN doesn't think doctors or scientists are "smart people". :/
------
dochtman
I wonder what this means for Panorama... Since it's not close to being done
yet (as far as something like that ever gets done), it could surely use more
of Aza's design chops.
~~~
gjm11
In what sense is it "not close to being done yet"? I'm using 4.0b7 right now;
it has Panorama in it; it works fine.
I dare say it could have more features and/or polish added, but that's true of
almost any software. It's certainly of releasable quality.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
H1-B population Estimate [pdf] - Bang2Bay
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Native%20Docs/USCIS_H-1B_Authorized_to_Work_Report.pdf
======
Bang2Bay
Hard to believe that there is no way for USCIS to get the actual count. Is
this the best they can arrive at given all the technology these H1-Bs develop.
USCIS should hire a couple of H1-Bs to develop techonolgy that tracks tech
workers in real time.
~~~
vsskanth
They can get the actual count. Passport numbers are unique and foreigners have
their assigned alien number in their I-94 record.
They probably just don't know how to do it.
~~~
Bang2Bay
they are with different departments. for security reasons(?) i-94 details may
not be available to USCIS.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Could Be Your Last Day of Life - msurocks
https://medium.com/@msuworld/this-could-be-your-last-day-of-life-51a797fc0a54#.x0b0jjocl
======
maxharris
But it is vastly more likely that it is not, and you are far better off
working, planning and preparing to make your future a better one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US State Dept questions Australia's planned Internet Filtering. - ra
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/stephen-conroy-and-us-at-odds-on-net-filter/story-e6frg996-1225846614780
======
mmastrac
This quote from the article is what bugs me about these national firewalls:
"While considered a noble idea..."
It's not noble at all - it's an outrageous, secretive, information-blocking
filter with no accountability whatsoever. It's a great way for a government to
get its foot in the door into controlling what information is acceptable for
its citizens to consume.
While this sounds like a slippery-slope fallacy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope>), I'd like to point out that
leaked copies of blacklists from Australia, Denmark and Thailand all contain
entries which, IMHO, a reasonable person would not consider worthy of a block:
[http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/denmark-net-
censor...](http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/denmark-net-censorship-
blacklist/)
All of my Google searches for supporting references ended up at
somebodythinkofthechildren.com- I'd recommend reading further there for anyone
interested.
~~~
jstevens85
>with no accountability whatsoever.
The legislation has been delayed so that the government can implement
"transparency and accountability" measures.
>It's a great way for a government to get its foot in the door into
controlling what information is acceptable for its citizens to consume.
Get its foot in the door? The scope of the internet filter censorship will be
identical to what already exists for traditional media - books, magazines,
films and video games. The government already has its foot in the door. What's
happened is that since 1996 they've started to lose grip, and this legislation
is an ineffectual attempt to regain the control the government had 15 years
ago. However, as the trial report and Conroy himself have stated, the filter
will be trivial to bypass.
~~~
nopassrecover
The internet isn't media, it is the domain in which modern citizens conduct
business, exchange ideas and interact with one another. Censoring the internet
isn't like censoring books - it's like policing social clubs, mobile phones,
political organisations and retail stores.
------
ra
I'm very pleased that this topic has been raised on the international agenda.
So far I have only heard meaningful criticism of the plan from within the
Internet industry.... this is so much more important than the man on the
street realises.
~~~
hartror
I'm expecting the filter legislation to be dragged out till after the election
then dumped once they win especially if (let's hope) Fielding loses his seat!.
I think the only reason it has been dragged out this long is face saving on
Conroy's part.
~~~
philk
_I think the only reason it has been dragged out this long is face saving on
Conroy's part._
I'm not so sure about that. Conroy keeps returning to the filter, whereas if
they'd wanted to save face but ditch the policy they'd have just murdered it
by committee somewhere.
~~~
hartror
They know it is unworkable, they know it is a waste of money so as long as
they don't implement it instead of a black mark against them they have the
promise of "protecting children". They can then go into the election with it
as a plus. This is assuming the average aussie is sucked in by this, I have
major sampling bias as I surround myself with techies and left wing nuts so I
haven't a clue.
------
jamesbressi
Ironic we question another country, yet we still haven't put net neutrality to
bed here in the U.S.
------
benologist
.... "for advice".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
People, Places, and Jobs - SeoxyS
http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/
======
graeme
As a Canadian, I have to say that the logic in Paul Graham's essay seemed a
lot clearer to me. We get a lot of good people you guys don't get in.
I'm one, actually. I run a bootstrapped business, and would be contributing a
bunch of revenue to the US treasury if there was a clearcut visa class for me.
As it is I'm happily in Canada, exporting products to Americans and spending
the proceeds in Canada.
There are a LOT of issues with the specific's of Graham's essay, but many
replies treated it as if letting in more people was per se a bad thing, no
matter how it is implemented.
~~~
davidw
> the logic in Paul Graham's essay seemed a lot clearer to me
How so? I wrote this to refute a lot of the mistakes I see on these
immigration discussions, so if you can list specifics, I'd be appreciative.
~~~
graeme
Oops, my own writing wasn't clear. I left off the end of the sentence. I meant
to say: PG's essay was clearer to me, as a Canadian, than it seems to have
been to other people here on Hacker News (who generally oppose it)
Your essay was clear!
------
pcurve
Most people on HN are level minded enough to realize that it is hypocritical
to try to block people from immigration to protect their own jobs.
If you work in SV surrounded by top H1B talent, then you have a myopic view of
how H1B is being used in bottom 80% of the IT talent pool.
The rest of us working in corporate IT know that vast majority of H1B is used
as a vehicle for labor arbitrage.
They are paid prevailing wage? Please. I once had a guy who was getting paid
$29/hour because two consulting companies were double dipping into $78/hour
rate.
~~~
davidw
> Most people on HN are level minded enough to realize that it is hypocritical
> to try to block people from immigration to protect their own jobs.
It's not just hypocritical, it's plain wrong, as I explain in the linked
article.
> They are paid prevailing wage? Please. I once had a guy who was getting paid
> $29/hour because two consulting companies were double dipping into $78/hour
> rate.
So let those people switch jobs easily and they'll start demanding market
rates in short order, if they're worth it. If they're not worth it, so what?
They're not going to "depress wages" any more than having more farm workers is
going to depress programmer wages.
------
mempko
H1-B visa is a source of abuse. They should open the borders, no strings
attached.
Of course it should work the other way too. People need to be free to leave.
However the talk about labor marker is bad. We need to have an economy where,
cooperation, not competition, is rewarded.
I can't wait for the day wages become as antiquated as the idea of kings and
serfs and the idea of a labor market is as strange as the market for slaves.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Curated list of awesome Mastodon-related stuff - j0k3r
https://github.com/tleb/awesome-mastodon
======
shazamfr
Can I create a PR to add some stuff?
~~~
_tleb
Sorry, I didn't see this post. Thanks Github for detailing the traffic infos,
which I just looked at today.
Sure, you can! Or if you want to do it quickly, just share the links you think
of here or in an issue, I can add them myself if you want.
------
carlchenet
Very useful, thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Could Virtual Reality Be the Next Big Thing in Education? - BaptisteGreve
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ptc/2014/08/27/could-virtual-reality-be-the-next-big-thing-in-education/
======
BaptisteGreve
An other article about the subject :
[https://unimersiv.com/blog_post.php?id=15](https://unimersiv.com/blog_post.php?id=15)
I strongly believe that VR could help us learn much faster.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chad Rigetti at Startup School SV 2016 - BIackSwan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzMvG8UO6Eg
======
MCneill27
He says he is from Saskatchewan, but he pronounces Regina wrong. What is going
on here?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system - wallace_f
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/22/us-voting-machine-private-companies-voter-registration
======
tptacek
If you want to have strong opinions about voting security, you should do as
Matt Blaze recommends and sign up to be an election judge. I did it after my
business partner 'lvh did, presumably at Blaze's urging, and he's right: you
really can't comprehend fully what's going on in an election until you've
worked on one firsthand. A lot of things you'd be inclined to think are major
security problems probably aren't, and the converse is also true.
Wherever you are, it's probably easy to sign up (I did online) and they'll
likely pay you to do it.
~~~
the_snooze
Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping, but it really is true. If
you're serious about election security, you'll learn a lot very quickly by
immersing yourself in the process and the people who do it.
For example, one often-overlooked advantage of traditional in-person paper
voting is that you're entitled to spoil your ballot and request a fresh one.
This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a
photo of their ballot as proof, as there's no guarantee that the ballot in the
photo is the same as what was submitted.
~~~
paulgb
> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking
> a photo of their ballot as proof
I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that
people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined
by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?
~~~
amenghra
Once you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant
really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your
credentials to vote.
~~~
nostrademons
Isn't that also a problem with in-person voting and fake IDs?
~~~
Tyrek
that's entirely a question of scale - I can imagine that it'll be trivial to
scale 'online' voting fraud if you have credential access, whereas doing it in
person naturally limits the total number of times you can do it.
~~~
colmmacc
Committing identity fraud in person, in locations likely to have an elevated
police presence, is extremely risky and getting caught carries severe
consequences.
~~~
tptacek
More fun Cook County details: not only is there not an elevated police
presence at our polling places, but the election judges are charged with
making sure the local police are not hanging around within like a quarter city
block, since the local police don't have any authority with respect to voting.
We got to chase a cop away at our place.
(The Cook County Sheriffs police our vote, but there aren't that many of them,
so if they're going to show up, it's because a judge called them out.)
------
dbcurtis
I would feel better if these folks
[https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15](https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15)
helped establish the best practices for voting machine approval.
Seriously, what does it say about our society that it is harder to deploy a
slot machine in Reno than a voting machine in Peoria?
~~~
organsnyder
Money.
I work in healthcare. We have a much higher regulation burden on how care is
paid for compared to how it is actually delivered.
------
Animats
We need a Democrat to buy an election company. Then legislation for voting
transparency will sail through the Senate.
~~~
e40
This is 100% snark and 100% true, at the same time.
~~~
jakeogh
It's really not. The US is (well was...) dominated by a uni-party. They
usually only really need to rig primaries.
~~~
e40
I think you missed the point. Had HRC become president, she would have likely
been impeached (in the House, not Senate) over emails. We have a criminal in
office now who has made it 2 years without impeachment.
There are two parties are a double standard. If the Republicans thought votes
were being stolen by Democrats, there would be swift and strong action.
~~~
jakeogh
The RINO's as we call them are indistinguishable from the DINO's. The
"criminal" you referred to terrifies them, and rightly so.
Jeb! was supposed to lose to Clinton. Bush Sr. referred to Bill as his son.
They vacationed with the Bin Ladens.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-
oU3Hqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-oU3Hqg)
------
davidw
Happy with my Senator Ron Wyden's take on this: paper ballots. He's also
mentioned in the article.
Our system here in Oregon works pretty well: you vote by mail with paper
ballots and there's automatic voter registration.
~~~
neilv
One of the downsides of vote-by-mail is that it makes some ways of buying
votes easier.
But it does have the upside of making participation easier (especially for
people overburdened with work or other responsibilities). And the physical
paper auditing trail makes it immensely better than all the electronic systems
without that record.
~~~
davidw
It's not perfect - another potential flaw is late breaking information that
might lead some people to change their votes. Still, compared to the mess
where people don't vote because of long lines and taking time off work (most
western countries vote on weekends) and so on... I think it's good.
Now we just need more ranked choice voting.
~~~
amanaplanacanal
I believe in Oregon you can change your vote right up until election day.
~~~
davidw
Nope.
> Can I change my mind after I've returned the ballot?
> No. Your ballot has been cast as soon as you deposit it in the mailbox or at
> a drop site. After that, you cannot receive a new ballot to re-vote.
From [https://multco.us/elections/voting-oregon-vote-
mail](https://multco.us/elections/voting-oregon-vote-mail)
------
UweSchmidt
No machines are needed for voting. Votes should be counted manually. Several
tiers if error correction ensure honest counting and no manipulation. Counters
should be paid well and be recruited from all parts of society.
~~~
specialist
Tabulation is the smallest part of the election administration software stack.
Even when ballots are counted manually, vendors would still get their cheddar.
------
joshfraser
It would be a lot easier to trust an electronic voting system if it was open-
source, open-hardware, and votes were recorded on a public blockchain.
~~~
rectang
But such a system is incompatible with the secret ballot, and is therefore
vulnerable to voter coercion.
Didn't vote for the right candidate? You're fired "for performance reasons".
~~~
joshfraser
It would be pseudo-anonymous like Bitcoin. You would keep the mapping between
public keys and real-world identities private. But perhaps some percentage of
people would choose to waive their right to privacy, further strengthening
trust in the system. Statistically, the public voters should be in line with
the final outcome.
~~~
mcintyre1994
> But perhaps some percentage of people would choose to waive their right to
> privacy, further strengthening trust in the system.
This has the same problem. Didn't waive your right to privacy and provably
vote for the right candidate - you're fired (or worse). That's why taking
photos of a ballot isn't allowed, you can't have any way to show who you voted
for.
~~~
deburo
Huh? If you're asked to waive your right by your employer, I'm pretty sure you
can get them in trouble by going to the media and make a fuss about it. This
is a silly hypothesis.
~~~
joshfraser
It's no different from an evil employer who forces their employees to vote and
send a picture of their ballot today. Sure, taking a photo of a ballot is
illegal, but that's not going to prevent it from happening when you're behind
that little curtain. Coercing people to vote for your guy is illegal in both
scenarios and you can and will get in trouble if you try and pull that stunt
at any significant scale.
~~~
manacit
When you vote on a paper ballot, you are entitled to request a new sheet of
paper if you've messed up a vote. In effect, this would allow you to take a
picture of one ballot, toss it, and get another.
So, yes, it is quite different - an employer has no way to validate that an
employee has voted a specific way. Any proof is not indicative of the final
vote, unlike the proposed Blockchain solution.
------
spenrose
"VotingWorks is a non-profit building a secure, affordable, open-source voting
machine."
[https://voting.works/2018/11/votingworks-better-voting-
machi...](https://voting.works/2018/11/votingworks-better-voting-machines/)
------
Stokes22
This is a concrete action that is happening right now-- Tulsi Gabbard's bill
to have all votes secured by PAPER BALLOT BACKUP:
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22hr1994%5C%22%22%5D%7D)
------
5trokerac3
> “To say that they don’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing is not to say
> that nothing untoward happened,” Raskin said. “It’s simply to say that we
> don’t have the evidence of it.”
What kind of "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" nonsense is this?
Why doesn't this article talk about how DHS was caught red-handed hacking into
GA election systems?
~~~
WillPostForFood
Because it wasn't true:
[https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/339734-investigatio...](https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/339734-investigation-
shows-dhs-did-not-hack-georgia-state-computers)
~~~
sciurus
Then Secretary of State and now Governor Brian Kemp has a history of falsely
claiming groups he doesn't like are hacking GA election systems.
[https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--
politics/prob...](https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--
politics/probe-georgia-democratic-party-prompts-fresh-scrutiny-brian-
kemp/AElKvktttgsz5UgJbiXgyO/)
------
cjslep
One way to make it harder for those who "own" the voting system to rig it
would be to reform the voting system itself so that it isn't the first-past-
the-post winner-take-all system we have today.
------
ryanmarsh
The dichotomy between our pride in the power of the individual to cast their
vote and be represented in government, and the facts of how voting and vote
counting happens (the security of the systems and the conflicts of interest
involved) is so stark a contrast that I can only assume there are forces at
work which have achieved full capture.
~~~
specialist
Journalist Andrew Gumbel called this "America's recurring amnesia."
Steal This Vote [2005]
[https://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-
Democracy/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-
Democracy/dp/1560256761)
As an (burnt out) election integrity activist, I'd say not much has changed.
------
throwanem
We could vote on paper for the same people we've been voting for, and we'd
still end up with the same problems.
------
Stokes22
Paper Ballot Backup
Current bill to do just that:
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22hr1994%5C%22%22%5D%7D)
------
1024core
It's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These
problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in
the Congress, nothing gets done about it.
~~~
hannasanarion
This is a lie. The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen
years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by
requiring paper backups.
Every time they were blocked by Bush, or the Republican Filibuster, or Trump.
Election security is not a "both sides" issue. Democrats want more of it,
Republicans want less of it, and this is bourne out very clearly in their
voting record.
[https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_departm...](https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_department_appoints_special_prosecutor/dhpcbdc/)
~~~
rectang
This isn't uniformly true: consider that New York's governor Cuomo blocked
played a part in blocking reforms there for several years. It's not
historically true, either, when you consider buying votes in the Daley machine
of Chicago.
It's possible to talk about the politics of this on HN, but if we apply one
level of generalization ("people in power for whom free and fair elections do
not serve their interest"), we can have a less inflamed discussion.
My rejoinder to the grandparent is, "some states are better than others". This
is well known, and the correlation with party is well known as well.
~~~
hannasanarion
Cuomo is not a good example of an mainline Democrat. He sides with Republicans
in the state senate as often as Democrats. The only NY politician with a worse
approval rating is Mayor DeBlasio.
Election reform is a major piece of the Democratic party platform, and has
been for a very long time.
Whenever it comes up in Congress, the vote is party-line: all Democrats in
favor of more secure and less money-influenced elections, all Republicans
opposed.
~~~
jerf
No, it's all Democrats in favor of things that they know will net them more
Democrat votes, and Republicans against them, and vice versa, of course. Why
are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to
court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? Well, you
could try to derive an answer from first principles... or you could just count
votes, and come to the correct answer much more quickly.
Don't be so silly as to believe their spin about "getting money out of the
election"; such reforms are not hypothetical things that may happen in the
future, reforms have been passed are in effect, and, lo, money is still in
politics.
~~~
tzs
> Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and
> going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens?
You are a bit off on that.
The census is supposed to count everyone resident in the US, regardless of
citizenship status or legality of their presence here. It's been that way
since the Census Act of 1790. (And it does not count US citizens who are not
resident in the US, except for Federal employees and their dependents).
The issue with adding a question about citizenship is that it might discourage
some people from responding to the census, reducing the accuracy of the count.
The Census Bureau estimates that about 6.5 million people will not respond if
the question is included.
There are legitimate reasons for the government to want to know how many
citizens are resident in the country, and how they are distributed, but they
already have that data from the American Community Survey which does include a
citizenship question (in fact, I believe, the same question they are trying to
add to the census).
The experts at the Census Bureau unanimously recommended not including the
question (as did six former directors of the Bureau, both Republican and
Democrat). The Commerce Secretary overruled them, claiming that the Justice
Department said it wanted the question added to somehow better enforce the
Voting Rights Act. (Emails between the Secretary and the DoJ that were
introduced in one of the trials over this show that this is not true--the DoJ
told him that the question was unnecessary).
Here's a recent article that covers most of this [1].
[1] [https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-
implica...](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-implications-
at-stake-supreme-court-hears-census-citizenship-questio)
------
terryschiavo22
This isn't a complicated problem. State election agencies are underfunded and
have to cut corners in order to survive. A simple federal cash infusion would
solve 70% of this problem. The other 30% is coming up with sufficient election
machine standards.
~~~
rectang
It isn't technically complicated, but it is politically complicated: free and
fair elections are not in everyone's interest. The technical problem will
continue to persist (or will be reintroduced!) so long as it benefits someone
in power to have a broken system in place.
~~~
maxxxxx
I think that's an important point. For a lot of people in US politics it's
more important to "win" than to have fair elections.
------
techrich
Or how about we don't use a computer at all, something as important as
elections should have nothing to do with a computer. If the russians are that
good at hacking elections, why take the chance?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone ever use TLA+ on a Webapp - fenier
I recently became aware of TLA+, and I was curious if folks who have used it, have used it with webapps and had much luck with it?<p>I typically work with things like Personalization and Caching, and was wondering what folks thought about TLA+'s usefulness in those areas.
======
hwayne
I've used it for caching, batch processing, and concurrent web apps, and it's
been a huge help. I've gone into how I used it in a couple of places:
\- "Tackling Concurrency Bugs with TLA+"
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9B__0S21y8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9B__0S21y8))
\- "Formal Methods in Practice" ([https://medium.com/espark-engineering-
blog/formal-methods-in...](https://medium.com/espark-engineering-blog/formal-
methods-in-practice-8f20d72bce4f))
I love helping people with this stuff, so ping me if you have any questions!
~~~
fenier
Thank you so much, I may take you up on that - this looks very interesting to
me, and I started watching the Learn TLA+ video series.
I'll for sure be looking over the stuff you just linked.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Freelance sites for single scripts or small programs? - breathesalt
I'm looking for some <i>good</i> freelance sites that specialize in only gigs for single scripts or small programs. Anyone know of any--or currently making something like this?
======
rpicard
I think that's what <http://gun.io> is for.
~~~
breathesalt
gun.io gets linked on HN often, but I didn't know it was a service. Thanks for
the link, this was what I had in mind essentially.
~~~
rpicard
No problem.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Music Sales Are Just 6% of Average Musician’s Income - mtgx
http://torrentfreak.com/music-sales-are-just-6-of-average-musicians-income-130114/
======
paulhauggis
so..this means you can just take music as you please?
Music is only 6% because they can't make a living by selling it. We might
actually have better music (and a dependence from the music industry) out
there if independent artists could make a living (even if it was
small)..almost like a startup selling software/services.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Book Could Remove The Myth About Vim Learning Curve - 300
http://www.jovicailic.org/2014/07/vim-learning-curve-myth-book/
======
irickt
This is a promotion for the book.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Engineers build crappy Products - RKoutnik
https://medium.com/@wschenk/why-engineers-build-crappy-products-6558eedcf0c1
======
DrScump
The premise assumes that Engineering, rather than Marketing or Sales, has the
final say on public interfaces.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sunrise is shutting down - Remiii
http://blog.sunrise.am/post/144196642739/its-almost-time-to-say-goodbye
======
eterm
From their announcement of acqusition:
[http://blog.sunrise.am/post/110577824529/sunrise-
microsoft](http://blog.sunrise.am/post/110577824529/sunrise-microsoft)
> Today, we’re excited to announce that Sunrise is joining Microsoft. For
> Sunrise, this is just the beginning.
> Sunrise will remain free and available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and
> Desktop – we’re not going anywhere.
~~~
DKnoll
It was amusing that Sunrise was bought by Microsoft, but still could not
connect to either of the Exchange servers I threw at it. Support basically
just shrugged at me via email, rough translation being 'it works on my
machine.'
Sort of unrelated, but Outlook for Android also still cannot handle recurring
all-day events. They will appear in the calendar on incorrect days. Also
tested this across multiple servers.
I use Nine for email, which blows Outlook for Android out of the water.
Business Calendar 3 is the only Outlook (Desktop) equivalent calendar I've
found for Android.
------
willwhitney
Once a startup gets bought, I look for alternatives.
If they don't shut down, I still learned something new! But usually they do.
In this case, I landed on Fantastical [1] — it's a little pricy but completely
worth it. (Mac/iOS only.)
[1]: [https://flexibits.com/fantastical](https://flexibits.com/fantastical)
~~~
toomuchtodo
> it's a little pricy
We should appreciate when its pricey. That's motivation for the product to
continue to exist. Otherwise, "OurIncredibleJourney".
~~~
toyg
I agree but the current model is broken. I buy FantastiCal, don't like it,
I've just thrown money down the toilet. Yeah yeah you can go through iTunes
and get it back but that feels like a dick move, and how many actually know
the procedure anyway? It's not exactly advertised.
I throw a quid down the toilet? That's fine, I don't mind. I throw a fiver or
a tenner? Woah dude, that's like, a Starbucks latte! Totally different (or
not, but hey, that's what it feels like).
I wish Apple would start allowing time-limited trialware. The IAP machinery is
already there, they just have to allow apps that stop working after 30 days if
there is no payment. After 30 days, I have a pretty good idea whether an app
is worth £1, £10, £50 or 0.
~~~
toomuchtodo
> I throw a quid down the toilet? That's fine, I don't mind. I throw a fiver
> or a tenner? Woah dude, that's like, a Starbucks latte! Totally different
> (or not, but hey, that's what it feels like).
[http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps](http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps)
~~~
toyg
Well spotted. Note how that strip is from 2011, it was a bit of an old joke at
the time already, and nothing has changed. Or rather: app-developers now route
around this perception with IAP-whaling, which makes everyone sad and doesn't
really map to "real" apps anyway. A trialware model would be better for
everyone.
~~~
toomuchtodo
> A trialware model would be better for everyone.
I agree.
------
reustle
The overarching lesson I'm slowly learning is to not get too comfy with any
saas products. Who knows how long they'll stick around, regardless of if
they're great / popular / profitable.
~~~
jerf
I still prefer to use desktop-based products that I own as much as possible
for this reason. Rather than think of it as being behind this swing of the
pendulum, I prefer to think of it as being ahead of the next one.
------
cperciva
They must have had amazing self-control to restrain themselves from titling
this "Sunrise is sunsetting".
~~~
jgill
Ha, our inner pun masters are in alignment.
------
johnatwork
This is becoming a tiring pattern.
I've just gotten used to the UI.
Can anyone commit to building a proper business? Is Sustainability no longer a
virtue of creating a service/application?
~~~
zeveb
> Can anyone commit to building a proper business?
How about we users commit to building the tools we need, and forget about
relying on businesses to do it for us?
That's what free software is all about — head on over to the Free Software
Foundation and pitch in today!
~~~
clickbyclick
Another angle...
It's sad when we pay $5 for a coffee made in 5 minutes that we'll drink in
3... but not $5 for an app that took 5 months that we'd use daily for a year.
~~~
vectorpush
Well, if coffee shops started offering up free coffee with ads on the cup,
people wouldn't pay $5 for coffee either.
~~~
ImprovedSilence
Most coffee cups already do have ads on them. They have you paying $5 for
coffee, AND running around with free ads for them in your hands. And you don't
even notice you're a walking billboard for them! Not to mention all that juicy
data you're giving them with every CC purchase, or loyalty card swipe...
------
emdd
Well, this is disappointing. I was late to the Sunrise party, so I've barely
been able to use it. I'm not thrilled about heavily integrating Outlook into
my future work, so I guess it's off to find another solution.
~~~
harlanlewis
It's a bit unexpected, but I've found Outlook to be the best iOS email client
these days. It's bloated and has quite a few rendering bugs, but for the basic
email-as-task-list workflow pioneered by Mailbox et al I haven't come across
any current players that are better.
Kind of sad that the explosion of clever email and calendar apps a few years
ago has collapsed into a handful that aren't as good as we used to have.
~~~
Randuin
I wish there was something like it just for Calendaring though. Especially on
the desktop. For email I'm already using Polymail full time and it's a hassle
to have two email clients just for calendar.
~~~
grinich
What do you use for calendaring right now?
What do you wish it did?
~~~
brerlapn
Not the OP, but on my Android device I have an easier time of calendaring
since basically any app I choose will show all of the calendars I want
(personal, my work calendar, my manager's calendar, my team's calendar) in the
same space. For desktop, I did have Sunrise's desktop app until I noticed I
wasn't getting a proper sync of some (apparently random) appointments from
desktop to cloud/mobile, and even more so because I accepted an appointment
via Sunrise and it changed my email alias in the response from my actual
address to Sunrise's generic "[email protected]" so that people then
started emailing me at the generic email rather than my actual address.
Most of my calendars are Google Apps. Outlook was my backup for the work
calendar using the Google Apps Outlook Sync app (although I've noticed a few
sync failures there, too), and just adding additional calendars to Outlook
without having all of my email there too looks like it requires some kind of
arcane magick. Thunderbird+Lightning got rotated out of the mix quickly due to
a lot of issues syncing and getting multiple calendars into it.
Probably because everyone we're communicating with is mixing between Google
Apps/webview calendar and Outlook or Office 365, I also find that I regularly
can't see an appointment that is emailed to me in my email client as it shows
up as an .ics file attachment instead.
So featurewise:
\- Most important for me: Easy addition of multiple calendars, where I can
just select which calendar a new appt should be added, as easily as I can in
my Android clients- I hate using web clients for calendaring, and they never
really show multiple calendars well. NOTE: I mean that the calendar has a
direct sync to each of the calendars online, not having one main account to
which I have to share all of my other calendars. I want one place where I can
go to view and create appointments and then have them also show up in their
respective accounts. \- Supports open standards like CalDAV/CardDAV as well as
syncs to Google or Office 365 (I can select a provider like Fastmail that uses
CalDAV for my personal calendar, but I'm stuck with Google or O365 for work)
\- Desktop client, multiple views (agenda, today, week, month) \- drag-and-
drop of items into the calendar to create a new appointment \- "Send to
calendar" from an email as an option \- Categorization/tagging on an
appointment would be nice - Outlook allows this but Google doesn't seem to
allow tagging appointments like you can email
A bit of a data dump, but a desktop client that handles multiple calendars
well is surprisingly difficult to find in Windows. I happily pay for a number
of otherwise free services (Pandora, Evernote, Pocket, Lastpass, etc.), but
there really isn't even a pay option.
~~~
tdkl
Did you try eMClient? One of the rare clients that does *DAV on Windows.
~~~
brerlapn
Thanks, I hadn't heard of it but I'll see how it works.
------
cheshire137
I hope this ends up on Our Incredible Journey:
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)
------
colinbartlett
The best part about Sunrise was Meet, its quick little method of booking
meetings with someone: [https://sunrise.am/meet](https://sunrise.am/meet)
You'd choose some available times, it gives you a link which you send to
whoever you want to meet with, and the recipient books a time slot with a
couple of clicks. It updates in real time so if you book something new, the
slot disappears. It even has a little iOS keyboard to generate these links.
Does anyone know a similar replacement service? Nothing beats just pasting
someone a link and letting them pick one of three times you chose.
~~~
ericcholis
I've used calendly.com with some success.
~~~
colinbartlett
Nice, thanks! And I can pay for it, that's a comforting change.
------
stephenr
> On August 31st, we’ll officially shut down the app and it will stop working
> all together.
So based on this, I assume that all access to your calendar server (iCloud,
Exchange, Google Apps, etc) was managed through a centralised server(s) that
Sunrise used... for something.
Maybe the next time someone claims to be a funky new take on <boring office
task> just do a little checking. We've had desktop and mobile device clients
for mail, calendaring, contacts etc for literally decades. Why _now_ , when we
have more computing power available to us than ever before, do we need
_another_ server (operated by a company that's more likely to disappear than
not) between us and our mail/calendar/contacts?
------
tdkl
That's why paying for mail, calendar and contacts hosting is worth it in the
long run.
------
throwanem
Sunrise, sunset?
------
rosstex
This is lame, Sunrise has been awesome for me over the years.
------
kin
Super bummed by this. The integrations were priceless. Taking recs on any
alternative.
------
reiichiroh
Will Wunderlist shut down too, I wonder?
~~~
tasnent
Were they bought?
~~~
emgeee
Yes, by Microsoft
------
educar
This is getting ridiculous. We need like n founder manifesto canary before we
start using the products of all these startups. The canary should contain:
1\. Their business plan
2\. Long term vision for the company
3\. How they plan to sustain themselves in the short run (1-2 years with
no/little revenue).
4\. What they would do if they get acquisition offers.
etc.
The startup can remove the canary once they decide to change their direction.
~~~
bentlegen
Or you could consider purchasing from open source businesses. Like Nylas,
GitLab, Sentry, and others.
~~~
kennydude
Sentry is absolutely fantastic. Use it daily at work and it's really good
------
Danilka
I'd like to say THANK YOU to the Sunrise team for the incredible work you've
put into the app! You've made my calendar experience very enjoyable and I know
that you got a proper reward for that as part of the acquisition. It's great
that there are people like you, working on software these days.
~~~
Mithaldu
They don't deserve any thanks for remorselessly fucking over their users.
~~~
untog
Their users don't deserve anything as they were enjoying the use of a free
product. They've given everyone a good amount of notice to move on.
~~~
Mithaldu
Without their users they wouldn't have gotten this nice cushy acquihire.
~~~
untog
So, everybody wins. The users got a free product for a few years, Sunrise got
acquihired.
~~~
Mithaldu
"Everybody wins" would involve everyone walking away with equal or more than
they had at the time of parting, which could be done by opening the source of
the product instead of letting it die of bitrot.
~~~
untog
Sunrise walked away with an acquihire, users walked away with several years of
free service of an app they liked.
I get what you're saying here, but the Sunrise team owe their users nothing.
~~~
Mithaldu
They owed them the honesty of saying at the start:
"We never intend to make this an actual product. This is only here to get us
attention and hired. If you use this, be aware we'll kill it as soon as anyone
hires us."
~~~
untog
But who's to say that's what they intended at the start? They may well have
entirely expected to make it a successful startup, only to find themselves
unable to make the profit required to do so, so they got acquihired.
If you wanted to use an app with open source and a permanent future you should
have installed an open source app. Installing a closed source app created by a
business and depending on them open sourcing it when the business closes is
folly.
~~~
Mithaldu
I don't even use it and keep away from software like this. I just recognize
the morality involved. But hey, thanks for going the expected route. :)
~~~
untog
> I don't even use it
Ah OK, so you don't have any skin in the game, you're just here to argue on
the internet. Makes sense.
> thanks for going the expected route. :)
Which is to say that you're aware of viewpoints alternative to your own, but
you have no interest in hearing them out, you just want to shout until you
win.
If that's what you need to get through your day, congratulations on your great
victory.
~~~
Mithaldu
> Which is to say
Nope, i expected you to attempt victim blaming. But hey, jumping to more
conclusions is not unexpected either.
------
lowpro
Sunrise is the only calendar app that has ever worked for me. I tried others
like Google and the integrated outlook calendar, this is sad news.
Is it impossible to have apps that don't go either Microsoft or google? I
don't want to be locked in an ecosystem.
------
asdfaccount
Well this sucks. anyone found a good alternative?
~~~
ghostly_s
They're not being dishonest in characterizing this as more than a simple
acqui-hire; most of the functionality of Sunrise is faithfully replicated in
Outlook for iOS now (which, if you're not aware, was actually itself born out
of the acquisition of a multi-protocol email app called Accompli, and still
includes support for a variety of non-Exchange mail services). Unfortunately,
missing features include the long-press natural language "quick-add" input
box, and setting multiple reminders on events.
------
pbowyer
Drat, the best calendar app I've used on Android (except for the 46
notifications it gave for Easter Monday, and 58 for the last English Bank
Holiday).
I will miss it.
------
jakegarelick
Just saw the notification on my app this morning. Very unfortunate - I've been
using it for as long as I remember, it was my favorite calendar app.
Any alternatives?
~~~
sumitgt
Well, Outlook on Android/iOS has most of Sunrise built in.
------
PascalsMugger
I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, but why do companies acquire
startups just to shut their product down within a year so often? Is this just
an acquihire? Or do big tech companies just play whack-a-mole with startups,
buying any out with interesting products just to make sure they don't one day
turn into competition?
~~~
pedalpete
For the $100+ millions Microsoft payed,they got the team, the tech and the
opportunity to move the sunrise users to use their products.
Sunrise best capabilities are likely being built into outlook, they have a
team that they know can execute and a percentage of sunrise users will move to
outlook.
I only installed sunrise last week (when I moved to Android) but I found it a
bit odd that I was using a different calendar app. I came from Windows Phone
where messaging and calendar was baked in really nicely. So far my Android
experience isn't as good but maybe outlook with sunrise will complete this
circle for me.
------
tertius
Great time for competitors to get users me thinks. I'm ready to jump ship,
where to?
------
bnt
As good as Outlook is on iOS, the calendar portion doesn't work well. It
constantly misses timezones.
------
chunkiestbacon
Just when I finally was happy with calendaring and got organised. So annoying
------
zarvox
Submitted this to Our Incredible Journey [1] which documents a long string of
services shut down post-acquisition.
[1]:
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)
~~~
edwinjm
Why is this site so hard to read?
~~~
Animats
Because some of the screenshots are JPEG format. JPEG compression has trouble
with sharp edges.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is AlphaZero really a scientific breakthrough in AI? - bmc7505
https://medium.com/@josecamachocollados/is-alphazero-really-a-scientific-breakthrough-in-ai-bf66ae1c84f2
======
sunstone
I obviously took the original press release and breathless articles at face
value when I should have been a little more careful as this article clearly
shows. I hate it when that happens.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Cable & Satellite Can Save the Newspaper Business - jasonlbaptiste
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/02/22/how-cable-satellite-can-save-the-newspaper-business/
======
opinionator
When you let the old guard control the revenue that the newcomers receive you
never get change. Cable and satellite having a spigot on online video revenue
is a VERY disturbing development that will seriously hinder the march toward
unfettered media. Disruptive technologies can only make for progress when they
aren't quashed by the old regime.
------
keltecp11
In order to 'save the newspaper business' you must first understand why the
business is failing. For years, newspapers have been giving discounts to
national corporations who run full page ads in publications. Local advertisers
advertise less and usually pay more for ads. In the past, there have always
been more local advertisers paying more $ and this is where traditional
publications received the majority of their revenue. So when big businesses
like Home Depot, best buy, petco, walmart, papajohns, target, etc... start
becoming more and more popular, the small local mom and pop shops are forced
to close up shop. Less mom and pop shops = less local ads = less revenue for
publications. Industry turned upside down (not to mention the million other
factors in play here ie. economy, increased cost in supply, etc...) Cable and
Satellite can't 'save the newspaper business' the newspaper business need to
diversify their portfolios. Investing in products that can complement their
publications and help them adjust to the crazy world we now live in.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Build a Blockchain from Scratch in Go” training codebase - lukaslukac
https://github.com/web3coach/the-blockchain-bar
======
lukaslukac
The goal of this project, tutorial is to re-implement major blockchain
components from specific implementations such as Bitcoin/Ethereum/XRP while
documenting how to do it step-by-step.
In the next days/weeks I will add more blockchain concepts, components and
improve the integration tests because they were coded in rush.
Give it a try this weekend and have fun doing so!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder? - fmihaila
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-california-death-row.html
======
mannykannot
If Cooper is innocent then, in my view, those who obstructed his exoneration
are as guilty as those who framed him - and if he is executed, then what they
are all guilty of is the moral equivalent of murder.
------
stuaxo
Variations of this story are repeated again and again, and that's just the
ones we know about. Institutional racism doesn't quite cover it,
institutionalised murder does.
~~~
gargravarr
For this reason I am glad the UK eliminated the death penalty back into the
50s. Many times, after serious crimes, media figures will call for it to be
reinstated, but it just isn't worth the risk. One of the final people executed
in the UK, Timothy Evans, was convicted on flimsy evidence and was later
exonerated. Admitting someone was innocent of a crime is pretty meaningless
after they have been executed for it. Might as well just put your hands up and
say 'whoops'. And here the court could hand down a death sentence for such
inconsistent and inconclusive (from Cooper's perspective) evidence? The
criteria for capital punishment should be so tight as to practically require
the perpetrator to be caught standing over the victim holding the stained
knife.
At the same time, the underpinnings of racism here are appalling, as they
often are in these repeating stories. Anyone blocking new examination of
evidence _knows_ for certain the conviction is unsound and that the
conclusions could be decisive. Reading through this story, yes of course the
author is biased, but it's plainly black and white, quite literally. Why else
would all witness testimony point towards white criminals, they're literally
handed the necessary evidence to convict a white criminal and yet the
authorities pursue a single black man for the crime. Hideous. The most
disturbing thing is, if asked how they sleep at night, I would have no doubt
the sheriff's officers would have no hesitation in saying 'perfectly fine,
thank you'.
~~~
hospes
>> The most disturbing thing is, if asked how they sleep at night, I would
have no doubt the sheriff's officers would have no hesitation in saying
'perfectly fine, thank you'.
What amazes me is that these officers and their families live in the same
city/county or even in the same neighborhood with these alleged criminals, and
yet they feel perfectly OK to let them walk away and instead catch some random
black guy and send him to be executed. How much you should not care about your
own family, yourself, friends,... to do that? How much hate one should have
toward other race(s), to be able to send someone innocent from that race to be
executed, solely based on the skin color?
~~~
gargravarr
I didn't think about it from that angle. You're absolutely right. That really
does make it worse.
I think I'll defer to Depeche Mode on this one:
People are people so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully
So we're different colours
And we're different creeds
And different people have different needs
It's obvious you hate me
Though I've done nothing wrong
I never even met you
So what could I have done
I can't understand
What makes a man
Hate another man
Help me understand
------
docker_up
People seem to think that EITHER Republicans OR Democrats are terrible. They
forget that it's _politicians_ regardless of political leanings that are
corrupt and disgusting.
Very prominent Democrats could easily order those advanced DNA tests that
could offer justice, but they don't care about justice, they care about
personal convenience. I have no doubt Republicans in exactly the same
situation would behave exactly the same.
It's horrible that this is occurring and there is nothing we can do about this
except vote out these politicians.
~~~
saghm
> People seem to think that EITHER Republicans OR Democrats are terrible
OT, but I've always found it interesting that in English, "or" is often (and
maybe even usually) implied to be "xor". Sometimes I joke that we should just
call "xor" "or" and then rename the old "or" to "inclusive or".
~~~
taeric
I think that is only the case when it is for something where you also have to
be in one of the categories. For many people, it isn't A OR B. It is their
group, or the other group. That is significant.
Even many of the people that point out it can be both, typically identify as a
third option. It isn't "my group can also be bad." It is "both of those groups
could be bad." Where the talker is pointing from the outside.
~~~
coldtea
> _I think that is only the case when it is for something where you also have
> to be in one of the categories. For many people, it isn 't A OR B. It is
> their group, or the other group. That is significant._
You want coffee or tea?
~~~
taeric
Isn't that similar in that you join with one of the groups?
I mean, yes, the language construct is clearly often used as an exclusive, but
it is a language construct where context supplies a large part is the meaning.
~~~
coldtea
> _Isn 't that similar in that you join with one of the groups?_
The argument above was about emotional attachment to one's group though (that
they can't fathom to identify as possibly also bad) -- here it's merely a
preference or even just a casual order (just because when asked "X or Y" you
ordered X over Y food for dessert this time doesn't mean you're an "X
person").
~~~
taeric
Ah, I see what you mean. I wasn't necessarily trying to index only on the
emotional aspect of it. Though, I think I see how that is required for the way
I framed it.
So, to reframe. For the cases where it is completely "XOR", I think the
emotional attachment matters a lot. For the others, I suspect it is more of a
short circuiting behavior. "Coffee, tea, or soda?" I've often answered that
with "Coffee and soda water, please." That or just stopped listening when they
listed what I wanted anyway. :)
~~~
saghm
> That or just stopped listening when they listed what I wanted anyway. :)
I guess you'll never know if they actually said "XOR" or not then :)
------
oh_sigh
Why won't Jerry Brown allow for DNA testing? The guess as to the reason in the
article doesn't seem very satisfactory to me, because CA has already pardoned
5+ people from death row, so Brown must know that not _all_ people on death
row are guilty.
~~~
hospes
They know that the guy is innocent, they know that DNA test will confirm that.
What they are concerned about is what will happen after he is found not
guilty. Who framed him? How, When, Why? In the end of the day many influential
people can end up in jail. Plus he will probably get millions from the state
for wrongful convocation. They are just covering "their" asses and saving
money, for them it is a win win if he stays guilty and is executed.
~~~
oh_sigh
Why would Jerry Brown protect these people? The event happened 35 years ago.
------
natecavanaugh
FTA: > Maybe in the grand scheme of things, the fate of one man on death row
doesn’t seem so important;
I completely disagree, though the author points this out. But while I am in
the favor of the death penalty in certain cases (until we have a way to
rehabilitate even the most degenerate murderers), the death of even one
innocent should stop us from using it unless there is incontrovertible
evidence and proof of both guilt and the inability to rehabilitate. This
article points out obvious reasonable doubt, and I seriously am baffled as to
why _the California Democrats_ won't even consider it or even justify their
position.
Maybe there's more to the story, but this all seemed incredibly persuasive to
me.
~~~
GuiA
_> I am in the favor of the death penalty in certain cases
> the death of even one innocent should stop us from using it_
In the real world, "0% false positives" isn't really feasible.
~~~
coldtea
> _In the real world, "0% false positives" isn't really feasible._
Executing 0% of those false positives is absolutely feasible though, and all
civilized countries have already adopted it for decades...
~~~
b6
I wasn't aware we'd enjoyed a split second of civilization in the entire
history of the earth. Could you list the civilized countries for me?
~~~
coldtea
Those that don't legally murder their citizens, for one.
It might not be the litmus test of civilization, but it would be a good start
(assuming the abolition of slavery, human sacrifice, and such as already
surpassed as a bar).
~~~
natecavanaugh
1\. Legally murder is an oxymoron. Murder is the unlawful killing of another.
Unless you believe cases of self-defense also count as murder, but the right
language, pedantically speaking would be, legally kill.
2\. Do you really believe there is never a justifiable reason for the state to
kill a human being? I'm just curious, honestly.
~~~
coldtea
> _Legally murder is an oxymoron. Murder is the unlawful killing of another._
That's the pedantic definition though -- not the one that goes beyond what
"the books" say. By that metric, the killings of their own people by Nazi's,
Communist, and right-wing regimes, where also lawful (the state dictated that
those people were to be killed).
And not only people have been calling government/law approved executions
"murder" for ages, academics have as well. E.g:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide)
> _2\. Do you really believe there is never a justifiable reason for the state
> to kill a human being? I 'm just curious, honestly._
"Justifiable" is a pretty low bar. A false-sense of increased security, or a
request for revenge can also be used as justifications for capital punishment.
But why exactly do you find this difficult to believe?
Dozens of European countries have already decided that "there is never a
justifiable reason for the state to kill a human being" \-- and voted so.
Those countries still have had e.g. pedophile serial killers, and other such
creeps, in the half a century or so without capital punishment, and are
totally fine with just keeping them in jail.
Not only it is less hypocritical ("murder is bad, unless we do it judicially")
and cheaper, it also prevents killing innocents, and allows for the
possibility for exonerating evidence to clear them at a later date.
~~~
natecavanaugh
It's not that I find it hard to believe, but just trying to understand. Would
an actor of the state be justified in killing someone who was threatening
their lives or the lives of others?
------
fjsolwmv
Kristioff wrote aabout this last year too, name-dropping Kamala Harris as one
of the officials refusing to pursue justice, a name people have been
mentioning as a Democratic Presidential contender in 2020:
[https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/multiproduct/lp8HYKU.ht...](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html)
------
vortico
Could we get a less clickbait title please? EDIT: Thanks!
~~~
jmcgough
HN requires that the actual article title be used, so complaining here isn't
really going to do anything but add noise.
~~~
vortico
The title is "Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?" The <title> text "One Test
Could Exonerate Him. Why Won't California Do It?" is a subtitle / article
description.
~~~
fmihaila
For what it’s worth, I used the HN submit bookmarklet. I didn’t deliberately
choose the title.
------
blackoil
Why is this story `33 points by fmihaila 2 hours ago` below at 27th position,
compared to `29 points by jeffbarr 3 hours ago` (9th pos) and `18 points by
westoncb 3 hours ago` (13th pos).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zynga Buys German Game Engine Developer Dextrose AG - vyrotek
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/zynga-continues-international-expansion-buys-german-game-engine-developer-dextrose-ag/
======
vyrotek
I have to admit, I was actually a bit upset to hear this.
I remember finding these guys some time ago and loved what they were building.
Now it seems like it will never be available to anyone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
$AAPL in free fall, currently at $407 - orrsella
https://www.google.com/finance?q=aapl
======
loganfrederick
"Free fall" is a bit of an exaggeration. Yeah, it dropped 4% really quickly
this morning, but in the grand scheme of market drops, 4% is not that large. I
was expecting to see a 10%+ drop. A 4% drop could be attributed to a lot of
different things not directly related to the company's business or someone
making a big move before earnings announcements.
~~~
velodrome
The price of the stock is near the $400 - a psychological pivot point. If it
continues to decline in value and closes under $400, the stock will go into a
freefall (or another selling period).
In the short term, Apple needs to come out with innovative, disruptive
products that create a whole new market much like the iPad and iPhone. In the
long term, they need a sustainable cash cow like Google's ads business.
------
pinaceae
No new products in sight, so numbers will be bad. This is all the investors
getting out/shorting before the Q numbers roll in.
The best thing? Has nothing to do with actual performance of the company right
now. Gambling.
------
jcnnghm
It's down less than 5%. That's not exactly out of the ordinary. They are
probably expected to miss their earnings forecast.
~~~
rquantz
Yes, and they're having supply chain problems that are pushing back product
launches.
[http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/04/apple-inc-aapl-to-
disappoin...](http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/04/apple-inc-aapl-to-disappoint-
in-q1-on-lower-iphone-sales-jefferies/)
------
sixothree
TQQQ and UPRO are both down similar amounts. Bad day all around.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FBI Raids Apartment of Alleged King’s Speech Uploader - tomkarlo
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/kings-speech-uploader/
======
kylelibra
It is always nice to have confirmation that these things get leaked by the
very industry trying to vilify the leakers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NYC JavaScript User Group: First meeting, tonight at 7pm. - aditya
http://groups.google.com/group/nycjs/browse_thread/thread/6348252c09dc4706
======
zackola
hm. a little bit of notice might have been nice :)
------
paddy_m
I'd like to go. I haven't heard of this group before. There is no history
other than this thread ont he group
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The moving sofa problem - franzb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_sofa_problem
======
lb1lf
Recycled anecdote from the last time this was discussed on HN:
While a student, I looked after the apartment of a friend of mine, who was
overseas.
When he moved there, we were _just_ able to eke his sofa around the last
corner from the stairwell and through the door to his apartment. Just. After
much cursing and several failed attempts.
So, what does a good (cough) friend do while the owner is overseas?
Get some hardwood mouldings/trimmings/whatever you call those long, thin
pieces of wood typically put where wall transitions to ceiling or floor and
nail them to the exterior doorframes, making both door openings perhaps 3/8"
or so narrower, paint them in the color of the doorframe, sit back and wait.
Then, years later, as he is about to leave town, moving company comes along
and everything runs smoothly until one item remains. The sofa. Obviously, it
got in - so it'll (as obviously) come out. Only it doesn't.
We (everybody except the owner and the moving guys were in on the joke)
managed to keep a straight face for several minutes.
The moving guys even laughed as they (eventually) left, mollified by a bottle
filled with a Scottish export product which we'd kept on hand to ensure no
feelings were hurt afterwards.
~~~
te_platt
That especially hurt me too read as just this morning I helped a friend move a
couch. We had had to turn it pretty much every way possible and the only
reason we kept trying was because we knew somehow she got it moved in. It's
interesting that in so many different areas knowing there is a solution makes
finding the solution easier.
In a related story my dad remodeled his house and put in a new wall blocking
in a couch. When it came time to move it (years later) I thought it was going
to be a permanent feature of that room. My dad came up with the solution of
getting a saw and cutting the couch into pieces.
~~~
fcbrooklyn
This is such a common issue in NYC that we have a business (the couch doctor)
that does nothing but take apart furniture and reassemble it in place. Friend
of mine used them and they were apparently really impressive (he told them
what sofa he had, the dimensions of his door, and they knew right away it
wouldn't be a problem)
~~~
ghaff
A number of years back I bought a couch from my brother. I promptly took off
on a trip on which I managed to badly break my foot so he ended up dumping the
thing at my house and it sat in my garage for months.
Once I was mobile again, I realized it was a tight fit and the sofa wasn't
actually symmetrical. Fortunately, it was asymmetrical in the right way for
the room but I had a momentary panic.
>we have a business (the couch doctor)
I also have to say that I just love how businesses get created to deal with
especially largely localized problems and do a really good job at it. Even at
a national level, I met with a specialist company yesterday to do something in
my house and it was very refreshing.
------
willvarfar
If anyone hasn't read or has forgotten Douglas Adams 'Dirk Gently's Holistic
Detective Agency' then I warmly recommend it. It includes, iirc, The Sofa
Problem and the solution is classic Adams and all HNers will love it! :)
~~~
noir_lord
Wondered if anyone would mention this, also if you haven't tried it the
Netflix version of Dirk Gently is wonderful, departs from the books without
departing from the characters.
~~~
bostik
The first season is delicious, the second one (unfortunately) veers too far
off into the odd mix of fantasy, conspiracy theories and mysticism. I'm
curious what the third one brings.
Casting-wise, I am not sure Elijah Wood was the best choice. Big name for
impact maybe, but the role just feels ill-fitting.
~~~
scrooched_moose
Unfortunately nothing, it's been cancelled.
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2018/03/dirk-
gentl...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2018/03/dirk-gentlys-
holistic-detective-agency-will-not-have-a-season-3-producer-1202335666/amp/)
------
mkl
Gibbs's computational approach is really interesting [1]. Keep the sofa still
and move the corridor, and the optimal sofa shape is the intersection of all
(well n, since it's a numerical approximation) the corridor shapes as they
sweep around.
[1]
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311900489_A_Computa...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311900489_A_Computational_Study_of_Sofas_and_Cars)
~~~
cheerlessbog
That link does not work for me, but this may be better :
[https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~romik/movingsofa/](https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~romik/movingsofa/)
~~~
mkl
That is a different article. My link to Gibbs's article came from Wikipedia,
but your link points to another copy:
[http://vixra.org/pdf/1411.0038v2.pdf](http://vixra.org/pdf/1411.0038v2.pdf)
Maybe that one will work for you.
------
vinchuco
Kudos to the animation illustrator [0]. See also [1]. I'm collecting these for
reasons.
[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rocchini](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rocchini)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15549197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15549197)
~~~
mar77i
That particular guy appears to have a knack for geometry, 4-dimensionality and
hyperbolic spaces. Topics that I feel like I have a foot in from watching my
favorite Parker square videos...
------
enriquto
This problem seems tame and uninteresting compared to the real-life 3D case.
Last christmas, I was moving a sofa on my mother-in-law's home, and it was
stuck in the corridor. She told me "i seem to recall that you have to raise
this side a bit". I replied something to the effect "no way, i am a
mathematician and there's no way that this can possibly make a difference".
Of course she was right. I could only move the sofa by rotating it in 3D _just
so_ , so that the slightly protruding arm and leg could pass one after the
other.
So the real question, not dealth with in the wikipedia page, is: what is the
largest sofa that we can move through a unit corner, allowing it to rotate in
3D ?
~~~
OscarCunningham
I guess the answer might be to take the largest 2D sofa and just extrude it
upwards 1, so that it fills the height of the corridor.
~~~
enriquto
It will depend on how you define the "largest" sofa: total volume? surface
area of the ground covered by it?
If it is the largest volume, you need to limit the height of the corridor (to
be the same as the width? a multiple of it?). Otherwise, you can pass an
arbitrarily long L that you turn side-wise on the corner.
~~~
OscarCunningham
I was thinking of maximising the volume of the sofa in a corridor as tall as
it is wide.
------
vignesh_m
Somewhat related, but more counterintuitive and "solved":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakeya_set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakeya_set)
------
tambourine_man
Nice numberphile vídeo on the subject:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXfKWIZQIo4](https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXfKWIZQIo4)
------
SOLAR_FIELDS
Would proving this advance our knowledge in some related field such as
mathematical topology? Since the values have already been brute forced (but
unproven) there really isn’t any direct practical application for knowing the
solution
~~~
mabbo
> there really isn’t any direct practical application for knowing the solution
Oh, but math always seems that way. And often, it is. But sometimes, very
rarely, your solution to the sofa problem explains a key detail to P vs NP, or
allows a breakthrough in transistor design, or improves the airflow
calculations allowing for faster jets, etc.
Math's true beauty is that it's never done playing games with us as we realize
all the strange connections.
------
thomasfedb
Kickstarter idea: Gerver's sofa in Italian leather.
~~~
mkl
It doesn't seem very practical as furniture - there's a big hole in the
middle. Actual sofas can be moved in three dimensions, so can be more usefully
shaped.
~~~
mattkrause
It might not be awful if it came with a matching coffee table for the middle
section.
~~~
berbec
Even better - a detachable ottoman. It fills the hole when you want a sofa,
and becomes a footrest when you don't.
------
chdefrene
Numberphile did a great video on this topic
[https://youtu.be/rXfKWIZQIo4](https://youtu.be/rXfKWIZQIo4)
------
kyberias
Pivot!
~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Yes! [https://youtu.be/Tam7KO4qhUI](https://youtu.be/Tam7KO4qhUI)
------
Biba89
It would be great to someone create a game where you should calculate and
create sofa in order to move sofa through the building passages
------
flingo
Can someone just put this in an ISO standard already, so I know how wide to
make my hallways?
------
ourmandave
var numberOfMovers = (! hideABed) ? 3 : 0;
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Norway tightens IT security to prevent ballot tampering - ingve
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-election/norway-tightens-it-security-to-prevent-ballot-tampering-idUSKCN1BC4AH?il=0
======
klondike_
Computer voting was a mistake. It has been shown over and over that voting
machine security is abysmal.
Voting is one of the few things that shouldn't be computerized. It's far
easier to swing an election by hacking a few voting machines than to forge
thousands of ballots.
No matter where you live, do yourself a favor and vote only on paper.
~~~
spaceseaman
I think it's a great example of our governments' misunderstanding of modern
technology and security. Our current governmental computer systems appear
_extremely fragile_ [1] and prone to tampering.
If governments were actually serious about electronic voting, they need
dedicated committees and bureaucratic entities whose sole responsibility is
the maintenance and security of these systems.
I expect the United State to be absolutely crippled by cyber-warfare in the
coming decades. On a state level, our government is simply incapable of
recognizing the many vulnerabilities their systems have and compensating for
them.
While personally I think electronic voting is a trash idea (couldn't we
instead still vote via paper, and then read the results via ML? This would
give us a "margin of error" of votes, but we would always have the paper
ballots to fall back on), I think that tightening IT security is a good thing
for governments to do. Especially considering just how poor computer security
is for government entities.
[1]. Just want to mention I'm not a security guru. This is just my
interpretation after visiting many government websites, reading stories, etc
~~~
QAPereo
There is always major opposition to anything which would cause many more
people to vote, because that would utterly change the current political
landscape. The turkeys won't be voting for Thanksgiving.
------
saltvedt
The machines used to count votes were Windows machines connected to the
internet.
[https://www.nrk.no/norge/teller-opp-stemmer-i-valget-pa-
data...](https://www.nrk.no/norge/teller-opp-stemmer-i-valget-pa-datamaskiner-
tilkoblet-internett-1.13660659)
~~~
spaceseaman
So when is this gonna blow up for someone?
Like are we gonna read about the U.S. power grid being shut down, or an entire
state / nation wide election tampering?
It's absolutely terrifying how incompetent these folks are. Why is there no
one marketing their skills to governments who have actual skills? Why aren't
governments hiring employees with actual skills?
We used to have the most talented structural, mechanical, and industrial
engineers in government positions or as government contractors. Is tech simply
too young for that to have happened yet? Or are governments failing to
adequately respond to their massive skills' gaps?
~~~
empath75
It already did. Look at the last election.
~~~
gruez
Not obvious enough. Power grid hacked, widespread blackouts = somebody
obviously hacked it. Meanwhile, poll numbers slightly off from opinion polls,
but enough to sway an election = could he hacks, or could be sampling error.
And thanks to the 2 party system, both parties will poll close to 50% it's
very easy to hide in the noise.
------
ingve
Vivaldi browser developer Patricia Aas has done a terrific job bringing
awareness to election security issues ahead of the upcoming Norwegian
election:
[https://twitter.com/pati_gallardo/](https://twitter.com/pati_gallardo/) (most
links are in Norwegian, but Google translate does a reasonable job).
~~~
erokar
I agree. She raised this concern as a private citizen and debated it on
national tv and radio with the ballot bureaucrats who initally dowplayed the
issue. If it hadn't been for her, probably nothing would have been done about
it.
~~~
captchaos99
Or someone else would have done it.... ;-)
~~~
erokar
Or not ;)
------
maaaats
Tightening it by counting manually, hehe.
Was a big deal earlier this week that the keys and stuff for some
municipalities were posted online on their web pages. Edit: it was
certificates you had to install in the browser to verify that you were in the
position to enter the total amount of votes in your municipality. The url for
download were unique and random, but got indexed by search engines because
they spy on urls you visit.
[https://www.nrk.no/norge/sensitive-valg-filer-for-tre-
kommun...](https://www.nrk.no/norge/sensitive-valg-filer-for-tre-kommuner-var-
tilgjengelig-for-hele-verden-1.13664601)
Edit, hmm, downvoted?
~~~
JetSpiegel
I don't speak Norwegian, but this claims Edge sends all visited URL to Bing?
Microsoft taking a page from Google, how quaint.
~~~
rlkf
> this claims Edge sends all visited URL to Bing?
Yes. So if you instead of attachments of large files in email send an URL such
as [https://acme.pri/?id=cafe-babe-deadbeeff00d](https://acme.pri/?id=cafe-
babe-deadbeeff00d), which is not secured by any other method than obscurity,
then Edge will submit it to Bing, which indexes it and then the content is
available if you can come up with some keywords that match.
It is fairly well known in Norway, due to having been in the national news
earlier this spring, but I have no reason to think it doesn't apply
universally.
------
andy_ppp
In case you haven’t seen this breakdown by Tom Scott about why electronic
voting is lunicy, here it is:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)
------
alain_gilbert
Just a wild thought I had:
If you remember the invisible dots that printers add, so the government can
track where something was printed. (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894)
)
I wonder if some government did/are/could use this technologies to deanonymize
voters.
For example they would print your SSN on the piece of paper that you are
voting on.
~~~
askvictor
It might be possible, but quite difficult in practice given that a voter can
show up at any time to any number of voting stations.
~~~
alain_gilbert
It's been a while I haven't voted. I'm from Canada and currently live abroad.
But If I remember well, I had to actually vote at a specific place.
The part I don't remember well is if they were giving me a specific sheet of
paper, or just take one on the top of a stack.
I remember they were looking for my name, and I have a souvenir that they
detached the side of the sheet (but this is vague).
I guess it was a stack :)
~~~
askvictor
In Australia, you can go to any polling station in your electorate, where they
find your name in a book of paper (of which there are several copies in each
station, and several stations in each electorate), cross it off, and give you
a ballot paper from a stack. Presumably they process the names lists after the
fact to see if anyone voted twice, though by that point there's no way to get
the votes out of the mix.
------
askvictor
Reposting what a few 2nd level comments have already said: voting is still
done on paper in Norway; the counting if what is being done electronically.
~~~
amptorn
Oh good, so you just have to hack the counting machine?
~~~
askvictor
Yes, that's the point of the security overhaul. But at least paper votes can
be recounted and verified.
------
anfractuosity
Out of interest, with computerised voting do they generally also protect the
information of who voted for who?
I might be wrong, but I don't think paper ballots have any identifying
information on.
Edit: Hmm, ballot papers do apparently have a unique ID on, which I hadn't
noticed before.
~~~
tyfon
Here in Norway at least, all voting is on paper ballot.
You receive an election card (valgkort) in the mail to bring to the polling
station containing all your info. ID is also required.
If you forget this card, they can print it out for you.
Then you enter the booth containing party lists. You can't "punch" the wrong
party as each have their own ballot. You can erase/add/reprioritize names on
the party list you choose though.
Then you put this ballot into an anonymous envelope. This envelope is then put
into another envelope along with your election card.
When they count it, they pull out the ballot envelope and the election card,
register that you have voted, then someone else will open and count the actual
vote.
It seems to me to be pretty secure and anonymous.
------
nkristoffersen
Isn't blockchain tech perfect for voting?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Googling a sentence yields copycat sites and poor results in general - HoppedUpMenace
Take the following sentence for example, searched in google with quotation marks included:<p>"Booster seats, car seats and seat belts are equally effective at saving the lives of children"<p>This is a sentence that originated (as far as I know) from here: <a href="http://www.montana.edu/news/17359/msu-studies-investigate-effectiveness-of-booster-seats" rel="nofollow">http://www.montana.edu/news/17359/msu-studies-investigate-ef...</a>.<p>The first page of results contains various websites that, on the surface, contain the quoted sentence but on closer inspection, contains the entire original content from montana.edu verbatim. Additionally, the first 5 results are from sciencedaily.com, with different titles for each result and were created (supposedly) over the past 10 years or so.<p>Now if you go to the second page of results, the majority of results are now sciencedaily.com but by exploring the links, you find the phrase is embedded as a link to articles first shown as results on the first page of google search results.<p>I thought this was interesting so I attempted to look up what might be another widely copied type of sentence across websites to see what other articles are copy and pasted everywhere, example from <a href="https://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/22-medical-studies-that-show-vaccines.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/22-medical-studies-that...</a>:<p>"The vaccine-autism debate has been going on for years. It has been a tale of shifting beliefs as child vaccination rates remain high"<p>In this case, searching this sentence, quotes included, yielded results as before highlighting the sentence in almost every result that I found but the article itself was not copy and pasted verbatim as before.<p>In any case, thought this might be interesting to share. Perhaps this show the futility or limitations of searching this type of content or it may also show how many websites are merely reposting noteworthy content in order to generate clicks or mislead people into thinking their website is legitimate when it comes to scientific data or studies.
======
tivert
Anecdotally, I'm finding it's becoming much harder to Google article titles
for me when I'm trying to pull up an article on my phone to share. The top few
hits are usually copycat sites.
I wonder if Google's gotten too comfortable in its dominant position, so it's
not troubled when its search quality slips.
~~~
chewz
My guess is Google makes better ROI on copycat sites (the reason for their
existence beeing linking and displaying adds - both fields dominated by
Google). So it isn't accidental it is direct result of Google's policy.
------
ThJ
Google is kind of showing signs of becoming more like AltaVista towards the
end of its life. It's not quite as bad yet, but I feel increasingly frustrated
when I'm searching for things, and that wasn't the case 5-7 years ago. You
often have to scroll past junk to find the good stuff. I do think they're
resting on their laurels somewhat.
------
ezekg
Interestingly, almost all of the results below the fold given here [0] result
in being redirected to a writing service or a blank page.
Maybe this is a new type of SEO "growth hack"?
[0]:
[https://www.google.com/search?ei=nJRbW9PgFMfEswX8tpDgCQ&q=%2...](https://www.google.com/search?ei=nJRbW9PgFMfEswX8tpDgCQ&q=%22The+vaccine-
autism+debate+has+been+going+on+for+years.+It+has+been+a+tale+of+shifting+beliefs+as+child+vaccination+rates+remain+high%22&oq=%22The+vaccine-
autism+debate+has+been+going+on+for+years.+It+has+been+a+tale+of+shifting+beliefs+as+child+vaccination+rates+remain+high%22)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: April Fool's Pranks - siong1987
Instead of saturating the frontpage with April Fool's pranks, why don't we keep all the jokes under this thread?<p>It works just like a subpage for just April Fool's pranks.<p>* Submit your link with comment.
======
siong1987
From Google,
* Google Nose: <https://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/nose/help.html>
* Gmail Blue: [https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/promos/blue/index....](https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/promos/blue/index.html)
Edit: Gmail Tap removed.
~~~
sevkih
<https://www.youtube.com/theyoutubecollection>
~~~
fudged71
This is also from last year, IIRC
~~~
notatoad
Yup. Youtube's prank this year is pretty great:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H542nLTTbu0>
~~~
robflynn
I was pretty impressed with the 12 hours of non-stop youtube readings.
Dedication.
------
bhickey
I wrote a file system that gives weather reports:
<http://github.com/bhickey/cloudyfs>
~~~
bbanyc
If you did this for Plan 9 it wouldn't be a joke. Actually I wouldn't be
surprised if Plan 9 has already got this.
------
arcatek
April Fools on the Python bugtracker
#17587 Have all core library modules imported by default
<http://bugs.python.org/issue17587>
~~~
pyvek
Even though I know its a joke, a part of me still raged inside.
And can we put an & and a $ somewhere in Python? I think these feel very cool to use, and are easily one of >the best things I miss from more advanced languages like C and PHP.
Let's be honest, doesn't this:
$item->method();
Look a lot more professional than:
item.method()
------
dbarlett
INTERCAL on Interstates <http://www.intercaloninterstates.org/>
Stackoverflow rolls out "Chat with an expert"
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470570>
~~~
joshguthrie
INTERCAL on Interstates looked so close to real... Almost disappointed it's an
April Fools :(
------
dbarlett
Atlassian JIRA Jr. <http://www.atlassian.com/jirajr>
~~~
sveiss
This is slightly tempting for the teenagers I wrangle -- mostly for the
embarrassment factor.
------
vrdabomb5717
Youtube on the selection of a winner:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H542nLTTbu0>
~~~
zarify
As always, the really good stuff is in the comments.
I'd like to think they're playing along, but...
------
EmilRehnberg
Twitter's pretty good: <http://blog.twitter.com/2013/03/annncng-twttr.html>
~~~
josephpmay
This is great. I get the impression that they are mocking app.net.
------
hkuo
If you can get access to someone's iPhone for 30 seconds you can install a web
app that looks just like the iPhone interface but with various surprises when
anything is pressed.
<http://www.iphoneception.com>
------
carlsednaoui
Google Analytics - Visits from The International Space Stations:
[http://carlsednaoui.com/post/46805160838/google-analytics-
ha...](http://carlsednaoui.com/post/46805160838/google-analytics-happy-april-
fool)
~~~
paul9290
Yeah i just submitted my newest startup via a Show HN and since then been
watching Real Time Analytics.
I had no idea what that dot in the middle of the ocean was with 41 visitors;
joke was lost on me for a bit. Cute.
------
maguay
Some awesome CSS for messing up your colleagues' browsing experience for April
Fool's day: <https://github.com/wesbos/aprilFools.css>
------
ak0s
Lambda the Ultimate is moving to Facebook: <http://lambda-the-
ultimate.org/node/4709>
------
hayksaakian
stereotypical job ad for a startup
probably by 500 startups
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sof/3715368374.html>
saw it posted on YC jobs
~~~
josephpmay
Are you sure this isn't real?
~~~
hayksaakian
On second thought it could be real, but the notion of a startup needing a VP
of engineering with 5 years of rails 3 experience seems absurd given how long
rails 3 has been in existence.
edit: there are several articles about this company since 2011, so I guess it
_is_ real...
edit2: it's hard to take seriously with this line from the ad: "Yes, we
realize that the best technology leaders are highly sought after. So why
should you join us over that sexy social - local - mobile - sharing start-up?"
~~~
justinY
We specifically ask for, "5+ years of experience building and managing strong
engineering organizations," not "5+ years of rails 3..." lol
re: "edit2" - we're basically trying to convey that we're solving a real and
serious problem (helping retailers compete with amazon). it's actually
resonated with potential candidates since smart and motivated engineering
leaders don't want to just be part of "the next groupon..."
~~~
hayksaakian
Thanks for the response. You know your metrics better than I do -- the ad just
stood out to me because the tone conflicted with the message.
~~~
justinY
that's a good point...thinking of some edits...
------
pawn
I put this one together. I tried to be pretty blatantly obvious but some
people still bought it.
[http://www.cnn.com.2013.04.01.supreme.court.settles.marriage...](http://www.cnn.com.2013.04.01.supreme.court.settles.marriage.debate.ausaliwvpqqervzubufoolahahaiamwaxon.viewthesource.org/index.html)
~~~
Justsignedup
May I say, a brilliant use of domain names.
~~~
pawn
You may good sir! Fooled several friends with my use of the subdomain. Even
after I told them I wrote it, "how'd you get an article on cnn?"
------
Urgo
I've been keeping a list of every website that puts up an april fools' day
joke since 2004. Here's the 2013 list (submit to here if you like too)
<http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/2013.html>
------
nitins
[http://itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-to-join-
microsoft/?utm_sou...](http://itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-to-join-
microsoft/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ItsFoss+%28Its+FOSS!+An+Open+Source+Blog%29)
------
milkmiruku
Charlie Stross goes into movie production
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/press-
re...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/press-release-
stross-uncloaks-.html)
------
jaredsohn
OkCupid Labs Date Courier (find dates via snail mail):
<http://www.okcupidlabs.com/blog/2013/03/30/Date-Courier.html>
------
EmilRehnberg
Google Japan has one on character input methods:
<http://googlejapan.blogspot.jp/2013/04/google-patapata.html>
And Kotaku is not late to the party either: [http://kotaku.com/tiny-nintendo-
consoles-made-out-of-lego-46...](http://kotaku.com/tiny-nintendo-consoles-
made-out-of-lego-464803244)
~~~
walt74
Kotakus Posting is real.
------
tonystubblebine
We did Goal Tracking by Mail and we're actually honoring these.
[http://blog.lift.do/post/46554731666/v0-1-goal-tracking-
by-m...](http://blog.lift.do/post/46554731666/v0-1-goal-tracking-by-mail)
People seem to want an Android version of Lift, but we thought a nice, high-
res paper version would do more to increase our reach.
------
YokoZar
Last year I uploaded an empty package to Ubuntu titled "Free Launchpad Karma"
-- the idea was that whenever an Ubuntu developer wanted more Launchpad karma
points, they could easily file a bug against it, close a bug against it,
upload a new version, provide a translation, and so on.
------
royalghost
Google Analytics - We were visited from International Space Station -
[http://www.merocampus.com/blog/2013/04/01/merocampus-
visited...](http://www.merocampus.com/blog/2013/04/01/merocampus-visited-from-
international-space-station-google-april-fool-joke)
------
elamadej
Supposedly "Wearing Unerdwear can solve EVERY SINGLE problem you can imagine"
[https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.293334650798987.10...](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.293334650798987.1073741827.212072642258522&type=3)
------
nirvanatikku
Google Analytics: Visitors from the International Space Station - Control Room
[http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46833558732/google-
analy...](http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46833558732/google-analytics-
april-fools-day-visitors)
------
andrewchoi
Just found this thanks to a late night diff eq. problem set:
[http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the-
wolf...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the-wolframalpha-
handwritten-knowledge-engine/)
------
dbarlett
Wolfram|Alpha Handwritten Knowledge Engine:
[http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the-
wolf...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the-wolframalpha-
handwritten-knowledge-engine/)
------
schuyler2d
Type 'peep' at <http://www.wnyc.org/>
------
nirvanatikku
Android Dev Portal "Add New Awesome Application"
[http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46785199420/add-new-
awes...](http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46785199420/add-new-awesome-
application)
------
tvwonline
The Guardian has announced 'Guardian Goggles'.
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/01/guard...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/01/guardian-
goggles-video)
------
mayankj08
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_qFFHC0eIUc)
Google's Find Treasure Mode Prank
------
lunita
Google Play - [http://www.fortechiesonly.com/2013/04/google-android-
develop...](http://www.fortechiesonly.com/2013/04/google-android-developer-
april-fools.html)
------
dbarlett
Imgur upload via Snail Mail: <http://imgur.com/blog/2013/04/01/upload-via-
snail-mail/>
------
Trezoid
deviantART launches deviantHEART, a dating site for artists:
<http://www.deviantart.com/deviantheart/>
------
moxon
Everest launches a startup within a startup, code named: Project Pink Elephant
<http://everest.com/about>
~~~
jtomasz
Hopefully they've figured out limbo.
------
1123581321
My favorite is Craigslist's new mobile site: <http://Chicago.craigslist.org>
------
sidwyn
Google Nose
<http://www.google.com/nose>
------
TallboyOne
GMail Blue... <http://www.gmail.com/blue>
------
arseniclifeform
iRoll - create fake iPhone apps to rickroll others. <http://iroll.co/>
~~~
miorel
I was expecting your link to be a rickroll.
------
tkahn6
Someone does this every year and the jokes still dominate the front page.
Some people get upset about this and some people let those people know that
it's not a big deal because it's only one day out of the year.
This discussion is repeated on every joke submission.
~~~
sharkweek
<meta>Next year, I'm going to cite your comment in the 2014 version of this
thread and say "And someone will comment ahead of time, explaining what will
inevitably happen throughout the day"</meta>
~~~
iaw
Funniest thing is that someone said _that_ in the 2011 version.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2394349>
~~~
raldi
Not seeing it. Got a link to the specific comment?
~~~
iaw
Look again, I'm _sure_ you'll find it ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Data Calculator: See who makes money selling your data and how much - rvrabec
https://app.fastgarden.io/assessment
======
rvrabec
The news about companies making billions off targeted ads and data access
agreements is interesting. We get that hackers made money off the Equifax and
Marriott breaches. But this information about the data market had me thinking,
is my data making these companies a few pennies or is there more on the table?
This app calculates the value of a person’s data based on two sets of
information. First, the apps you use, their data sharing agreements, and their
annual revenue per user. Second, the email you use and the associated accounts
that hackers have stolen information from. We’re working on improving our
estimation methodology, but the data brokerage market is pretty opaque. Here
are the sources and methods: [https://medium.com/fast-garden/fast-garden-
assessment-data-s...](https://medium.com/fast-garden/fast-garden-assessment-
data-sources-399dad064723)
Thanks in advance for the thoughts, ideas, feedback.
------
griffinkelly
This is pretty cool and at minimum food for thought on who's making money on
my data. Where did you get the dollar amounts? Is that based on facts and
conversations with these companies/data brokers?
~~~
rvrabec
Thanks! The dollar amounts for data brokers come from their annual revenue
statements. Though my experience in the industry plays into the estimate of
how big their consumer files are and how much on average they make selling
someone's data.
------
snowpython
How quickly do you anticipate being able to sell data and make your consumers
money?
How do you envision paying customers/individuals?
~~~
rvrabec
When you join Fast Garden we try to make it clear which datasets are in demand
and how they'll be used, for example, location data or purchase behavior.
Because of this, payment from companies to sellers is quick. We're testing the
details right now; should we pay people in monthly or weekly micropayments? or
pay people in yearly sums that are larger? It depends on the goals of the
people sharing their data. We've already gotten interest from people who are
used to selling their information because unlike a platform like Survey
Monkey, we'll create payment predictability for people who sell their
information over time.
------
iamericyes
Very interesting tool and wild to see how much your data can go for. So cool.
~~~
rvrabec
Thanks for checking it out Eric! Do you mind sharing how much your data was
worth?
------
alechter
LOVE THIS! Can’t wait to get control of my personal data again
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The emergence of laboratory benefits managers: PBM déjà vu? - wiggles_md
https://www.statnews.com/2019/11/05/emergence-laboratory-benefits-managers/
======
wiggles_md
I submitted this because there are more than a few startups in the lab test
space (partly to take advantage of CLIA).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should I work for free? (Flowchart) - Sukotto
http://shouldiworkforfree.com/
======
ColinWright
Many comments from when this was last submitted:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098332>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What doing a Startup feels like - enki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XI3U8eupNQ#t=1m0s
======
jgrall
Like you're crazy at first. Once you push through the initial self-doubt and
start building something that people want, it's one of the most energizing
things you can do.
------
dh2k
like surfing on the top of the wave instead of swimming below with the masses
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Mix, Preview and Download Trendy Font Combinations - jonifico
https://fontpairings.bypeople.com/
======
bootstraptor
a must-have tool for web designers, one of the best interfaces works like a
charm!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U.S. senators ask consumer watchdog head for details on Equifax probe - rectang
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-equifax-cfpb-lawmakers/u-s-senators-ask-consumer-watchdog-head-for-details-on-equifax-probe-idUSKBN1FS2R1
======
linsomniac
A previous HN discussion, possibly on Equifax now that I think about it, had a
comment recommending the book "The Chickenshit Club", about why the justice
department doesn't prosecute.
I just finished in it a discussion of Enron and their auditors, Arthur
Andersen. The justice department prosecuted Andersen (one of the "big 5"
accounting firms at the time), and there was a lot of backlash about the
Justice Dept "killing Andersen".
The details of it are that Enron was way crooked, lying to investors and the
public saying everything was great, when it wasn't. Andersen audits didn't
reveal this, and also was responsible for increasing document shredding from
80lbs/day to >2,000lbs/day in the few days before the SEC subpoena. And this
was after Andersen had been shown to be negligent in the auditing of Worldcom,
QWest, and Globalcom.
Basically, they recommended fraudulent practices with WorldCom, got caught and
said "We promise we will never do that again" and did it again with Enron.
Justice Dept prosecuted, and then there was all this backlash about the
prosecution.
So, is prosecution of Equifax likely? Seems like we as a country have trained
the government not to.
~~~
creaghpatr
Second the recommendation for Chickenshit Club (also helps interpret the speed
and proceedings of other DOJ cases in play).
Equifax is largely embedded in our business/credit infrastructure and there
would be collateral consequences for all of the businesses who would have to
change as a result of their punishment/demise. This in no way absolves them
from responsibility but DOJ pragmatism towards corporations is they way it
goes, for now.
If AWS (for example) experienced some significant breach, would the DOJ and/or
the public want them punished out of existence? Execs go to jail vs. large
corporate fine? Should punitive damages go towards patching the breach or
refunding customers? It's a delicate balance and I'm personally undecided on
how to scope the fix, even after reading Chickenshit Club.
~~~
cat199
1775 USA: If we don't like the king, we shouldn't get rid of the monarchy -
think of the impacts to the wider society!
2018 USA: If we don't like the executive, we shouldn't get rid of foocorp -
think of the impacts to the wider society!
systemic/structural answers to specific problems are rarely the solution, but
they sure do help you avoid the cost of dealing with the specific problem..
~~~
arca_vorago
"We need to look forward, not behind"...
I hate that attitude so much.
~~~
IntronExon
Anyone who tries to convince you to not study history is _not_ looking out for
your best interests.
------
tptacek
"US senators" here referring to most of the minority party, and none of the
majority party, meaning nothing is likely to come of this until after 2018.
~~~
protomyth
_The letter, which was dated Feb. 7, was led by Hawaii 's Democratic Senator
Brian Schatz and signed by 29 Democrats, including all those on the Senate
Banking Committee, and two independents._ per Reuters, but no actual letter
text.
~~~
tptacek
Right, but the two I's caucus with the Democrats.
There's an argument to be made that the Democrats (who I'm a stalwart
supporter of) have happily polarized this issue, rather than doing something
more quiet while collecting bipartisan support. That what they're doing
_looks_ helpful but really isn't.
~~~
protomyth
Well, yeah. In the 90's or early 00's, it would have been both parties with a
joint press conference. Now we have 24 hour news and don't need cooperation to
get press. At this point working with the other party is just not done. The
congressional leadership of both parties has set a course and its going to be
this way for a while. In some ways, its just a shift from incumbent protection
to trying to gain back seats. Equifax is pretty far down the list politically
anyway, so it probably didn't actually do any harm, but it certainly didn't do
any good either.
I find it amusing that the polling that has failed for multiple years is being
seen as valid this time around.
------
rectang
Was it inevitable that the Equifax situation became partisan?
I'm a market constructivist, and I'd prefer the simplest possible solution
which regulates Equifax and its immense externalities out of existence.
But isn't there also a libertarian case to be made that the credit authorities
are a cartel and should be deregulated out of existence? And if that's the
case, can't at least some of us find common ground?
~~~
sp332
No, the Equifax breach hurt tons of constituents on both sides of the aisle.
The parties had every reason to come together on this. Especially the
Republicans, because the lack of trust will be bad for business. But it seems
the ones elected at the moment are beholden to specific donors and not
accountable to the people they're supposed to represent.
I'm not clear on how deregulation would hurt Equifax and the other reporting
agencies? It seems that enforcing regulations would hurt them in this case.
~~~
mulmen
You seem to have conflated the concepts of representation and protection.
Congress represents constituents, it does not protect them. If constituents do
not demand action here congress will not pursue further action.
The CFPB is supposed to be protecting consumers, not congress.
~~~
sp332
That's a good point. But rectang was asking about protection becoming
partisan, which is playing out in the Senate.
------
tomohawk
Equifax is bad, but the CFPB is much worse. Its rules and actions are immune
to oversight by any other body, including Congress and the Judiciary. It draws
funding directly from the Federal Reserve instead of being funded by Congress.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/norbertmichel/2017/01/24/the-
cf...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/norbertmichel/2017/01/24/the-cfpb-is-in-
the-crosshairs-exactly-where-it-belongs/#277dedfc1a4f)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We're Shutting Down and I'm Scared - danaseverson
http://startupsanonymous.com/story/were-shutting-down-and-im-scared/
======
tptacek
Been there.
* If your payables and debts are all in the company's name, nobody is coming for your house. The likelihood that your business was going to die before you could pay all your debts was priced into your contracts. If you have employees, pay them and get them off your books first; employee wages are, depending on the state you're in, the one likely exception to that rule.
* If they were in your name, well, that sucks, but still nobody is coming for your house. Your credit rating will probably absorb all the damage. I've had shitty credit all my life, so much so that it used to make it hard to get checking accounts (I'm not a deadbeat, I just don't have revolving credit, and do have billing disputes that I don't have time to resolve). Shitty credit is not that big of a deal. Just don't use credit.
* It sounds like your wife is right. The existence of startups isn't a guarantee that you'll never need to work for someone else again. The normal life cycle of a startup founder is, (1) work for someone else, (2) start company, (3) run company into ground, (4) goto 1. Think of it this way: had your company been successful, it almost certainly would have left you in a state where you'd be working for someone else for a couple years during your earnout. "Not working for someone else" was never really on the table.
* Getting a company funded and then running it is a resume plus. You won't have more trouble getting another job than you did getting the one you left to start this company.
* Your investors expected you to fail. The odds were always overwhelmingly that you would. The whole startup investment model is, put money into 10 companies, hope 1 succeeds. Your investors are professionals. Let their problems remain their problems.
* Are you going to get ridiculed for failing? Obviously, you're not an HN reader. You'd have gotten ridiculed for succeeding. Ridicule is the air we breathe. Why do you care?
* Most small companies start from nothing. That's good news, because "nothing" is an easy state to achieve. Give yourself a couple years, and then try again.
~~~
patio11
In addition to Thomas being right about employee wages being able to "pierce
the veil" in many states, they're the people most at risk in this situation,
so you owe it to them to make sure they're taken care of. It's the one
circumstance where I would backstop a company problem with personal funds. (If
your company was also behind on e.g. rent or hosting, on the other hand, that
risk was priced into contractual terms, like Thomas said. I'd generally prefer
to make vendors whole where possible but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.)
With regards to your own situation: you're in the best hiring market in the
history of ever. Reach out to your incubator's network and you'll have
attractive job offers starting as early as you can accept them. That isn't the
whole of the solution set: Big Daddy G and the rest of the tech industry are
hiring like mad, too, and they are also throwing around signing bonuses large
enough to cover your last few months of salary nonpayment.
P.S. to other HNers: "And then we didn't pay ourselves salary" strikes me as
something I hear from a lot of failed funded startups which magnifies the
personal financial risk of doing them significantly without meaningfully
increasing the chance you'll pull things through. I'd strongly consider not
doing that, again, unless the alternative is missing payroll for your other
employees.
~~~
tptacek
The dumbest thing I've ever done in my career was to start a "founders don't
take salary" company after earning a windfall from the sale of the last
company I'd been at. Most companies fail. That company was no exception. The
personal cost was spectacular.
Most HN'ers seem to be in their mid-20s. Something you'll learn when you cross
30 is that time is more valuable than money. You'll never get the years you
spend chasing a doomed idea back. If forgoing a salary seems to be a make-
break issue for your idea, pick a better idea.
~~~
nostrademons
I'm trying to understand the context and limits of your advice, in light of
the chicken-and-egg problem of getting people to invest in or buy your product
before proving it out, which usually requires building something to show it's
possible, which usually requires quitting your previous employer so they don't
own it. Are you suggesting that forgoing salary shouldn't be a substitute for
thinking about your revenue model, which I'd probably agree with? That
thinking "I have money in the bank, I'm fine for now" makes you less hungry
and less likely to take the actions you need to succeed? That one should know
when to quit and should never let dreams get in the way of facts?
Or are you saying that forgoing salary is always a bad idea? If you are, how
else are we supposed to start a product company? It seems like it's a worse
idea to take investment without having done some minimal homework and
prototyping to prove out the market, which usually requires at least building
something you can show to customers. It's a very bad idea from a legal
standpoint to do that work while you're still employed by somebody else.
Consulting -> product conversions can work, but it's often really hard to make
time for product development while consulting.
From my own perspective - I started a "founders don't take salary" company
when I was 2 years out of college. It failed miserably, predictably - it was a
terrible idea to begin with, and I folded it up once I realized I was in over
my head. But I think starting it was one of the best decisions I made in my
lifetime, because the skills and perspective I gained from it got me a job
that paid enough that I made back that year after about a year of employment.
I'm now in a position where I have a bunch saved up, and I'm trying to weigh
my options rationally. I'd like to avoid making stupid mistakes, but I'm also
mindful of how the #1 regret of most elderly people, on their deathbeds, is
that they wish they'd taken more risks.
~~~
001sky
The idea that you should preserve investor's cash is a good notion, but not at
the cost of forgoing _fair_ compensation to yourself and the early founding
team. In the long run, everyone is better off from this approach.
(1) Good investors run (on average) profitable portfolios, and they are not
going to be made or broken by pennies on the dollar from the disposition of
the firm's assets in a bakruptcy.
(2) Good founders should have enough 'skin in the game' that the signalling
behaviour forgone by avoiding this strategy should not be the make-or-break
between succusseful outside investment (or not).
(3) Following up, if (1) and (2) are in place, everyone is best served by
having the founding team fully solvent. Preferably before and after the
company succeeds or fails. All of the principal founders, investors, and
employees want each other to be thinking clearly, rationally, and open-
mindedly...with well-understood motives.
~~~
nostrademons
I can easily see paying yourself living expenses, once you've taken investment
(or have paying customers), as a good thing. That's basically "ramen
profitability", and getting to there as fast as possible is important.
I'm wondering about the part before taking investment - when you don't have
any money coming in, are still building out a product (or even a prototype),
and have cash in your personal bank but none in the corporate bank. Is it
appropriate to pay yourself nothing then? Should you make this phase as short
as possible? (Well, obviously yes, but in practice this means a lot of
different trade-offs, like picking a less ambitious project that you can
complete more quickly, or doing consulting to bootstrap the business, or
pivoting to a business that focuses on profit more than userbase, or not doing
a startup at all. At what point should you be willing to sacrifice future
possible gains to ensure that you have money coming in to cover your living
expenses?)
~~~
NhanH
I'm sorry I might have misunderstood you. But if you have money in your
personal bank and none in the corporate bank, why would you pay yourself (and
be taxed on it) rather than just use the money (your money) to cover the
living expenses?
~~~
nostrademons
That's what I'm trying to understand from tptacek's post. Some hypotheses that
come to mind:
1.) Putting money into the corporate bank and then taking it out as a nominal
salary keeps you really honest with yourself. You can't say "There's money in
my bank account, there's not much need for urgency", instead you see the
corporate bank account dribbling dry just as if it were someone else you were
paying.
2.) It reduces personal risk in case the startup goes bankrupt.
3.) It makes accounting & record-keeping easier for when the startup actually
does start making money, since you already have systems setup.
4.) Minimum wage laws require it. I talked to a (Massachusetts-based) lawyer
once that suggested this may be an issue. But then, if it is, how does that
square with all the tech company CEOs that take $1 salaries?
5.) It lets you take advantage of certain personal financial products that are
only available if you have earned income in a year, eg. Roth IRAs.
~~~
tptacek
It's (1). It does more than keep you honest with yourself; it also protects
the value of your time.
------
laureny
> But, I can’t imagine working for somebody else. I wish my wife understood
> that.
She's understood it long enough to let you pursue the dream of your life at
great costs for her, maybe now it's time for you to do some sacrifice for her
and go work for someone?
You're not the first one to have to do that and, you know, survive.
Seriously.
~~~
tod222
I caught this too.
So did one of the commenters: [1]
_Sorry it didn’t work out._
_“I can’t go much longer without a paycheck. But, I can’t imagine working for
somebody else. I wish my wife understood that.”_
_Change your perspective on this._
_I’m a co-founder of a successful and growing business. I’ve got around $2M
liquid and who knows what on paper. I’m decently rich headed for pretty damn
rich. In the last week, I’ve changed light bulbs, picked up bugs with my hands
(no tissue close, wanted to get it and call the bug guy before people saw it),
swept the floors, took box trash out to the dumpster, cleaned some toilet
stuff (will leave it there) and just generally served people on my team in any
way I could. I find ways to do it because they are talented, could work
anywhere and choose to work here. So I serve them. Also, I have deep
relationships with them and I love them. I want to win with them._
_From your words, I worry that you don’t understand the point of the game you
are playing. If you want to run any successful team be it a business, a non-
profit, a 5th grade little league ball club – you are servant in chief. Others
exist in the world. You aren’t really ever by yourself or for yourself. Work
on being and building a team. Make meaning and tie it to production. Start by
being the best teammate you can be. Being an employee in an intense and well
managed company is a good place to learn this skill._
To me the key point was this:
_If you want to run any successful team…you are servant in chief._
Most managers completely miss the "servant in chief" bit.
[1] [http://startupsanonymous.com/story/were-shutting-down-and-
im...](http://startupsanonymous.com/story/were-shutting-down-and-im-
scared/#comment-147)
------
GuiA
Hi!
As your post seems to indicate, you're scared shitless right now and it seems
like the entire world is coming to an end. Trust me, even if it really seems
that way, it's not.
For now, grit your teeth and go through the bad stuff. Tell your wife. Be
honest with her. No matter what, she's your wife for a reason- she'll support
you through all of this. If you neglected your relationship with her a bit
because of the startup thing, then she comes first now. Then tell your
investors. Tell your employees. Tell whoever else you need to tell. Be honest,
genuine and straightforward. The next few weeks are going to suck big time,
but you'll get through them.
Once the big stuff is behind you, take a few weeks to breathe, if possible
financially. You're coming to the end of a long, arduous journey, and that's
always something hard to process. Try to find joy in the little things that
you didn't have the time for during your founder mode. Have brunch with your
wife. Go take a walk alone in the forest. Read a book. Take time to recover.
You will find another job. You don't realize this right now, but having run a
startup for 2 years gives you more skills and experience than others have
developed in a lifetime. If you have to take a job right away because of
financial hardships, take something low stress (consulting/freelance could be
a good choice, for the flexibility, although it can be hard to get started
with no leads). Now is probably a bad time to do another startup. Also, you
probably want to use this as a lesson to remember that you should always have
~6 months of expenditures in the bank that you NEVER touch precisely for
situations like this one.
Don't worry about the investors. It's part of their job - you're not the first
startup that they funded that failed, and you're not the last either. Be
professional with them- if you want to do a startup again in the future they
will remember your honesty and ethics more than the fact that your startup
failed.
You ran a startup for 2 years. Solely by doing that, you've gone further on
the path of entrepreneurship than 99.999% of people who call themselves
"entrepreneurs" have. Take time to grieve, but also take time to see all that
you have accomplished.
If you still feel depressed after a month or two, go talk to a professional
therapist/psychiatrist. Sometimes we need a little external help.
It's going to be OK. :)
~~~
jlebron2
I haven't started a company (yet!) and can't imagine what the OP is going
through but reading this made me feel better :). I will definitely save this
for future reference for when I do start (and more than likely fail) my first
company. Thanks and cheers!
~~~
keithpeter
The bit about 6 months money in the bank sounds good to me (never ran a
startup but been made redundant &c)
------
dsr_
Reminder for people who are running startups and are in serious relationships:
nothing should be a secret from your spouse/partner. Especially money.
Maybe they're supporting you so you can recycle every dollar of revenue back
into the business. Maybe you're gambling your shared savings on the success of
your venture. Maybe you've got a good financial position and your family will
be safe no matter what.
It doesn't matter. Tell your spouse. Get their advice. You don't have to take
it, but they are a valuable resource to you, someone you can trust to listen
to you, keep your secrets and have a different perspective.
It should not come as a surprise to him/her that the shutdown is likely; the
shock of "no, it's definitely over" should only be a small bump.
Then you can both live through it, and go on to the next thing you have to do.
~~~
bksenior
THIS! I can't get behind oscarthegrouch who thought it was important to
articulate the worst case scenarios in a case like this, because regardless
the next steps are the same, but this advice is gold.
Dont get to this point and surprise your partner. She is as much your partner
financially as your co-founder, treat her like that from day one.
------
pbiggar
I've been there. I shut down my YC startup about 3 1/2 years ago. It was
covered in the press more than my launch was! Shutting down was a huge weight
off my mind - we weren't successful and nothing was going to make it so.
You raised money and have employees. Worry about the employees. Get them new
jobs in great startups by actively going through your network and making sure
they get new jobs that they'll love with teams they'll enjoy.
Dont' worry about the investors. They've lost money before. If you raised from
non-professionals, then you may have to apologize. Mean it.
Tell your wife, obviously. You probably don't need to worry about money too
much - now you can take a low-stress job at high pay and get back what you
lost doing the startup.
Also, please feel free to reach out: [email protected]
------
dchuk
If you can run a startup, you're employable as a consultant to at least enough
people to make ends meet. Reach out to your personal networks and try and stem
the tide a bit.
We've all been there at some point in our life, there's nothing shameful about
working for others to make ends meet. And even though most of us hate the idea
of working for other people, at some points in life you have to put your ego
and pride aside and just bite the bullet and do some damn work to pay the
bills.
Life is long, failure is temporary. You didn't crash an airplane with 300
people in it, you just didn't succeed at business, an extremely common
occurrence. Just keep truckin'.
(I realize OP is not the anonymous poster in question)
~~~
walden42
> Reach out to your personal networks and try and stem the tide a bit.
I'm not in OP's position at all, but I'm wondering what you mean by this.
Would you just call/email people you know and ask if they need help with their
business?
~~~
dchuk
Generally, you'll end up connected to similar guys in your field after you've
been running a startup for a while. You can reach out to them and say that
you're offering XYZ consulting services in an effort to pseudo-bootstrap your
company while still working on improving traction for your company. Most
business people will actually really respect that, in fact.
It really depends on how well you've networked though. At the very least, you
can start picking up random gigs on Craigslist or even contract work if you
have any technical skills to at least keep money coming in in the short term
so you can afford some breathing room.
------
smtddr
There are all kinds of failed start-ups. As long as you know you didn't scam
anyone and you can explain to your investors what happened and show
accounting-books detailing how it all unfolded, and you learned something
during this whole experience, you'll be alright in the long term. You can
always try again. Maybe YCombinator(or GoogleVentures or whoever) should have
a support-group for failed start-ups so people can share their experiences and
know that they're not alone. Assuming you're in tech, investors know the
gamble. I'm sure they know at least half the start-ups they invest in
ultimately fail.
That said, one slightly harsh bit of advice:
_> >But, I can’t imagine working for somebody else. I wish my wife understood
that._
You need to get over that. Working for someone else(after a short break
perhaps) is basically recharging your funds and your mind while you think
about your next company. For all you know, you might run into your next co-
founder in your new job. It's hard to think about the distant future when
you're not even sure how to put food on the table tomorrow.
------
eoghan
If you're in SF, LMK if you want a sounding board and someone to talk to in
confidence. I'll buy you a beer. Help you get your head straight.
[email protected]
~~~
mbesto
And if you or anyone else wants another sound board, I'm here as well (SF or
Palo Alto) - mbesto@gmail (I can relate 100% to the OP's struggles)
------
paultannenbaum
I sympathize with most of this post, but the one thing that I don't get is
this line:
"I can’t go much longer without a paycheck. But, I can’t imagine working for
somebody else. I wish my wife understood that."
If the author really is as down and out as he claims to be, I think somebody
offering him good money to get his life back on track might be something that
is welcome. He can always work for himself once things straighten out.
------
piratebroadcast
Get over it and work for someone else, run a few side projects/experiments on
the weekend and after hours. Your wife is counting on you.
~~~
alxjrvs
I came here to make this comment. I completely sympathized (and still do) for
his position - but the luxury of something like "Not working for someone else"
is the first to go when you are in dire straits. If you have debt, a home, and
people who count on you, you take whatever work you can find. I'd call up
Chuck E. Cheese and see if I could get my first job back before I would decide
to just fail on my responsibilities.
When your luck is down, the room for luxury is low. "Not working for someone
else" is a ridiculously large one, and your wife is not in the wrong for
thinking similarly.
Still, to be constructive: Consider work that can sustain your
responsibilities, albeit at a non-optimal rate. You founded a startup, a task
that requires endlessly marketable skills in a growing field. It ended, and
perhaps it ended poorly - but you can, and will, endure.
------
panther2k
I'm there right now (minus the high-profile accelerator and funded part so I
had even less success). It sucks. I'm exhausted. But I'm broke so I need a
job. I can hack stuff together but I'm more of a junior level dev so not sure
how attractive I am to a Silicon Valley startup.
I thought I knew what it took to be successful, so I quit my wall street job
and drove out to San Francisco to JFDI. I even lived in my car for nine months
to save money. It would be worth it once the business took off. It never did.
So I started another one, which failed too. When you work non-stop, every
waking hour for almost two years and fail at everything, you realize you don't
have it all figured out. At all.
The scary part of failing is asking yourself, what the heck do I do now? And
you don't know the answer.
Probably should have made this a throwaway. Oh well.
~~~
yuhong
_Probably should have made this a throwaway. Oh well._
I prefer that the problems be fixed properly if possible.
------
DanielBMarkham
It's not as bad as you think. You're alive. You have your health (hopefully).
Tomorrow you'll most likely be alive and still have your health. This is the
starting point.
Those that love you came along for the ride. If you tried as hard as you
could, and you took this gamble with their blessing, you do not owe them an
apology -- although it wouldn't hurt to give one. They'll still love you and
you'll still be making decisions together.
Debt is bad, but they don't throw you in jail for being in debt, at least in
the states. Do some studying on dealing with creditors. It's a game like any
other game, and it helps if you know the rules. Plenty of folks in debt who
are living happy and fulfilled lives. It's not the end of the world.
As to whether you'll be viewed as a failure or not, this depends on your peers
and your culture. I suggest you hang out with people who view this as a badge
of honor. Life sucks enough without having friends who stomp on you while
you're down.
Family is another matter. Can't pick your family. But you can set some ground
rules for interacting with them. If you need money from them, be prepared to
do things you wouldn't normally do. After all, it's only fair to let them
drive a bit if you're needing their help.
It's nothing but a thing. It can be hugely disasterous, or it can be a slight
bump in the road. The difference is all between your ears, inside your head.
You get to decide how to view this part of your life -- great adventure
continues or yet another failure. I suggest you choose wisely.
------
kordless
Speaking from experience, failure is essential to becoming a good
entrepreneur. I've heard we learn more from failure than any other learning
technique. At no time are you more present in this life when you are failing,
of that I can personally assure you.
I applaud your ability to share your failure with others, even in an anonymous
way. Wherever you go and whatever positive choices you make next will guide
you to the thing you were meant to do.
------
shmerl
_> I’m broke and it’s not fair to my wife to go any longer without pay... I
can’t imagine working for somebody else._
In such circumstances one might need to do what's required, and not what one
would like to. I hope his wife will explain that to him.
------
poulsbohemian
About 18 months ago I was laid off from an executive position at a company I'd
been with about 5 years. At the same time, I was trying to bootstrap a
business on the side, I'm the sole breadwinner in our household, three little
kids, and I had a house that was underwater that we couldn't sell due in large
part to all the foreclosures in the area that were the competition. To make it
worse, we had moved to a very remote, rural area for family reasons, so had
two houses to cover, and _zero_ job possibilities anywhere in the area.
Eighteen months later, that side project has folded (which I'm ok with), the
other house is sold, and I'm doing well consulting (and with minimal travel).
Will your story 18 months from now be rosy and happy? I don't know, but I
suspect if you are the kind that would take the risk to start up a business,
you are the kind that will hustle to do whatever it takes to first reach a
point of survival and then the road back to thriving.
------
flyinglizard
How you deal with the process and its fallout will be a defining moment for
you as a person. Be upfront, be honest, and don't worry to much. Life goes on.
You're in the best place and time there ever existed to fail and move on.
The best advice I can give you is that the sky will clear the moment you
absolve yourself of the responsibilities. You'll be a free, earning man again.
Things will only look up, and very quickly the ideas will start flowing again.
Take your wife for a talk. Explain to her how it's going to be, and that
you'll be looking for a job the moment you've turned off the lights. You will
have some peace, comfort and certainty soon that will allow you to think
clearly, and later on, establish a learning process of everything you've gone
through.
Someone around these parts said that the most difficult part of being an
entrepreneur is managing your own psychology. It's time you get a hold on
yours and own the situation.
Good luck!
------
mbesto
Here's one of the most important lessons I've learned about startup life:
_There is a fundamental difference between being poor and being broke._
Being broke implies you don't have enough cash or expected cash flow to cover
your debt - but it doesn't mean you haven't accumulated wealth. Being poor
means you neither have cash nor wealth. The OP is simply broke, but not poor.
Knowledge from failing a business is (IMHO) one of the greatest, if not _the_
greatest, ways to accumulate intelligence in business. That is extremely
valuable.
~~~
sayemm
"Knowledge from failing a business is (IMHO) one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, ways to accumulate intelligence in business. That is extremely
valuable."
Amen.
------
aaronpeck
I think what you're going to find out is letting go will actually be a huge
relief. You're going to bumble around feeling like a worthless piece of shit
for a few weeks and then ideas will start boiling over in your mind. Before
you know it you'll be writing a business plan or prototyping something new and
you'll be armed with this failure as a roadmap of what not to do. You sir will
be a-ok.
PS. Not having any money at least once in your life is something everyone
should go through. You'll be surprised at how well you eat and live when you
thought you'd be homeless. You'll also realize how much bullshit you have in
your house or services you pay for that you really don't need. Good luck - you
won't need it.
~~~
apapli
Completely agree. It's amazing what we don't need and I'll expect you find
your confidence in 12 months is through the roof. The shackles you thought
were binding you are were actually made of sand.
So all the very best, and remember this will be an awesome war story for you
to tell in the future.
------
hidingmyname
I wrote
[http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com](http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com)
Like you, I raised money, went through a top accelerator and had a wild ride
that doomed in failure.
It's ok to be terrified. It's ok to hurt. Fear paralyzes. You will pull your
socks up and do what you need to do. It'll hurt more than you know. You'll
quickly separate your real friends from the rest. And then something amazing
will happen, your life will go on.
The first thing you'll notice is how much of life you've missed while riding
the startup "high life". Big things like love, family, reality will suddenly
become clearer and no longer dimmed by the tinnitus of whatever TechStars
derivative you've been through.
The next is that you're a hell of a lot wiser. You'll find a job and you'll
start performing. You'll look like a legend because the pace and agility you
learned to work at during your startup days will make you a rockstar anywhere
you decide to put your talents to use.
Your performance will bring more money, and power (to a degree) than you've
ever made before. You'll make up for lost time.
And then, like all of us, you'll hear the siren song of entrepreneurship
beckon you out into the world again. You'll pick up the pieces and start anew.
Ride the wave, brother/sister. Godspeed.
------
gavinbaker
It is hard to be where you are. Thankfully life does move forward.
In my case we had a couple million invested in the world changing idea. Saying
we failed was very very hard. Hard to tell my friends, our industry partners
and my parents.
What I did - was take a long walk to my favorite rock on the lake. And I sat
there in the cold and watched birds fly and fish eat and the sky change. I
cried tears of frustration and of grief, for the possibilities that wouldn't
be.
I then went back the office and made a list of things we needed to do. In my
case our investors saw it coming because we'd missed key milestones for
additional funding. Our team was small and I'd been open with them about
missing the milestones.
We negotiated out of our contracts and made our final payments. In our case
our board had made it clear we needed "wind down money" in the bank and we had
it.
It wasn't easy, not by a long shot. At the end I was drained. I took two
months off. I slept, I prayed, I read and I journaled. You may not be able to
do all of that, but give yourself a break.
What I wished I had was someone to talk to who understood what I was going
through. Plenty of people fail in business, but not many have a lot of money
backing it, a lot of people believing in it and you feel like you let them
down. Take up the offers of help to talk in person. I'd be glad to sit and
listen if you want. The good news is that the sun will rise tomorrow and it
will be a new day. And while it won't feel great, you will get through all of
this.
------
clarky07
It's interesting, currently my business (bootstrapped and small) is doing just
fine. Profitable, making more than I used to working for someone else, and I'm
STILL scared shitless most of the time. The wife and I want to build a house
and have kids and that sort of thing, and it all scares me.
The really interesting thing though is that in general working for yourself is
not much if any more risky than working for someone else. Sure if you are at
Apple or Google it's unlikely they are going out of business, but companies
big and small go bankrupt all the time. Layoffs happen all the time. That's
the way things work. You just have to make yourself valuable and work hard.
Especially in our business, if you are remotely competent it isn't hard to
find work right now.
I really should find a way to feel less stressed. Things are mostly fine, and
I know for a fact that I could get a job tomorrow if I wanted/needed to.
"Failure" for me would likely mean taking a high paying dev job at a great
company that I respect. I should just relax and do good work and hope for the
best. It's hard though, and I see where the OP is coming from.
~~~
72deluxe
No point working all the time to accumulate all you can only to die early from
a heart attack.
Working for someone else means you can go home and not think about work until
tomorrow. And you can read a book and develop hobbies, learn to play an
instrument, tend a garden and look after a pet.
I do not envy you. I have had to work very hard in the evenings to get out of
sticky situations, and despite the romantic view of working for yourself, I
like to go home and forget the day.
Take some time off.
~~~
clarky07
That's the interesting thing. I made more money than I've ever made last year
while working fewer hours than I ever had. Things are going well for all
intents and purposes, but building a house and having a kid or two is scary on
many levels. Being responsible for yourself is pretty easy. Being responsible
for a spouse adds a little bit to it. Being responsible for a kid on top of
that (and having the spouse quit working to take care of it) adds
significantly more.
------
mironathetin
Been there too. Here is the lesson to learn: If you got funded and have to pay
invoices, employees (including yourself), never hope for more investment.
Shrink and - if necessary - finally close your business before (!!!!) you run
out of money. This is true for startups, businesses, household budget, pocket
money, girlfriends (hrmmm), etc.
Startup is a high risk, the statistical odds are against you. Investors know
that. If they see you fail, they will not tell you, they will simply stop to
invest (and may be think, you will go on to save their a...). Hope that you
may find new investment means, you did not start looking early enough to know
the odds.
I (we) were at the same position in 2001 when the internet bubble burst. I am
happy to report, that our business needed heavy investment (like yours did)
and it became clear to us, that there will be no more investment for internet
business in the foreseeable future. So we did shut down with money on the
bank, paid our debts, bought out our gadgets from the company and divided the
money that we paid for the gadgets among the shareholders (us :o). Both of us
founders saw the startup as a business not as our baby. So we were able to
look at it from a kind of outside perspective. This was not the reason why it
failed, though, but it lifted us at eye level with the investors.
The way we handled it allowed us to book it as a very interesting experience.
We were immediately able to look forward.
But, here is the positive side: You got investments (a lot even), you survived
for 2 years, which is great. Now get together with your co-founders in a nice
place, drink a bottle or two of good wine and analyze your mistakes.
Sorry to say this now that it is late for you. But next time ...
~~~
mironathetin
Here is another thread about failure: Post mortem and lessons learned: This is
the right attitude IMHO.
[http://elnorr.com/2014/01/27/post-mortem-thanks-lessons-
lear...](http://elnorr.com/2014/01/27/post-mortem-thanks-lessons-learned/)
------
ninive
I'm a CTO and a serial entrepreneur, and i'm into this business since i was a
kid. 6 years ago after a very intense splash in a huge famous company in US,
I've decided to take a break, and fly to the Caribbean to open a sushi
restaurant. My girlfriend is a successful F&B manager so i took all the
suggestions I can handled from her, and opened it. After 12 months, was a
complete failure. The first of my life. I was really scared to lose everything
but just the time to close and open my eyes, solutions were there. Time and
focus are very helpful. I didn't drop. I've found a re-start partner, took my
girlfriend with me in business to advice and manage, changed style, and
finally sold it to at least break even all the debts and have some vacation,
ready to go back to the Internet. The break lasted 4 years at the end, and was
the most important time of my life, looking at it from here now. The major
growth of your soul. Keep the energy and focus, be sincere, and for sure
something good is going to happen. And your second time is going to be
ridiculous easier, trust me. Good luck.
~~~
72deluxe
Sounds like you went to some exotic places and tried some interesting things
though. Likely a worthwhile experience!
I would like to visit the Caribbean. Even America would be good! Must save
up...
------
jonhmchan
This is a dark time, but you can work for someone else. Most of us do.
~~~
perishabledave
Agreed. It's about priorities, if he values his family more than the
comfort/luxury/whatever-it-may-be of self-employment then you do what you have
to do; not saying it would be easy.
------
ojbyrne
"We didn’t leave enough money in the bank to pay off our debt, so now we need
to tell people we can’t pay. Are they going to come after me, or my house and
my car? I’m broke and I’m scared."
Hoping the "well-known accelerator" knew their stuff and the company was
structured appropriately so that's not an issue.
------
eli
" _Will [out investors] forgive us? Will any investor ever trust us again?_ "
These are professional investors putting money into an early stage startup,
right? I'm certain they were aware going in that they might not get their
money back. (And, in fact, that this was the most likely outcome.)
------
omegote
> I can’t imagine working for somebody else. I wish my wife understood that.
Seriously?
~~~
MichaelGG
Seriously. I'm 32, and never had a "boss" per-se. I've had consulting clients,
and I've been at a company before, but always on my own terms.
I recently started work with a part-time client in a more traditional
arrangement and it's quite...trying. I had thought it'd be the opposite:
someone else is running things, you just show up and get things done. If they
make poor decisions, whatever, it's their money and time. In practise, I'm
finding it extremely difficult to deal with. I'll stick it out because I said
I would but it is not as pleasant as I had thought.
It's not a good thing, and I wish as a teen I had been subjected to higher
work discipline. Yes, I know, I'm whining about first-world problems (while
living in a third-world country).
~~~
72deluxe
I am not yet 32 and I have worked for companies as an employee. Also, when I
was utterly broke I did freelance work on the side and different languages and
skills. It helped me get another job in fact!
I think the important thing for me now is that at the end of the day I can go
home and not really have to worry or think about work until tomorrow. If money
was the most important thing in life (or I was deeply in debt again), I would
be working all evening as well, but money isn't the most important thing. Time
is. Time to read, time to play with my cats, time to reflect.
My know a few who work for themselves and they seem constantly restless and
with worry about how to make ends meet when not enough work is coming in. The
idea of working for yourself seems romantic and "free" but it can be quite
stressful, particularly with a family and children.
~~~
MichaelGG
I was hoping it'd be like that: "Clock out" and then forget about things.
Except it's not, and I have dreams revolving around exactly how to solve a
certain problem. Maybe if I became a lumberjack I could rest at night.
~~~
72deluxe
I find the drive home is the time to unwind for that. It isn't a long drive
but I try and force myself to forget it. Of course, I might end up tinkering
with stuff in the evening but I try and make it my own code, not works, to
keep that separation. But mostly I will attempt to avoid computer "work".
I think if it gets too much I will become a gardener for the council and mow
lawns. All that green is quite therapeutic, and you can see where you've been
and where you've got to go on a lawn, so it is good.
------
patrickod
Take some time to decompress. The winding down period is stressful and it
seems you're already feeling the effects.
As many have mentioned you've only enriched your resume with this experience.
Use it to find yourself work, your incubator network should be full of people
looking to hire.
I've gone through this and it's stressful as all hell but you'll make it
through. With your nose right up against it the problems seem much more
formidable than they are in reality. Employees come first in terms of settling
debts. Deal with vendors after that.
One point I'd really stress is that you should talk to people about it. Feel
free to reach out ([email protected])
------
skwirl
I don't have any particular advice to give, but, assuming nothing improper
happened here, if you gave it your best, there is nothing wrong with failure.
Failure is part of the system. Your investors and employees realize that
startups are a risky venture. There are plenty of jobs out there and your
employees will land on their feet.
I have nothing but respect for startup founders who did their best and came up
short. I hope that the experience you've gained serves you well throughout
your career and one day you can look back and appreciate the experience. Good
luck going forward.
------
pdq
This reminds me of the "My Startup has 30 Days to Live Blog":
[http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com/](http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com/)
~~~
paulrademacher
I'm pretty sure that was fake.
~~~
hidingmyname
OP here. It wasn't.
------
ig1
Talk to your accelerator and your other investors (assuming they're typical
startup investors), they'll have seen plenty of other startups fail and will
be able to give you advice how to handle the situation.
They'll also know which of their other startups are hiring and should be able
to setup introductions to help you and your employees get accelerated
interviews, etc. to help with the transition.
------
iterable
Stay strong dude. I'm sure you'll make it through and figure it out. Many have
made it back from far worse situations. You can do it.
~~~
danaseverson
It's not me, just sharing. :) Thanks though.
------
danthewireman
A big first professional failure is like breaking up with your first
girl/boyfriend - it feels like the entire world is ending. After you find out
that it didn't, it can be wildly liberating because you won't really be scared
of failure any more. I recommend a few massive fuckups in any career.
------
dodyg
I've been having my business for 10 years - which almost died twice.
The business is not about you. Yes you are the founder but you are just part
of the machination to make it work.
When the business fails, it's not a judgement on your character or your moral.
Failure sucks. Tell the truth your employees ASAP. Deal with the fall out
directly.
If you need to downgrade your lifestyle, do it. It is better than having the
anxiety to put up with un-affordable lifestyle.
More importantly - don't be an ass to your wife. If you need to get a job, get
a job. There's plenty of time to try again in the future.
------
tobinharris
Think of the first time you had to build a solution to a problem you didn't
understand. It's scary with lots of unknowns.
Seeing your company collapsing is scary, and you don't know how to deal with
it. There are lots of unknowns.
In the end, you'll find a way of coping that works for you.
There's good advice here in these comments.
Personally I'd recommend finding someone experience to guide you through the
closure. That's what I did (accidentally).
You'll look back in a year and think "That was scary shit but I learnt a shit
load".
------
fredgrott
What I am interested in is the thought process involved in balancing things
like fund raising, paying one cofounder and not others to stretch it, when to
pull back, etc.
Obviously, investors want the dev cofounder paid to get product out the door..
But I am more interested in the decision process...
Let me clarify.. certain small business industries have these
accounting/financial tools to help determine decision trees such as pay off
debt now or later, etc.
Is there a similar set of financial ratios/trends to assist in the above
decision trees?
~~~
dclara
I don't know about his kind of tools, but I agree with you that doing business
has rules to follow.
Cofounders should be paid if the company has received external investment
already. Employees should be paid even if the company is not making money.
Looks like OP is very young, all he and his cofound concerned is about the
product and market, etc., not including how to run a business. In business,
cash flow is always the no. 1 concern. If there is not enough fund, don't
hire, no lease. Based on my previous job experience, $1M cannot afford a team
in office. $3M can only have 1 years expense. Startup's burn rate is super
high. Founders need to have plan B in place. It is said, "Failed to plan is
plan to fail".
Emotionally, it's hard to accept the pitfall from owing $1m to negative. But
how about if you never had that $1m, was that going to feel better? It's all
about expectation and planning.
So the most important thing is to learn what can be avoided from this lesson.
A lot of people are helping him to get rid of fear on the emotional side. It's
sad that I didn't see much help on the business side to help other failed
companies as well. Emotion is temporarily. Closing out process is a must to
go. But how to prevent the 90% of the failed companies to avoid the pain is
more important.
A lot of people care about it, but I didn't see any experts helping outside
the YC meetings, although here is YC extension forum.
------
timmm
We are smarter than this. Why do we accept this as a normal part of our
industry. There are ways to avoid this, the anxiety, heart ache, and lack of
dent in the universe.
Let's learn from this.
------
rdl
Most debt dies with the company. Tax debt (especially employee payroll
withholdings) is really the only kind of I know which carries on, along with
any personal debts which won't get reimbursed (which I got burned by, on
credit cards, several times).
It's all surprisingly easy to walk away from, at least in the US, and
particularly with normal professional investors.
------
throwaway5752
It happens. Tell your wife. Inform the board. Hire a lawyer to deal with the
debts. Inform the employees, giving them some idea of severance and resources
to transition elsewhere . Figure out how money you have left and do an orderly
wind down. Send out rfps to see if anyone will buy all or part of the company.
Then get a new job.
------
peterjancelis
You really should look for a job. There's nothing wrong with it. Look at it as
starting a consulting business with just 1 client, get to know your 'client'
and start suggesting ways you can make more money together - then charge a cut
to do so.
~~~
72deluxe
Good idea on rationalising it in your mind. Good idea.
------
Grokit
I'd say the best thing you can do is learn the lesson that you should have had
a contingency plan for this situation. Particularly since failure is the most
likely outcome of any startup. I know though, that only happens to the 'other'
guys.
------
atmosx
I don't have any advice to offer, but it's the best story/post that I've read
about startups. I think is exactly what you have to read, before jumping into
the startup wagon. Then, you're ready to go, if your gut can take it
------
datahack
Ha! Not to worry. I got myself 700k in the hole in the 2008 financial crisis
trying to "do the right thing." Spent four years digging out of that mess in a
situation where I had to run a company successfully at millions in revenue
just to stay afloat. That is a hell of a lot worse than folding the company,
and if I knew the hell it would take to dig out, I might have folded! But
we're free and clear and making money now so it was worth it. This would be
the fourth company I started. The previous three I went through the same thing
you're talking about. Got to the point where I started to wonder if there was
something wrong with me, or if I wasn't cut out to be an entrepreneur.
I know that feeling of strain and staring at the ceiling wondering if I'm
going to survive. No way out. It sucks. That's entrepreneurship. That's why
I'll never tell anyone to be in business for themselves. You have to really
want it for the right reasons or you'll never be able to survive this kind of
thing — it will break you. I've actually seen quite a lot of entrepreneurs get
"broken" when things got super, super bad to deal with. It's overwhelming.
But, the way to deal with it is this: what is the TRUTH of the situation. What
are the real FACTS? The truth is, it's not that bad. It's not like you're
being chased by ruthless drug lords down a dark street. You're folding a
business.
Whenever you find yourself afraid, find the fear, then find the truth. Keep
working through those until you feel better. It actually works. If you stick
to the facts, you'll get through it.
Also, dude, you need to keep pushing. Get yourself shut down with class, get
honest with your wife, and you'll come out swinging. It might sound crazy now,
but the average entrepreneur who makes it has a few of these under their belt!
Also, awesome piece of advice here:
[http://leadercast.com/en/](http://leadercast.com/en/) Watch the video from
Rorke Denver. Here's the cliff notes (pdf):
[http://leadercast.com/en/downloads/LN_CalmisContagious.pdf](http://leadercast.com/en/downloads/LN_CalmisContagious.pdf)
Now is the time of your testing. How you behave when the shit hits the fan is
the question of what kind of leader you'll find _yourself_ to be, so don't let
yourself down. Be calm, be brave, face fact, and dive in! It's time to learn
as much as you can about what you did to get here and what you can do next
time to avoid this outcome!
------
mindotus
If you are in the NYC area coffee or drinks on me! Just shoot me an email to
[email protected]
Just remember it's not the end and there is much more to look forward to
perhaps in a future startup months or years down the road.
------
sytelus
ummm... Didn't we invented a marvelous escape hatch called "aqui-hires"
exactly for this situations? If you have even moderately connected investors,
you should be able to get aqui-hired in a week or two, very likely sipping
pina colada on a Caribbean beach to stretch out before you start the new job
with giant bonus vesting schedule that beats any of your colleges. Plus you
get to update your Linked-In profiles with "CEO & Founder of Fantastic Startup
(Acquired by whatever)". There are no loosers in startup world anymore, AFAIK.
~~~
herdrick
Easier said than done.
------
BeccaCory
The comments below the post are what makes this really worth reading.
------
diydsp
yeah, my thoughts echo what most other people said: just keep your eyes wide
open and observant so you can use this experience for next time! e.g. keep a
journal and write stuff down so you remember...
I was at a code review recently with several people who had clearly never been
through a major failure such as a start up going under (i've been through
several...) and the difference in our viewpoints was apparent to me. This is
valuable experience you're getting.
------
informatimago
Perhaps now would be a good time to read or youtube about The Venus Project,
(and perhaps also about money as debt), to get some perspective.
------
CmonDev
I thought start-ups are about spending someone else's money and never your's.
------
akbar501
1.) I hope you are over playing the despair part, but if you really feel that
every sucks then you should speak a professional to help give you perspective.
Seriously, your mental health matters.
2.) Create a list of everything you need to do, then start to work through it.
a.) Have a __conversation __with your wife. Inform her about what 's
happening, what issues you're facing, and ask her about her thoughts. Get on
the same page, that way there are two of you working through this. What's her
game plan? She'll likely have some action items that should go onto your list.
Get your emotions out, but then move on. I've been doing the startup thing for
14+ years and married for 8+. I cannot emphasize enough that you should not
overburden your spouse. She's got a lot on her plate now, so get your emotions
out once (if you're into that), then stay upbeat.
b.) Schedule a meeting with your investors. Have a set agenda, use a
PowerPoint (or other presentation software) that outlines your current status,
etc. Also, show that you are a professional by showing them you have a
plan/budget/timeline to shutdown the business.
Your investors are professionals. They know that a large percent of early
startups fail. What they will want from your is professionalism.
Also, ask for their input. What do they need you to do?
c.) Legal: Speak with your attorney (this can also be before #b). Get their
input on your legal checklist.
You must shutdown the business correctly. Your attorney will be a big asset.
Keep your meeting with them professional and focused. Don't waste time on
emotions in this meeting.
d.) Schedule a team meeting and speak with your employees. Help them
transition if you can. If you're overwhelmed, which it sounds like, then tell
them you'll be happy to give glowing references. This is easy and will require
minimal work on your part while keeping the relationship alive.
As with #a, don't overburden your employees with your emotions. Sorry, but
complaints flow up, not down. They will have their own pressures, and your job
as a manager is to help assuage their fears and help them see that everything
will be ok.
e.) It sounds like you don't have kids. Yah! Seriously, grab a beer. This is
so much easier without kids.
f.) Fill-in this list with input from everyone above plus your co-founders.
g.)It's only Tuesday. Get moving and this done __before __the weekend.
3.) Debt: To any first time founders, please allocate budget to shutting down
a business. Experience matters here, and it's best practice to know your
shutdown costs, to budget for them, and to have the professionalism to shut
the business down when you have just enough money to close up shop. You should
pay debts, invoices that are due, employee salaries, legal fees to shutdown,
etc.
To the OP, create a list of assets/liabilities. If you can sell assets to pay
for liabilities then do it. Be cool about who you owe money to. If these are
other small businesses / startups, then try to make your debt whole.
------
richardlblair
congrats! You failed! I'm serious. I know it's hard to see now, but so often
life's greatest successes are born out of failure.
Hang tight. Things will work out.
------
sjayman
This too shall pass
------
wehadfun
could you sell?
------
asmallfish
Sorry to hear it. I'm sure you can land another job fairly soon if you were
running a startup. Go take a small vacation to clear your mind first.
------
yungether
These posts are like torture porn.
~~~
terra-cheng
I think the story is not real. It's just to sell of the website Startup
Anonymous.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kagi sparks controversy with $5 VisualHub Lion update - DeusExMachina
http://www.macworld.com/article/161777/2011/08/kagi_sparks_controversy_with_5_visualhub_lion_update.html
======
marssaxman
Kagi still exists?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Map showing the homeland of every character in Homer’s Iliad - juanplusjuan
http://kottke.org/17/02/map-showing-the-homeland-of-every-character-in-homers-iliad
======
PeterisP
"it was surprising to me how geographically widespread the hometowns of the
characters were"
On the contrary, that was quite unsurprising, because the story describes a
fight of two large alliances, and talks about the lords and rulers of these
places. It doesn't talk about the local warriors e.g. Agamemnon was leading,
but talks about the actual allies, the lords that joined each with their own
armies.
In that time when Homer says "Lord-A and Lord-B and Lord-C participated" it's
the equivalent of modern "Country-A and Country-B and Country-C participated".
It's not like the story is describing a band of adventurers, the both sides
commonly represent pretty much the whole military might of the surrounding
region at the time, and since there's no centralization yet, each local
"warband" is lead by their local "kings"/warlords/leaders/nobles, who are
named in the story.
The colored areas of the map are not just a homeland of random representative
characters, but the "countries" that actually fought in the war - you could
say that it is "a way of making listeners from many areas feel connected to
the story", or you could say that it is simply not omitting any participants;
For example skipping Philoctetes from the list would pretty much mean saying
that the land of Meliboea didn't participate in the war - it's like omitting
New Zealand from the list of WW2 Allies, it would be far more serious than
making people connected to the story, it would be considered offensive.
~~~
oh_sigh
Also, keep in mind that the entire landmass displayed in the map is
approximately the area of Ohio
~~~
hughdbrown
It looks to me that the map goes from the modern Turkish-Bulgarian border
across to the Albanian-Montenegran border in the north and includes all of
Greece and 20-25% of Turkey. I'd say it is 100% Greece (51 000 sq miles), 20%
Turkey (60 000 sq miles), 90% Albania (10 000 sq miles), 90% Macedonia (8 000
sq miles), 15% Bulgaria (6 000 sq miles). So about 135 000 sq miles versus 45
000 sq miles for Ohio. So I'd say the landmass represented is about 3 times
the size of Ohio. (And we are not counting the water.)
------
Aethelwulf
Original source is user Pinpin on Wikimedia:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homeric_Greece-
en.sv...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homeric_Greece-en.svg)
~~~
gadders
Bit of an oversight not putting Helen on it. Awesome map though.
------
pjmlp
> I wonder if that level of mobility was accurate for the time
Looking at old scripts or books like the one from Herodotus, I would say yes,
just that it would take a few days/weeks instead of hours.
Also since the traveling meant being able to fight for your life, only the
adventurous would do it.
~~~
douche
There were pretty extensive trading networks in the late Bronze Age[1]. I'm
not sure what the accepted timeframe for the Trojan War is now, whether it is
in that late bronze age period or has been pushed up into the following dark
age, but it does increasingly seem that voyages around Greece and the greater
Mediterranean as in Homer would not be that unusual.
[1] [https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-
Turni...](https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-
Turning/dp/0691168385)
~~~
trgn
Sea faring is front and center in the Odyssey, and mentions the more mundane
reasons why people would travel by boat; trading, pilgrimages, family
reunions, ... It must have been dangerous for sure, but common experience as
well.
~~~
logfromblammo
And in that particular case, the sea travel took 10 years, rather than weeks
or months. With favorable winds or strong oarsmen, a vessel can transit from
the port on one island in the Aegean to another in days. With diesel engines,
cruise ships can make those same trips overnight, while the passengers are
sleeping.
Seafaring ships and river boats were the highest-throughput way to transport
soldiers and cargo for thousands of years, until one empire or another built
an overland road and maintained it.
Sea travelers had to deal with adverse weather and piracy. Land travelers had
to deal with inconvenient terrain, adverse weather, taxes or tolls, banditry,
and blisters.
------
bbctol
In Iliad 12, the Trojans wish for the Achaeans to die unremembered; in the
original Greek, literally "nameless." This map is a good reminder that the
level of detail in the Iliad is no accident, it's an integral part of what the
story's about.
------
ballesta25
It doesn't say which Ajax is which?
~~~
anvandare
Good point. The great Ajax is the brother of Teucer and son of Telamon, from
Achaea. The lesser Ajax is the son of Oileus, from Locris. (Both Telamon and
Oileus were Argonauts.)
------
astrobase_go
There really should be a legend on here:
1) There are boxes of two different colors here, light green versus yellow. I
read the Iliad in high school, so I forget if there are actual differences
that the creator was attempting to codify. I shouldn't have to look it up,
good information design should make that apparent to the unfamiliar viewer.
2) I assume the crosses are meant to signify that the character died at some
point? If that's true, perhaps another signifier would be more appropriate,
since that seems to the uninitiated to be associated with the death of a
Christian person. Since this was written sometime beyond 1,000 B.C.E., I'm
going to say that those people weren't Christians.
Would love for someone with the time/ability to edit that map to make these
updates.
~~~
pvg
Yes, the crosses mark the characters that died in the war. The mark is in
common usage for death, regardless of religious affiliation - we don't spell
the names of the characters in the original ancient Greek either.
~~~
hackuser
> The mark is in common usage for death, regardless of religious affiliation
If where you live is mostly Christian it may seem that way, but that symbol is
only used by Christianity (and is it even used by Eastern Orthodox?). Go to
Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, Jewish, etc. cemeteries and look around.
~~~
pvg
It is typical in written English and this an English-annotated map not a Hindu
cemetery. I'm not suggesting the dagger is some universal symbol for 'dead',
but in context, it's used appropriately. If you translated the map, perhaps
some other symbol would be better.
Take a look at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_(typography)#Modern_usa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_\(typography\)#Modern_usage)
Edit: Oh, and yes, it was used as such in Orthodox, pre-revolutionary Russia.
~~~
hackuser
> It is typical in written English
Let's not blow this out of proportion, but to address this narrow point:
Again, it may seem that way if you read a lot written by Christians, but I
believe it's the religion of the author not the language that determines the
usage.
Consider the nation with the largest English-speaking population in the world,
India; do they use crucifixes? English also is widespread in Israel and other
countries that aren't predominantly Christian. My guess is that books written
by Israelis don't use them either. I agree that the usage is widespread in
predominantly Christian countries.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm talking about using the symbol to indicated death.
~~~
pvg
I'll stop here but I honestly don't understand how the actual, real,
referenced fact that this is an existing typographical convention is 'blowing
things out of proportion'. It either is or isn't and in this case, it is.
A lot of language conventions, including typographical ones have implicit and
explicit cultural biases. That's just how language works. You seem to be
arguing this should not be a typographical convention because you're
unfamiliar with it and some other general principles. Sure, maybe, but that's
also very much not how language works. You're welcome to advocate for change
but this does not instantly turn this into not-an-English-typographical-
convention.
~~~
hackuser
> I honestly don't understand how the actual, real, referenced fact that this
> is an existing typographical convention is 'blowing things out of
> proportion'.
I only meant, let's not make too big a deal over this tiny issue.
I understand your claims, but do you have evidence that in non-Christian,
English-speaking cultures, the cross[0] is used to indicate death? Wikipedia
isn't the best source, and I'd expect it to represent the views of people in
mostly Christian societies. I admit I'm not doing the research myself, so I'm
not complaining if you don't.
EDIT: Also, from the Wikipedia page you cited: _While daggers are freely used
in English-language texts,[citation needed] they are often avoided in other
languages because of their similarity to the Christian cross.[citation
needed]_ Certainly that could apply to non-Christian English-speaking
societies. An uncited Wikipedia statement is even less reliable than a cited
one, but so far nobody has pulled in any solid evidence.
[0] I don't agree that the icon on the map is a typographical dagger. Of
course, any cross could be a dagger and vice versa, but otherwise nothing
about it indicates a dagger. Also, as the Wikipedia page you cited says, "The
dagger should not be confused with the Unicode characters "Latin cross" (,
U+271D),"
~~~
pvg
" but do you have evidence that in non-Christian, English-speaking cultures"
Who cares? This is an existing convention in written English. It doesn't
matter whether you or I like it. Your original argument was that it shouldn't
have been used on this map because the dead weren't Christians. That's not how
typographical conventions work. Now you want me to prove to you something that
really exists exists. It does. Sorry you find it irksome and didn't know it
before or that sometimes dagger and cross get mixed up. None of this changes
the fact this is an existing typographical convention. Let's call it a day.†
~~~
hackuser
> Your original argument was that it shouldn't have been used on this map
> because the dead weren't Christians.
It was not and is not. Regarding the rest of your message, it's sad that I
can't discuss typography with you without enduring insults.
------
tuomosipola
It gets really tricky when they use son-of-this-and-that. I'm working through
the much shorter Ilias Latina and it's really hard to keep track of the
characters.
~~~
acqq
It's not that hard, but due to us not being used to these names, you'd benefit
of taking notes. "Son-of-this-and-that" is just like the family name in their
case. Something like, imagine, John Smithson and John Markson, if the
narration starts about one person, once it will be refereed to as John
Smithson, then probably just Smithson or just John.
The second problem is that the narration assumes that the "famous" relations
are known. If I mention the Beatles, then say just John, everybody knows John
who. Or whoever now says England and then the Queen and Kate, everybody knows
who's that about... But you're dealing with the stories from almost 3000 years
ago.
------
tragomaskhalos
I imagine that Homer would have killed to have this on a Powerpoint slide when
he got to reciting the Catalogue of the Ships :)
------
JabavuAdams
Spoilers! Achilles dies?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tmobile.com is having some serious problems - jpindar
T-Mobile's site has been having some major issues for several days now, bad enough to make the site unusable. 400 bad requests everywhere (among other things).<p>Even the salespeople in their brick & mortar stores can't order anything because their systems are only working intermittently.<p>They are apparently in the middle of rolling out a new site design - some pages are in their new modern looking theme and some are not.<p>As some one who is primarily a desktop and embedded developer, I can only wonder what causes this kind of thing. I admit it, the only sites I have been responsible for were small and simple and just worked.<p>But I'd be interested in reading about some of the things that can go wrong in a more major rollout. Anyone have any interesting stories, or speculation about what went wrong in this case?
======
jpindar
It's down completely now, just going to
[https://www.t-mobile.com/](https://www.t-mobile.com/) gives you a 400.
------
masonic
Did you try the app? I avoid it, but if it functions independently, it could
be a stopgap.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nvidia's Hackintosh Support Is an Insurgency Against Apple's Computers - ptrptr
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nvidia-titan-xp-hackintosh
======
gableroux
I used to work on a hackintosh, the support is impressive on tonymacx86.
[https://www.tonymacx86.com/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/)
ReHabMan is just amazing. It's even easy to get started with all the
tutorials. Indeed, the problem I was getting was with nvidia support, mini-
display port, multi display in general, video drivers, hybrid video
(integrated + discrete card), etc. Everything else was working a bit too well.
It's sad that this is not legit, the community is really awesome. At least
this nvidia move with drivers is a good news for the users in general I
suppose.
I personally worked on windows back in the days, discovered MacOS, moved to
ubuntu, hated all the PPAs, missed the tools I had on mac so gave hackintosh a
try, wasn't legit and had lots of troubles with nvidia, moved to arch linux,
struggled with lack of nvidia support too (ironic isn't it?) but turned out to
work a bit better on Fedora (maybe because I got better with X11, wayland and
configs in general) Then someone left at the office and I got his macbook so I
moved back to MacOS (my dotfiles are now compatible on all main os and I
automated my setup...). I don't think I'll switch again for a while (time
consuming, it's a long trip), but this news is really tempting to move back to
hackintosh. I have to admit it though, I really enjoyed Fedora :P
~~~
atroll
I've just recently installed macOS Sierra on my ASUS laptop thanks to
ReHabMans tutorials, some things took me days to fix like the audio, but you
always end up finding the solution in a thread made by that talented guy. The
only problem I had was high RAM usage and some other things that need
tweaking. edit: mic and cam don't work, this way nobody can spy on me ;)
~~~
chatmasta
Does Xcode and/or the iPhone simulator work?
~~~
Jyaif
Yes for both.
------
rl3
This is great. The usual emphatic declarations of listening and caring about
customers rings more hollow with every Apple press event that I watch.
Things are messed up when they let a product cycle lapse for 4 years (i.e. Mac
Pro) while leaving everyone in the dark the entire time.
------
9999
Nvidia has supported installing their latest cards into old Mac Pros for years
now with their web driver. Nothing new. They still have no support for Apple
EFI in these cards (meaning the cards have no video output during boot and
install of OS updates, making them incredibly inconvenient to use in day to
day work).
~~~
IMcD23
They work just fine for OS updates, I just installed one on mine. The only
thing you lose is an Apple boot logo.
------
tmikaeld
If Apple now respond with locking out Hackintosh users in any upcoming MacOS
update...
Then they'll probably do Microsoft a huge favour in persuading a lot of MacOS
users to finally go Windows.
I'd expect my current Hackintosh would last me 3-4 years now that it runs with
a 1080 Ti.
~~~
Hydraulix989
You could also try giving Linux Mint a shot, too. Unlike Ubuntu and Windows
10, you don't deal with copious ads in your file manager and launcher and
things like that.
~~~
tmikaeld
Unfortunately i use After Effects too often.
I'm planning to run Linux, but also run OS X and Windows 10 at the same time
using KVM and dedicate a GPU (Via passthrough) for each of these. This way i
get the added benefit of not having to reboot to enter Windows, plus i can
make snapshots of the entire VM whenever i desire and thus do A/B tests in a
"native" environment.
OS X works very well with KVM, so it is certainly doable.
------
ap46
Once the Pascal drivers come out, no spec upgrade from Apple to the Mac Pro
lineup will pull people back from making their own Hackintoshes with
1060/80(Ti) & going nuts with rendering or machine learning applications!
Cheaper hardware with top of the line specs, upgradeability & compatibility
with Windoze, *NIX & macOS.
~~~
jacquesm
Or they might switch to Linux where that all 'just works'.
~~~
sqeaky
For those who think this is sarcasm, the last update to the nVidia drivers
fixed most of my issues on Ubuntu. I only have a 980 and not doing machine
learning professionally, but this thing handles any game I throw at it.
~~~
jacquesm
> I only have a 980
It's such a tribute to the modern semi conductor industry that you can write
that so casually, and yet, we're talking about an approximately 5 TFLOPS co-
processor here.
Not all that long ago that would have been a rack full of very expensive
hardware and not all that long before that half a floor in a DC.
Welcome to the future.
And you're right, definitely not sarcastic.
~~~
sqeaky
For gaming or home use its a big deal, for professionals, why waste time with
as single 2 year old card.
~~~
jacquesm
A card like that is still more than powerful enough to learn with. That's
technically still 'home' use but as a professional entering a field you could
get a lot of mileage out of it, especially if you already have it.
I wouldn't buy one new or second hand to study with today.
------
Hydraulix989
NVIDIA has been "casually" helping out Hackintosh users with driver updates
for their cards that aren't realistically used anywhere else for a while now
(nobody has that pre-"trashcan" Mac Pro with the swappable PCI Express GPU
slot anymore).
------
libertine
Couldn't this just be aimed for GPU Docks (mainly for laptops)?
Or Apple doesn't support such devices?
Edit: Well it seems that's not straight forward... but maybe NVIDIA is playing
ahead of the curve with TB3 on MBPro 2016 :
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/12/01/the-
thunderbolt-3-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/12/01/the-
thunderbolt-3-equipped-macbook-pro-can-use-external-gpus----but-at-a-cost)
------
mtgx
I'm still not sure whether this is Nvidia "playing ball" with Apple, or
whether this is Nvidia saying to Apple customers "Hey Apple guys, we love you
now! Please don't go with AMD!"
~~~
H1Supreme
I found myself asking the same question. Either way, this is great. Going to
pick up a 1070 for my hackintosh.
------
juusto
Anyone has any tutorials on how to build your own hackintosh with Ryzen+1080?
That would be a time saver. Thanks
~~~
phren0logy
The common wisdom is that support for AMD chips / MBs is sufficiently poor in
MacOS that it's probably not a good idea. Check out
[https://www.tonymacx86.com/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Elizabeth Holmes’ Downfall Has Been Explained Deeply–By Men - rossdavidh
https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-holmes-downfall-has-been-explained-deeplyby-men/
======
rossdavidh
My first take on the article was that it would be overwrought feminist
apologizing for fraud. It seems considerably more interesting, and plausible,
than that. But, of course, I have no way of knowing how true.
~~~
greenyoda
I think the article could be a warning to anyone who starts a company,
regardless of their gender:
_" Fear of doubt meant Holmes fired all doubters, thus guaranteeing the
failure of Theranos."_
If a CEO is so insecure that they can't tolerate employees' doubts about the
direction of the company, they probably shouldn't be leading a company. And if
investors tolerate a CEO firing anyone who doesn't blindly follow the agenda,
the investors aren't exercising enough due diligence.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A risky currency? Alleged $500,000 Bitcoin heist raises questions - Hoff
http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/WZ6R0WGNqJs/bitcoin-the-decentralized-virtual-currencyrisky-currency-500000-bitcoin-heist-raises-questions.ars
======
pavel_lishin
Of course this is one of the risks. It's balanced by the alleged rewards.
Think of it as cash - you can store your $500k worth of savings in a jar under
your mattress and shop completely anonymously, but the risk is that someone
will come into your house and take it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: I mixed Yelp with Craigslist and got this. - proexploit
http://iowacityaccess.com
======
nailer
I _love_ _love_ _love_ your design (so much I've bookmarked it as a reference
for my own projects).
It's the perfect mix between extreme minimalist and professional.
~~~
proexploit
Thank you so much. Minimalism is my guiding principle in designing things. For
this website, I took it even more to the extreme than usual, to focus on the
ease of use and helping users find the content, but this is literally one of
the best compliments you could give me. :)
~~~
az
I agree, its very neat, clean and easy to use. Its so straight forward its
amazing!
------
smokinn
It's a pretty good start but I would suggest doing the same as for new events
with the bars and restaurants. When I clicked on the "are we missing" link, I
expected a form where I could add one (either automatically or moderator-
approved) but instead got a popup window with a single text field.
If I could easily locations I would (well, actually I wouldn't because I know
nothing about Iowa but if it were available in my location I would) but I'm
not going to start writing prose to get a location added, especially not on a
mobile device which is where sites like these are most useful.
EDIT: Another suggestion would be to rename the Events header to be more in
line with the verb theme leading up to it. Drink - Eat - Play for example or
something similar to that. Breaking the theme is jarring.
~~~
proexploit
Thank you for your suggestions. I always like hearing about other user's
experience with the website.
The reason I have the are we missing link? instead of a complete form is
because of the large amount of information I collect on each bar/restaurant. I
wouldn't expect a user to give me enough information, and I wanted to allow
them the flexibility to say something like: "the summary seems like it was
written by a two year old" rather than a form they need to say.
@EDIT: Funny you would say this! Originally, the design did say eat - drink -
play (there's even a banner still saying that on my Facebook group). I felt
that play didn't describe general events well enough but I may have to
reconsider.
Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with me.
------
steveplace
You can generate some nice cashflow working on niche local sites like this.
General process:
1\. Scrape listings off yellowpages/yelp
2\. Start ranking for local keywords
3\. Call restaurants/bars/auto dealerships to confirm info and generate lead
4\. Offer ad sales on site, as well as design/SEO -- can outsource the latter
There's a great discussion on wickedfire with respect to this field, if you
can tolerate the profanity: <http://bit.ly/4L1Rya>
------
ZitchDog
I like this. I live in Iowa City and have been thinking for a while now that
Iowa City is sorely lacking a good place for entertainment info. Goiowacity is
widely used even though it's terrible. If you're looking to collaborate on
this or other projects my e-mail's in my profile.
~~~
proexploit
Sent you an email. Glad to know there's others in the area!
------
lunaru
If you need more local content, you can try pulling some data from Oodle
(<http://developer.oodle.com/oodle-api>). I know for a fact that CL is very
guarded about scraping their content.
~~~
proexploit
I think my title may have been a little misleading. I don't scrape the data
from Yelp and Craigslist, I meerly used them as my inspiration. All of the
content is added manually by myself (hence the empty parts of the site).
~~~
seasoup
Would be great if people could go on and add their own businesses. There is
only so much you can by yourself.
~~~
proexploit
The biggest issue I've been dealing with, and one of the main causes for
creating this site, is inaccuracy of information available. There's dozens of
Iowa City bar or restaurant sites, but none of them have good data, and none
display it well. I do have a portal (iowacityaccess.com/portal - you won't be
able to use it, but can see it) that allows business owners to let me know
about changes and additions while verifying with their personal 8 digit code
that I've mailed to them. It's optional, but it may help me cut down on some
of the work in the future.
------
apowell
I'm doing something similar with <http://www.desertdrinks.com>, and I like
your site. However, unless the dollars start flowing in rather quickly, you're
going to find it difficult to keep the data current. Once you appear in Google
for some local terms (perhaps some specific bar/restaurant names), business
owners will seek you out. Are you prepared to monetize that?
Your "advertise" page suggests you're not serious about monetizing this site,
which means it's likely to be dead before summer.
Regardless, I wish you the best and I'll bookmark it so I can watch it
develop.
~~~
proexploit
First off, love your site. Great stuff.
I have a small monetization feature built in (homepage featured and search
results featured). I really want to stay away from Adsense and other "annoying
ad" type income generating. I am offering web design service to all the
locations in my "welcome packet" in an attempt to generate some recurring
income (offering sites for $99/month. Minimum 1 year contract).
May I ask what you do in terms of advertising / featured listings etc? If you
don't want to share the details, I'd be happy to have you email me as well.
I acknowledge that monetization has been one of the overlooked parts of the
website, as I wanted to create a resource first, make money second. Your post
gives me second thoughts about that.
~~~
apowell
Desert Drinks is a side project for me -- an experiment in the potential of a
focused local directory. Right now, I have a single sponsor (the tall banner
on the right).
I plan to more aggressively market and monetize the site this year (I just
left my day job last month, and I have a to-do list a mile long). Even in the
best-case scenario, I think it would be very tough to make a living on Desert
Drinks alone. I can see it generating ~$1000/mo in this market of about
400,000 people.
I think the key is to figure out the formula and then build nationally market-
by-market. In my opinion, that's how I think an individual could bootstrap
this sort of business.
------
minalecs
I am on the opposite end of your design, feeling like its hard to navigate or
figure out, because all the filters are displayed in several different content
boxes in the same column, and each column representing a different option.
The beautiful thing about craigslist is that there are few options and when
they do give you options they bundle it in a nice little box at the top. Yelp
is beautiful because of the filters and ability to drill down to areas
quickly.
Overall not something I would use as I feel yelp does a good job of this
already, but overall good job.
~~~
proexploit
I appreciate your comment. However, I am having a little trouble understanding
it. I personally find my design easier to navigate than Craigslist and less
crowded. I understand this isn't the case for you, and I would really like to
hear more detail about this.
As far as filtering, you're absolutely right. I wanted to include a sort of
advanced search that constantly narrowed down the options using AJAX as you
selected things, but it proved too difficult to implement and I settled for
second-best.
------
djb_hackernews
Without much content I'm not sure how it's going to work. And you plan on
manually adding in all of the content? Is that really feasible? Are you
updating the movies everyday by hand?
Voting should be ajaxified.
I know you are trying to be the informal, formative resource, but, for me at
least, it is a major turn off when I detect someones bias in what is supposed
to be just that, a resource. It's obvious we have different tastes, why would
I return to your site?
~~~
proexploit
I did a soft launch with only the downtown bars enabled as that's going to be
huge to the students in the area. It was a minor goal that I was able to set
that leaves the site up and "functional".
The movies are not updated by hand, but added via an API. Everything else,
shouldn't change often, so once I get it in, it should be manageable. I guess
I'll find that out with time. I'm more concerned with having accurate content
rather than taking time to update the content.
I agree that voting should use AJAX and will implement that in the future.
When you discuss the bias, are you referring to the summaries of the currently
added bars? I don't intended to be biased (but it's very hard to control I
imagine), so I'd love if you could give me an example or more details. The
summaries were unfortunately not written by me, but a couple writers I hired
in the area. I'm one of the worst writers I know, and I couldn't handle that
aspect.
------
ekanes
Fantastic stuff. A usability suggestion would be to change the color of links
that lead to empty "no results" pages. You could of course "unhook" the links,
but that would make it harder for people to navigate there to "add" an item,
which is the way some people visualize the right way to do it. Good luck with
it!
~~~
proexploit
Very good idea. Right now some links to lead to no results pages, but only
because I have such a wealth of information to add. In the future, any link
available will have at least one result.
I launched it yesterday because I'm finally happy with the functionality, and
I have most of the downtown bars listings complete. Iowa City is a college
town, and I think a huge draw will be the Today's Specials listing of where U
of I students can get drunk and lose the morals at the lowest possible price.
------
noodle
that is pretty neat. any plans to open source it, make it more generic or open
up separate sites for other cities?
is it using APIs for CL/yelp or is it a custom job separate from the two and
the description is just a comparison of functionality? i'd love to run it for
mine and see how it looks.
~~~
proexploit
This started as a project for just my city, as there's a ton of work that goes
into information collection. I also want to be more involved in the area, have
giveaways events etc, so something bigger would be too much for me to manage
and I think, dilute the overall project.
As for open source or API, I've had some thoughts of selling the source to
some other areas, but I don't want it to be so diluted that a dozen different
hobbyists can attempt to mash together something for their own city using the
script. Is that just me being selfish? I'd love to hear more.
It isn't using an API, the data is collected by me, and added manually. I've
developed a pretty good admin panel behind the scenes with some other great
features.
I think its important to note, that I'm not the main developer on this
project. It has been my project for a long time, I've done all of the design,
concepts, etc. But I've worked with a very skilled coder to implement
everything.
~~~
blasdel
Trying to sublicense it non-competitively to only one hobbyist in each area is
a _really awful idea_. FreeCycle turned into a massive clusterfuck because of
this.
If you want your implementation to spread to other cities either make a
franchise business out of it or make it open source.
~~~
proexploit
I'm afraid of open source just turning it into a project that consumes my time
and money with no return. I'd definitely be interested in "franchising" it so
to speak so that other areas could use my work in their specific non-competing
area and hopefully get a little bit of my development costs back. Anyone who
has experience with this, I'd be happy to hear from you (email is in my
profile).
I'm a sharing guy, really! I just don't want to jeopardize the project I've
been working so hard on.
Thanks for your comment.
~~~
noodle
then i would suggest this -- develop more automation into the process, and
make it something that can simply be piloted by an admin, and then
hire/solicit admin to come and pilot the their city's site. set it up so that
they can somehow get a cut of the revenue. for example, allow them to add in
their adsense code and the site will display their ads 80% of the time.
you keep control over source, you keep some revenue, and it gets franchised
out with locals at the helm of the individual sites.
~~~
proexploit
More automation as in API from Yelp, etc?
I agree with the rest of what you're saying, but to me, the data gathering
(while time consuming) is part of what makes my site better than others in my
area. The information is confirmed, it's accurate.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
~~~
noodle
in my head i was thinking of a process that puts things in an authorization
queue. pull in all data that is probably accurate, and have an admin either
hand-verify it or hand-edit it so that its right.
------
jcnnghm
I developed something pretty similar to this. Check it out at
<http://barsannapolis.com/>.
~~~
proexploit
I like your website. It gives me some solid ideas for some things to add in
the future hopefully. I'm so full of ideas that I can only do so many of them
:)
~~~
jcnnghm
Are you developing the software yourself, or working with someone else? It's
very clean.
~~~
proexploit
I'm working with a Ruby on Rails coder, but I am the sole owner, brain,
designer, etc.
------
racerrick
You should add a twitterbot too and get specials from local businesses that
use Twitter.
------
jpwagner
you should get the bars to pay you to increase their rating :P
~~~
proexploit
Haha. Ratings will be authentic unless some obvious tampering happens or
something. I do have "sponsored" functionality built in for the future. I.e.
for a fee, any bar can appear first in the search results that they appear in.
~~~
jpwagner
what if multiple bars pay the fee
~~~
proexploit
For the homepage, rotation through all the featured listings. On the search
pages, rotation in position.
------
ntulip
nice - open source it.
~~~
proexploit
In reply to your email as well, I'm unsure of my future plans for sharing the
code. I do appreciate open source software, and it may be something I do, but
I've spent thousands of dollars of my own money developing this. I'm 22. It's
a big deal to me. I don't want to create another Yelp.com, I think that user-
edited information can be too inaccurate.
I wouldn't want someone to be able to download my source, and start 3 more
sites in my area as direct competitors. If I have a solid competitor, I'd like
to know that they spent their time and money on it as well. As I stated above,
I'm not 100% against open source, and would be happy to hear arguments for it.
~~~
ntulip
My apologies. From the title and the minimalist design it appears I didn't
consider the financial resources that went into the project. Quite honestly -
I can only hope that tools such as this knock Yelp and other out of their
place. I wish you good luck. Thanks for the down votes everyone.
------
philipn
An empty, undeveloped website? Why should we care?
~~~
brm
Snark is a terrible way to comment. You could offer him constructive advice,
not upvote him, or even flag the post if you choose. There are many less
damaging and less mean ways to express your displeasure.
See the section on comments in PG's essay here:
<http://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Niche Tracker - leanvertising
https://www.serpwoo.com
SERPWoo was created to answer the frustration traditional rank trackers pose - only tracking selected URLs. That process did not give a clear picture of what's really going on in the top SERPs for a niche; nor how to rank properly or automatically track, monitor, and analyze new competitors. We created this tool to fill in those gaps.<p>Since the search engines have to display all their cards on the search engine results pages (SERPs) we created this tool to allow marketers quick glances and access to the top 20+ results for any given keyword to get a better understanding of how websites are ranking, moving up & down, and generating organic traffic.<p>We then integrated crucial 3rd party data we utilize everyday like ahrefs, majestic, moz, semrush, social signals, and additional tools to dig deep into a website's SEO structure (on-site & off-site) allowing for a better picture of HOW and WHY the selected website is ranking.
======
jensnockert
The notifications are cool, but as implemented they seem way too spammy. Even
the demo account with just a few search phrases has over a hundred
notifications from the last 24h.
Also, on the demo account, search volumes don't show up? Is it a bug, or is
data just missing for those keywords? I also used SEMrush as a data source for
a while so I'm a interested if you can get it to work. For me it felt like
they were missing data for almost everything (Swedish words on Swedish google
though) and had to replace them.
Ps. I really like the bug reporting thingy in the top bar, really cool.
~~~
CCarter
We are reducing the default sensitivity of the notifications in an upcoming
update. That setting was really for ORM where brands usually want to know
everything in the top 2 pages as it happens. So far, we've actually had zero
complaints about the notifications coming in too fast. I personally thought it
was a little overzealous after the first couple of days, but got used to it.
30% of users have actually increased their sensitivity, but I'm going to
reduce the default setting for new users.
We just Launched thursday afternoon so the beta testing is still going on.
We've gotten lots of good feedback from early adopters and plan on
implementing the stuff that makes sense for reverse engineering and ORM
monitoring.
Also we are looking into pulling SEMRush data in the future as well as search
volume - even though that's kind of anyone's guess to the accuracy since it's
not directly from the 'search engine that shall not be named'.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clojure at Github - freddealmeida
https://github.com/clojure/clojure
======
freddealmeida
I didn't realize clojure was in Github. With 1.3 coming out soon, makes
upgrading so much easier.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: YuleCal – Advent calendars with your pictures - mkempe
https://www.yulecal.com/
======
mkempe
I built this slowly over the years, originally just for the enjoyment of our
relatives (we're spread all over Europe and North America). Then they started
to say they wanted to make their own advent calendars.
It takes just a few minutes to make a custom online calendar with your own
selection of photos, or pick a prepared calendar from a catalog. People you
invite to your calendar are your private guests. They can signal their love of
your photos, and add personal notes. It's a private way to highlight and share
pictures with a seasonal purpose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Understanding International Trade and Why Trump’s Approach Is Misguided - georgeshi
https://medium.com/discourse/understanding-international-trade-and-why-trumps-approach-is-misguided-b5626a9a3fe1
======
deogeo
The article has a somewhat rose-colored view of free trade agreements - in
practice, they tend to include many environment-, worker- and consumer-hostile
clauses (which is predictable, since the agreements are negotiated mainly by
industry representatives). I can't find the source currently, but I believe
one of them (Possibly the TPP?) had a clause where a patent holder could
forbid the export of any item covered by their patent (even after it was
sold). The direct opposite of free trade.
A brief example of the many horrors contained in the for-now dead TPP:
[http://infojustice.org/archives/34189](http://infojustice.org/archives/34189)
And industry representatives defend such terms by saying that they are
'standard' for trade agreements (that they _also_ mostly wrote!), as if that
somehow makes it better, not worse.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
About Coding House (2014) - p8952
[url redacted]
======
codinghouse
Hello!
Our mission at Coding House is to provide a viable alternative to higher
education; one that does not result in crippling debt and teaches the real
world skills necessary to get a job - in a fraction of the time.
We recognize that our program may not be for everyone. Periodically, a student
may decide to leave or will be asked to leave. We work hard to separate
amicably and to support that student with a hassle-free, dignified exit as we
did in this instance.
This student (in our first cohort ever) was unable to successfully complete
the program due to a number of reasons. About half of these were our fault and
we have taken full responsibility to ensure we don't repeat those same
mistakes. The other half were a result of the student's actions (or inactions)
that ultimately contributed to an unsuccessful outcome.
We have since held more than ten cohorts with over 85 students. All but a
handful of them got high paying jobs after completing our program. We have
also modified our price structure from $15,000 upfront (what's known as the
pay and pray method) to 18% of their first year's salary (with a down
payment).
We don’t break even until our students get a job. Because of this, we assume
the majority of the risk for our students (skin in the game). This guarantees
an incentive for us to do everything in our power to make sure our students
are technically competent and able to articulate well in a job interview, and
that we will help them get a great job so we can get paid as well.
Thank you.
\- Nick James, CEO The Coding House Institute
~~~
dang
We let this comment be posted after the thread had closed to new comments, as
we've done in the past when people's businesses are affected by material
posted on HN.
(Not an opinion about the subject.)
------
dang
We've taken the url out of this post. The author of the document asked us to
do so for legal reasons.
------
xeromal
HOLY. SHIT.
I am sorry. :( 90% of these coding schools need to go. I thought my private
school was bad.
Also, there are plenty of free sources for education. Definitely enough to get
you started building your own applications. Hell, ever pluralsight is a better
bargain.
~~~
rpcope1
Agreed. I am incredibly dubious that "bootcamps" have any value whatsoever in
any case, except maybe for introducing practicing developers to new
technologies. I know tech is the hot place to be any more, but man it's
amazing the number of charlatans that have started to show up surrounding "hot
technology."
~~~
nfoz
Different people have different learning styles. And many people do not have
an effective or appropriate learning _environment_ where they can learn new
tech through free resources. So I think direct-mentorship can be very helpful
to some people; even it can help wade through what's out there to understand
what's important to learn, how long you should spend learning x, etc.
But until this article, I had never thought much about bootcamps requiring
accreditation, or the dangers of this type of training. Yikes!!
Thanks very much to the author for sharing this experience.
~~~
rpcope1
I get that not everyone can sit down and start grepping how a kernel works,
how to architect database solutions, or get what it means to be reentrant in
the context of parallel programming. Not everyone can be efficient successful
autodidacts; however we have places to learn, like colleges. I would rather
see community colleges or university start offering more individual courses to
help you get up to speed. There is probably some room for just emerging people
in technology completely for a period of time, like some bootcamps seem to do,
but these sort of operations reek the same way for-profit universities do,
feeling very strongly like whoever is teaching is in it for the money and that
the whole operation is a fly-by-night. Beyond that, I wouldn't hire someone
out of a bootcamp to do much more than maintain my generic off the shelf CMS,
as I'm not sure 6-12 weeks is enough to truly gain the experience and
knowledge to avoid anything but the most superficial problems when attempting
to build and maintain effective codebases.
~~~
rhc2104
One of the big "problems" with learning at college is the sequential nature of
Computer Science.
You have to take CS1 your first semester, then CS2 your second semester, and
then you finally have the prerequisites to take multiple classes at once.
Coding bootcamps have a semester's worth of material, so it would be cool if
colleges had a one-semester full-time class that covers Intro CS, Data
Structures, Web Development, and Intro to Software Engineering.
Because that basically is a coding bootcamp (except coding bootcamps have
class all day in lieu of giving out homework).
~~~
johnreddington
This was a big reason for me to do a coding bootcamp. I was switching majors
out of engineering and into CS. I didn't want to spend 2 years slowly learning
CS to find out if I liked it. It was faster and cheaper for me to do one of
these schools to see if I really did want to do this for a living. Now I'm
employed and do do it for a living and love it. I still push myself everyday
to learn and do more learning outside of work. Unfortunately this style of
teaching just doesn't fit the mould of traditional universities, but I think
it's a great way to find out if you really want to pursue a career in this
field.
------
danso
The OP says they were required on a daily basis to fill out a Google form that
asked them things like how many tweets and reddit posts they made the previous
day. And there's the LOL-worthy question, "What is your Klout score today?"
If Groucho Marx were alive, he'd say "I refuse to join any club that would
care about my Klout score"
Besides all of what OP posted in terms of Coding House being a joke, another
sign would be that such questions had to be asked and put into a Google
form...all of those metrics could have been automated in their collection. In
fact, that should be one of the assignments for any proper coding school.
~~~
hsod
"If Groucho Marx were alive, he'd say "I refuse to join any club that would
care about my Klout score""
No, he wouldn't. His original line was self-deprecating, yours is self-
aggrandizing.
~~~
danso
_WHOOSH_
------
zipWith
Considering that the sales pitch of Coding House and every other bootcamp I've
yet seen is "give us $$$$ and we'll land you a job making $$$$$$," I wouldn't
be surprised if bootcamp graduates got a negative, mercenary-like reputation
amongst their peers, who overwhelmingly got into programming for the love of
it. Obviously you can't blame someone for trying to improve their standing in
life, and not everyone discovers programming in childhood or young adulthood,
but I don't really understand why code schools are needed when self-education
has long been an established, effective alternative to a CS degree.
The whole bootcamp movement smells of opportunists cashing in on the naive and
uninformed.
~~~
dragonwriter
> I don't really understand why code schools are needed when self-education
> has long been an established, effective alternative to CS university
> education.
There's probably a real utility to vocationally-focused coding schools; OTOH,
there's also quite a lot of opportunity for those who are sharp salesmen
without a lot of training or technical acumen to take fleece the naïve who are
aware of the high pay in the industry and aren't equipped to evaluate the
quality of the institutions.
Unregulated, unaccredited educational programs (heck, even with regulated,
accredited programs, less-than-stellar programs of this type are _still_ a
problem, though there are more checks and balances to identify and weed them
out) promising to get people into highly-paying careers have _always_ been a
problem.
------
vinceguidry
I'm trying to figure out what the relevant criteria should be for the decision
of whether to go to a code school or not. I have a friend that sees how hot
the market for talent is and wants to get in on it. I showed him mhartl's
Rails tutorial but he's too busy to really dig in and when he does ends up
burning a lot of time spinning his wheels.
I suggested two Atlanta-area code schools, both of whom have been around
several years and are well-connected with the development community. The
problem with a code school is the same reason why there's a market for code
schools at all. The market for talent is so hot that the people you want to be
instructors can make way more money elsewhere than you could ever pay them. So
you should know you're signing up for sub-standard instruction even before you
start looking for one.
I still think my friend would be well-served at one of these spots, I've
offered to help him out, but he's just too busy, he needs a situation that
will force him to focus that has people on hand to help him cut through the
noise. Then his natural intelligence will start coming through and he'll be
able to make progress on learning.
Code school is an option, but you still really need to be resourceful and able
to pick stuff up on your own because your instructor is pretty much guaranteed
to be of the amateur-hobbyist variety.
~~~
dustincoates
"So you should know you're signing up for sub-standard instruction even before
you start looking for one... your instructor is pretty much guaranteed to be
of the amateur-hobbyist variety"
I don't think this is a fair assessment, especially at the more established
code schools.
For one, the instructors are probably making more than you think they are, so
the difference between what they could get for a full-time gig and what they
could get as instructors likely isn't that differently.
You also need a very special skill set to be an instructor at these kind of
schools. You need to know the code very well, but you also need to be a good
instructor which is a completely different skill set (communication, patience,
understanding of how and when to introduce concepts). A vast bulk of the
talent at the very top end you're referring to who would be completely
unaffordable for the coding schools may not have that second component.
But, you're right in your suggestion that you choose a good school. The number
of code schools, in my opinion, has become far too crowded and I expect that
within the year we'll start to see most of the schools either go under or
merge.
(As a disclaimer, I (until recently) worked at General Assembly which runs
coding schools in several cities, but I don't speak for them and I never
worked directly on the Web Development Immersive program during my time at GA,
though I did take it and was happy with the outcome.)
~~~
cansync1
Somewhat agreed:
(oh btw a disclaimer at the bottom of a post like oh I may be biased or still
work there but....)
I am a founder at Coding House.
We have the instructor (co founder) who wrote the RoR curriculum for General
Assembly 3.5 years ago (that they still uses to date) and was there lead
instructor. He also wrote the curriculum for Nashville Software School, and
Flat Iron School. That they all still uses!
There is not an instructor out there that has more experiences.
[http://codinghouse.co/#!team?team=chyld-
medford](http://codinghouse.co/#!team?team=chyld-medford)
------
sleazebreeze
EDIT: Turns out this Quora review is written by a different Jose who attended
Coding House. My bad!
Was this review by Jose written under duress or legally compelled somehow?
[http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Coding-House](http://www.quora.com/Reviews-
of-Coding-House)
It is written by the OP, but it is quite positive and recommends the
experience from Coding House. It was written in April 2015. The article was
from September 2014.
Something is off here...
~~~
danso
I'm assuming two different Joses?
edit: Keep reading that Quora thread. In one of the hidden responses (hidden
because it really isn't a review), it mentions the source of the OP, which has
apparently been removed since its original posting:
[http://joselcontreras.com/about-coding-
house/](http://joselcontreras.com/about-coding-house/)
~~~
huac
Different Jose's.
Looks like the OP was removed under legal threat (read the end of the PDF),
but not before somebody saved it to their Google drive.
------
slapresta
Looks like Amy's Baking Company has branched into coding bootcamps.
~~~
icpmacdo
haha I look forward to laughing at the MS paint conspiracy story boards that
result from these kind of events
------
clavalle
I can see what Coding House was trying to accomplish from this description:
give the attendees a 'solved' but real problem that they could start building
day 1. Show them how to be self reliant in terms of finding answers for
themselves (important for any development career). Address the commonly
neglected area of interpersonal networking and personal branding (I can't
believe I just used that phrase with a straight face, but there it is).
But it seems like it was geared toward people who already had a handle on
programming. This, along with inflated marketing promises (welcome to the
business world) is where things collapsed.
These are fixable problems. First, time should be split between instruction on
concrete beginner level topics and the project. Preferably relevant to the
task they will be tackling in the project itself. The instructor should be
very well versed in the technologies at least so far as the previously solved
project the students build is concerned. The project itself and the steps
needed to accomplish the project should be very well understood. The
instructor should have a step by step guide from start to finish. This would
take doing the project from scratch a few times using the notes from the
previous one as a guide. That guide shouldn't be shared with the developers
but it should serve as a reference to get them unstuck after beating their
head against Google and Stack Overflow.
And, of course, you shouldn't make promises of employment that you can't keep.
Now, those seem to be very core problems but I do see the logic behind a lot
of the rest. Exercise is important to work into your routine. Networking is
important. Learning to solve your own problems is important. Working with
others is important. Doing promo photoshoots and locking your laptop? Not so
much.
I can see why this person would want their money back and if I were Coding
House I'd pay it, but I don't think everything is as damning as this letter
makes out. With some serious tweaks it is recoverable. I think their heart was
likely in the right place.
------
GFK_of_xmaspast
See also: [http://www.demon-sushi.com/warning/](http://www.demon-
sushi.com/warning/)
~~~
MCRed
The relevance of that site is not immediately obvious.
------
childplease
I recently completed the Coding House program and have been actively
interviewing for four weeks. I had three offers this morning from different
companies - all six figures and above (yes - $100,000+). I am accepting one of
those now. I also turned down several other opportunities because they didn’t
fit my career interest. This didn’t happen by chance and it certainly would
not have been possible without the exceptional program I attended at Coding
House. These post come at the perfect time for me to voice my opinion on
coding bootcamps. And by the way this has nothing to do about money - it has
to do with an amazing program that provided me with thousands of career
opportunities.
For complete transparency I graduated college with a business degree, worked
in the software industry (project management/account management side) for 5+
years, and completed multiple online certifications for various programming
languages. I am telling you this not to brag (because this experience doesn’t
mean shit) but to demonstrate these programs can benefit individuals who have
a solid work/education background, as well as those wanting to make a career
change.
Prior to Coding House I was making roughly $50,000. I was teaching myself
programming on the side on platforms such as Pluralsight, Codecademy, and Code
School. I also took took three classes at O’Reilly School of Tech. I can say
from personal experience NO ONE can become a Jr. Developer in a reasonable
time using these resources. These platforms teach you programming in a kiddie
pool environment far away from real world environments. Try developing a
production ready application after completing those courses - it isn’t
possible for 99% of people. You don’t have professionals showing you the ropes
of Version Control Systems, framework architecture, Test Driven Development,
Design Driven Development, development tools, deployments to AWS, Digital
Ocean, Heroku, and API integrations. Anyone who is claiming someone can make
the transition with only using these educational resources is clearly
uneducated on software development. Those individuals are so far disconnected
from reality its laughable.
Making a transition into software development is far more complicated than
taking a few free courses online. Programs such as Coding House (and several
others) prepare their “students” for real world application development.
Bootcamps are extremely intense and mentally exhausting. You have to be
resilient and willing to make a million mistakes. Yes the reward can be great
on the other side (great pay and work) but you have to be honest with yourself
prior to attending a camp. 2 months is a short time for anything. You have to
put in countless hours before and after the program. Nothing is going to be
handed to you. Welcome to life - mommy and daddy will not be there to hold
your hand. These camps provide a huge stepping stone that modern Computer
Science programs are not providing. I am not saying CS programs are not worth
time + investment because I have never attended such a program. CS programs
and bootcamps are different on so many levels and have different goals.
My Accomplishments at Coding House: -Accepted employment offer one month after
program was complete -Won 1st place at Launch 215 Hackathon building an
application with Sabre Cord API -Invited to speak with the CEO of Codecademy
based on a blog post I wrote. -Interviewed at PayPal and Apple and completed
all final rounds of the interview process (and I turned all those offers down)
-Developed a mobile application that allows anyone to scan a barcode of a food
product and know instantly if they are allergic to any ingredients.
Prior to coding house these accomplishments were not within my reach. I can
honestly say I accomplished more in 2 months than would have been possible in
a 18 month timeframe on my own. My money and time was well worth the
investment.
What makes Coding House successful: -Extensive pre-work prior to attending. I
spent well over 200 hours or more dedicated to preparing myself for the
program. -One of the best damn instructors the industry has to offer. I have
worked with very talented developers throughout my career and this instructor
is top notch. He can teach, coach, challenge, and push you to your limits.
-The curriculum (Javascript Stack) builds extremely well and allows for great
progression -No others worries but coding and collaborating with other
students -Application based learning with a solid portfolio to display at the
end of the program
So what does this mean? Bootcamps are what you make of them. Are they perfect?
No. But they can help propel you in many different directions for your career.
Anything worth pursuing is difficult and a lot of people will fail achieving
it. I swam for 4 years as a NCAA Division I athlete (again -this isn’t too
brag). 20 of us started as Freshman, and 4 of us completed our Senior year.
Why? Because it was hard and demanding. Bootcamps are the same. They are hard
and require 110% dedication to achieving your goals. The weak will fail and
blame everyone around them for it. Those people are everywhere and it’s sad
they can’t take ownership for their own failures. The tough will succeed and
continue to push the limits of education and software development.
------
ired
here is the link to the story (copy of the original pdf):
[http://gapurov.com/files/codinghouse_tell-
all.pdf](http://gapurov.com/files/codinghouse_tell-all.pdf)
------
cansync1
Hi All,
I am one of the founders at Coding House. Let me provide some insight on the
post from last year.
1) 50% of the the post is true and my fault
2) 50% is untrue and students fault
3) It was our very first cohort and we had a lot to learn about what worked
and did not work
4) The student has been refunded
5) We wanted to make it like a real boot camp and that was to hard on some of
the students
6) We have fantastic instructors you can find there bio's on our site
7) We have change our policies to insure it dose not happen again
8) Look up all the reviews of Coding House and you will find we have great
outcomes and satisfied students
~~~
wyc
> 50% is untrue and students fault
This statement does little to make me feel any better about Coding House.
~~~
joshrotenberg
Should be more like "We take 100% responsibility for the issues and plan to do
something about it."
~~~
cansync1
Fair enough.
We take 100% responsibility for taking a student in our first cohort over 1
year ago; who was not prepared, did not do the work in or after the program.
We have learned from our mistake.
We now have extensive per work, coding challenges (gates on all phases) and
accept only 3.16% of the students that apply.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
That's like a little kid who, when told to make an apology, says "I'm sorry
you're so ugly."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CES 2014: What To Expect From The Biggest Tech Show of The Year - davidsmith8900
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/phone-and-communications/ces-2014-what-to-expect-from-the-show-1193036
======
AdrianRossouw
i only really care about seeing more about steam machines
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Gervais Principle IV: Wonderful Human Beings - SandB0x
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/10/14/the-gervais-principle-iv-wonderful-human-beings/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ribbonfarm+%28ribbonfarm%29
======
zck
Already posted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790749>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do I have to float through life? - thecombjelly
http://thintz.com/essays/float-through-life
======
nostrademons
This is basically why I wanted to drop out through most of college. I _wanted_
the challenge, I wanted to make things difficult for myself, because I
certainly hadn't been challenged until then.
I realized halfway through senior year, when it was nearly too late, that I
was being silly. Mostly because I finally realized how hard what I wanted to
accomplish in life _actually_ was, and figured that if it's intrinsically that
hard, why make it even more difficult on myself? I can challenge myself by
working on harder problems, not by throwing up artificial roadblocks in my
way.
The way I _wished_ I'd approached college was to treat it as a menu of
opportunities, each of which I could sample or gorge myself upon as I saw fit.
I did this to some extent, but there's so much more I could've exposed myself
to had I made different choices back in high school. Unfortunately, it's
difficult to understand just how big the world is and how much richness is out
there when you've spent the first 18 years of your life in an
institutionalized box with your parents making every decision for you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: WhatLane – A fun Q&A platform - whatlane
https://whatlane.com
======
whatlane
We just launched WhatLane in open beta and are looking for feedback regarding
the web design, features, market demand, etc.
Do let us know (you can be harsh). Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A picture I took in Times Square - iqster
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/37/timessquaret.jpg/
======
nxn
Hmm, saw the same ad on a billboard somewhere outside of Philly a few weeks
ago. Reminded me that I should check the address to see how many pictures
they'd have of people wearing headsets on their site. Fun drinking game this.
------
iqster
Entitled: Why I get the feeling we're back in a tech bubble :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tracked calories and macros for a year – analysis suggestions? - gx
https://nutritionize.co/analysis/guan/
======
gx
I've put together a simple moving average analysis that lets me analyse my
nutrition/bodyweight history in two things I find useful:
1\. measuring how consistent I've been with my calories/macros (blue line),
compared to the targets I've set (white line),
2\. extract my averaged bodyweight values so that I don't get hung up on
singular ups and downs.
I'd love to pick your brains and hear suggestions on what other types of data
analysis might be useful here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sean Parker: Now Is the Most Toxic Time Ever In Silicon Valley - michaelochurch
http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-parker-now-is-the-most-toxic-time-ever-in-silicon-valley-2012-10
======
atomical
Sob story by a company that doesn't have a price? It seems to me that Jason
Fried is talking about companies like this.
------
dpakrk
Not surprising , They should choose mobile instead of web and also very less
people interested to talk strangers if its not a dating site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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