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Super Mario Bros on an 8x8 LED matrix - ph0rque
http://vimeo.com/9928343
======
zuck123
Gotta love embedded systems. On a side note, don't bring it to Boston
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare>
------
MikeCapone
The music pushed this from "really cool" to "awesome" for me.
------
zackattack
CMU HCI makes the coolest stuff
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Royalty-Free Video Game Music Library - LuckyLionSt
http://luckylionstudios.com/royalty-free-video-game-music-library/
======
rjsamson
Another title change?? This one, again, seems totally inappropriate -
shouldn't "Show HN" posts be exempt from mods changing the title since one
would imagine that the creator of what is being shown has a better idea of an
appropriate title than a mod? Seems to me like its one step away from editing
the very content being linked!
------
josho
Please charge more. My current (indy) project just selected the stock music
for our project. I'm happy to pay $30 / piece. The site that we licensed our
music from had pricing options as well. E.g. $30 for the full track, down to
as low as $7 for a short loop or a stinger.
Also if you can make it easier to find what I'm looking for then I'll look
first at your site rather than others. E.g. is the piece fast/slow tempo,
instruments used, genre or style, etc.
Good luck.
------
aw3c2
Consider making some tracks free to use and share (with your name and contact
info and "I make music for money for you" being mandatory to be kept). You can
use a creative commons license for that. I haven't listened yet but doing this
might mean ending up in free/open-source games and thus maybe being bundled
into linux distributions. Great free advertising.
------
ef4
I'm curious about your choice of pricing.
My uninformed guess is that you can charge substantially more than this and
still provide great value. Consider that $5 is about the cost of four minutes
of programmer time.
~~~
timaelliott
Yeah, he could most likely get away with charging higher. How do you suggest a
company test out pricing though? I mean I think that's exactly what Amazon has
done and they get criticized for doing so (since they do it in a A/B fashion)
I guess he could just bump all the songs to $10 and see if sales
increase/decrease/etc over a period of time. Pricing is definitely an
interesting problem, for all startups.
~~~
metafunctor
Personally, I wouldn't shy away from A/B testing prices (I do it), if you have
enough transactions going on to run a successful experiment.
Running pricing cohorts takes more time, and doing other experiments at the
same time will taint the pricing experiment.
------
esonderegger
Nicely done!
A lot of the commenters here think you're charging too little and I agree.
Have you thought about having two pricing tiers: one for non-exclusive use and
much higher one (maybe $100 per track?) for exclusive use?
If I were a game developer and I thought I was making the next Angry Birds,
having a recognizable theme that I knew no one else would have would be an
easy to understand added value.
~~~
JoshTriplett
> Have you thought about having two pricing tiers: one for non-exclusive use
> and much higher one (maybe $100 per track?) for exclusive use?
I think you've vastly underestimated a reasonable price for exclusive use,
given the inability to sell it to anyone else, the amount of time needed to
produce an original piece of music, and any sensible salary for individual
composers.
~~~
esonderegger
Since my day job involves working with composers as they record original
works, I _know_ $100 per track is very low considering the
time/creativity/experience required.
However, I respect that different people are at different stages in their
careers. This may be a rung on the ladder on the way to commissions or a side
project while in school.
I was simply taking the current price of $5 per track and thinking that it may
be unlikely for any given track to be licensed by twenty different game
developers for non-exclusive use. It might yield more revenue to have one
buyer at $100 per track.
------
iharris
The website could use some optimization but it's a great start. I like the
music that you've posted so far. One question, though: Would you consider
doing short musical sound effects ("jingles" for lack of a better word)? For
example, for level-ups or small achievements within a game. A lot of music is
available for games but it seems tough to find decent-sounding musical effects
that can be used in this way.
~~~
LuckyLionSt
That's actually on my to-do list. I want to create a series of shorter
"jingles" that can be packaged and sold as bundles in various styles (so you'd
have a more orchestral set, an electronic set, etc). It's definitely something
I want to have available sooner than later.
------
matthewdanger
Very cool resource and there are some great tracks here. I'm excited to see
how you expand the library to accompany all kinds of different projects, even
beyond games.
I'm quite a fan of royalty-free music, actually I just finished up a project
using 100% royalty-free music from Kevin MacLeod (<http://incompetech.com/>).
He uses a creative-commons license for all of his work, but makes the bulk of
his money through private projects brought on from exposure.
Our project was for an immersive reading experience for The War of the Worlds,
which meant we needed lots and lots of different types of music for all the
story arcs. Shameless plug if you want to check it out:
<http://e-mersiv.com/apps>
Again, I think you could definitely have a market for more than just game devs
out there, your pricing model is attractive enough to be used for short
videos, ebooks, etc.
------
yannickmahe
The idea is extremely appealing. Do you have any idea of the market size?
~~~
LuckyLionSt
I don't have hard numbers but given the popularity of web and mobile game
engines, like Unity3D, there are numerous people entering the game development
space. Music seems to be one of the most often requested areas and most indie
devs either try to make it themselves or buy really crappy music. I figure I
can offer them affordable yet high-quality music. I've been talking to a
handful of social/mobile studios as well and have some ideas on how I'm going
to change the business model to support them.
------
cobrausn
I'm currently working on an indie game that we hope to release within 6 months
or so. Sound effects we were pretty sure we could handle, but music is another
thing altogether. From what I can see here, this fits the bill very well - the
music is appealing and generic enough to be put in numerous types of games,
yet not so generic as to be devoid of the ability to set a mood. I like it a
lot.
Also, I do agree with some of the other posters - you should charge a bit
more. Seems like a steal at $5.00.
Have you considered allowing 'library license' purchases, where you pay a bit
more than list but get access to the entire library and future releases as
well?
As an aside, I am getting a lot of 'File Not Found'.
~~~
timaelliott
Haha, was just going to say the same. Got some "error establishing database
connection". Looks like we broke his server.
------
dkersten
I couldn't browse at all - kept getting knocked back the loading bar. I'm
using Firefox on linux. As others have said already, I'd suggest making a
javascript-free version for people like me who aren't able to listen for
whatever reason (and I see quicktime mentioned on the page - please please no
quicktime, I refuse to install it).
For my purposes, a plain HTML page with download links to a low quality sample
for me to listen to would be enough. (and obviously a shopping cart or some
other way to buy the full quality versions)
Having said that, I love the idea and hope I can listen to some of your music
soon.
------
hmgauna
As a musician and former gamer, I think this is a great idea and interesting
discussion about pricing and business models. Have you thought about a
commission/share model? I don't know the real market, but I think most
musicians won't think about the games industry as a business, so you have
probably less competition there. On the other hand, lately I've seen more and
more indie games, so demand seems to be growing.
With such a low price, I'll have my concerns with the lack of exclusivity.
Maybe you could add a premium price to remove the audio from further selling?
Regards!
~~~
LuckyLionSt
I have a custom audio service on the site as well which I recommend for people
seeking exclusivity and the more traditional commission approach. The prices
are still lower than most composers can offer, but they're obviously a good
deal higher than what I can offer for the non exclusive library tracks.
I've also considered the buyout approach for the library, and it's something I
may eventually include.
------
peterjmag
Great idea! One recommendation: Currently, your site loads a complete instance
of the audio player for each track, which causes Flash's memory usage to shoot
up by a couple hundred MB (Chrome on Windows). Might I suggest something like
Yahoo's WebPlayer instead? It handles long lists of audio files more
gracefully, with a single Flash object. That alone should greatly impact your
page load times and responsiveness.
<http://webplayer.yahoo.com/>
------
kephra
What formats do you offer?
Especially, do you offer a MOD formats (1) or only streamed audio? Because
better games prefer to sync with the engine, and separate spacial tracks with
OpenAL.
(1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOD_%28file_format%29>
And as told: us$5 is much to low to be taken serious!
------
felipellrocha
Bookmarked it. I understand that you're a musician, and that's why you decided
to start with music, but do you guys have any future plans of also providing
other resources, such as sprite sheets, and that sort of stuff? This site has
a great potential of being a one place stop for indie developers to help them
get started.
~~~
LuckyLionSt
I think that's a great idea and a service that needs to exist, but for me
personally I think that would be biting off a lot more than I could chew.
------
jakesgordon
I have purchased a few tracks from Lucky Lion studios in the past for some
personal projects (<http://codeincomplete.com/>) and been very happy.
I highly recommend them.
Good luck(y lion)!
~~~
LuckyLionSt
Hey! Thanks for the support, I've actually played Snakes!
~~~
jakesgordon
Cool. I also just used a couple of your tracks for a little outrun-style
racing game
<http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2012/6/22/javascript_racer/>
I would agree with the comments that you could charge more (certainly for the
longer tracks)
------
raphaelcaixeta
$5 is a steal. I'm sure you could charge a lot more and still keep customers
happy!
------
iambrakes
I wish you the best of luck but how do you plan on contending with some of the
large stock music sites? I won't give names.
Are you going to open up to other composers to sell through your service?
------
mkilling
Wow those tracks really are cheap. $100 per track would still be cheap.
------
kingatomic
This is a great idea! One of the bigger stumbling blocks for me, as a hopeful
one-man-studio, is that I am crap at making music. This could be the answer to
that. Best of luck to you!
------
gavanwoolery
I am a hobbyist game developer, and this seems like a good resource (I have
bookmarked it). Do you compose all the music or take in tracks from others as
well?
~~~
LuckyLionSt
I compose all of the music at the moment, but as the business grows I would
like to potentially bring in other composers and sound effect artists to offer
a wider selection of styles.
~~~
RyanIyengar
Sent you a message regarding this. Cool idea man, I like the tracks.
------
crgt
Having trouble previewing songs on my iPhone, but this looks like a great
resource. Will check out again when in front of a "real" computer. ; )
------
whiskers
These are great! Have you any plans to provide a package including everything
for a single price? I'd definitely be interested...
------
stewie2
Thank you, this is extremely useful.
I'm a programmer, I can handle some light graphics work. But I can't do music.
------
josscrowcroft
Ough this sounds fantastic but you should have installed WP Super Cache!!
Bookmarked to check back later.
~~~
josscrowcroft
PS I'm also a composer, when can I upload tracks for others to buy? :o)
------
rex64
Cool! Would love more chiptune songs!
~~~
LuckyLionSt
Thanks, that's definitely one of the more popular genres so I'm planning on
bulking up in that area for sure.
------
ga0bi
as a developer+designer team, this resource is going to be tremendous for us!
thank you :)
------
tubbo
what an awesome idea!
------
dltylol
I hope you're a good composer becase you're definitely not good at making
websites :(
Good luck!
~~~
LuckyLionSt
Yeah, the website could definitely use some improvement. Revenue is trickling
in currently, hoping I can contract someone to spruce it up. I've been told
HTML5 audio players would make a big difference in loading speed.
~~~
aw3c2
I highly recommend making a version that does not rely on Javascript for
simply listing the tracks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: ProAnd.Contra, Fast and easy online Pro/Contra opinion polls - mmathias
http://proand.co
======
sosospz
Nice one
~~~
mmathias
Thanks!
------
mahede
very nice.......
~~~
mmathias
Thank you! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Recursive DNS Server Fingerprint - pjf
https://recdnsfp.github.io/
======
gtirloni
It's nice to see a country as large as Brazil having 24% of its domains with
DNSSEC records (973k out of 3.9m domains). I expected it to be close to zero.
This is very interesting work. I wish there was an easy way to see DNSSEC
statistics for each ccTLD side-by-side with the fingerprint report.
~~~
gcb0
brazil is the only country other than US that understood internet control.
they have their own, centralized registrar, and they use proper tlds such as
gov, jus (justice) etc with their own tls system (which sometimes update
faster than browsers can keep up so you have to add root signatures manually
to your systems)
~~~
dschulz
I was actually surprised when Kaspersky announced NIC.br was compromised and
many banking sites where hijacked. If I remember correctly, they (NIC.br)
identified a vulnerability but then denied Kaspersky claims.
[https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hackers-hijacked-banks-
entire-...](https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hackers-hijacked-banks-entire-
online-operation/)
~~~
gcb0
Did anyone ever release any more info on this?
so far, all points to the bank falling for a scam and releasing credentials to
nic.br
------
willscott
This is a very cool use of RIPE Atlas!
Note that it's not going to flag many of the censorship apparatus, because
they will inject replies only for queries matching their denied patterns.
Reversing that list in a useful way remains tricky, to say the least.
------
JoshTriplett
Seems odd that their tests have a drastically different number of probes from
different source countries. total_probes ought to be exactly the same from
every source, for a more rigorous experiment.
~~~
toast0
It sounds like they used all the probes available. Many of the countries
simply have very few RIPE Atlas probes available; I don't think it's
reasonable to only select 5 probes from the US, because that's how many are
installed in Vietnam; if you did, you're unlikely to pick any of the probes
that showed this behavior.
Instead, it's better to report the total and suspicious numbers, and take the
percentages with a grain of salt on low total probes.
~~~
JoshTriplett
I thought the point was that they queried many available DNS servers, not that
they did so from as many different locations as possible. Even if they only
have a dozen sources in a given country, can't they still query all the DNS
servers they know of from there?
~~~
toast0
> We used all RIPE Atlas probes (~9000 probes) to send DNS queries to 8.8.8.8.
> Each probe issued several queries, a single query covered one of the
> features described above (e.g. DNSSEC validation, IPv6 only-domain
> reachability, NXDOMAIN redirection, …).
My understanding was that they did the same queries from as many network
locations as possible, and looked for unexpected results.
Querying more known public dns IPs would provide better confidence that a
given probe was attached to a network that hijacked DNS, but still wouldn't
tell you very much about the internet in a country with a low probe count.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Electrical jolts to brain restored memory of elderly to that of 20-year-old - evo_9
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/brain-jolts-revive-memory-in-elderly-turning-clock-back-four-decades/
======
ASalazarMX
> In a subsequent experiment, the researchers tried to reverse the finding:
> they used brain stimulation designed to desynchronize waves in young
> participants, which caused the subjects to do worse on the memory test
Now that's how you do mad science.
~~~
jammygit
Who wants to co-found a new 'electric coffee' product?
~~~
Fjolsvith
Simply called "Jolt!"
------
leggomylibro
Huh, wow. I was expecting this to be about deep-brain stimulation, but it
looks like they used a non-invasive technique. And it sounds fascinating.
It looks like they analyzed peoples' theta and gamma waves in different
regions of their brain, and tried to 'nudge' them towards staying in sync.
Theta/gamma/whatever waves are defined by the frequency at which the signal
occurs, sort of like radio bands, and it sounds like this study presents the
brain as a bunch of analog circuits which eventually develop stuff like noise
and clock drift.
>Here we show that a core feature of cognitive decline may emerge from the
temporal decoupling of neural codes theorized to constitute a flexible
frontotemporal circuit for the monitoring and storage of memory contents of
real-world information. The work supports theories of neurocognitive aging
that propose cortical disconnection underlies age related cognitive decline...
Neat. Sounds like we need thicker wires.
------
larkeith
If there's no side effects of long-term usage, I wonder how much power this
needs - could you make a hat of some sort to just constantly provide the jolts
to offset the limited duration of the benefits?
Perhaps the 90s dream of "space helmets" will come to fruition.
~~~
Junk_Collector
Stimulation doesn't need a lot of power, transcranial has been a topic of
research for a long time. If you do it incorrectly, however your nervous
system will build up an immunity by learning to ignore the external signals.
~~~
WalterGR
_If you do it incorrectly, however your nervous system will build up an
immunity by learning to ignore the external signals._
That sounds interesting. Where can I learn more?
~~~
Junk_Collector
Sorry this is such a late reply. The best publications I've found on this
topic came from St. Jude Medical Research (The private medical device
manufacturer not to be confused with the Hospital Chain) and it related to
their line of neuro-stimulation devices back when they were still in
development. I'm having trouble finding it right now or I would link some
specific papers. The jist of it is that you need to use a psuedo-random
modulation or the nervous system will eventually learn to ignore the external
signals. Is applied at pretty much all levels of the nervous system from pain
receptors to the brain but not at the same rate of developing immunity.
The Army Human Factors group has published a lot of material specific to
various types of electrical/magnetic cranial stimulation. You can find some
excellent stuff on DTIC.
------
zwieback
That messy ribbon cable in the picture suggests that signal integrity or power
isn't a big concern in this experiment. How hard would it be to replicate a
system like this?
~~~
testpostpls
Re photo: the article's photo appears to be a stock photo.
[https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-
photo/epileptology-u...](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-
photo/epileptology-unit-nice-france-patient-hospitalized-news-
photo/1041927180)
~~~
mirimir
Damn, that is _lame_.
------
hello2
Sounds like a lobotomy experiment. Successful at the time, but 50 years later
doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore.
------
onetimemanytime
I guess as a last resort....kinda trying whatever for cancer after the doctors
send you home to die. Just as you can improve it, you can also fry it
(whatever is left anyway)
------
seehafer
Here's a company using similar tech in a commercial product:
[https://www.haloneuro.com](https://www.haloneuro.com)
------
dawhizkid
Don’t psychedelics do the same as far as increasing plasticity goes?
------
hirundo
"You know you’ve got the brain of a four-year-old child, and I bet he was glad
to get rid of it." \-- Groucho Marx, Horse Feathers, 1932
So which 20-year-old's memories do they get? Can they pick one with good
memories? Where do I get in line?
~~~
robbiep
It mentions it in the article - working (short term) memory
------
0815test
The article title isn't clear - is it saying that the _state_ of the person's
memories was 'restored' to what it was when they were 20 years old?
Intuitively, that's just about what I would expect "electrical jolts to the
brain" to accomplish, at least in the best case!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Splitting founder equity is about checking your ego at the door - abinoda
http://abinoda.com/startup-equity.html
======
vlokshin
"It follows that the founders' relationship is the next most important
determinant of success." -- Words to live by for early stage start-ups.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What are your recommendations for Git visualisation? - carmat
I like to think I'm well versed enough in how to use git, at least on a day-to-day basis. Having had plenty of experience with GitHub repos, both private and public, I now find myself in a situation whereby I should assume GitHub is not an option, and use 'self-hosted' repos.<p>With this, comes the difficulty in visualising progress, history and collaboration within a small team. Issues arise due to a no -standard, or non-existent, workflow (but that's for a different discussion).<p>I believe a visualisation tool would greatly help the team I work with, but with little experience outside of GitHub, I'm looking for advice from those that have used other tools.<p>e.g. Gitlab: to me, it looks like the answer, or at least something pretty close. But I don't want to commit to something, propose to my team, only to later discover a fundamental flaw or usage restrictions etc.<p>EDIT: An ideal feature would be the concept of pull requests or merge requests. Given the current team workflow, not every piece of work is to be released as soon as its completed so having some visualisation of things waiting on the wings is important.<p>Help in research would be grately appreciated.<p>Thanks community :)
======
sdesol
Disclaimer: I'm the creator of GitSense which is focused on Git analytics and
search
Right now it doesn't support analyzing/visualizing merges/pull requests, but
it will down the road. What it does really well right now, is it lets you
analyze changes across branches, which is a precursor to merge/pull requests
analytics. Below is an example of how you can use it to analyze two branches
from the rethinkdb project:
[https://gitsense.com/insight?c=bitbucket:gitsense/contexts:g...](https://gitsense.com/insight?c=bitbucket:gitsense/contexts:gs_contexts::default.ccf#b=github:rethinkdb/rethinkdb:next::github:rethinkdb/rethinkdb:v2.3.x)
I write a bit more about how the tool works in the GitSense blog:
[https://gitsense.com/blog](https://gitsense.com/blog)
Right now I'm working on deep integration with Bitbucket and Microsoft, but
you can use the standalone web tool, to analyze repos from GitHub/GitHub
Enterprise, Bitbucket Cloud/Server or GitLab Server/Cloud. If GitHub and
GitLab supports injection points in their product, I'll provide deep
integration with them as well.
------
carmat
Just spotted this come up on HN New as well, pull requests included:
[https://opsnotice.xyz/gogs-git-docker/](https://opsnotice.xyz/gogs-git-
docker/)
Another potential I guess, however I've never used Docker or Go so maybe not
worth the risk.
------
matt4077
GitKraken is pretty nice, and free – but it's client software, not a web
service.
~~~
carmat
I probably should have mentioned this in my original post (will amend) but
does it handle things like feature/merge requests kind of like how GitHub and
GitLab does?
~~~
matt4077
No, it's just a client, merge requests aren't part of a standard Git install
so it wouldn't know where to even save them. (It does handle them when working
with a Github repository).
For that Gitlab is certainly the best option – or a private repository at
Github. I'd trust their security much more than anything I could roll myself.
~~~
carmat
Important point well made. Thank you
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When do you become a developer? - stephsmithio
https://blog.stephsmith.io/when-do-you-become-a-developer/
======
stephsmithio
Hey HN. After teaching myself to code over the last year and launching
multiple products, I thought I would at some point “feel” more like a
developer.
For whatever reason that feeling hasn’t changed, so I decided to run a poll to
see when others thought the inflection point really happened. When does
someone really “become” a developer?
I thought the responses to the poll (N=300+) were really interesting and
perhaps the lack of alignment in the responses led me to discover that maybe
there wasn’t a defining point.
Do you agree? Interested to hear thoughts on this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why don’t we donate directly to researchers? - lettergram
Donating to research typically has a ton of overhead... such that only a percentage of what we donate goes to the scientists.<p>Why? Surely we can donate directly to researchers?<p>Anyone know why?<p>Had this idea to build a website to let you do this, but was curious if anyone knows why this doesn’t exist already.
======
ThrowawayR2
1) What qualifies the public (even HN readers) to sort out the worthy projects
from the charlatans?
2) Under such a site, funding would go to the flashiest and best hyped
projects rather than the ones that need it. There would a huge incentive for
style over substance, much like Kickstarter.
It doesn't exist because it's obviously a bad idea.
~~~
lettergram
While I think that’s mostly fair, you can control for much of that.
Have a “trustworthy” score based on number of replication studies from the
lab. Have a percentage of each donation go to replication.
You can also limit it to larger institutions and what not.
Honestly, is it better that we don't know where and why funding goes where it
does?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Don’t Do Sales On The App Store - bjonathan
http://carpeaqua.com/2011/03/23/why-i-dont-do-sales-on-the-app-store/
======
bob_kelso
Isn't it a bit contradictory:
"All I get out of a blind code giveaway on a social media site is a lost
sale."
and:
"In most cases, people claim codes because they like the idea of getting
something for free, even if they have 0 intention of ever using it."
How is giving your app to someone who would never by your app a lost sale? To
me it makes sense to give away promos every now and then. True, not everyone
will use it, and yes, maybe someone who gets it for free would have been
prepared to pay for it. But maybe the onces that start using it have friends
who they show your app to. Friends that like your app and buy it. And maybe
they have friends too... So you give away maybe 20 "copies", but since this
costs you nothing, every sale this gives you counts as profit!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you search for awesome stuffs? - jdeng
http://awesome.samemoment.com/
======
jdeng
There is a ton of curated list of awesome stuffs, as you can explore on
[http://awesome.re](http://awesome.re). But I found it inconvenient to search
by topics, or preview projects while browsing. Do you feel the same? Is the
pain point serious enough for a search engine of curated awesome stuffs?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nanowire ‘inks’ enable paper-based printable electronics - manojr
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/8831.html
======
achow
> “There is really nothing else I can think of besides these silver nanowires
> that you can just print and it’s simply conductive, without any post-
> processing,”
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but isn't conductive printable ink a
fairly old 'technology'? Bare Conductive exists for quite sometime I think
[https://www.bareconductive.com/](https://www.bareconductive.com/)
Also, there are tutorials on making graphite based conductive paints at home
[http://www.instructables.com/id/Paper-Electronics-
Conductive...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Paper-Electronics-Conductive-
Paints-Inks-and-Mo/)
This paper talks about silver based ink, which would be highly conductive than
maybe those made from graphite, but they would loose out on cost. The last
line of the article indicates as much - the team is trying to develop silver
coated nano wires (as opposed to solid silver nano wires) to bring down the
price.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coronavirus policy: Are Swedes naive or the only adults in the room? - situationista
https://www.thelocal.se/20200416/coronavirus-opinion-are-swedes-naive-or-the-only-adults-in-the-room
======
jjgreen
Oh to be in Sweden, they'll come out of the other end of this without the
multi-generational crippling debt that the rest of the world has chosen, and
they're currently sitting in the sunshine sipping a beer (suitably distanced,
of course).
------
thdrdt
I think it's good every country takes it's own measures because it is very
hard to compare countries.
For example Sweden has ~22 people per km² while the state of NY has ~160/km².
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bits of History, Words of Advice (On Smalltalk) - AriaMinaei
https://gbracha.blogspot.com/2020/05/bits-of-history-words-of-advice.html
======
jecel
The title of the blog post is from the "green book" that describes the efforts
of the companies Xerox first licensed Smalltalk to:
[http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/](http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/)
------
AriaMinaei
Some bits that stood out to me, though the whole piece is full of interesting
points:
> I believe, the community has been self-selected to consist of those who are
> not bothered by Smalltalk's initial limitations, and so are unmotivated to
> address them or support those who do. In fact, they often could not even see
> these limitations staring them in the face, causing them to adopt
> unrealistic business policies that hurt them more than anyone else.
> Perhaps an even deeper problem with Smalltalk is that it attracts people who
> are a tad too creative and imaginative; organizing them into a cohesive
> movement is like herding cats.
------
lalalandland
I work in Smalltalk for hobby projects and it's mostly a fun experience. Very
powerful debugging and introspection makes it easy to take on stuff I would
not consider in any other system.
~~~
kencausey
Which implementation do you use and what sort of projects are you
implementing?
~~~
lalalandland
I mostly work with Squeak and do small explorations with graphics and games
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The future of front-end development is design - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/the-future-of-front-end-development-is-design/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
======
seattle_spring
They said this back when homestead.com was a thing. 15 years later, FE
engineering is stronger and more in demand than ever.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cata-list: Useful lists of some of the best info, media, tools, and quotes - mwtheta
https://cata-list.github.io
======
mwtheta
Creator here. I've been lurking on Hacker News for a while and often add
useful and interesting articles and tools which I find here to my lists. I
hope and imagine that any who resonate with the Hacker ethic [1] and/or seek
to be/create catalysts for positive change may find some interesting and
potentially useful things.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic)
Quick example links/pages:
News / Timeline: [https://cata-
list.github.io/articles/timeline/2020](https://cata-
list.github.io/articles/timeline/2020)
Media / Books: [https://cata-list.github.io/media/books](https://cata-
list.github.io/media/books)
Media / YouTube: [https://cata-
list.github.io/media/youtube/academyofideas](https://cata-
list.github.io/media/youtube/academyofideas)
Tools / Science: [https://cata-list.github.io/tools/science](https://cata-
list.github.io/tools/science)
Quotes / Ralph Waldo Emerson: [https://cata-
list.github.io/quotes/emerson](https://cata-list.github.io/quotes/emerson)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
From a Mailchimp email and Wufoo form to $25k in 3 months - gozmike
https://medium.com/who-what-why/c744d79a6e76
======
johnrob
A classic pivot: "This gold mining thing isn't working out, perhaps we should
just sell goods to the other miners".
~~~
sgdesign
As someone who's working on the exact same concept for another domain
(freelance designers), I've come to realize this is one of the least original
business models ever (there's about 10 similar services in my space alone).
Still, it fills a need and people are ready to pay for it, which is more than
you can say for a lot of startup ideas…
~~~
mahmud
Just 10? Have you been looking with both eyes closed?
------
starrhorne
Is that $25k in revenue? Profit? Or total transactions from which you take a
%?
Just curious. I really like your lean approach.
~~~
mikaelcho
That 25k number was total transactions from which we take a 15 percent
commission.
~~~
rubiquity
So you've made $3,750 in three months?
~~~
joelgascoigne
$3,750 in 3 months is not bad at all. It is super difficult to get something
off the ground. Once you're in motion, it can grow pretty fast.
~~~
rubiquity
I wasn't scoffing at the number, I was clarifying the honesty of the number.
------
reustle
This reminds me of Kyle Braggers Tinyproj project. I really wish he hadn't
sold to GroupTalent (which subsequently killed it).
~~~
mikaelcho
Ya, I loved Tinyproj when I was working freelance before ooomf. Hated to see
it go.
------
unclebucknasty
Good stuff. Congrats to the founders on the pivot and the success.
Getting the MVP approach right is hard. Really hard. Either that, or I have
just been doing it wrong. We have one line of business that is our bread and
butter. It came up the old fashioned way: getting in the trenches, gutting it
out, and tweaking the model until we gained traction. Since then, we have
launched no less than 3 new businesses. Two were shutdown and one is currently
languishing.
The challenge is marketing. It's hard, there is too much noise, and when the
product is not refined, conversions can suffer. So, it can be difficult to
discern whether your company is failing because of the minimal product
(especially in these days of "high design"), because of some other execution
element, or just no market fit.
I also think the MVP approach is suitable to businesses with specific
characteristics and these may be relatively rare. In this case, the business
already had fairly extensive relationships with its target market on both
sides of the equation. That was key, I believe, as much of the marketing
legwork had been done and the established trust could override any qualms
about such a minimalist approach. Also, the nature of the business was such
that simple forms and manual processes were sufficient to start. That is
frequently not the case with tech businesses.
This is not to disparage their accomplishments in the slightest. It was an
astute pivot and their approach was smart. It's just that the mantra of MVP,
fast iterations, fail fast, etc. has been the magic hammer lately, and too
many companies have been nails.
------
dylangs1030
This is the kind of writing I love to see from founders. It's first-hand
experience, and any advice is accompanied by narrative that explains the line
of thought. It doesn't just seem as though it came down on stone tablets from
gods of startups. In a word, it's _practical._
------
sgdesign
Funny, this is exactly how I started Folyo
([http://folyo.me](http://folyo.me)) as well (which is the same thing but for
freelance designers).
The only difference is that I used Posterous as well to get an online archive
of each project (you could post directly form Wufoo to Posterous if I remember
correctly).
Edit: from reading the post I thought they catered only to app developers.
After taking a look at the site, it seems that they do designers, so they're a
direct competitor.
Others include:
[http://onsite.co](http://onsite.co)
[http://juiiicy.com](http://juiiicy.com)
[http://workingnotworking.com/](http://workingnotworking.com/)
~~~
3stripe
I think you mean [http://onsite.io/](http://onsite.io/) ;)
------
k-mcgrady
Thanks for writing this. I'm launching a product this month and while building
it I regularly fall into the trap of trying to create the vision I have in my
my head that's fully automated rather than the MVP that requires some manual
operation.
Your post reminded me of the recent PG essay [1] "Do Things that Don't Scale"
which I also found really useful.
[1] [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)
------
walden42
Great post, thank you. I'm wondering, when you "manually contacted the best
developers", was this a telephone call or an email? I'm having a hard time
finding the "fine line" of annoying telemarketing call or not. Although the
service I provide would genuinely be useful to the one I contact (as useful as
your service), it's hard not to sound like a telemarketer nonetheless.
------
Simple1234
Isn't anybody going to talk about the irony of a developer service that found
success without writing any code? I think the take away is git or ftp, ruby or
php, sql or a text file, json or xml. Customers don't care, not even
developers. I find that interesting.
------
simonswords82
Nice work people, I've read a number of your blog posts and one in particular
stuck with me (the one about getting press). You've certainly got your own PR
and marketing in general nailed, glad to hear you've now nailed your product.
~~~
mikaelcho
Thanks Simon. That means a lot.
Here's the link to that getting press post:
[https://ooomf.com/blog/post36194316012getting-
press/](https://ooomf.com/blog/post36194316012getting-press/)
------
arbuge
How exactly does the money back guarantee work? After a developer does all the
work for a project, the project owner can just say he's not happy with it and
wants a refund? There must be some safeguards in place to prevent abuse...
~~~
mikaelcho
For each milestone or project, the details of the deliverables are put into
the system. This way, if there's ever an issue (hasn't been yet), we look at
the documentation to make a decision.
Because the projects are vetted as well, this decreases the chances of this
happening.
------
txttran
Slightly off topic, but the website of the company being talked about in this
article ([https://ooomf.com/](https://ooomf.com/)) take a REALLY long time to
load on my computer.
~~~
mikaelcho
Thanks for the heads up. We're working on it now.
~~~
cschneid
Holy crap does the site's landing page look like Simple.
~~~
allenpc
I don't think these are the only two sites using a big hero image overlaid
with white Gotham/Lato/Proxima Nova headers...
~~~
torbit
It instantly reminded me of simple as well. Both top fixed headers with orange
buttons and large BG image with a white background. There are more for sure.
The basic app/tool website layout.
~~~
josegonzalez
Both sites use twitter bootstrap with a few font changes, among other things.
~~~
cschneid
Didn't mean to come off so accusatory. I had simple open in another tab at the
time and thought it was weird that the sign in link had changed text before I
realized what was going on :)
------
scottmagdalein
This is encouraging. But it's not an MVP approach as much as a validation
approach. They validated the idea/product with Mailchimp. The product didn't
come until they started building something to "productize" what had already
been validated manually.
This is what I want to do with a new type of email-based shopping experience.
We'll see.
------
theycallmemorty
Great post. I especially loved the screen shots of the signup and payment
forms that very clearly had Wufoo branding all over them. It really goes to
show that if you have a good idea you don't need to have all your I's dotted
and T's crossed in your MVP; If people like the idea they'll look past those
little lumps.
------
Felix21
The art of the MVP.
I love it.
Good Job.
~~~
mikaelcho
Thanks a lot. It's been a crazy ride so far.
~~~
arbuge
That is a great job - and a great post too. Thanks for sharing that.
------
sarhus
It's a great story. Mind if I ask how did you get the first programmers to
sign up?
~~~
antoinec
From what is in the post, it seemed too me that it was through personal
connections
------
fumar
This is a great story that focuses on iteration.
There are several players in this field. Where are you sourcing all the
project/clients from? I understand the connection to developers. What about
the clients?
------
clarky07
I didn't see a link to their site in the article, so I thought I'd include one
here - [https://ooomf.com/](https://ooomf.com/)
------
joeblau
Did your team end up ditching the mobile marketing effort? That's what I need
for my next project.
------
mtgx
Anyone who's used both Aweber and Mailchimp? Which is better for a mid-level
website?
~~~
Noxchi
I prefer to use self hosted autoresponders using a 3rd parties SMTP service
(like Sendgrid or Amazon SES). Much cheaper and just as reliable (you pay 1
cent per 1000 emails sent, no pay-per-user-per-month).
You'll need to spend $XXX on a self hosted autoresponder first though,
Interspire or arpReach are good.
------
aurelius83
Pretty interesting. I wonder if that is 25k per month, in total revenue, gross
profit etc.
~~~
reledi
I believe it's 25k worth of projects submitted to their site in the first 3
months, from which they take a 15% commission fee (though they started with a
$10 fee).
------
lunarprose
Have loved following ooomf since about March of this year. Brilliant, simple
service.
~~~
mikaelcho
Thanks! So happy you enjoy it.
------
dmak
This is leaner than lean.
------
sfall
how often are you sending out the email newsletter?
~~~
mikaelcho
It's usually 2-3x per week
------
caruana
thanks for the insight, very helpful
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Future of WhatsApp. - kauphy
https://medium.com/@eggonomy/the-future-of-whatsapp-c18769305567
======
btipling
Sure, but WhatsApp runs on phones that have a plan with a phone company. It'll
just be that the cost is offset by cell phone providers shifting their voice
and text revenue to data more than they already have.
~~~
avalanc
In future the Internet service provider and the telephone company might be
separate companies. No wonder Facebook and Google are racing to become ISPs.
You will no longer need a voice plan from Verizon.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Was Once the Most Preposterous Vehicle Known to Man - ajaviaad
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a31709299/helica-propeller-car/
======
h2odragon
"Murder machine" ... Imagine the joy this thing would be on a gravel road.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I would like to work in London, would you help me with my CV/résumé? - ceoloide
Thanks to everyone that is reading this post and everyone that wants to help me! You have my gratitude :-)<p>tl;dr - My CV/résumé probably sucks for the lack of real working experience as a programmer. What would you change? What would you improve or highlight? What should I try to include in it to make it more compelling?<p>Résumé PDF: http://ge.tt/3RgNL2P/v/0<p>LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcomassarelli
======
ceoloide
I currently work as a tech consultant for Accenture in Italy, but I would like
to move to London and work for a software company with a strong software
culture.
The first big project in Accenture that I worked on was an image recognition
service that calculated KPIs and metrics of the shelf layout in supermarkets.
Think of a panorama app to capture a whole shelf mashed together with Google
Goggles to recognize specific products. In this project I designed the
information workflow, the mobile app for Symbian and Android, the back-office
tools. I directly contributed to the code of the Android application,
improving performance and stability and even building new features. I was
considered an SME of the whole solution and I was chosen more than once to
participate in knowledge transfer sessions with new teams and managers.
The second big project I worked on was a knowledge sharing intranet portal,
integrating multiple systems and allowing the user to search on them from a
single page. Here I had a smaller involvement in the design of the solution: I
was in charge of security, data model, and the web-services. I quickly became
very knowledgeable about the entire solution architecture, given that I acted
as a bridge between the business and dev teams. After project go-live I was
nominated to maintenance coordinator, thanks to my knowledge of the system,
and I got the chance to supervise teams of 5 and 2 people in the Philippines
and India.
In my free time I'm working on a manga reader app for Windows Phone 7.5 (w/
custom reading functionality and web scraping on manga portals), an open-
source transfer manager library for Windows Phone 7.5
(<https://github.com/ceoloide/DownloadManager>) and in the spare time
contributing to the code of the upcoming metwit.com Android app (although very
small time is left to do that). When I don't code I participate to the
Appsterdam meetings here in Milan.
------
viraptor
Nit picking: it's mobile rather then cell in UK.
Otherwise it looks interesting, but I usually see more details. It looks like
there's much more to tell about the research papers. Also the Accenture work
is all in one block, but I can see a number of areas you worked on - is it
worth separating them with some more description? I'd also mention the group
leader part (or repeat it in skills) on its own.
Then again it comes from a person used to receiving 5+ pages cv prepared by
agencies. To me your cv looks good, but I'm not sure if someone from HR would
be happy - if you have any friends in that area, show it to them too .
~~~
ceoloide
Thanks for the suggestions! Nit picking is good ;-) I will revise the résumé
and include your comments.
At first I had detailed the projects I worked on in Accenture, but they ended
up taking too much space. I'll try to improve on that.
------
fla
Résumé, not rèsumè. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9>
~~~
ceoloide
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Does any ruby/rails IDE have breakpoints? - twism
Breakpoints are HUGE for me, the ability to stop your program in mid stride and view, traverse, and manipulate data and variables ala keanu reeves in the matrix.
======
luccastera
From the Netbeans page at <http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/60/>
"Ruby Debugger. Single-step or run through Ruby code, set breakpoints, look at
local variables, navigate the call stack, switch threads, and evaluate
expressions by just hovering the mouse over the variable in the Editor. There
is also support for the "fast debug" extension."
------
sweeper
netbeans claims to. not played with them much.
~~~
twism
thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Perl 6 compiler, Release #107 (2017.01) - raiph
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.compiler/2017/01/msg14763.html
======
whatnotests
I still hold hope to build something fun and interesting in Perl6 sometime in
the next couple years.
Hyper-operators, advanced type declarations and all the goodness that makes
Perl Perl is still attractive to me even after years of doing mostly Ruby
(after about 10 years of mostly Perl).
------
dugword
This release contains fixes I submitted, and I would like to call out how
welcoming and supportive the Perl 6 community was during the process.
Also, the fact that Perl6 is written in Perl6 made contributing especially
easy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mark Cuban on startup investing (and Gmail management) - pakafka
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090115/mark-cubans-startup-investing-tips-buy-now-bonus-advice-how-to-manage-5000-emails-a-day/
======
vaksel
What other big name entrepreneurs are that accessible?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Early access to GT Machine Learning course on Udacity - pushkar
I helped Dr. Charles Isbell (Georgia Tech) and Dr. Michael Littman (Brown) build this course as a part of the Georgia Tech online MS program. Charles and Michael have different views on how they think about various Machine Learning topics. This course will give you a unique learning experience to learn Machine Learning from both of their viewpoints.<p>I really enjoyed working on this class with Charles and Michael, and I would like to hear your feedback.<p>Udacity is releasing this course on 3/17, but wanted to give early access to a limited number of people on HN. If you are interested, sign up here: http://goo.gl/kCiYI9<p>This will let you view the free version of the course (includes everything except personal project support and certificate). If you miss the cut-off, don't worry, you can see the course for free beginning on 3/17!<p>Course page: https://www.udacity.com/course/ud675 (watch the trailer!)
======
seiji
Dr. Isbell is one of the best instructors I've had the pleasure of being
talked at by. It's like he has a cable dumping knowledge directly into your
brain.
------
BWStearns
You are awesome. I've been waiting for this course to start. I started a book
on ML and found that given the quantity of new material for me that I would
wait for the Udacity course since the format works better for me in instances
when there are lots of known and unknown unknowns.
Thanks a ton both for helping build the course and sharing this!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Network Connectivity Problems in AWS US-West Region - dan_manges
http://status.aws.amazon.com
======
logicalmike
I hope this doesn't get worse, because I'm seeing quite a few connection
failures between various instances set up in this region.
~~~
stock_toaster
A few of our ($dayjob) RDS instances are currently MIA in us-west. ;_;
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: StoryGrill – Your personalized newspaper - storygrill
Hi everyone,
we are a startup with a new concept for delivering the best news to you. The site is called StoryGrill, and it keeps you updated with the most recent news from your favorite newspapers.<p>You need to choose your favorite newspapers/magazine/sites, and then relax: the site will update in real-time whenever there are updated news from your favourite newspapers.<p>We have many ideas how to improve this(personalization, notification, etc..) but we prefer to stay lean and get feedback from actual users. We would love to hear what you think about that. Be brutally honest, we can handle it ;)<p>Our MVP can be found at http://www.storygrill.com<p>We are also inviting users to try our mobile version of the app.
If you like to try it, get an invitation here: bit.ly/1LcGf3c<p>Looking forward to hear all your feedback!<p>The StoryGrill Team
======
marioluigi
Clickable - [http://www.storygrill.com/](http://www.storygrill.com/)
For your next Show HN, remember to link directly to your website. You can then
enter the text as a new comment.
~~~
storygrill
Thanks. I will remember it!
Clickable for the mobile app: [https://bit.ly/1LcGf3c](https://bit.ly/1LcGf3c)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sears stock plummets nearly 15% as it struggles to stay in business - nodesocket
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/21/sears-flags-going-concern-doubts.html
======
nodesocket
This is something very personal to me, as one of my first jobs was selling
computers in the electronics department at a local Sears in my town's shopping
mall. I remember seeing the egg shaped color iMac selling off the shelves and
thought to myself, boy Apple is really getting popular. I an now a longtime
$AAPL shareholder.
I don't think everybody realizes how big and important Sears is to the
American retail story. They are a 123 year old company (founded in 1893, in
Chicago). They pioneered the concept of magazine orders, and many people will
recall buying holiday gifts from Sears magazines.
Let's hope they can get it together, but Edward Lampert has shown no such
indication. He's run the company into the ground only fattening his own
pockets and his hedge fund.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Signs your team might be too large - iand
http://blog.jayfields.com/2012/06/signs-that-your-project-team-might-be.html
======
vampirechicken
Perfectly valid, but incompatible ideas are how you reach your global maxima.
You implement both of them and the one that has the implementation that makes
the code better is the one that wins.
Ideas are ethereal. Code is real.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Selecting the Next Librarian of Congress - dang
https://medium.com/message/the-next-librarian-of-congress-e85d514fc800
======
vermontdevil
This job is actually important.
The LoC administers the Copyright Office which includes DMCA and the Copyright
Royalty Board.
Hopefully the next Librarian would be well versed with digital copyrights,
technology, etc.
~~~
jessamyn
The LoC also gets to decide which things get DMCA exemptions which could be
HUGE (and really a license to print money depending how they go). I'm
surprised more people aren't really pushing this new appointment to go in some
direction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
40 Years of Zen - joubert
https://www.40yearsofzen.com/about
======
VieEnCode
"And now I'm offering the same gift to you."
At $15k, how does this constitute a "gift"?
------
vixen99
And coffee's included!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why We Haven't Seen Any Lawsuits Filed Over Domain Seizures? - vabole
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110521/15125114374/why-we-havent-seen-any-lawsuits-filed-against-government-over-domain-seizures-justice-department-stalling.shtml
======
bigwally
Much easier to start again and register with a non US based domain registrar.
The only winners of any lawsuits will be the lawyers.
~~~
Joakal
<snip> What was really incredible was how everyone I spoke to involved in
these cases (even though not at all connected with one another) had an
identical story: they'd all love to take their cases to court, but they're
waiting for the government to actually get in touch with them. </snip>
Please read the article.
~~~
bluedanieru
I don't think this is a case of didn't read the article.
~~~
Joakal
There's much more information in the article where the author says many
involved want to take the government to court over the domain name seizures
but the government stalling the process as long as possible.
His post looked like an axe to grind against lawyers with a suggestion of how
to avoid them.
~~~
shareme
There is some missing information as under certain conditions the US gov can
be sued for damages and you do not have to wait for the gov response as you
can ask the court judge to demand the gov to respond.
The question is what information are we missing as google.com at times display
links to files on rapidshare, etc and yet its domain names were never seized
by ICE but instead a negotiation between Google, ICE, MPAA, etc happend
instead??
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do sites like Foursquare/Gowalla obtain db of geolocation/business? - koudo
I am curious as I am just starting to learn about geocode, geolocation etc.
======
rwhitman
I'm pretty sure both of them were seeded by crowdsourcing..
One good trick is to tap into the Google AJAX API, there is also SimpleGeo,
but its more meant as a method to push your checkins to, than being a
datasource of business geo listings
Also, this just came out but I'm not sure if it does what you need:
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/placecast-debuts-all-in-
one...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/placecast-debuts-all-in-one-
geolocation-data-funnel-localbox/)
I'm eagerly awaiting the day there is a very simple reliable worldwide API
that I can punch in "Steves BBQ, Podunk, NY USA" and it gives me geocoords, an
address, phone #, hours etc. If such a thing now exists, love to hear about
it...
~~~
koudo
I think the crowdsourcing portion keeps the list updated, but the initial list
seems to have rolled out too quickly to have been crowdsourced
------
bradleyjoyce
<http://simplegeo.com/> would be a good place to start... we used it on
<http://www.foundtown.com> for some stuff
~~~
rwhitman
So you were able to tap into SimpleGeo for business listings?
I was under the impression their business data layer wasn't that useful for
something like looking up a business by name/location and getting the
geocoords, name & address etc. Like it is mostly for keeping track of your own
geo records, right? But I haven't looked at it in a while...
------
eeagerdeveloper
There are services that can provide this data such as Teleatlas.
------
steveklabnik
It's seemingly crowdsourced. You can just click "Create Venue"...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Marka.js - electic
https://github.com/fians/marka
======
poseid
the demo looks fun: [http://fian.my.id/marka](http://fian.my.id/marka)
Wondering, what type of apps would you need this? Could this be used together
with SnapSVG?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good introductory books in Neuroscience? - samuel
I have just read "On Intelligence" and enjoyed it a lot but it's a bit old and don't know if the ideas proposed in the book have been confirmed or dismissed. Any recommendation of a more recent book? I'm not afraid of more technical or rigorous approaches but keep in mind that I have had very little exposure to Biology(my background is in Computer Science).
======
jdale27
If you _really_ want to learn neuroscience, here's the book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Edition-
eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Edition-
ebook/dp/B009LHFYNG)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Police Claim Encryption Use Is Illegal - slashdotaccount
http://cryptome.org/2013/09/police-crypto-illegal.htm?update
======
slashdotaccount
Discussion of the previous events:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6488407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6488407)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GVIM+IPython with Conque plug-in - ez77
http://pycloud.blogspot.com/2010/04/gvimipython-with-conque-plug-in.html
======
urlwolf
ncurses supported... will this work with bpython? A pity I moved away from vim
recently.
~~~
sophacles
Doubly cool would be if there was a bpython extension that allowed for "send
code back to vim". Currently it allows saving code run in the repl, so this
might be pretty easy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Art Of Manipulation - Garbage
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/01/the-art-of-manipulation/
======
hxa7241
This seems broadly to pass the Kant test on morality, so it could be said to
be well-grounded.
Something is immoral if it is contradictory when generalised -- that was the
gist of Kant's view. And real manipulation and persuasion seem to fail: if
everyone is allowed to manipulate everyone else, everyone loses their own
control of themselves -- in which case, how can they manipulate someone else?
There is a contradiction.
The two basic checks the article proposes -- "Will I use the product myself?"
and, "Will the product help users materially improve their lives?" -- are
sort-of rough ways of testing for such Kantian contradction.
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat>
~~~
true_religion
> And real manipulation and persuasion seem to fail: if everyone is allowed to
> manipulate everyone else, everyone loses their own control of themselves --
> in which case, how can they manipulate someone else? There is a
> contradiction.
Consider the case of two people A and B in a zero-sum game, who are trying to
manipulate one another. Both parties know the score---that each is attempting
to control the others actions.
When A or B acts, either one party has succeeded at manipulating the other or
both parties have failed.
There can be no situation where A manipulates B (thus A wins), and B
manipulates A (thus B wins simultaneously).
~~~
gnaritas
Manipulation isn't a zero sum game, you can both win. Spouces manipulate each
other concurrently all the time.
------
rdudekul
Great article! I really liked the manipulation matrix. The author did a great
job of impressing upon entrepreneurs like me to create new products that
improve lives by facilitating healthful habits. Couple of questions: 1) How
does one balance the needs of investors while having a clear conscience to
create a product that materially improves users lives but has higher costs or
lowers margins? 2) Is there a fundamental behaviors matrix that defines what
improves users lives?
~~~
tomjen3
I hate it, because if I were to use it, I couldn't make a weight watcher app
(I don't need or want to lose weight), I couldn't make an app to help women
keep track of their period or when to take their birth control pills (I am not
female).
But neither of those are evil, and both of them arguably improve the lives of
their users.
As for how to balance having a conscience, that is easy as you need to find a
product that you believe in and then you won't have moral issues with causing
more people to use.
If you can't find one, then realize that there is no god, no universal morals
and what we believe is right or wrong can be changed. If you simply believe
that you are a moral person and that you don't do things that are unethical
then cognitive dissonance will ensure that you don't have any issues with you
conscience.
------
stcredzero
Manipulation is wrong if it's truly consensual, and it remains truly
consensual after the fact. This is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.
The way I sometimes state this, is that, "Not being f#cked with is a basic
human right."
If you get consent, but the other party changes their mind and you pressure
the other party to remain silent through threats or social pressure, then you
don't have true consent. Buyer's remorse notwithstanding -- markets and
monetary transactions are a different matter.
I think there is a lot of social and cultural conflict that occurs because of
some notion of "implicit consent" or the treatment of certain locations or
social contexts in the way we treat a market. I would find that a man who buys
a woman dinner and therefore feels entitled to sex is being a jerk. Feeling
entitled to sex in almost any context is probably being a jerk. This is
another case where one is applying market rules to an interpersonal
transaction.
------
gyardley
Seems to fall apart at a close look.
Except at the extremes, "materially improves users' lives" seems highly
subjective. You can make this fit almost any product with a clear conscience -
so no one's going to describe themselves as a Dealer or Entertainer.
Also, creating something you personally would use also seems like an odd and
arbitrary distinction. I doubt patio11 is personally running many bingo games
- but I'm certainly not going to criticize him for building a product many
other people find useful.
~~~
acgourley
I think the article would be improved if he took a softer stance here.
Certainly there are observable defined needs (like bingo cards) an
entrepreneur can provide. But many tech companies are trying to invent new
things people didn't yet know they needed. When you go there, you better need
it yourself or be a damned good and empathetic designer.
------
tomjen3
I am somewhat disappointed by this text it claims to be on how to manipulate
people but is in reality a morality story (which I could have gotten in the
local church if I wanted it).
On the other hand, I do enjoy the irony.
~~~
bbrtyth
You and I both. If you haven't already seen it there's a book, (Predictably
Irrational, IIRC) that gives some scientific studies on why certain
manipulations work. You might enjoy that, I did :)
------
boon
This article is great. Can't wait for the next one she publishes so I can read
it immediately!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An experiment-driven guide to Perl - sea6ear
http://matt.might.net/articles/perl-by-example/
======
Mithaldu
Full disclosure: I'm the guy who made [http://perl-tutorial.org](http://perl-
tutorial.org) a few years ago because the top google result for "perl
tutorial" was a perl 4 tutorial. I have looked at many tutorials and have a
vested interest in getting quality tutorials in people's hands to avoid them
writing shitty perl.
That said, this tutorial is terrible on a number of points, since it teaches
outdated things that have long been known to be dangerous and are only kept
around for the sake of backwards compatibility. Reading it is wholly a waste
of your time, unless you already know perl like the back of your hand and wish
to get enraged; or have the masochistic desire to learn perl in a manner that
will punish both yourself and others for your mistake of reading this
tutorial.
If you truly wish to learn about Perl in a whirlwind tour, read either the
very short free book Modern Perl [1] or any other short tutorial linked on the
site i mentioned first.
If you're the author of this tutorial, i applaud you for the effort, but wish
you'd have spoken to any part of the community before publishing. If you feel
like it, #perl-help on irc.perl.org is a great place to start. And if you
meant this as a troll, 10/10, would rage anytime.
[1]
[http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/](http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/)
~~~
mattmight
Article author here.
To be clear, this is not a tutorial on writing good, idiomatic Perl. (And,
I've strengthened the article's disclaimers to that emphasize that.)
It's a semantic excavation of Perl.
My goal was to understand how the Perl interpreter thinks, and to answer
language design questions like: How are parameters passed--by value, by alias,
by name, by reference, by need? How are variables scoped--lexically,
dynamically, globally? What is the effect of @ in a prototype? For the ..
operator, how is the implicit toggle scoped--at the procedure or the nearest
enclosing block? How do prototypes influence context, and how do contexts
influence evaluation?
That is, I wanted to understand what was possible. The possible is entirely
separate from the good.
As a formal semanticist, I was continually surprised by how Perl behaved.
As someone that has had to occasionally debug other people's Perl, I believe
there is value in understanding the syntactic and semantic quirks in the
language.
Thanks for your comments.
I'll be updating the article with your feedback.
~~~
VLM
I can dig it. By analogy something like "If you insist on installing deck
screws with a hammer instead of a screwdriver, this is what happens with a
sledgehammer, this is what happens with a large heavy rock, this is what
happens if you use your fist..." It is interesting, rather than terrifying,
when seen in that light.
However, Google is going to google, thats its thing, so some victim in the
future might think this is the one true answer to using objects in perl, which
is not cool.
------
j_m_b
Ahh perl... the first language I used to make something non-trivial. The
coolest script I wrote was a load balancer that used ssh to submit jobs and
monitor the activity of nodes in a cluster via commands remotely executed by
ssh. No root access needed, no servers to install, just needed to have an
account accessible via ssh on the remote machine and ssh + perl on the machine
you were working on. It was the simplest solution to the complex problem of "I
have all of these computers, now how do I use them to their maximum
potential?" Stuff like Linda existed than, but I found it way too complex in
comparison to my simple scripts. Alas, I since moved onto the heady world of
lisp, but I still use perl for the occasional $ perl -pe 's/this/that/' at the
command line and as a alternative to bash scripting.
A merry Tim Toady to you all! Also, an obligatory xkcd:
[https://xkcd.com/224/](https://xkcd.com/224/)
------
maxlybbert
As a long time Perl programmer, I am a little disappointed with the lack of
comments on this post.
I generally follow Matt Might's blog, and I am impressed by previous posts.
Unfortunately, this tutorial is likely to leave beginners more confused than
when they started. I have to encourage people to look at chromatic's free book
"Modern Perl" instead.
------
theOnliest
> In Perl, there are three contexts in which an expression may be evaluated.
> 1\. scalar
> 2\. array
> 3\. void
There's actually no such thing as "array context" in Perl; instead there's
"list context". An array is a list that's been stored in a variable (this is a
fairly common mistake).
See [http://friedo.com/blog/2013/07/arrays-vs-lists-in-
perl](http://friedo.com/blog/2013/07/arrays-vs-lists-in-perl) and
[http://perlmaven.com/scalar-and-list-context-in-
perl](http://perlmaven.com/scalar-and-list-context-in-perl) for good
examples/discussion.
EDIT:
Posted this before I finished the article. Understanding the difference
between arrays and lists makes the following potential WTFs a lot clearer:
sub take_two_arrs (\@\@) {
print $_[0], $_[1] ;
}
take_two_arrs @a1, @b1 ; # prints ARRAY(0xAddr) ARRAY(0xAddr)
take_two_arrs ((1,2),(3,4)) ; # error: arrays must be named
The second doesn't work because the prototyped function takes _array_
references, not lists. It would work if you called it like this:
take_two_arrs ([1,2],[3,4])
I'll admit that this is baffling.
sub what_are (++) {
print $_[0], " ", $_[1] ;
}
what_are ((1,2),(3,4)) # prints 2, then 4
(This is part of the reason that Perl programmers don't use prototypes very
often.) perlsub warns:
> When using the + prototype, your function must check that the argument is of
> an acceptable type.
The plus here forces scalar context on the arguments, which are lists (not
arrays!), so they return their last elements. This would work how the author
probably wants if called like this:
what_are ([1,2],[3,4]); # prints ARRAY(0xAddr), ARRAY(0xAddr)
~~~
chromatic
_I 'll admit that this is baffling._
The inner parentheses force evaluation of the two inner comma operators in the
scalar context provided by the function prototype. `1` and `3` get evaluated
in void context and discarded, leaving `2` and `4` as the two arguments to the
function. (I had to look up `+` in prototypes, however.)
Without a working understanding of lists and context, this example is
undoubtedly baffling, but that's why the documentation exists.
~~~
theOnliest
I guess I really meant "is baffling without a thorough understanding of
context." I feel better about looking up the + now that I know you did too,
though! I don't think I've ever seen code like that in the wild, and I've
never seen a Perl programmer attempt to call a sub with nested parens, like
what_are((1,2),(3,4)) before.
~~~
perigrin
You may not realized that's what you saw, but for example all of the Moose
documentation uses effectively a nested param:
has foo => ( is => 'ro' );
is equivalent to:
has('foo', ('is', 'ro'));
because Moose's `has` sugar is written as a exported function.
~~~
theOnliest
That's true, but I've never actually seen anyone call 'has' like that. Plus,
Perl's behavior on lists makes sense (always flatten) if there's no mucking
around with prototypes, so that's much less confusing than the behavior in the
article.
~~~
perigrin
The first one I presented is the way the Moose documentation calls has, the
way the Moose test suite typically calls has, and the way I and most of the
rest of the Moose Cabal call has.
The second one isn't common at all, but I have seen people both completely
leave out the parentheses:
has foo => is => 'ro', isa => 'Str', ...;
or treat has as a straight function
has(foo, is => 'ro', isa => 'Str');
both of which cause Perl::Tidy to do weird things.
~~~
theOnliest
Sorry, I meant I'd never seen it called the second way (nested parens). I also
haven't seen the no-parens version, which looks really bizarre!
------
chromatic
The core documentation is not always clear about the difference between lists
and arrays--and much credit to the author for identifying the comma operator
as an operator--but this is really confused:
_By default, the arguments to a procedure are in the array context, which
means that the comma operator expects both of its operands to be arrays. It
promotes them to single-element arrays if they are scalars. In Perl, comma (,)
can mean cons, append, flatten all at once._
I wrote an explanation of context in Perl which is hopefully clearer:
[http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl/chapter_01.html...](http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl/chapter_01.html#context)
------
ceronman
I loved this article.
I started writing Perl nine months ago because of my new job. I learned it
with the Modern Perl book, which is really nice and goes directly to the best
practices. However, I've found that real life Perl code is full of the
old/deprecated/insane ways of doing things as well. And Perl developers really
take the TIMTOWTDI principle to the limit.
This article helped me to understand Perl more. And specially to understand
real life Perl code better. I also liked the language designer perspective and
the semantic analysis. Thanks for writing it!
------
pasbesoin
"alarming brevity" :-)
Looking forward to reading further into this.
~~~
cbaleanu
To accept a reference to one of several specifiers, Perl accepts a grouped \[ specifiers ] form:
sub array_or_hash (\[@%]) {
print $_[0] ;
}
Dear god...
------
raiph
Hi Matt,
I've been exploring your blog. Great stuff! I was particularly appreciative of
the parsing articles.
Larry Wall (the Perl designer) has been designing and helping develop a new
language for years. (He claims he began thinking about this new language
before Perl 5 shipped 20 years ago.) Arguably it addresses the same sort of
audience as Scala and Haskell. Have you taken a look at it?
~~~
agumonkey
I can't find the link, but I remember a few talks about Perl 6 Grammars which
were very interesting both in the eDSL structure and the fact that Perl 6 was
built on top of them. I think it was Damian Conway speaking but I'm not sure
anymore.
------
slashdotaccount
I'll concentrate on the mistakes. If I were to criticise all the other many
weird formulations and expressions in this guide which make it hard to
unambiguously understand what the author meant, I would still sit and be
typing here tomorrow.
\----
> A code comment in Perl begins with a hash #
Hashes are already something different in Perl. Avoid ambiguity, use the
common name of that character: number sign.
> procedure
This word is used through-out, but the official Perl documentation does not
mention it. Use the word subroutine (or just sub for short) instead.
> The $ prefix references a variable as a scalar
> Array variables use the prefix @
This is the wrong explanation. The sigil denotes the mode of access, @
indicating the expression evaluating to a list value, $ indicating a single
value. This becomes clear when one examines slices of a compound data
structure.
@arr = ("foo","bar","baz");
$arr[1]; # "bar"
@arr[2,3]; # ("bar", "baz")
%hash = ("foo", 1, "bar", 2);
$hash{"foo"}; # 1
@hash{"foo", "bar"}; # (1, 2)
The guide mentions the change from @ to $ or from % to $ only in passing
without explanation, and does not mention slices at all.
> Hash variables expect an array for initialization.
No, a list.
> three contexts in which an expression may be evaluated:
> 1\. scalar
> 2\. array
> 3\. void
No, the second is list context.
> Is localtime() returning a scalar, or an array?
No, a scalar or a list.
> By default, the arguments to a procedure are in the array context, which
> means that the comma operator expects both of its operands to be arrays. It
> promotes them to single-element arrays if they are scalars.
> It seems that the function call still flattened out the arrays (and hashes)
> when making the call.
This is completely misleading. A sub takes always a list. What is described
here has nothing to do with arguments, but is the consequence of the specifics
of how values are evaluated into a list. This also happens, for example, on
list assignment.
> all of the following are equivalent procedure calls:
> print3 (1,2,3) ;
> &print3 (1,2,3) ;
This is wrong, there is a difference, it just did not show up in the example.
> In fact, the argument isn’t even hash, despite what the specifier says
Refer to the documentation: when not backslashed, % is defined to behave like
@.
> sub use_hash (%) {
> print $_[0]{"foo"} ;
> print $_{"foo"} ;
> print @_{"foo"} ;
> }
> use_hash ("foo" => 1701) ; # prints nothing
No wonder. The code is broken.
@_ contains a plain list value. To access it with a hash subscript, turn it
into a hashref first.
print +{ @_ }->{"foo"};
print ${ {@_} }{"foo"};
> The specifier & expects to receive a function
Not function, coderef is the appropriate word.
> To accept a bareword filehandle as an argument, it becomes necessary to use
> the rarely used * prototype specifier
Simply passing *F is also possible, no prototype involved.
> The repetition operator x repeats a string or an array,
No, it repeats single or list values. Scalars are coerced into their string
representation, and lists are simply repeated unchanged.
\----
Closing words: This is amateur hour, not worthy of a professor. Advice for
next time: consult domain experts and have them proof-read before publishing,
and also always give your documents a last-modification date and version
history, or at least a version identifier.
------
durrrrrrr
"Every programmer needs Perl in their arsenal."
I stopped reading at this point.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The new Disqus 2012: Elevating the Discussion - dctrwatson
http://blog.disqus.com/post/25017922977/the-new-disqus-2012
======
mechanical_fish
I block third-party cookies, and as a result I never see a Disqus comment.
I've found that if I don't allow Disqus to set a cookie their JavaScript
widget just spins ineffectively.
I wonder if the new Disqus will stop requiring me to send them a tracking
cookie in order to _read_ the comments. (I accept the need to identify myself
if and when I want to post. But it would be nice to be able to _visit_ a web
site with Disqus installed without that visit going into my permanent record
next to my name.)
~~~
bentlegen
Not only do we not require you to set third-party cookies to _read_ comments
(we never did afaik), the new version also allows all users - regardless of
cookie settings - to comment. It just won't remember your session between page
refreshes.
~~~
mechanical_fish
Very good, thanks. I was certainly hoping that I had misdiagnosed this
problem, and apparently I did.
I'll follow the suggestions of the other commenters and suspect the Do Not
Track plugin. I guess the fact that my problems go away when I whitelist
Disqus cookies is some sort of crazy side effect of my crazy toolchain.
------
markessien
The new disqus feels very much like the users are actually disqus users that
happen to be commenting on your site. Not your users talking on your site. I'd
put this on a fun site or a site I did not care very much about, but on a
business related site, I'd want to control my own users and not hand them all
over to disqus.
~~~
bonaldi
This is a huge advantage. I want to be a disqus user, not a user of 4000 tiny
blogs. When I make comments on x, y and z random blogs, I want to be able to
follow replies to them in one central place.
I especially don't want to give a username and password to all these little
poorly-secured blogs.
If you want to "control" "your" users, build your own comments system. And
turn off RSS.
~~~
simonbrown
> I especially don't want to give a username and password to all these little
> poorly-secured blogs.
How many blogs require you to create a blog to post?
> And turn off RSS.
What's wrong with RSS?
~~~
bonaldi
Nearly all blogs require you to authenticate with some kind of account. The
alternative is spam city.
RSS: There's nothing wrong with it. But if you object to Disqus centralising
"your" users, you should equally object to eg Google Reader centralising them.
It's exactly the same principle. You lose "control", to the benefit of the
user.
------
mike-cardwell
I'd love to see somebody develop a free clone of this which cuts out the
middleman and lets you host it on your own server.
[edit] The videos are pretty good. Their use of "FaceCrack" in the second
video is a little cringe-worthy though.
~~~
bretthoerner
One of the biggest benefits of Disqus is the size of their network. I'm
already logged into Disqus and thus can easily reply to someone, comment,
upvote and share. When I go to sites that expect me to make a new account,
provide my email to a stranger, or give them auth via my Twitter account I
likely won't bother at all. Disqus also offers a full account export (or they
have in the past, I haven't checked lately) if you ever really feel like you
want to go self-host.
~~~
sho_hn
The hypothetical self-hosted version would be a perfect candidate for OpenID
auth I guess ...
------
samwillis
I'm interested to know what their new architecture is, I believe that they are
a Django shop. Does anyone know if they are still using Django and if so what
method they used to do real time?
~~~
Fluxx
Django still powers a lot of the DISQUS infrastructure. That said, we're in
the process of breaking certain parts of it off into independent services and
out of Django. But Django will be the main component for the foreseeable
future.
~~~
ptrklly
Could you talk a bit about why you're doing that?
~~~
zeeg
Don't misread what Fluxx is saying. The core of disqus and our primary data
flows are still powered by Django and that won't change. New servers which are
less complex (e.g. the realtime system) are generally written on top of Flask.
------
sync
The interactive demo on <http://disqus.com> is pretty amazing.
~~~
zachwill
It's one of the best interactive walkthroughs I've seen. Executed incredibly
well.
------
streptomycin
I've never used Disqus, and I guess this might be off topic, but...
Do they let you export the comments people leave on your website so you can
easily switch to another commenting platform?
~~~
Jimmie
Yes, IIRC it's one of their big selling points. You can easily get your data
out and use it for whatever you want. For example I believe many Jekyll blogs
use Disqus for comments and periodically grab all the comments then write them
into the html so that google will spider the comment section.
------
wetherbeei
This is still just threaded comments with some fluff on top for discovery and
community. Threaded comments have been around forever, and they don't scale
well for big communities.
Someone needs to take the idea of "semantic comments" and run with it to
visualize community reactions.
------
michaelhoffman
If you use Disqus on your site, I'm not going to comment on it. More than once
comments I entered via Disqus have vanished into the ether. Disqus claims that
the site owner deleted my comment, but the owner publicly says they have done
no such thing. Disqus then refused to do anything further.
Since I don't know whether Disqus comments will actually stick around or not,
it seems like a waste of time to participate. The fingerpointing from their
support staff didn't fill me with confidence.
~~~
noodlezrulez
We've made a lot of improvements to the system (including the spam filter)
since you last contacted us — are you still seeing similar issues? If so, we
are always happy to take a look. Feel free to contact Support if you are
having trouble: <http://disqus.com/support>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How People End Up with Boring Jobs - Abrahola
http://www.thecashflow.info/2018/05/how-people-end-up-with-boring-jobs.html
======
cimmanom
They're jobs that need doing. Someone's going to end up with them.
~~~
Abrahola
Yes, that's true, but you shouldn't be one of those people that will end up
with them of you don't want to. There is always another way.
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Some examples of the serendipity effect on innovation - rgrieselhuber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity
======
ojbyrne
In one of the high schools I went to, there were 3 classes they wouldn't
devote a full term to, so we rotated through them - art, shop and home
education. They called it serendipity, which I thought was kind of
appropriate, mashing up disciplines is a big part of it.
~~~
rgrieselhuber
Nice to hear about a school with such an enlightened view.
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I lost my job for speaking up about women’s rights - cygaril
https://medium.com/@MForstater/i-lost-my-job-for-speaking-up-about-womens-rights-2af2186ae84
======
lsaferite
I find this reminds me of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..).
Every group eventually finds itself under attack at some point. How they
respond when _other_ groups are under attack is what tells the most about any
group IMHO.
I say this as someone with no strong opinion in any direction on the issues
raised in the article.
------
gehwartzen
>Some transgender people have cosmetic surgery. But most retain their birth
genitals. Everyone's equality and safety should be protected, but women and
girls lose out on privacy, safety and fairness if males are allowed into
changing rooms, dormitories, prisons, sports teams.
I'm not sure I follow her argument here. Does she mean that fundamentally the
presence of male genitalia in these spaces is the problem? That a transgender
female is not acceptable in these spaces unless birth genitalia is removed at
which point it becomes acceptable (independent of any other changes i.e
hormonal)?
And if so how does the presence of male genitalia make the space less safe? I
assume because males have a higher rate of committing sexual assaults (which I
guess is a fair argument). But then why would a penis attached to an otherwise
female body pose a problem since I assume it is male neurobiology and hormones
that drive sexual assault behavior (not the genitalia)
~~~
anon1000
The author cites a number of sources which deal with "Trans-Exclusionary
Radical Feminism" which asserts that Transwomen aren't in fact women at all.
She emphasizes this with a tautology: >Trans women are trans women
Which deviates from the trans-positive claim of "trans women are women".
Her position is fairly clear in that she doesn't think of trans-women as being
interchangeable with "real" women.
From there, you can much easier derive her line of thought.
~~~
intarga
She only says
>Transwomen are transwomen
once, in an effort to sound reasonable. The rest of the time she just calls
them men...
------
intarga
It seems that she was actually fired for targeted abuse of a colleague...
>I've got a Q for my male twitter friends who have pledged not to appear on
all male panels - if u were invited on a panel w Pip Bunce - one of FT's top
100 female champions of women in biz & another guy would u say yes or call the
organisers & say sorry i don't do #manels?
>This question sparked several threads of discussion and I wrote about 150
tweets over the course of a week [...] The tone of these discussions was one
of ordinary discussion and disagreement, but not long after I received an
email from HR
------
hashberry
The biological sex vs cultural gender debate is rather fascinating because it
comes down to categories and definitions. Each side can't agree on the
"correct version" of reality because culture creates simulacrum
(representations) that feel real and authentic.[0][1]
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation)
------
jamewatson
Sensible article, you are amazing
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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One Hero - Parallax scrolling comic - joeblau
http://onehero.ca/
======
joeblau
The sound in this comic EPIC!
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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TechCrunch Teardown: Etsy, It's Crafty - replicatorblog
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/11/tc-teardown-etsy/
======
gfodor
Check out our tech blog:
<http://codeascraft.etsy.com>
We post fairly often in detail about the technical challenges we've had to
overcome while growing the marketplace.
~~~
bmelton
In reading through the blog, there's an article on the technical challenges of
resizing the 135 million + images as you reorganized the site.
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but if you've already got a resize script
that resizes images into 6 different sizes when the seller uploads it.
What was the reason you didn't just re-point that script at the filesystem
instead of an uploaded file object? It may have taken slightly longer to
process, but my hunch is that it may have compensated for man-hours you spent
in building something new. What was the limiting factor there?
~~~
code_duck
Excellent question. Check out the comments. A few members of the community
have questioned why they chose this elaborate process, which actually ended up
with the new images actually having noticeably lower quality. This was noticed
by the artists themselves, too, as Etsy's customers labor for a long time to
get the highest quality photos possible. Etsy's response when this was brought
up in the member forums was that they 'learned from this' and would take note
for the future... a more satisfying response would be "we acknowledge that the
images are inadequate and we'll re-do them".
Why Etsy thought they had to seek new image algorithms rather than just using
the ones they already used is the sort of question they very rarely answer. My
analysis is that it is related to the fact that they did the processing on an
Amazon server. To save bandwidth, transfer time and processing time, they sent
over the medium sized images rather than the original, full size image. Of
course, that doesn't explain why they decided to do it in 'the cloud' at all
rather than, as you say, just operate directly on the file system, in house.
They claim to have gone through an elaborate comparison process, apparently
with the visual quality comparison being done by engineers - not people
specializing in the non-technical side of photography or graphics. They seem
to have entirely missed the quality issue, though it was apparent enough to
customers that at least a hundred of them brought it up in the forums once the
switch to the new image sizes was made.
------
smokey_the_bear
My fiance and I are purchasing our wedding rings from an Etsy jeweler. It's
the largest online purchase I've made, and it's a testament to how well Etsy
manages its reputation.
Also speaks to how irritating going into local jewelry shops was though.
~~~
code_duck
There are definitely some excellent craftspeople with shops on Etsy. Etsy has
done a good job of managing their appearance, to where they clearly appear
more upscale than eBay or other marketplaces. There are some issues with that
but there's no reason to get into it here... if anyone is interested, the
juicy action is always on their forums, when it hasn't been suppressed yet.
------
strebler
Great story, but I definitely dislike seeing financial projections with such
unnatural jumps - August to September 2010 has a $500K+ jump in monthly
revenue, which would appear to be the largest month-to-month increase in
revenue (as an absolute and I'd say as a percentage too).
Not saying it's impossible (maybe the September numbers so far support this),
but the jump from ~2.1 million to ~3.7 million in 4 months feels a bit
unnatural given the historical data.
| {
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Making a 1970's camera digital - deweerdt
http://frankencamera.wordpress.com/
======
jzwinck
The very first digital SLRs were made the same way: by replacing the film
transport of a traditional camera with a digital back. Kodak did this with
many camera models from Nikon and later Canon, all of them branded Kodak DCS
[1]. The DCS 420 seems to me the most iconic, with a digital capture device
exactly the same size as the original film body, bolted right on.
It took a decade for DSLRs to become truly integrated, no longer plausibly
convertible back to film. During this time compact digital cameras were born,
but not as conversions of 35mm compact cameras. Nikon went straight for the
crazy with the Coolpix 900 (OK, they had an even weirder 100 model that no one
bought); Sony had the Digital Mavica writing to floppy disks (!), and Canon
went ultra-compact with the S10. All this back when Digital Photography Review
was a tiny independent site with reviews written by one guy (yet always the
biggest site of its kind).
We've come back around a bit, with Fuji's X10 bringing back not a true film
camera but at least the aesthetic. Olympus, who made unconventional film
cameras in the 70's and 80's, didn't miss a beat of their alternate drummer.
Konica as used in this article merged with Minolta and then sold the camera
business to Sony, so it's entirely fitting that a Konica film body be merged
with Sony electronics.
And Kodak, well, RIP.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS)
~~~
privong
I believe most digital medium format cameras are still modular. There are a
few which have integrated sensors, but most do not. I guess this is due to the
legacy of interchangeable film backs.
------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8277020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8277020)
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Piracy is a Market Correction. - asciilifeform
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/ar53y/talking_to_pirates_the_people_who_steal_software/c0izjj4
======
solutionyogi
Pardon me, but this is _total bullshit_.
Piracy is not market correction. There is no reason a particular product has
to be priced relative to the marginal cost of production. According to his
logic, an audio cd should cost less than a dollar.
Producers can price their product however they want. Consumers have the choice
to buy it if they can afford it. Trade happens only if both parties think that
they are getting value out of it, econ 101.
Unfortunately in digital age, a consumer can get the product by illegal means
even if they can't afford it and producer doesn't really have a way to stop
this illegal behavior.
I am surprised that this post reached top of hacker news.
~~~
pyre
> _Unfortunately in digital age, a consumer can get the product by illegal
> means even if they can't afford it and producer doesn't really have a way to
> stop this illegal behavior._
That may be. But if the consumer consumes the product without paying because
they couldn't afford it in the first place, can you really say that you lost
money on that? If they didn't have the money to buy it in the first place, how
could they have given you money for it if piracy wasn't an option?
The _real_ cause of piracy (other than availability) is the over-saturation of
media markets that we have. Example: If I want to buy a new video game for
$60, that's maybe 4 or 5 CDs that I can't buy, so I download those CDs
instead.
I know that some people will call it naive, but we live in a society where we
are bombarded by marketing in which everyone tries to shout the loudest or
find the best way to subtly convince you that you _need_ their product (i.e.
you won't be cool unless you have X). But we are now in a marketplace where
the consumer can choose to pay for X and pirate Y instead of just deciding to
(exclusively) buy X or Y. So it comes down to this: If everyone is able to
convince me that their product is a necessity, then I'll end up acquiring all
of those products, but only some of them will be paid for.
Note: I'm using a hypothetical 'me/I' in this explantion.
~~~
mtoledo
I don't think this argument really holds.
Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent any
money on that doesn't really mean you'd never spend _any_ money on that given
a free pirated option wasn't available.
The point being we do have the money, and we do can afford it. It's just that,
when you can pirate it, you end up spending your money on other things
instead. But its not like you'll never have enough money that you'll ever be
able to buy one game.
It's interesting to observe the Playstation 3's market, because they've so far
done what was unthinkable since way back the times of the PS1: a console you
can't pirate.
So I have a loooot of friends that live on Brazil, and that pirated all their
PS2 games. And that pirate music and movies too. Some even have an Xbox360 and
pirate games on it too. But all of them buy PS3 games. They don't just leave
their console there hanging, playing demos, as you'd expect.
~~~
pyre
No, it just means that the money that they do spend they redirect towards PS3
games. There are obviously people who _always_ go for the 'low-cost' option
which is usually pirating the music/game/video/etc. But you can't make that an
absolute. You can't say that _everyone_ operates in the fashion, just the way
that I didn't say that my explanation applied to everyone.
People have a limited amount of income, but an insatiable desire to consume.
How people deal with this varies from person to person. Though we can
generalize it a bit, there is no catch-all generalization that applies to
everyone.
In the future though, don't use anecdotes to try and prove a point. 'everyone
does X because my friends in Brazil do X' is not a valid argument.
> _Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent
> any money on that doesn't really mean you'd never spend any money on that
> given a free pirated option wasn't available._
If I download $3,000 worth of media per month, but I only make $3,500 per
month after taxes, how can you posit that I would have bought all $3,000 worth
of media where pirating it not an option? If I use the 'pirate market' as a
way to consume outside of my income level (i.e. outside of my ability to
consume _without_ the 'pirate market') then how could I have purchased all of
those things?
To your Brazil example, what were your friends spending that money on when
they were pirating PS2 games or did their income level suddenly jump when the
PS3 came out?
~~~
mtoledo
hey, I absolutely agree about my anedocte not applying to everyone else. What
I wanted to illustrate was cases where, piracy not being an option, people
just actually buy the games, rather than not buying as some people believe.
As for the income/worth of consumed media for month, I _surely_ don't believe
the amount of lost sales or whatever companies claim is _exactly_ the amount
of consumed media. That's false as you clearly illustrate. It means people
would consume _less_ media, within their means.
All those friends of mine, would the xbox 360 not have pirated games, would
also have bought original games. They wouldn't just let it there, sitting.
Would they buy every each of their pirated games? of course not.
So my thought process is not like "if there weren't pirated media, people'd
pay for all they consumed as pirated items", but rather "weren't there pirated
media, people would either consume original media, or do something else, and
we can't tell that for sure". And therefore asserting that people who pirate
stuff "would have never bought that anyway" is wrong.
------
andrewljohnson
No, that's way too deep to be correct. Piracy is just an externality caused by
an out-of-date copyright law that doesn't take computers into account.
People "steal" the content because they want it, it's easy, and there are no
consequences (regardless of what the MPAA would have you believe).
It seems to be a big issue right now because there is an industry built around
the old copyright system. Eventually, those companies will perish or
transmogrify into something useful, and people won't even talk about piracy.
~~~
patio11
_people won't even talk about piracy_
No, producers will move to platforms where it is difficult to impossible. Care
to guess how many people have pirated the SaaS version of Bingo Card Creator
versus how many have pirated the downloaded version?
I am not the only person to have done the math here. Look at the sales of,
say, MW2 on consoles (where piracy is hard) versus PCs (where piracy is
trivial). Look at the PC games which actually sell, where World Of Please
Pirate This Shiny Flat Paperweight is probably, what, 4 of the top 20 SKUs at
any given time. There used to be a thriving PC games market. It has,
predictably, shrunk to those sectors where it is actually profitable, avoiding
sectors where 90% of the "customers" steal the product.
Every time I hear the online crowd whinging about nickle-and-dime models like
microtransactions, and not being able to "own" the software they planned on
stealing, I have a brief moment of that very hard to spell German word.
~~~
andrewljohnson
Sure, SaaS is a good model for some things. It certainly does have that nice
feature of being unpiratable. That makes sense of course... in SaaS you aren't
selling a digital copy that is fundamentally worthless. You are selling
computing power, updates, support... stuff you don't need bunch of arcane laws
to protect!
As copyright laws ease, some will turn to SaaS, but others will embrace the
model of letting a lot of people have something for free, and charging those
that can afford it.
Heck, people like to give books as an example of media that must be protected
and that will never be free. But guess what... the most popular Kindle authors
these days give many books away for free.
Moreover, the biggest companies have been turning a blind eye to piracy
because they believe it helps them sell more software, for ages. Microsoft is
the biggest example... as Bill Gates once said (and I paraphrase) - I'd rather
you steal my software than buy my competitor's.
~~~
alttab
Every single person on this comment thread that has agreed with the topic has
been downvoted.
Is it because the argument is fundamentally flawed, or are we seeing a little
groupthink here?
~~~
jacoblyles
Well, the original post is poorly reasoned and fails to preempt all the
objections from Econ 101 that can be raised against his point.
~~~
alttab
Possibly revisit supply and demand shifts in the first semester.
~~~
jacoblyles
The author is postulating that the price of a good is determined by its cost
of production, which is essentially the Marxist theory of value that has been
discredited for over a century. Else, he is proposing that the demand curve is
completely parameterized by cost of production, which is a radically new idea
that I sadly don't see much promise in.
~~~
alttab
I agree with you that demand isn't dependent on costs always - and I don't
think the author is either.
He's saying that demand is still high, as is supply. But because the
_marginal_ cost of each unit is so low (on the postulation of infinite
copies), that piracy is how the price is "fixed" economically speaking.
This isn't a pro-piracy position, but if you see it as each copy of the game
had to be physically manufactured piracy would drop to zero - otherwise it'd
be called theft.
~~~
jacoblyles
That the marginal cost of copying media is zero is a pretty mundane
observation. The author goes beyond this to hypothesize that demand moves
according to some abstract "fair price" (that happens to suit the author's
semi-Marxist definition of fairness), and that piracy only occurs when the
market price is set above this value. This second point is the only _novel_
bit of the author's post, and it's just not very good.
------
Super_Jambo
My position on this is to come from the other end, i.e. start at the moral
side then journey into the economic.
Economic laws have been developed over time for the good of society. We
started to settle and farm so we needed property rights. This was so your hunt
didn't kill my dairy cow - disrupting both our milk and cheese nommage.
Intellectual property rights exist then to ensure that society has a good
supply of IP. Their success should be judged not on the moral value of you
'stealing' my 'work' but on how the copywrite and patent systems changes
supply and demand curves from the baseline that would exist without the extra
rules (and costs associated with those rules).
Remember it was not illigal for you to hunt my dairy cow because of how unfair
that feels. If I'd been keeping a friendly rabbit alive society wouldn't have
bothered with property rights. Society wants more Meat and Cheese, not warm
fuzzies.
So where does that get us? Well, does anyone truly believe they'd be music
starved if they could only listen to the current back catalouge + what would
be made for the kudos / enjoyment / profit from merch & performing? No chance.
Music should be free, we have a VAST oversupply and there are ample incentives
to keep people supplying it without authorized monopolies.
Books? Movies? Games? With these the cost of production is alot higher, the
argument that people would do it for free still exists but it's less obvious
how they could leverage resultant fame into some kind of money spinning live
performance. I think here society needs to have the debate, but for it to be
useful it MUST be framed in terms of supply, demand and what behaviour the
system incentivieses. Not self-rightious moral 'right' of what you 'deserve'
either from the pirates or the artists.
------
albertsun
People pirate because they can and because when factoring in the punishment
and the chance of getting caught they come out ahead by pirating.
Let's say that a piece of software has price p and that you get value v from
it.
If v > p, then you will choose to buy it, getting v - p in consumer surplus.
If v < p, then you choose not to buy it.
Now let's say that you can pirate the software as well, with chance of getting
caught c and punishment if caught d. Pirating the software costs 0. If p > c *
d then it's economically rational to pirate it, getting overall value v - c *
d.
~~~
decode
You're basically asserting that people are rational agents doing subconscious
(or perhaps conscious) algebra in their heads. I thought we learned long ago
that people are not rational agents. Sometimes it is useful to model people as
rational agents, and sometimes not. But to say that people are actually
motivated, in a real factual sense, by some cost equation, just doesn't
correspond to reality.
~~~
jacoblyles
People respond to incentives. Sometimes in strange ways, at the edges. But
mostly they do.
------
jsz0
This article is full of naive statements which means everyone will discount it
but I feel like the core point is somewhat valid. Obviously content has to be
developed, art has to be produced, someone has to manage the whole thing, you
need to market it so people know it exists. Oh, and they all need health care
and a reasonable salary. That being said I feel like the content industry is
failing to adapt to people's habits for consuming their content. As a result
maybe piracy is a correction of sorts. People are creating a set budget of how
much they are willing to pay for entertainment. This includes cable/satellite,
access to broadband, and old fashion _offline_ entertainment. When you tally
it up that's a pretty good chunk of money before you even buy a single movie,
record or game. I don't want to listen to one or two CDs a month. I want a
dozen. Maybe I won't even like most of it but I like exploring what's out
there. Maybe I want to watch 3 or 4 movies a month. Not that unreasonable but
the stuff they play on cable/satellite is _awful_ to me. I don't want to watch
_those_ particular movies yet I'm actually paying for them anyway via the
cable subscription. I have a seriously short attention span for games. Maybe I
only want to play 5 levels of your game but I have to buy all 50 on the DVD
for $60. I only wanted 5% of your product but you were only willing to sell me
100% of it. So when I look at $0 versus $60 the $0 just seems more fair to me
so I go with it. I would pay $3 for it bundled into a subscription plan or
micro-payment system.
------
alttab
How many people steal Quickbooks? How many people steal ERP or CRM software?
Now how many people steal Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and computer games?
Its overpriced for the market, based on the added marginal value. The supply
is greater than demand (especially for digital products - versus services -
supplies are virtually unlimited), and people are correcting it by downloading
it off the internet for free. These people probably wouldn't have bought it
anyway - so its not stealing. And its not wasted resources by the these firms
so they can't count it on the books as a loss.
This is economics 101. A supply curve goes up with cost, a positive
relationship with price. As price goes up, demand goes down, and the market
price is where they meet in the middle.
Because it cost virtually nothing to copy bits, the supply goes up. As the
supply curve shifts up vertically, the demand doesn't necessarily change
(demand curve shifting to the right) to compensate to keep it at the same
price. Since demand is still at a constant rate (a certain number of people
want to play these games), but supply is practically unlimited, ethically
people can talk themselves into stealing it for free (correcting market
price).
As software developers I think HN is a perfect forum for audience
polarization, but the fact of the matter is both arguments have their merits
and can coexist without mutual exclusion.
After reading the article then looking at the comments I was actually very
surprised. But I'm merely adding my portion to the discussion.
~~~
marilyn
Producers of software like Photoshop and Office stand to benefit from user
level piracy.
For example, not many students and graphic artists starting out can afford to
buy a copy of Photoshop, let alone the entire Creative Suite. If all the
talented creative types opt to spend their time learning GIMP instead of
pirating Photoshop and learning how to use it, the companies that hire them
have no reason to buy the expensive software. In effect Adobe needs users to
pirate their software to ensure there are as many people as possible who know
how to use it, thus securing the sales to businesses.
~~~
nzmsv
Actually, MS has finally figured this out, and has a deal on Office for
students ("the ultimate steal"). It's Office Ultimate for $60. Pretty much
everyone I told about this who was using a pirated Office bought a copy.
~~~
aneesh
Yeah, this is their version of "get 'em while they're young". There's also
<http://dreamspark.com> which gives out free copies of Microsoft's developer
tools (Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc) to students.
~~~
Ras_
IEEE and ACM also dole out MS developer tools to students for free (price of
subscription). For example I got Windows 7 release to manufacturing -edition
from ACM this way two or three months before its launch date. They've since
pulled the plug on the offer.
------
dlytle
7 people at a LAN party I attended last month were in the process of trying to
buy the latest Borderlands DLC when someone pointed out it had Securom. I had
it in my Steam cart when I found it out, and promptly removed it. Everyone who
played the DLC that night played the pirated version instead.
There are certainly cases where piracy is a market correction of sorts, but
you certainly can't just narrow it down to a single cost-to-produce argument
like the linked article. It's a large variety of different problems and
incentives tied to a single, very polarizing, issue.
Trying to come up with a magic bullet solution/answer is just shooting at the
wind.
------
alextgordon
There are many different motives for piracy. Some are morally justifiable (at
least to me), some are not. For example:
* Lack of available funds. This is a mostly harmless (and sometimes beneficial) form of piracy. If a person has $75 and a product costs $200, then their two options are non-purchase and piracy. In this case, piracy cannot financially hurt the owner, as the person could not have bought the product in the first place.
Adobe have used this kind of piracy to their considerable advantage. High
school and college kids pirate Photoshop and become proficient. They go on to
become professionals, already locked into Photoshop.
* Unwillingness (but not inability) to purchase. This is a harmful type of piracy. A person has the available funds, but pirates something through pure unwillingness to pay for it. This is seen mostly in music and app store piracy.
This is a difficult kind of piracy to deal with. How do you compete with
something that is free? One notable success is Spotify, which has displaced a
proportion of piracy by merely being more convenient.
* Non-availability. This is particularly prevalent in the piracy of TV shows. Frequently a program is shown exclusively in the US, and is not available in other countries for months or years, sometimes never at all.
This is potentially financially harmful to rights owner, but as those pirating
the shows only have the options of non-purchase and piracy, it is justifiable.
* Superiority of the pirated product. For example, music at a higher bitrate than can be easily purchased, a pirated TV show that can be watched at any time in full 1080p, a pirated game that does not include restrictive DRM. This type of piracy is financially harmful.
Morally this is a bit of a gray area. Perhaps the moral solution is to
purchase the inferior product and pirate the superior one. This is however
still illegal. The general solution is for the rights owners to "compete" with
pirates, to provide equal products.
------
scotty79
There are two services. One is producing unique content and second is
delivering content to people who are interested.
Traditionally first service was paid by establishing monopoly for second
service and channeling disproportionate gains from providers of second service
to the providers of first service.
Since second service became ubiquitous (anyone can provide it at almost no
cost and without involving anyone else except himself and his customer) it
became virtually impossible to uphold this model of financing creative work.
Of course no one gives away old ways without putting up any fight, especially
if old ways brought him mountains of cash, but all antipiracy campaigns are
just futile attempts to play against the market that due recent developments
in communication technology made coupling used in the past infeasible.
There are new ideas (new for the industry) how one can pay for creative work.
Some are advertisement based. Some involve entangling content to services
provided by server that is under complete control of party who has deal with
content producer. Some (dumber ones) involve closing up content delivery
process by limiting capability of device.
Some things turn out to be more profitable some less. Market adapts to
advancement of technology. Some people are not seeing money that past
experience led them to believe they deserve but that's just the way life goes.
Technology giveth, technology taketh away.
------
Batsu
The authors best comments are in the last three paragraphs. The larger portion
of the text may not speak volumes to the how or why people pirate what they
do, but that last part really points out unfair comparisons that are drawn in
regards to software piracy and other (tangible goods) markets.
------
DrewHintz
Chris Anderson describes a similar idea in his book Free[1]. Anderson says the
price of an item converges towards its marginal cost, and the marginal cost of
duplicating information is essentially zero.
[http://books.google.com/books?id=lLZbXN2odVYC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=lLZbXN2odVYC&printsec=frontcover)
~~~
ct4ul4u
Chris Anderson is not actually an expert on anything, you know. He's just
somebody who has made a bunch of anecdotal observations and written a few
books about them.
~~~
decode
You just described the field of journalism.
~~~
blasdel
Nah, that's a media personality / talking head.
Journalism is the process of paraphrasing press releases into content to place
ads around, while self-aggrandizing about how democracy depends on your work.
Even Woodward & Bernstein were straight stenographers, just to _the acting
head of the FBI_ instead of some PR flack.
------
gabrielroth
Obviously this is totally wrong, for reasons others have pointed out on HN.
But it contains an interesting germ of truth: Consumer psychology around
pricing gets complicated.
A couple years ago, my local bagel store raised its prices. When they did,
they put a notice next to the counter saying, “To our valued customers: Recent
increases in the price of wheat have forced us to raise prices. We hate to do
this, but it’s the only way we can continue to pay our rent. This will be our
first price increase in almost eight years. We hope you understand our
situation.”
According to Econ 101, this sign was a waste of time. Customers will look at
the new prices and decide whether or not to buy bagels at those prices. In
fact, according to Econ 101, the bagel store might just as well have put up a
notice saying, “Dear customers: We are raising our prices because we’d like to
increase our profits, and we suspect that many of you are not very price-
sensitive.”
Of course, no one conducted an experiment to see what effect the sign had on
business, but I’m prepared to bet it helped minimize the drop in business from
the price hike.
Econ 101 has no concept of “fair share,” but consumers do, and they’re willing
to take losses to prevent someone else getting more than what they perceive to
be his fair share. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game>) This isn’t
right or wrong—it just is.
If you’re selling physical goods, you should sell them at whatever price
enables you to maximize your profits, just as Econ 101 suggests. But you
should also suggest, in the way you talk about your product, that the cost is
determined largely by the cost of your inputs.
If you’re selling intellectual property, well, it’s a bit more complicated
because everyone knows the inputs don’t bear on the marginal cost of each
item. But it might be helpful to let everyone know that you’re not getting
rich. Let your customers know you’re trying to support a family as an
independent software developer, or that you still work a day job to allow you
to make music. Don’t let people think you’re ripping them off.
Of course, when your product is easily available for free on the black market,
as is the case with piracy, none of this makes much difference. Consumers
prefer to pay the lowest possible price. Econ 101.
------
stse
This thread is a good example, for one of the reasons, why I try not to read
HN comments anymore. (Failed this time though, as I'm very interested in
serious discussions on this topic)
There's a lot of information out there for anyone who wants to actually try
and understand the issues, instead of dismissing people who have though about
them and claiming everything is bullshit, econ101 and stealing. How can you
even have a discussion with someone that can't even differentiate between
physical property and intellectual property?
Either we try and work around the issues and find solutions, or give up civil
liberties in the name of stagnating business models. Incomprehension and
ignorance must be the lobbyists best friends.
------
muffins
That article is so ignorant.
I pirate because I would never be afford all the things I want or use.
I'm not saying I wouldn't pay someday when I have money, but the $ to content
ratio is too high. It is not stealing a product, but a service. I'm stealing
an experience created by a company (video games) or a sound created by
musicians and not paying the entrance fee.
There is another side to the issue that he completely ignores.
~~~
derwiki
Why do you feel you deserve all the things you want that you can't afford?
~~~
emmett
Presumably because it's societally optimal for everyone to be able to consume
as much media as they like (since it has a marginal cost of zero). He gains,
no one else loses.
Of course, there's a massive externality to deal with: how do the people who
_create_ media get money for it? But in an optimal system (which we might not
be able to create) everyone would still be able to consume as much as they
want.
~~~
anamax
> Of course, there's a massive externality to deal with: how do the people who
> create media get money for it? But in an optimal system (which we might not
> be able to create) everyone would still be able to consume as much as they
> want.
How is it "optimal" if it doesn't address the obvious cost?
We don't consider compensating producers as an externality where physical
goods are concerned, so why is it an externality for intangible goods?
~~~
chromatic
> We don't consider compensating producers as an externality where physical
> goods are concerned, so why is it an externality for intangible goods?
That's a good question. One important difference is that, at the point of
which duplication is possible, the intangible good already exists.
Compensating the creator for creating the good may or may not encourage future
creations. It's a sunk cost. It's also the only cost.
~~~
anamax
> One important difference is that, at the point of which duplication is
> possible, the intangible good already exists.
Not so fast. Yes, duplicating intangible goods is relatively inexpensive, but
at point of purchase and use, tangible goods also exist, the costs are sunk,
etc, so they're exactly the same.
In both cases, payment compensates producers for effort and resources that
have already been expended.
~~~
emmett
Each incremental physical good deprives someone else of a copy of that good
which could otherwise be gained. This is not true for digital goods, which
have _zero_ marginal cost. No tangible good has a zero marginal cost.
~~~
anamax
> Each incremental physical good deprives someone else of a copy of that good
> which could otherwise be gained. This is not true for digital goods, which
> have zero marginal cost. No tangible good has a zero marginal cost.
While true, that's irrelevant to an argument that claimed that sunk costs were
an externality that wasn't all that important.
------
jacoblyles
That's an awful lot of paragraphs to get to the point that the marginal cost
of copying software is near zero, combined with a rant about what the author
personally considers to be a "fair" price.
~~~
thasmin
There's also the fixed costs (development) to consider. The point he's making
is that people are willing to may for software, but there's an inherent price.
If the vendor's price is higher than the inherent price, people will pirate.
~~~
jacoblyles
Piracy is not the function of "inherent" price. The author postulates some
price like (MC + (FC/units)) * 1.15 (where MC is marginal cost, FC is Fixed
cost, and units is units sold) below which is "fair" and people will not
pirate and above which is "unfair" and people will pirate.
If this is the case, then people should be less willing to pirate a game that
costs $millions to make than a game that costs $thousands because it is more
"fair" to pirate a game that was made on a budget than a game with high fixed
costs. I don't think that is the case. Rather, I think piracy is a function of
how much a pirate values his time and effort and how much he likes the
software product.
~~~
thasmin
I believe the author would add that the pirate's perceived value of the
product is also a function of piracy.
------
colinplamondon
Yes, if only greedy developers would drop their App Store prices from 99 cents
to 25 cents, all the Crackulous pirates would immediately start purchasing
apps. They just don't have the extra 75 cents to spare!
------
calcnerd256
theft is market correction ... if we take the market as orthogonal to morality
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hack The Galaxy: Hunting Bugs in the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge - aldo_23
http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/11/hack-galaxy-hunting-bugs-in-samsung.html
======
listic
Which phones allow running the latest AOSP today?
~~~
izacus
Nexus devices from 5 and newer.
~~~
droopybuns
I think there is lag between the "Latest" AOSP build & what's actually
available.
------
dang
Url changed from
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34719564](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34719564),
which points to this.
------
xenadu02
Another day, another batch of Android security holes. Since I'm primarily an
iOS Developer these days I used to laugh at Google's seeming ineptitude (and
inability to wrangle the herd of cats that is the OEMs and carriers). I
naively assumed they'd catch a couple of black eyes, get serious about
security, and fix their internal processes and the OEM licensing process.
It has been 3-4 years since then and now I just feel sorry for everyone stuck
on an Android phone. You can walk into any store and buy brand new Android
phones that have unpatched libStageFright holes _today_... some of which will
_never_ receive an update!
The whole thing is a disgrace and the fact that Google is resorting to public
shaming shows just how little power they have over Android as a platform. At
this point, deploying Android devices in Government, Enterprise, or sensitive
contexts is equivalent to a breech of professional duties on the part of IT
personnel.
There is no reason it has to be this way; it just seems like Google, carriers,
OEMs, and the government don't care.
* Yes, I know iOS has security bugs. All Operating Systems do. The difference is every iOS device Apple ever shipped got at least 2 years of patches; the recent trend is a minimum of four years of updates. I believe it was "goto fail" that prompted a patch for the older version of iOS to fix the bug for devices not supported by the latest iOS. I don't think any Android device has _ever_ gotten that treatment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ford to skip past level-3 autonomy because its engineers kept falling asleep - Futurebot
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/ford-robocar-to-ford-engineers-wake-up
======
techdragon
And is anyone familiar with even a basic understanding of human attention
psychology surprised? I think not.
Level 3 was doomed from the start.
~~~
slv77
I want to believe a level 4 vehicle is possible but it feels too much to me
like the flying cars if the 1950's. Even if the technology gets 99.9% of the
way there who is going to assume liability for the car packed full of kids
being sent autonomously to school?
This liability could potentially extend to literally decades and is what
killed small private plane manufacturers in the US. In the 1950's it was
assumed that the families "third car" would be a small private plane and the
biggest challenges would be how to get around once you'd flown there (hence
the need for the flying car. Today a Plane like the a Cessna is outside the
reach of middle class families because of liability costs. Each Cessna sold
has to factor in liability costs for every plane still in the air. It's the
reason that prices for decade old planes appreciate over time.
The only market that I can see a level 4 vehicle being viable (assuming its
possible) is fleet vehicles for taxis and where and for how long they operate
can be strictly dictated and the private vehicle market would be left with
very advanced driver assist.
~~~
FabHK
The General Aviation Revitalization Act was supposed to shield GA
manufacturers from product liability to an extent and revive the moribund
industry: Cessna basically stopped building small airplanes in 1985.
But it's really remarkable how costs have soared (average unit costs, not for
the "same" airplane) and the number of general aviation planes shipped has
dropped since the 1970s, see the graph here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalizatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Random RGB values that average to N; or, Pointlessness and Probability - kpgiskpg
https://kevingal.com/blog/rgb-average.html
======
7373737373
For a little project of mine [0], I want to generate a _set_ of uniformly
distributed RGB values that then average to another RGB value which is known
in advance. Would this be possible using the same approach?
Edit: Yes, it seems to, instead of generating and summing over RGB, it would
be over all the R, G and B values separately.
Edit2: Hmmm, if the number of RGB values is large, the combinatorics involved
seem to make it computationally infeasible...
[0] [https://qewasd.com/](https://qewasd.com/)
~~~
kpgiskpg
Cool! I love projects involving colour, because they always have nice
visualisations. Would you mind explaining your project in more detail? I'm
intrigued by your site! Not sure if it's supposed to be interactive because
I'm on mobile.
I haven't looked too much into the general case. You could consider a tuple
(R1, R2, ..., Rn) and compute the probability distributions one at a time for
R1, R2, etc. I don't want to get sucked into the exact details of how to do
that, but I think it would involve some head-wrecking combinatorics in a loop.
Then you could do the same for G and B.
Like you implied, this would be slow if you did it 1000s of times. That's why
I pre-computed the R probability distribution in my code, which unfortunately
would not be applicable to the general case because there would be too many
possible distributions (exponential) to pre-compute. To generate 1 set of
RGBs, however, I think it would be fine.
Alternatively, you could try a non-combinatorics interpretation. The folks on
Reddit (thread linked in the article) suggested a geometric interpretation of
the problem, which might work better.
There's also the approach I suggested at the end of my article: compute the
number of possible tuples that average to A (one-off combinatorics), generate
an index k between 1 and this number, then pass k to a magic function f that
spits out the kth tuple. I'm just not sure what f would look like, hehe. It
could be a recursive function. Not sure how to write f without having to do
the same probability / combinatorics as before. Or looping through all
possible tuples (yikes).
~~~
7373737373
Thank you for your reply :)
When "entering" a pixel by pressing E, the pixel "above", which the user
entered through should assume the average of all the pixels below. I thought
it would be interesting to have the 16x16 pixels in the lower level diverge
from the color of the pixel above when first visited, but they'd still have to
average to the original color.
I googled a bit more but couldn't find any solutions, existing libraries or
algorithms i could implement.
Maybe I'll try again in a few years, I'll keep the site running in the
meanwhile :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LilyPond ... music notation for everyone - afics
http://lilypond.org/
======
nodata
Nice! Got any screenshots? Examples?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to do a startup in your spare time - vanwilder77
http://blog.bellebethcooper.com/how-to-do-a-startup-in-your-spare-time
======
SandB0x
I have a list of concerns and questions as I am doing something similar. Would
be interested to see what you make of it:
What does your boss/supervisor think of your startup? How much do you talk
about it at work?
Are you worried that your full-time employer will think you're doing your work
on their time? Are you worried that you may be technically doing your work on
their computers (even by logging into Asana or a similar site)?
How do you juggle meeting clients, contacts, mentors, other cofounders, with
your day job? Not everyone can meet in the evenings and at weekends.
How do you send urgent emails related to your startup in your day job?
Will you consider leaving your current job/position to work full-time? Have
you set yourself goals or conditions for going full-time
(revenue/traction/funding/other?).
~~~
pc86
Not the author but I've done something similar before, so here's what I can
offer:
> _What does your boss /supervisor think of your startup?_
My boss had no reason to know, although she eventually found out through other
means. It didn't affect my day job at all so it was a non-issue. I had no
reason to bring it up and neither did she.
> _How much do you talk about it at work?_
Not at all. Work is for work.
> _Are you worried that your full-time employer will think you 're doing your
> work on their time?_
They knew me well enough to know that I would never do that to them.
> _Are you worried that you may be technically doing your work on their
> computers (even by logging into Asana or a similar site)?_
Do not do anything on work hardware, ever. In many parts of the US this may
actually entitle them to something (though IANAL and don't want to open that
can of worms). Just don't do it. There's no reason to.
Ideally, you wouldn't even do startup-related things on your personal hardware
(e.g. phone) during work hours or while at work.
> _How do you juggle meeting clients, contacts, mentors, other cofounders,
> with your day job?_
The job I had when I was doing this had an owner who was a butts-in-the-office
type (part of why I left). Because of this, the simple answer was "I didn't,"
unless it was over lunch. If the folks your meeting with know you're working
full-time - they probably should - then they'll know you can't meet for coffee
at 10 AM. Most of the time they will be impressed that you respect your
employer enough _not_ to use their time to build your business.
The job I have now is not so stringent on time. I could go have coffee with
someone at 10 AM if I had a really good reason (up to me to decide), and we
all put in enough hours that nobody is counting how long you're away from the
desk.
> _How do you send urgent emails related to your startup in your day job?_
As I said earlier, work is for work. It needs to be _really_ bad to require
attention from you when you're being paid by your employer to do what they
want.
I obviously can't answer the last point, but I'd like to leave you with one
thought. It would be great if everyone had the time, ability, and means to
bootstrap a business on the side while getting paid full time, but the
unfortunate truth is that some people don't. You may have a job that required
you to sign something prohibiting it explicitly. You may just have a job that
is too close to your passion such that any business would be a competitor. Or,
you may just have an asshole boss who makes you work 60-80 hours a week for a
2% raise and a $300 Christmas bonus.
~~~
rst
FWIW, some folks may have employment contracts with $dayjob which give that
company intellectual property claims on all technical work by employees
whether done on or off the job. The extent of those claims obviously depends
on the contract itself, and enforceability varies by jurisdiction. (California
is better on this than most US States, but even there, employers with a will
may have enough wiggle room to make trouble for an employee with a side
project that's taking off.)
So, if you're actually trying the "ignorance is bliss" strategy for managing
$dayjob relation, then consulting a lawyer up front could save you an awful
lot of trouble later.
~~~
espinchi
About this type of clauses, I've heard that "well, they are standard and are
almost always ignored, as long as you don't cross the line (e.g. code for your
side-projects in your day-job office)".
I know this depends on the company, but, as a general rule, are these clauses
really taken so lightly?
~~~
etsimm
I was running the engineering group of a VC backed firm when the side project
a couple of my people were working on nights & weekends got some great press
coverage. By the time it hit TC the Engineers' names were there along with a
quote about how their work was supported by their "day job" ... Our VCs took
notice and our boilerplate employee PIIA was trotted out to claim rights to
the side project. The project was completely unrelated to our line of business
BTW...but it didn't matter as the VCs smelled IP value in the press exposure.
I fought the good fight against some silly assertions such as "They could not
have built this in so little time without overlapping working hours" but lost
the battle when the VCs pointed to the timestamps of some support/feedback
comments posted by one of my Engineers on the project's website. He had
written those and posted during working hours while sitting in the office of
said "day job"
Project squashed, all the IP was rolled up and shelved. It was a bad day.
TL;DR these clauses are typically not enforced because your side project is
typically viewed as worthless. If on the other hand your project is seen as a
source of value... tread carefully.
------
edw519
Sorry to say but this post really rubbed me the wrong way. Let me explain...
Her important headings for "doing a startup in your spare time":
- Managing tasks
- Sharing links
- Talking to other founders
- Emailing customers
- Blogging
- Weekly catch-ups
All of this stuff sounds nice, but face it, it's all fluff. We really need to
talk about the elephant in the room, the single most important item in a part
time startup: _how to get stuff built_. If you can't get it built in your
spare time, none of this other stuff will matter.
Building anything of value tends to be difficult; doing it in your spare time
is _incredibly difficult_. Here's why:
\- In spite of you best efforts, you will be too tired after your day job.
\- When you're "in the zone" you won't be able to work on your start-up. When
your working on your start-up, you won't be able to get "into the zone".
\- You won't have long enough blocks of time to get large chunks done.
\- Your attention will more easily be diverted to other things (the day job).
\- It takes so much longer to have a deliverable, you will lose momentum and
interest and get easily distracted or drawn to something shinier.
So what should you do? 3 things, religiously:
1\. Determine your "Big Fat What". Have a precise definition of exactly _what_
you're going to build. That's right, you must write requirements to yourself.
Following the path of least resistance simply won't work for a part-time
start-up because you will never be able to sustain enough momentum. Writing
requirements forces you to have better discipline and better plan, and it's
also the kind of work that fits nicely into those 2 hour blocks of time you
have during the week.
2\. Determine your "Big Fat How". This is when you translate your requirements
into technical specs. You know, program definitions and flows, page layouts,
data base schemas, etc. Yes, again you will be writing specs to yourself.
Steps 1 & 2 are kinda like linear algebra; you'll spend a lot of time doing
seemingly mindless unnecessary steps to get to the where you really want to
be...
3\. Build it. You do this on weekends when you have large enough blocks of
time to crank. But your capability to build will only be as good as your
preparation. As you struggle with Step 3, you'll appreciate Steps 1 & 2 and
get better at them. Then you'll be surprised at how much progress you can make
building in your spare time.
Once you have something built (a true feat in any part-time start-up) then
(and only then) do OP's suggestions come into play.
~~~
startupjerkfest
Ed, you have the power of experience, and your suggestions are all good.
But I can't figure out why you even bothered to comment about her posting. If
you had to "educate" every startup hipster on what is wrong with their self
aggrandizing blog posts, you would never have time to produce anything. Were
you afraid other founders would take her musing as "law" and ruin their lives?
I think the less attention these interruptions get, the better chance they
will die out of pop culture, and more production can get done. I can't believe
i'm wasting my time writing this.
~~~
visakanv
Well, if it helps, I feel like I learnt something from reading both of your
thoughts on this. Thanks.
------
joshsharp
Co-founder here - let me respond to some of the concerns voiced here. Firstly,
I think if this was titled "what _we_ use to help us do a startup in our spare
time", it would make a little more sense. We are not advocating for any
particular approach. This is more a list of things that help us.
Doing a startup in your spare time is really, really hard. We could've
launched months ago but with limited time we're forced to keep pushing back.
There are benefits to this — it keeps you really lean, because you just don't
have time for all the little extras. But I'd still rather have more time,
especially in big blocks. Our main time is evenings and weekends, which limits
us severely.
Belle works full-time for Buffer doing content, and they're incredibly
supportive of us and Exist. Working for a startup who have been there not so
long ago is probably one of the points to mention which make this more
sustainable. Belle's time is flexible as she works remotely, meaning she can
make time in her day for meetings, emails, etc., and still be able to complete
her work for Buffer.
And I'm freelancing at the moment, meaning my time is just as flexible (in
theory — if you're flat-out, that doesn't mean much).
I think edw519's points are good complement in terms of actually building your
product and managing your time.
------
efesak
Mistitled. Using services is not way to do startup in spare time.
~~~
hatu
This is more like a how to be a startup hipster in your spare time- guide.
Just missing tips like where to order your single estate coffee for your
hacker space. Managing to juggle two demanding jobs at once is very difficult
and what tools you use are pretty irrelevant.
~~~
Dirlewanger
Even the start-up sounds like a joke. Just a bunch of semi-insightful metrics
on a flat dashboard...ugh...er, I mean, yeah there's definitely a market for
that.
~~~
jebblue
I thought a web app that lets users upload pictures was so easy there's no way
you could make much money with it.
------
drakaal
Doing a startup in your spare time is a good way to get fired. It is also a
good way to ruin your good idea.
Part time startups work only if you are trying to start a "home business" that
is very different from you day job.
You work at Best Buy, and want to start a new search engine. Great. That is
better than quitting you job to start a new search engine.
You work at Google and want to start a social network. You are going to get
fired. There is a good chance Google will own your code, and you won't have
enough time to get your social network off the ground, so now you are doubly
screwed.
You work at Google and want to start a business selling Clay ovens on the
weekend. Congrats you have a startup that won't break Google's moonlighting
rules.
~~~
AznHisoka
For the vast majority of people, their startups/side projects are vastly diff.
than their day job.
~~~
alok-g
>> "Vastly different"
This is not the case to the best of my knowledge.
See details in my older comment here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6245810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6245810)
------
k-mcgrady
Seems like a list of things most startups do/should do. Doesn't seem to have
anything specific to doing a startup in your spare time.
------
stefan_kendall
Write this article when you've succeeded and quit your day job.
When.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Organized Resources for Deep Learning in Natural Language Processing - ghosthamlet
https://github.com/astorfi/Deep-Learning-NLP
======
minimaxir
Mostly a dupe (with a slightly narrower focus) of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17750791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17750791)
I'm surprised this submission made it to the second chance pool.
~~~
dang
Not everyone sees the same threads so occasionally we miss a dupe. HN itself,
however, misses nothing :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Having Trouble With Your iPhone 4? Solution... - dell9000
http://gizmodo.com/5573179/the-semi+solutions-for-iphone-4-reception-problems-so-far?skyline=true&s=i
======
watmough
Luckily, there's an easy solution for all these anti-iPhone articles from
gizmodo:
127.0.0.1 gizmodo.com # screw you gizmodo
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pessimistic pros missed the big rally, and so did many Americans - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-11/u-s-stock-market-wall-street-pros-missed-out-on-the-big-rally
======
secondcoming
It seems this rally has now come to a crashing halt! The stock market is
absurd right now. Apparently a lot of first-timers are investing via
Robinhood. Some will make money, most will lose it all as they all seem to be
trading options.
ZeroHedge is a pretty scummy website, but it occassionally has some good
stuff: [https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/google-searches-day-
tradin...](https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/google-searches-day-trading-and-
call-options-explode-record-highs)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Julia IDE work in Atom - tokai
http://julialang.org/blog/2016/01/atom-work/
======
niutech
Dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860633)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Clippi.io lets you collect your visual inspiration from any video - liaai0630
https://clippi.io/
======
real-hacker
Great tool. How does it work? I mean how does the script know the exact
position the video player is currently playing?
------
Primer16
Wow this is very clean and well designed!
Does it work for all the sites? I have always wanted to save reference footage
but couldn't find a useful tool.
------
LisaParsley
hmmm...It's like Pinterest for videos
~~~
liaai0630
I'm planning to add screenshots, texts, images and screen recording to make it
the ultimate visual productivity tool
~~~
gitgud
Great idea, and an amazing product! But is this really classified as a
productivity tool? ... Well maybe a tool can be productive, without being a
business tool ...
------
RobertBStone
Dude you are 19???!!!
~~~
liaai0630
Yes, I've been coding since 12 and have been building products since 15.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stories from "The Launch Pad" - frankdenbow
http://blog.startupthreadsmonthly.com/post/33903868385/interesting-stories-from-yc-book-launchpad
======
zacharycohn
I've given the same advice as PG in regards to massive, macroeconomic stats
before during Startup Weekend events.
"The food industry is 10 trillion dollars, because everyone needs to eat! If
we could carve out even .1% of the industry, that would be 10 billion
dollars!"
Judges, investors, audience, whoever is listening to you pitch that will just
roll their eyes.
~~~
jasonshen
Good call Zachary =)
To be fair, we had trouble finding stats on how much people spent specifically
on driving long distance and threw the trillion miles in knowing it wasn't
ideal. That's why there's a prototype day! =)
------
taskstrike
“Sam (Altman), you know what my biggest, overused, meaningless tech lingo is?
On-boarding….It’s driving me bananas”. -Jessica Livingston
Great quote
------
blizkreeg
31 is older entrepreneurs? :-)
~~~
mrkurt
I have 4 kids and a mortgage, which seem to signify "old" more than actual
age. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Haskell Sucks [pdf] - yokohummer7
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40457956/haskell_sucks.pdf
======
talideon
Monads become a lot more straightforward when you realise that they're just a
way of making the semicolon programmable.
No need for any nonsense metaphors: the bind operation in monads is just a
programmable semicolon.
------
meat_fist
Someday something won't suck. I'll wait to learn anything till then, to make
sure I didn't learn something that sucks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is Music? Towards a Working Definition of “Music” - pjdorrell
https://whatismusic.info/blog/TowardsAWorkingDefinitionOfMusic.html
======
peapicker
My working definition is "Music is organized sound".
This is neither subjective nor egocentric.
While this includes many things that some would not consider music, it at
least doesn't seem to exclude anything that humans at one time or another have
called music, many of which I find enjoyable. (Japanoise, Power noise, etc).
~~~
pjdorrell
What do you mean by “many things that some would not consider music”? Is there
some group of people who would consider all “organized sounds” to be music?
Are you one of those people?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Responding to a Potential Job Offer in an Interview - simplegeek
https://medium.com/@wyounas/responding-to-a-potential-job-offer-in-an-interview-70ba258ec4e5
======
rzzzwilson
I would have to agree. A hypothetical question like that, not an _offer_ note,
deserves one of two answers, either "I would consider it and get back to you
within <short time>", or "let's find out".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which plants can be planted indoors and easily maintained? - gymshoes
======
iamben
I'm a big fan of cacti. I've not managed to kill one (yet). Also anecdotally I
found I was killing plants because I overwatered them. Turns out they don't
need love as often as I (and I think a lot of people) thought. Apparently a
good generic test is checking if the soil is damp - don't water if it is.
Anyway, just asked this question to the founder of a start-up I'm working
with. She replied "Sansevierras thrive on neglect and low light calatheas are
good" \- if that helps? As an aside / plug if you're in the UK:
[https://bloomboxclub.com](https://bloomboxclub.com) \- she's set up HN10
which will give you 10% off all plants / plant subscriptions for the next few
days and want some (more?!) greenery :-)
~~~
Jaepa
I'll second sansevierras (also called snake plant or mother in law's tongue).
When I started working as a programmer I had one in my office in the back of a
windowless office. It was amusing seeing how many people assumed it as a fake
plant as they didn't a plant could live back there.
Zamioculcas (or ZZ Plants) are also another very hardy plant that do well in
low light and can take a lot of abuse.
There is also Pothos, several types of ferns (Boston being the most aviable in
my experience), Spathiphyllum (peace lilly), Dieffenbachia, Monstera,
Spiderplant, Rubber plant, weeping fig, fiddle leaf fig. All of these are
pretty common and should be relatively easy to find.
If you want some more interesting ones there are Calathea Triostar, Ficus
Doescheri & Tradescantia Tricolor which all have a pinklish marbling, &
Tradescantia pallida which is a deep purple.
~~~
nkzednan
Another thing about snake plants is that you can cut a few inches of a leaf
off and plant it. Within 3-9 months or so it will sprout some new shoots.
------
eatonphil
Pothos is so easy to grow! I started with one last year after a move and have
propagated it successfully 8 times... I'm currently trying to get coworkers to
accept clippings so I don't have to throw away excess.
Snake plants are also easy to grow indoors.
When I was first looking around for indoor plants I found the NASA study [0]
on house plants for air quality and went with the easiest to maintain of
these.
To find how "easy to maintain" a plant is, just Google it and most sites that
talk about care will let you know.
[0] [https://www.greenism.com/nasas-guide-to-air-filtering-
housep...](https://www.greenism.com/nasas-guide-to-air-filtering-houseplants/)
~~~
faizshah
Peace lily is extremely easy to grow, we've had some in the house as long as I
can remember. Nice to know they're great for air quality too.
~~~
test1235
Probably worth noting that what is easy to grow for one user might not be for
another - we all live in different parts of the world. At first glance, Peace
Lilies wouldn't do well in my cold, dark and rainy part of UK.
~~~
stevekemp
I stood one on the window of my bathroom, and left it there for a couple of
years.
Never watered it at all, and it thrived despite the leaky window. I always
assumed it would get water, via condensation/steam from my shower and that
seeemed to be the case.
------
dotdi
I'm a big fan of Spathiphyllum[0] a.k.a. Peace Lillies. They don't need much
light and you practically cannot over-water them. When too thirsty, they start
slouching and recover quickly after adding water.
They seem to be good for the air quality and here's some anecdotal evidence: I
have a room in my flat that had a weird smell about it. My son was sleeping in
that room and the smell became very pronounced soon after closing the door. We
put a medium-sized Spathiphyllum into that room and the stink is much less
noticeable, even at night. My wife was skeptical but now we have them in
almost every room of the house.
[0]: [https://www.thespruce.com/grow-peace-
lilies-1902767](https://www.thespruce.com/grow-peace-lilies-1902767)
------
hprotagonist
Spider plants are basically immortal. I’ve traveled with cuttings wedged in an
empty toilet paper tube on the back of a motorcycle before and then forgot
about them for a few days.. and then they grew fine.
~~~
androidgirl
I had a friend who grew her spider plants in a fishbowl of water for years,
somehow. They're insanely tough little guys.
~~~
hprotagonist
Oh yeah, i've had a cutting i've been meaning to plant for about 18 months now
in a teacup.
------
jamesholden
Easier to read overview: Lifehacker [https://lifehacker.com/this-graphic-
shows-the-best-air-clean...](https://lifehacker.com/this-graphic-shows-the-
best-air-cleaning-plants-accord-1705307836)
NASA PDF - Interior landscape plants for Indoor air pollution abatement:
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/199300...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073077.pdf)
------
dforrestwilson
[https://www.amazon.com/Rare-ZZ-Plant-Zamioculcas-
zamiifolia-...](https://www.amazon.com/Rare-ZZ-Plant-Zamioculcas-zamiifolia-
House/dp/B000PYAGFU)
It doesn’t need (or prefer) direct sunlight. It only needs water once a month.
The best part is it cost less than <$10 on Amazon.
I love mine.
~~~
Jaepa
Ah that drives me nuts. Its a super common house plant. Its tough as rocks
though.
------
workmandan
I have a few "Mother of Thousands" [0] which started out as a single plant
that I was gifted but it grew so rapidly that I now have about 6 pots of them.
They produce tiny little baby plants on the edges of each leaf which then drop
off. They are also nigh on impossible to kill (I rarely water them). I used to
plant all the tiny 'seedlings' but now throw them away as there are just way
too many. Be aware though that they are toxic so maybe not a good mix with
pets.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryophyllum_daigremontianum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryophyllum_daigremontianum)
------
getty
Spider plants are one of my favourites, you can get them from pretty much any
garden centre and they are easy to propagate/maintain. It's almost impossible
to kill Mother-in-law's tongue. Dracaenas look great, too
------
TheAceOfHearts
Bamboo and cactus are two easy choices. I keep a pair next to my bedroom
window. It's amazing how much impact having a few plants in your house can
have.
Sometimes I'll bring my bamboo buddy over to the desk and talk to it while
doing rubber duck debugging [0]. I'd invite the cactus as well, but it's a bit
too prickly. ;)
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)
------
petre
You can plant a terrarium bottle garden. No maintenance needed. There are
bottle gardens that haven't been opened for 40 years. It will develop some
algae though, and it does look rather wild. Aquarium plans and ferns are
suitable contenders. I have a Progestemon erectus plant in a jar, Hemianthus
callitrichoides mixed with Eleocharis pusilla in a rectangular plastic box,
Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo' in another box and in an open bowl filled 1/2 with
aquasoil that we keep on the bathroom window and mist regularly. There are
also more beautiful plants such as Bucephalandra or Cryptocoryne but I've only
planted them submersed. Bucephalandra will attach to and grow on driftwood and
rocks.
[http://theaquaticplantsociety.org/world-of-
bucephalandra/](http://theaquaticplantsociety.org/world-of-bucephalandra/)
With bottle gardens as with tissue culture, your worst enemy is mold.
------
androidgirl
I grow a lot of plants indoors, and the limiting factor is almost always light
levels. If your space for growing has a large west or south facing window,
you're in great shape! You will be able to grow most plants.
However, East or North facing windows will be able to grow low light plants,
or need full spectrum (5000k) lighting.
Easy bright light plants include succulents, pony tail palms, avocados,
bananas, and most herbs.
Plants that tolerate or thrive in low light are pothos, spider plants, parlor
palms, the bromeliads, snake plants, and english ivy.
Of these, I suggest a spider plant, they're very hardy, nearly impossible to
kill, and even don't mind being a little root bound.
Succulents require more patience, but are also fairly easy. Be sure to not
overwater, and make sure they have enough drainage! Some indoor gardeners grow
theirs in a mix of gravel and pine bark, in order to completely drain, and
just fertilize every watering.
The most important thing is don't try orchids at first. Finicky things.
------
neya
To answer your question correctly, we'd need to know what's your climate like.
But, if you didn't give us that information, I'd of course recommend you a
cactus like everyone else.
But if you live in an island like me, Devil's ivy aka Money Plant is my
choice. Scientific name: Epipremnum aureum.
[https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Devils-Ivy-Pothos-
Epipremnum/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Devils-Ivy-Pothos-
Epipremnum/dp/B0076ZJ21K)
It's an excellent plant that you'll quickly fall in love with, while requiring
very little maintenance. In asian culture, this plant is considered to bring
good luck, prosperity and money. Hence the name.
I recommend it not for those reasons, but from a purely plant owner experience
point of view. You can control its direction as it can creep. Mine goes around
my 27" monitor so it's really a beautiful sight to see.
------
alangpierce
Depends on your goal, but I got a little succulent plant for Christmas that
I've been keeping at my desk at work. I have almost no previous experience
with plants, but I water it once a week and it has done pretty well for almost
a year now. I gave it a name and it has been a nice little joy in my life.
------
Logicwax
This is what I used to help cure my black thumb:
Cricket chirp when your plant needs water.
[https://www.adafruit.com/product/1965?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2LuJ...](https://www.adafruit.com/product/1965?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2LuJlaj-3QIVFf5kCh2eSAtPEAQYASABEgIWx_D_BwE)
------
thecolorblue
This may not be the answer you are looking for, but any plant will grow if you
have a good light source and the right amount of water and nutrients. Add a
grow light and some vermiculite to the soil and you can grow just about 90% of
the plants available at your local gardening store.
------
collyw
Ok, from a brief look into this before (I am in no way an expert) I think you
would need to define what you see as a problem with indoor plants. Is it lack
of light?
As a quick and not too detailed answer, take a look at the typical plants you
see around offices - dracaena is one that comes to mind. I think it handles
relatively low light and has the benefit of reducing mould particles in the
atmosphere. Ficus is another one that I have had indoors and is really
difficult to kill, though mine is outdoors now.
(As for easily maintained, I have had some dracaena before and they are pretty
easy, but in both ended up getting some sort of disease after a couple of
years).
------
PebblesRox
Air plants are fun and pretty easy - just dunk them in water every so often.
I have a Christmas cactus that is nice. I break off the long pieces and stick
them back in the pot and they keep growing. I did this with my aloe plant too.
And I have a cactus or succulent that I know of as a Hot Dog plant, though
google wasn’t recognizing that name. It might be a variety of Rhipsalis.
Also I was given a basket of indoor foliage plants and I replanted them into
individual pots. Most of them are still growing strong! Looking at a garden
center or a florist’s for a basket like that could give you a nice variety of
easy-to-grow foliage that would make a good start.
------
koolba
Fiddle Leaf Fig plants are a great choice.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=fiddle+leaf+fig&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=fiddle+leaf+fig&tbm=isch)
------
akoster
I've had success with spider plants and "Wandering Jew" plants by growing them
in water for a while, and then adding soil at some point, and watering every
3-4 days or when the soil gets dry.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophytum_comosum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophytum_comosum)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradescantia_pallida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradescantia_pallida)
------
NeedMoreTea
Grape ivy will tolerate no end of neglect except heavy overwatering or sub 5
deg C. Good for getting lots of foliage, wiithout support it'll trail, or
climb with a couple of sticks in the pot. Also very easy to take cuttings
from, and will come back from near death neglect.
[https://www.shrublandparknurseries.co.uk/cissus-
rhombifolia-...](https://www.shrublandparknurseries.co.uk/cissus-rhombifolia-
ellen-danica.html)
------
ribeka
I have a few orchids inside my place. Most are Phalaenopsis, and one vanilla
orchid. After talking with one orchid grower, they told me the key thing when
taking care of orchids are:
* Do not overwater them (no standing water on the base of the planter). Keep the media moist.
* When the root turned white, give them water until they turned back to green (apparently they also photosynthesize).
I also have big gardenia in my kitchen and small gardenia propagated from the
big gardenia that I put on my work desk.
------
sdfjkl
Cherry tomatoes (because they're smaller and lighter they don't require much
support), chili peppers, maybe strawberries (mine ended up getting aphids
though).
I've written a bit about this back when I played with indoor gardening:
[https://sdfjkl.org/blog/starting-
hydroponics/](https://sdfjkl.org/blog/starting-hydroponics/)
For obvious reasons I was only interested in food plants :)
------
westurner
Chlorophytum comosum (spider plants) are good air-filtering houseplants that
are also easy to take starts of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophytum_comosum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophytum_comosum)
Houseplant:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseplant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseplant)
------
UI_at_80x24
Devils Ivy.
Leave it in water for years, or plant it and forget to water it for weeks.
It can grow quite long, so cut it, stick the cut-end back in the water and it
will root and keep going.
------
GeekyBear
Dracena are attractive and easy to care for. Water them twice a month and feed
them a couple of times a year.
They are a good indoor plant for beginners and they come in a lot of striking
colors that you can mix and match in the same pot.
[https://www.pinterest.com/iarapraude/dracena/](https://www.pinterest.com/iarapraude/dracena/)
------
grawprog
There's a lot of things already suggested so I don't have a ton to add, but I
didn't see green onions anywhere. You can grow them from the roots you cut off
of the ones from the store. They'll grow in just a cup of water if you really
want. Though they start to get kinda flavourless and mushy after a while that
way.
------
dvh
Ficus Benjamina, Aglaonema. I have both for two decades now, it last 1 week
without water. No pests. Huge. Leafy.
~~~
collyw
Ficus seem to be pretty difficult to kill (mine is still alive after close to
10 years). Pretty sure it has gone a fair bit longer than a week without
water.
------
matty22
My wife received an orchid as a gift. I know nothing about gardening, but I've
managed to keep it alive and growing for about 6 months. Just water it when
the soil feels dry and re-pot it every other year is about the extent of the
care instructions a DDG search turned up.
------
nelsonic
Here is the list of house/indoor plants which promote cognitive function in
order of ease of maintenance:
_Areca Plam_ (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens AKA Dypsis lutescens)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dypsis_lutescens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dypsis_lutescens)
_Mother-in-law 's Tongue_/ _Snake Plant_ (Sansevieria trifasciata)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansevieria_trifasciata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansevieria_trifasciata)
_Money Plant_ (Epipremnum aureum)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epipremnum_aureum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epipremnum_aureum)
_Boston Fern_ (Nephrolepis Exaltata)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephrolepis_exaltata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephrolepis_exaltata)
_Peace Lilly_ (Spathiphyllum)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spathiphyllum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spathiphyllum)
_Gerbera Daisy_ (Gerbera jamesonii)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbera_jamesonii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbera_jamesonii)
_Spider plant_ (Chlorophytum comosum)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophytum_comosum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophytum_comosum)
_English Ivy_ (Hedera helix)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedera_helix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedera_helix)
Take the list of plants to your local plant nursery to see how many of them
they have in stock. Buying them already established is much cheaper/easier
than growing them from seed/cuttings.
According to Allen et Al 2015 (see link below), having pure/fresh air in your
working environment _significantly_ improves cognitive function. i.e. having
indoor plants makes you smarter!
> Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation,
> and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled
> Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments ~
> [https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/27662232/4892924...](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/27662232/4892924.pdf)
> _Conclusion_ : Office workers had _significantly improved cognitive
> function_ scores when working in Green and Green+ environments compared with
> scores obtained when working in a Conventional environment.
> We’ve been researching this for: “home”
> [https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/8](https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/8)
Relevant YouTube videos on this topic:
[https://youtu.be/gmn7tjSNyAA](https://youtu.be/gmn7tjSNyAA)
[https://youtu.be/lPNYdSZRSdg](https://youtu.be/lPNYdSZRSdg)
[https://youtu.be/9dG9K8IQo7s](https://youtu.be/9dG9K8IQo7s)
~~~
noio
A version controlled repo for a physical habitat. You're building the B&B from
Cory Doctorow's _Walkaway_ :)
~~~
nelsonic
@noio yes, indeed there are similarities with Walkaway
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkaway_(Doctorow_novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkaway_\(Doctorow_novel\))
We will avoid the war. ;-)
------
smt88
This depends on how much light you have, what you mean by "easy", and what
country you live in.
My personal opinion is that HN isn't a good forum for the question, especially
when it's been written about on countless websites for specific
locations/conditions.
------
icebraining
I'm growing Genovese basil on my windowsill. I water it irregularly, yet it
grows quite well. I'm hoping to do a nice pesto from it, but the smell alone
is very nice.
------
tmaly
In the Northeast, I would recommend boxwoods, I have 4 and they are super low
maintenance.
I have a large variety of rose bushes, but they require a ton of work.
------
iBookChick
I'd like to add coffee, baby rubber trees, dwarf umbrella, earthstars (or any
bromelaid, for that matter), and dracenas.
------
nkozyra
Cane palm doesn't need much care or attention if you're looking for something
more tropical.
------
cleetus
Pathos, jades, and other succulents are pretty easy. I water them once a week
and repot once a year.
------
tropo
Do mushrooms count? They don't need any light at all. Shittake just need some
wet oak.
------
Fiahil
I'm growing a Pineapple, and my SO is growing a Japanese Black Pine ! :)
------
atrilumen
Blue Dream
Green Crack
GG4
Dutch Treat
Cinex
------
rhn_mk1
Peppermint willl survive multiple weeks of neglect and abuse.
------
megasquid
Yucca cane.
------
meggar
Cacti.
------
anoncoward111
I have a fig tree and a blueberry bush growing indoors with a 65w lamp and 70F
constant temperature.
The fig tree is dying and the blueberry bush is fruiting :)
Kind of the opposite of what I wanted though lol :(
------
another-cuppa
Succulents are easiest. Things like peace lillies are also classic. Anything
you could get from a supermarket is probably fine.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Could There Be A Better Advertisement For The iPad? - rblion
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/the-best-advertisement-apple-could-have-for-the-ipad/
======
something
in the video- the voice announcing the color of the piano keys should be
pitched to match the notes on the keyboard. they're missing a huge music
education/development opportunity.
------
hasenj
heh, I get:
> WordPress.com is temporarily unavailable.
so that monstrous website is based on wordpress? I could never tell.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A new course to teach people about fairness in machine learning - bookofjoe
https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/new-course-teach-people-about-fairness-machine-learning/
======
ilamont
Is this all Google is doing about AI ethics, a self-study course?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cloud Drive: Unlimited photo storage $12/year. Unlimited Everything $60/year - sashazykov
http://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/unlimited/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=wikiroom-20&linkId=KPETO6BE5ZKGJDLX
======
mikeyouse
I'm not in love with the app or the picture management on the website but
Flickr currently offers 1TB of photo storage at no cost..
[https://www.flickr.com/#section-4](https://www.flickr.com/#section-4)
My biggest annoyance with Flickr is that it doesn't treat RAW files as
photos.. I wonder if Amazon will?
------
abc_lisper
Time to use
steganography([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography))
to store data in the photos :)?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A curious result hints at the possibility dementia is caused by fungal infection - edward
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21676754-curious-result-hints-possibility-dementia-caused-fungal?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/fungusthebogeyman
======
cpncrunch
Already discussed a week ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344)
~~~
privong
And this Economist article had its own previous HN discussion, too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446411)
------
natvod
Horribly misleading headline as well. It clearly states in the article that
it's most likely having dementia makes the brain more susceptible to fungal
infections, not that dementia is _caused by_ them.
While in an ideal world, people should not trust headlines alone, a lot of
people do scroll and skim. And just merely being exposed to something could
leave a mark in their memories. I'm pretty sure this is how a lot of
misconceptions start.
~~~
gojomo
The article does _not_ "clearly state" reverse causality as "most likely"; it
mentions that as a possibility.
It's a fair, well-qualified headline – "hints at the possibility" –
summarizing the new evidence.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Answers as a Service as a Service - magicseth
http://askmagicseth.com
======
mgberlin
I got a 404 when I put in my credit card info :(
~~~
magicseth
You can ask me here... I'll answer on the site :-)
~~~
mgberlin
How many horse owners in America have iPhones?
~~~
magicseth
400K
~~~
arthurcolle
Please show your work.
~~~
magicseth
It's on the site!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Negative Influence of Games: An Autobiographical Essay - nvr219
http://nightmaremode.net/2012/12/the-negative-influence-of-games-an-autobiographical-essay-24380/
======
nvr219
Note: I didn't write the article in the OP and I think the author has things
backwards.
~~~
dizzy
I have noted this and will respond appropriately
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bootstrap 3 Grid Introduction - shaunxcode
http://www.helloerik.com/bootstrap-3-grid-introduction
======
ollysb
This just feels wrong, it's the unsemantic approach of bootstrap 2 but going
even further in the wrong direction. Semantic classes with media queries
easily allow for any variations in layout. Multiple grid classes on a single
element just smells bad. I much prefer the approach that frameless[1] takes.
Use column widths as a unit of measurement (e.g. .sidebar{ @import width(6) }
// 6 columns wide ) and then modifying the size of the grid container to get
the various layouts. Specifying the width of elements in the CSS (ok, I admit
we're talking SCSS/less but who isn't using one of those?) seems far closer to
the spirit of CSS.
[1] [http://framelessgrid.com/](http://framelessgrid.com/)
~~~
taifun
You can use the approach outlined further down in the article in the section
"Mixin" where it's explained how you can use the included Bootstrap mixins to
create semantic classes.
~~~
ollysb
Thanks, I'll have to have a play and see how the two approaches compare then.
~~~
eflowers
I would like to hear it. Post in my comments thread on the page and tell me
what you think and find out, I could add a revision and expand on the mixin
and semantic naming part to help address some of the pros/cons.
(im the author if that wasn't clear)
------
johnpolacek
People might flip out at first about putting all those classes in there, but
it works great for tricky layouts. Extra Strength Responsive Grids uses
basically the same approach. [http://dfcb.github.io/extra-strength-responsive-
grids/](http://dfcb.github.io/extra-strength-responsive-grids/)
Once you get used to it, the grid classes makes it easy to look at the markup,
see whats going on and move things around any way you choose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It’s not just the iPhone 5S — the 5C sensors aren’t accurate either - 0cool
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/07/apple-its-not-just-the-iphone-5s-the-5c-sensors-arent-accurate-either/
======
Hopka
I'm sceptical. You can actually use the upper button on the left side of the
app pictured in the article [1] to calibrate that app. So you could make it
show whatever inaccuracies you wanted. And it's far from an "unfixable sensor
problem" that "would put a dent in Apple's reputation". Also, analog bubble
levels aren't always perfectly accurate either.
[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihandy-level-
free/id29985275...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihandy-level-
free/id299852753)
~~~
arrrg
Apple’s built-in compass (which has not calibration) also shows many devices
to be off. I’m not sure why that person chose a third-party app to show this
off.
This is a real issue.
~~~
andyhmltn
AFAIK you can calibrate the compass. At least in iOS7. But using an iPhone 5 I
always find the compass to be incorrect most of the time.
------
craigc
I'm not entirely sure why this is a big deal right now. I had an iPhone 1 and
when the App Store opened up I downloaded Cube Runner. The accelerometer
calibration was off by A LOT. Just keeping my phone flat on the table would
cause the ship to shoot off far to the left.
I actually had to replace my iPhone at the Genius Bar (I think more than once)
in order to get one that worked better.
Since that was over 5 years ago it is very unlikely that Apple will now decide
to offer software calibration in the OS.
As for this comment from the article
> Unfixable sensor problems, however, would put a dent in Apple’s reputation
> as the company that sweats the small stuff to get every last detail right.
I am pretty sure iOS 7 already did that.
------
Cthulhu_
Offtopic, but I like how the article calls the 5C "relatively inexpensive";
it's still a high-end (priced) device that looks intentionally low-price /
less refined.
------
brunnsbe
Gizmodo has a more detailed article with some tests from last week:
[http://gizmodo.com/the-iphone-5s-motion-sensors-are-
totally-...](http://gizmodo.com/the-iphone-5s-motion-sensors-are-totally-
screwed-up-1440286727)
------
hmottestad
I'm leaning towards a calibration issue.
Apple could release an app for calibrating the sensors and offer to help you
at an Apple Store.
Anyone familiar with Windows Phone or Android know if their sensor software
offers calibration?
~~~
Osmium
> I'm leaning towards a calibration issue.
Surely this is easy to test? Is the level always off by the same magnitude, in
the same direction, for any given phone? Would be nice if the parent article
had tested this...
If a particular phone is always off by, say, 3.5º it's presumably an easy fix,
though, as you say, would require everyone to run a calibration on their
phone.
~~~
hmottestad
If every phone has a slightly different offset = not calibrated
A batch of phones has the same offset, but there are different offset between
batches = calibrated, but poorly
All phones have the same offset = Rounding error, sensor bugs, who knows.
------
nwh
Have the sensors ever been good? I've always found the compass to either
constantly lose calibration, or when it finds it, it's a good 90° off where it
should be. Since they introduced the hardware in the iPhone 4, essentially.
------
roflcopta
I don't have an iPhone5c/5s to attempt this myself but what I was informed is
that you have to:
> place the unit into "Do Not Disturb" mode be sure to turn off any type of
> call from anyone, and always silence.
> place the unit on charge
> let the unit sit flat on the backside for 90 min (home button facing up)
> check status.
Someone want to try this?
------
aw3c2
In Android one can simply calibrate those sensors by placing the device on a
level surface. Surely this is possible in Ios too?
~~~
ghshephard
Apple has a calibration process that doesn't require a flat surface. The first
time you go to the "level" app (it's a right swipe from compass) - you are
asked to spin a little virtual ball in a circle (kind of like a roulette
wheel) - after three or four spins it's calibrated and (at least on my iPhone
5) works as a dead level.
------
ghshephard
Anybody with an iPhone 5S see the problem? My iPhone 5 is dead level on when I
put it on a known-level surface in portrait, landscape format, or flush flat -
well, to within 1 degree (I don't get 1/2 degrees on the iPhone 5)
You are required to calibrate it by spinning the "ball" around prior to using
it though.
~~~
arrrg
5S, 3° off on a flat surface.
~~~
ghshephard
Interesting - Did you run the calibration process? (Spin the little virtual
ball in the "roulette" wheel)
~~~
arrrg
You pretty much have to, every time you launch the built-in compass app. I
feel this process is mostly for the compass, not the level.
The 3° are consistent, across multiple tries for several days. I think there
will have to be a software fix. Seems like their calibration process in the
factory was off or something. No big deal but annoying.
------
static_typed
Has QA slipped, or are all the walls in walled garden all a bit wonky?
~~~
leviathan
I'm wondering the same thing. There's also this placeholder text that still
shows even on iOS 7.0.2
[https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
prn2/q71/s...](https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
prn2/q71/s720x720/1381839_10153347469130121_1218956929_n.jpg)
I submitted a bug report, but I'm yet to hear anything about it.
~~~
dan1234
That's odd. The placeholder text doesn't show for me (correctly reads
"Music"). iPhone 5/7.0.2
~~~
leviathan
I checked with 4 separate phones with 4 separate people. Same thing. Maybe
it's a localization issue?
~~~
dan1234
Could be. What locale are you using? It's fine on "British English"
~~~
csixty4
Fine here. AT&T iPhone 5, 7.0.2 (11A501) on "English".
But definitely looks like someone didn't fill out all the translation strings
somewhere.
------
marban
How can 2.7° even matter? I assume people are not laying brick walls with
their phone.
~~~
adlpz
Are you serious? If you are hanging a 1.5-meter long painting and you go off
by 2.7 degrees (not %, by the way, that would be FAR worse) on the angle, one
side will be around 7 centimetres higher that the other.
This is a serious screw up. Hopefully it can be solved with just a
recalibration.
~~~
marban
I can do the maths. We're not talking about the precision of a measurement
tool here but mostly a mediocre input controller for asphalt racing, which I
assume is barely noticeable for people playing a game on their couch.
~~~
stedaniels
Unfortunately, your narrow view of the use of the sensors in a smartphone
isn't indicative of their actual widespread use in many applications hobby and
commercial. Heck I remember reading recently about some of the Syrian "rebels"
using an iPad to aim mortars. (Note my example isn't something I'd entertain
personally!)
~~~
nfg
> Syrian "rebels" using an iPad to aim mortars
Photo:
[http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52385f79eab8eafb56d...](http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52385f79eab8eafb56d28236-800-/rtx13mqd.jpg)
------
linker3000
"Apple’s reputation as the company that sweats the small stuff to get every
last detail ++of their marketing campaigns++ right."
(Products, not so much)
FTFY
~~~
linker3000
Oh dear, I've upset the fanbois!
Antennagate
Magsafe power adaptor recall
Scratchgate/Scuffing
Maps
There's no doubt many companies/products have glitches and design faults, but
the eulogizing needed a bit of balance.
~~~
ScottWhigham
My guess would be that people downvoted you for your reddit-style comments
that add nothing to the conversation rather than "the fanbois" taking up for
Apple. You aren't new here so I assume you either (a) knew that, or (b) are
assigning the blame for the wrong reasons. Had you taken as much time (or put
in as much thought) with your original comment as you did with this follow-up,
I suspect you would've had upvotes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Bartering for technical services? - goodweeds
Is there a good community or app for bartering technical services? Like "I'll trade 10 hours of consulting for a new mountain bike" or "I'll trade a week of pairing up to help implement chef if you'll spend a week helping me build a small Rails app"?
======
iKnowKungFoo
If there is, I'd like to find it. A friend and coworker's garage would flood
when it rains, so he hired someone to build a drainage trench to deal with it.
The guy he hired started the job, found out that my friend built web sites and
asked if they could trade the trench for a site. My friend got the trench,
plus a new deck for the backyard in exchange for the site.
------
mhusby
I have used <http://www.techscratch.com/> for some help with graphics and
design stuff. Its not exactly this, its mostly for small tasks (1 - 5 hours)
and you get points that you can then spend to get tasks done.
------
jtchang
There is something around here in the Bay Area called the BACE time bank. BACE
is Bay Area Community Exchange: <http://timebank.sfbace.org/>
The code it uses is a fork of oscommerce.
------
davidhansen
None that I know of. But if you find one, I advise you to bear in mind that in
the United States, barter transactions are generally taxable:
<http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html>
~~~
goodweeds
I'm fine with that, but I like the idea of transactions which bypass the
banking system. If I can avoid giving my money to financial middlemen, then
why not?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Joins the Blender Development Fund - antoineMoPa
https://www.blender.org/press/microsoft-joins-the-blender-development-fund/
======
Impossible
There is a lot of implied ill-will on HN, I'm guessing the phrase "embrace
extend extinguish" in Microsoft related threads gets upvoted? From the post I
see that many Microsoft employees (at least in research) use Blender.
Microsoft decided to pay for the software their employees are using, which
happens to be open source, so the best way to do that is to donate to their
foundation. Epic Games, Google, Nvidia, Valve, AMD, Intel, Ubisoft and others
have done this (looking at the list of corporate sponsors is easy). This isn't
a plot to take over Blender and destroy it from within...
~~~
acatton
Exactly. According to the membership page[1], Microsoft will be paying between
€30k/year and €120k/year[2] to the blender foundation, along Intel and
Ubisoft. On the other hand, Nvidia, AMD and Epic games[1] are contributing
€120k+/year each.[2]
All of these companies get "direct access to the Blender team for strategical
discussions. Roadmaps and priorities will be aligned with your requirements as
good as possible."[2]
I don't see how they're going to "extinguish" blender. With this kind of
reasoning, OpenBSD was also "extinguished" in 2019.[3]
_____________________________________
[1] [https://fund.blender.org/#credits](https://fund.blender.org/#credits)
[2] [https://fund.blender.org/corporate-
memberships/](https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/)
[3]
[https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2019.html](https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2019.html)
~~~
rbanffy
They probably can't extinguish Blender any more than Oracle could extinguish
MySQL (Larry must have been really mad for that), but I remember what happened
when they acquired and ported Softimage to NT. It worked for a couple
releases, then it was abandoned, after killing killing SGI by validating NT as
a 3D animation OS. The Softimage acquisition, as a business, made little sense
to Microsoft - it was a low volume high margin business, completely opposite
to what MS does.
SGI made plenty of suicidal moves by itself, but I remember the Softimage
thing was a big blow.
~~~
kayfox
Microsoft acquiring Softimage made perfect sense at the time, Microsoft was
wanting to push NT into the CG/VFX market, but because of the risk around
companies producing for a platform that noone uses, someone had to throw the
capital at it, and so Microsoft did.
Softimage|3D survived for a while after Microsoft sold it off, its eventual
obsolescence seemed to came about from the drive to more extensible platforms,
hence the new platform Softimage|XSI put out to compete with Maya.
Its also somewhat perfect irony that the company known for its Windows NT
based 3D animation software (3DS MAX), Autodesk, would eventually end up
owning the products which brought the big players over to that platform.
SGI also helped contribute to IRIX's obsolescence by producing NT based
systems for this new Softimage|3D on NT move.
~~~
rbanffy
> Microsoft was wanting to push NT into the CG/VFX market
That's what I meant. In isolation, the business meant no sense. It was a PR
move to validate NT as a graphics platform. With that goal accomplished, I got
the impression the product languished without significant development.
> SGI also helped contribute to IRIX's obsolescence by producing NT based
> systems for this new Softimage|3D on NT move.
Indeed. Microsoft assisted SGI in its suicide.
------
DrScientist
They appear to be using blender to generate data for machine learning!
So if you want to be able to recognizes poses or hand gestures from video or
image stills, you need data to train your network.
The bottleneck is often high quality 'labelled' data - real data that requires
people to laboriously label each frame and region with the 'ground truth'.
However, if you automatically generate the poses using something like Blender,
you can also automatically label, and also generate a huge variety of
systematic variations in camera angles, lighting, levels of noise etc.
Obviously there might be a worry that the Blender generated images may somehow
inject their own bias, but they claim it's working really well.
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/uploads/prod/2019/0...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/uploads/prod/2019/09/2019-10-01-Synthetic-Data-with-Digital-
Humans.pdf)
~~~
nightcracker
For the final project of the multimedia information retrieval class in my CS
Master's I'm doing something similar.
The goal is to predict depth maps from single-view pictures using CNNs. But
how to gather input, output pairs to train them?
I'm using a mod for Minecraft I wrote to generate such labeled data, e.g.
input: [https://i.imgur.com/JRtmCeG.png](https://i.imgur.com/JRtmCeG.png)
output: [https://i.imgur.com/q4KocXn.png](https://i.imgur.com/q4KocXn.png).
I'm not done yet so I can't tell you the results, but it's a fun project.
------
varbhat
1) Blender is GPLv2'ed Software,so there is no immediate danger of MS creating
proprietary fork of Blender and making money by selling the fork. I beleive
that they are contributing to Blender which benefits community as a whole.
2) Offtopic but i wish megacorps collaborate to create FLOSS alternative to
Adobe Suit like Photoshop/Other Graphic Design programs. This would super
benefit everybody on all platforms.
~~~
boogies
> _create_ [emphasis added] FLOSS alternative to Adobe Suit [sic] like
> Photoshop/Other Graphic Design programs
What's wrong with Krita, GIMP, Inkscape, etc.?
~~~
hellcow
Krita is fine for painting but isn't a full replacement for Photoshop.
Inkscape does vectors, which is something else different entirely.
If GIMP prioritized matching Photoshop's UX to make it easy to switch over
(shortcuts, UI similarity, etc.), it'd be much more successful at converting
Photoshop users. Serious Photoshop users at this point have spent more than a
decade (!) committing these things to muscle memory.
GIMP hasn't made replicating Photoshop's UX a priority, so it isn't a
replacement for someone more comfortable using the industry standard tool.
If I used Vim for a decade, then you said, "Notepad++ also edits text, why
don't you switch over?" Well, I'm not as productive in Notepad++, and I don't
think I'll ever be. Same for GIMP.
~~~
splatcollision
GIMP should do a Blender 2.8 and do a major focused release on improving UX
~~~
skykooler
There's a project called GIMPShop which was supposed to make the UI of GIMP
more like Photoshop; I don't know what the current status of it is though.
~~~
UncleSam
Just be aware that the dot com domain for gimpshop was not created by the
original author and contains malware in the download.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7481091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7481091)
------
DevKoala
Microsoft has dozens of game studios that enjoy using Blender, and no
competitor in the space (not recognized as a profitable business). Finding
negatives to this move is being too paranoid.
~~~
Impossible
I doubt any of Microsoft Game Studios seriously use Blender, although I'm sure
some individuals might use it for specific workflows. AAA games almost
universally use Maya (and ZBrush, Substance and Houdini), for example this
presentation on Gears 5 workflow specifically mentions Maya and Houdini
([https://cdn.gearsofwar.com/thecoalition/publications/The%20V...](https://cdn.gearsofwar.com/thecoalition/publications/The%20Visual%20Technology%20of%20Gears%205%20V2%20PDF%20Version.pdf)).
This donation specifically mentions digital humans created for Microsoft
Research, and MS Research as the user, not Microsoft Game Studios.
~~~
terramex
Blender skyrocketed in popularity in last 5 years. I just went through local
gamedev job openings site (skillshot.pl) and over half of 3D Artist postings
mention Blender.
~~~
Impossible
I never said that Blender is not used in game development, I specifically said
Blender is not widely used in AAA (Microsoft Game Studios) game productions,
and that Microsoft Game Studios is not the driving force for this donation
(which is stated in the origin post!). This should not be a controversial
statement.
~~~
GrammarCommie
> I specifically said Blender is not widely used in AAA game productions
This tells me you may not have been keeping as close tabs on industry
practices. I can tell you personally, this has been rapidly changing over the
past few years, and it's taken a lot of people by surprise. I can't say it's
supplanted Maya yet by any means, but that software's quickly being seen as
old-hat by each new wave of gamedevs. It's fascinating to see.
~~~
Impossible
If you have examples of AAA game developers that have moved their entire
studio (not individuals using Blender, or outsourced contractors making one
off assets) to Blender I'd like to hear it. I'm aware that indies, including
many successful ones, and potentially some mid-tier or AA studios, widely use
Blender. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about Naughty Dog, Blizzard,
Treyarch, DICE, etc. I keep very close tabs on industry practices and work for
a major game engine company. You yourself said "I can't say it's supplanted
Maya yet by any means", I'm not talking about potential future growth, I'm
talking about the current state of the industry in a very specific product
category.
------
kevincox
I'm surprised how low a Corporate Gold membership is, just €30k a year. They
claim that is half of a developer year.
[https://fund.blender.org/corporate-
memberships/](https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/)
Is the assumption that beyond that you would just hire your own developer to
work on blender?
~~~
galgalesh
€60.000/yr seems reasonable. This is the average salary in the Netherlands
(home of the blender foundation).
~~~
JrProgrammer
Could you provide a source for this statement because I'm pretty sure it's
actually closer to 45k/y for fairly experienced developers
~~~
roel_v
No, ezperienced C++ devs with the math skills you need to do 3d dev make 60k
or more, 45k is just above fresh graduate level. I don't have an online
source, just from what I know from companies and people I know, and doing
hiring myself in the past. I made more than 45k 10+ years ago when I was an
employee.
------
jcims
I just started paying attention to Blender again after some years. The
tutorials Ian Hubert does really demonstrates how powerful the product has
become -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY8Ol2n4o4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY8Ol2n4o4A)
~~~
nicholasjon
Came here to say this. This video of his really opened my eyes to what Blender
can do
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY8Ol2n4o4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY8Ol2n4o4A))
and makes a cool entry point into that world.
------
mikece
Microsoft supporting BSD and MIT licensed open source makes sense; this has
become commonplace under Satya's leadership. Aside from contributions to Linux
to make it work well in Azure or Git to make it work well for Microsoft's
rather unique issues, their supporting GPL licensed products is yet another
stark reminder that this _isn 't_ Ballmer's Microsoft -- and that Microsoft
might actually be doing more for F/OSS software than the FAANGs of the world
are at this point in time!
~~~
pjmlp
I use lots of commercial software, so this is more a kind of philosophical
question.
Many that still bash Microsoft for EEE practices, are the first in the line
killing GPL based stacks, pushing BSD and MIT licenses, which most of the time
end up with selected updates in upstream and gold features only on the
commercial products.
Which kind of makes sense, supermarkets don't take PR, but it is a kind of two
weight two measures.
------
vikramkr
Are there any good examples of embrace extend extinguish under nadella's
tenure? I keep seeing this meme everywhere (including in this thread) but git
is doing fine, Linux is doing fine. The only notable things I've seen
extinguished are their own windows phone and phone hardware platforms.
~~~
neilsimp1
Extinguish, I have no examples. But Embrace and Extend, here is a possible
one. Not saying I think this is a case of the first two E's necessarily but I
know other people have pointed it out.
1\. Build WSL2 and incorporate Linux kernel into Windows with great
integration. 2\. Add DirectX and GPU acceleration support for Linux that works
in WSL2 only and not in regular Linux:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-
GU...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-GUI-Apps-GPU-
WSL2).
These two steps could certainly be looked at as Embrace and Extend, although I
admittedly fail to see how they could take an Extinguish step from here.
~~~
zeusk
Well, the way directx on wsl works is it redirects dxgkrnl escapes/ioctls to
host windows system something not possible on native Linux.
~~~
capableweb
Well, that doesn't matter in the end. Part of extend is to take whatever you
embraced, and add things you cannot do. So it's a success in that sense. Seems
you're trying to put it as "What can Microsoft do if Linux doesn't support
it?" when they can, if they want to, do plenty about it.
~~~
zeusk
I think you're wrong there, bringing dxgkrnl to Linux would have been a much
more involved process instead of just providing a redirect.
dxgkrnl is by far the heaviest NT module afaik.
~~~
capableweb
> bringing dxgkrnl to Linux would have been a much more involved process
> instead of just providing a redirect
Of course, that's how collaboration works. Instead of going the harder but
"improving the entire ecosystem" way, Microsoft chose the easiest + the one
where they can extend stuff in a non-compatible way.
~~~
zeusk
The way you look, you'll find malice in every little thing.
------
jfkebwjsbx
Blender is doing so good nowadays it is crazy... Everyone is supporting them.
I hope they keep the team smallish as always!
------
throw_m239339
Tangential but a project I'd like to see supported more financially is
FreeCAD, used in many corporations of all sizes, big and small, like Behringer
for instance. It's very powerful and capable but incredibly buggy.
------
oregontechninja
Their paint3d app isn't the worst thing for non technical creatives. But it
scares me when I see the big MS start "embracing" something I love.
------
nickhalfasleep
If Microsoft is smart, they will continue to support large productivity
applications in major industries that don't fit into an app store model.
The kinds of things that work better on a full Windows 10 machine.
~~~
pratik661
I think the "Commoditize your complement" mantra is used by megacorps to
justify their investment in open source. In this case, 3D modeling is probably
complementary to their AI investments.
~~~
pjmlp
glTF 2.0 breakthrough adoption was triggered by Microsoft contributions to
move glTF 1.0 beyond WebGL as target API.
------
gfxgirl
I wish Sony, Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney and other major CG studios would pitch
in. They all probably pay 6 or 7 figures a year for licenses for various pro
3D software. I know Blender is not actually at the same level as much of that
software but it could be if enough funds were there to support it. Either fund
it directly or fund internal devs to contribute.
~~~
pjmlp
Blender still needs to improve a lot to compete against Renderman, Octane
Render, Hyperion Renderer and similar.
~~~
GrammarCommie
Blender isn't competing with those programs, because those are a different
type of software. Those are renderers, not 3D production suites. And two of
the renderers you listed can be natively used in Blender in place of its own
renderer.
Blender is competing against Maya, not Renderman.
------
Const-me
They might need to be there to port the software for that new armv8-a windows
they have. I don’t think there’re many volunteers implementing support of a
platform that hasn’t quite took off.
------
Jonnax
"Microsoft makes use of Blender to generate synthetic 3D models and images of
humans that can be used to train AI models. For researchers, having access to
high quality free/opensource 3D software has proven to be of great benefit for
scientific projects." Here's what they linked:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/uploads/prod/2019/0...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/uploads/prod/2019/09/2019-10-01-Synthetic-Data-with-Digital-
Humans.pdf)
Am I in the minority where all I see in this synthetic human stuff is
surveillance and propaganda usage?
What other benefits are there?
~~~
sidr
I would think the primary use case for this would be pose estimation and/or
recovering 3d models from 2d images. The primary use cases I'd guess is for
AR/VR and building other kinds of interfaces (gestures etc).
Neither of these use cases seem very useful for surveillance. I'm not
convinced that facial recognition algorithms would benefit that much from
synthetic faces, but I very well may be wrong about that.
------
pixxel
“Corporate Memberships: It's like having developers work for you - on Blender!
This membership level is for organisations who want the option to monitor in
more detail what will get funded with their contributions. They will get
direct access to the Blender team for strategical discussions. Roadmaps and
priorities will be aligned with your requirements as good as possible.“
------
Ericson2314
Yeah this seems innocent enough. If Autodesk gets on the board, _then_ we need
to be worried.
------
zmix
3E
------
justicezyx
MSFT figures out how to play with Open Source: If you can't defeat them join
them
~~~
wutwutwutwut
This happened 10 years ago btw.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study finds young children don't plan ahead, but they do remember advice for later - cos
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090324131554.htm
======
nostrademons
I suspect many adults don't plan ahead either, but rather remember advice for
later, once they've personally run up against the problem the advice solves.
How many people poured money into the stock market despite their grandparents'
warnings that stocks can go down as much as up? Or bought massive houses with
no money down despite warnings about taking on too much debt? Or started
businesses despite all the common wisdom about how you're basically guaranteed
to fail your first time?
Before I started working on my startup, I worked for 2 other ones so I could
see how it was done and hopefully avoid their mistakes. Despite carefully
taking note of everything my past employers were doing wrong, I made all their
mistakes anyway. The difference was that I could recognize it as a mistake in
a week instead of spending _years_ going down a dead-end path.
This may even be the smart way to do it. Every time I've blindly taken advice,
it hasn't worked out. The situation's always more complex than someone's
5-minute soundbite, and having personally experienced the problem seems to be
essential for making sense of the advice and picking out the parts that are
relevant to my particular situation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Former Apple engineers are busy working on, well, who knows what. - peter123
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/agnilux-is-start-up-for-wont-say-a-peep/
======
zyb09
Are we going to upvote everything that has Apple in the title now?
------
s3graham
It isn't "web design" anyway. (<http://agnilux.com/>)
~~~
peter123
the website was probably coded in Vi and the logo drawn with MS Paint.
------
fierarul
So, a NYT article about nothing, literally.
Also, title needs some grammar check.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
All Present-day Life Arose From A Single Ancestor - pg
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59133/title/All_present-day_life_arose_from_a_single_origin
======
pcof
We could call her Bacteria Zero and build a whole religion around her life and
times...
~~~
ZenzerNet
Deus Ex Bacteria. Shirley, this ancestor could be referred to as "God".
~~~
latortuga
Truly the father (mother?) of all life!
------
altano
Ohhh, occasion to post my favorite first line of a book the second time in so
many days! Neal Stephenson, first line of chapter 1 of Cryptonomicon:
"Let's set the existence-of-god issue aside for a later volume, and just
stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on
this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by
spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct
means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their
genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way
to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes
zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV
was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational
preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the
earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat
narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of
slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-
replicating gizmo--which, given the number and variety of its descendants,
might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time.
Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."
------
mkramlich
this was covered on The Onion already last week:
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct-
des...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct-descendants-
of-single-smoo,2762/)
------
DanielBMarkham
But even more likely was single-ancestor with some gene mingling. So a bit of
both.
Seems like a bit of a false dichotomy going on here as this is a "degree of"
question and not an either-or question (If I understood the article correctly)
~~~
LeBleu
No, it is two different dichotomies. One is one-ancestor vs. multi-ancestor,
with the first being correct. The second is no gene transfer between
descendants vs. gene transfer between descendants, with the second being
correct. So there was only one species to begin with, but then later, after it
diverged into multiple species, those branches traded genes back and forth.
~~~
Alex3917
"So there was only one species to begin with"
The idea that all life shares a common ancestor does not mean that there was
only one species to begin with. There could have been many species who
contributed genetic material to a common ancestor, and then eventually died
out. The article is poorly written because it doesn't make it clear whether
the gene swapping occurred before or after the common ancestor.
~~~
DanielBMarkham
I went back and re-read the article.
I took it at first to mean common ancestor in terms of a single ancestor for a
particular species. But then you guys seem to think it means a common ancestor
for all life.
I found it confusing. Meta: I have no idea why my comment was voted down so
much. I did not understand it, and I still do not. Seems like an admission of
that along with an explanation from other commenters would be a good thing,
right? Saying I don't know and having people help me -- reason for the board,
or not?
~~~
Alex3917
I have no idea what's up with comment moderation, but it's clearly been going
downhill. It's probably best to just ignore it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Supernovas and the history of life on Earth - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/the-secret-history-of-the-supernova-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea
======
JumpCrisscross
That was no fun. I've come to expect better from Nautilus.
The hypothesis, that past supernovae may have affected life on Earth, is as
interesting as it is complex. It is surprising the article, when picking only
one hypothesized effect to discuss, chose this one:
> _" While no mass-extinction events happened 2.8 million years ago, some
> drastic climate changes did take place—and they may have given a boost to
> human evolution. Around that time, the African climate dried up, causing the
> forests to shrink and give way to grassy savanna."_
We could have learned how supernovae may have affected cellular, or even pre-
cellular, biochemistry. Instead we got a proposed nexus between supernovae,
climate science and human evolution.
The weakness of linking three complex questions, each with large and uniquely-
varying uncertainties, shows itself in the article citing only one piece of
science: the estimation of when past near-earth supernovae occurred from Fe-60
concentrations in subsea Ferromanganese crusts.
Which makes this bit, buried at the end, even more unbearable:
> _" Some scientists think Fe-60 may have been brought to Earth by
> meteorites"_
Unlike the article, which offers it no counterargument, this argument is
revealing through its simplicity.
~~~
bediger4000
I kind of expected the article to at least mention the end Ordovician
Extinction by gamma ray burst theory:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0899](http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0899)
[http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309415](http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309415)
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.7049](http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.7049)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Angular is unable to build large applications - gregorymichael
https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/5618
======
abhisuri97
Does anyone know if this issue appears with React?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air - Mz
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/08/alaskas-tundra-is-filling-the-atmosphere-with-carbon-dioxide-worsening-climate-change/?utm_term=.da7f3e23dc07
======
taberiand
I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the
models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount
of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on)
could save our way of life.
"Sooner and worse than expected" is a phrase I expect to hear with increasing
frequency.
~~~
candiodari
It was never true that human industry was the main cause of co2 release into
the atmosphere.
Which is one of the reasons to doubt that all those climate accords will have
any influence on global warming at all.
> "Sooner and worse than expected" is a phrase I expect to hear with
> increasing frequency.
If you increase the input into self-reinforcing feedback loop that is exactly
what you'd expect to happen. Not that at that point it makes a large
difference, but it certainly makes _some_ difference.
Feedback loops are notoriously hard to mitigate.
~~~
castis
What if it's all a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
~~~
jerf
Then trillions of dollars were extremely inefficiently allocated to the task
of creating better worlds and a much _better_ world could have been created
with that money instead, costing lives in the process.
Having noble goals doesn't immunize you from accounting.
~~~
alistproducer2
I recommend you read "Money: The Unauthorized Biography [0]" You'll never look
at money the same way again. Money is not a commodity even though we treat it
as such. It certainly is not a finite resource.
Plenty of money gets created everyday for thing far more stupid than trying to
save the world. Look at how much money has been created (and will be spent)
for no good reason at all in the current cryptocoin bubble. The massive
capital gains are going to be cashed out and spent somewhere, creating market
distortions, making people who contribute nothing insanely wealthy. Money is
not sacred. Better we use it to try and save the world than to treat it as if
it (and the market) are some all-wise, ever-perfect allocator of human and
natural resources.
[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F1W0DAO/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F1W0DAO/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)
~~~
jerf
I already have an alternate view of money. I look at generalized wealth more
directly, with money merely an somewhat interesting special case that is less
special than most people think it is. (I tend to think even economists pay too
much attention to currency. Not that they pay attention _only_ to currency,
but that they pay _too much_ attention to it.) The simple truth is that if you
bend the economy towards creating wind and solar and cutting down hydrocarbon
usage and all the other things we have to do, all the people doing that stuff
as the result of a hoax aren't doing something else that would have been more
useful.
Money isn't the issue; finite time and resources are.
My point has nothing to do with how terrible capitalism is or any silly bete
noirs like that. It is simply the observation that if we waste our time on A,
we can't be using that time to do the better B. It sits at a level of
fundamental truth far below debates about economic systems or the nature of
money.
~~~
candiodari
I wonder where the theory that government spending is simply free actually
comes from, that somehow when the government spends money (or enacts
regulation or taxes, same thing) that the cost is somehow magically not that
everybody has to work more and/or harder to achieve those things.
But it's sure becoming a popular theory.
Also: I think what you're describing might be the broken window fallacy:
[http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-
fal...](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fallacy.asp)
------
dvdhnt
I don't think this is specific to Alaska - there's something similar going on
in Siberia and other places where melting permafrost has the potential to do
serious damage.
There are even books (and soon at least one movie) on how restoring wooly
mammoth populations can save us.
\- [http://www.npr.org/2017/07/05/534768716/woolly-breathes-
new-...](http://www.npr.org/2017/07/05/534768716/woolly-breathes-new-life-
into-a-scientific-saga)
\- [https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/27/16050308/woolly-ben-
mezri...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/27/16050308/woolly-ben-mezrich-book-
interview-george-church-deextinction-genetics-synthetic-biology)
~~~
chrononaut
For those looking around these sources wondering how woolly mammoth
populations can save us, from The Verge article:
_So these Russian scientists, the Zimovs, roped up a huge section of the
permafrost starting in the ‘80s and are repopulating it with these large
animals: reindeer, horses, bison. They’ve been able to lower the temperature
of the permafrost by as much as 15 degrees [Fahrenheit] by reintroducing large
herbivores. The mammoth project is all about this. If we can introduce a
mammoth herd to the tundra, we can maybe save the environment for another 100
years, because they’ll help put into place these very natural processes to
keep the environment colder._
------
cropsieboss
Arctic ice has 1400Gt of carbon locked up as methane. [1] This is equivalent
to 1400/10 = 140 years of human 2016 activity. [2]. Methane also has a
stronger effect than CO2. If ice starts to melt, we are doomed.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions#Contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions#Contribution_to_climate_change)
[2]: [https://www.co2.earth/global-
co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions)
~~~
seikilos
How long would that all take to melt? According to your source only 50 of the
1400Gt could be abruptly released.
~~~
tajen
I think they've tried to convert those 50Gt into palatable comparisons: It
equals to a 2 additional degrees increase of global warming, or reaching the
2100 temperature in 2080. But we're talking about methane – the original
article was about CO2.
------
vwcx
"The study, based on aircraft measurements of carbon dioxide and methane and
tower measurements from Barrow, Alaska, found that from 2012 through 2014, the
state emitted the equivalent of 220 million tons of carbon dioxide gas into
the atmosphere from biological sources (the figure excludes fossil fuel
burning and wildfires).
That’s an amount comparable to all the emissions from the U.S. commercial
sector in a single year."
------
trapperkeeper74
That's probably so however Siberia is contributing much more. The whole of
subarctic tundra is at risk for rapid melting and co2 and methane release as
trapped ancient organic material decays. There are also other major, imminent
issues: the uncertain liability of the ESAS clathrates, zero summer sea ice
(arctic ocean heating) and jetstream abnormalities (hence more variable
weather day-to-day).
Anyone whom wants actual facts ought to watch Paul Beckwith out of University
of Ottawa on YT for detailed updates and analysis on climate change.
[https://youtube.com/user/PaulHBeckwith](https://youtube.com/user/PaulHBeckwith)
~~~
basurihn
Or perhaps another more honest source, who is upfront about the statistical
uncertainties underlying all but the most basic climate science.
Hell if you want a good scaremongering, there are some old Van Impe videos
around somewhere.
------
crush-n-spread
The atmospheric carbon situation is not good, and we (as a species) need to
come up with actionable geo-engineering solutions. Here is one.
Rainwater hits mountains and dissolves silicate minerals into cations that
flow into rivers and then oceans. The oceans naturally uptake carbon from the
atmosphere by reacting atmospheric carbon with cations in the water that come
from those dissolved silicate minerals. This uptake de-acidifies the oceans
and produces food for ocean life; for us to collect all the carbon produced in
the USA last year, we would need to crush about 60km^3 of silicate rock (which
is in abundance) and spread it along coastlines.
To successful sequester enough carbon to save the ecosystem, this might one of
the best options we have. This paper [1] does a good job of explaining what
I've touched on here.
[1][http://www.greensand.nl/content/user/1/files/rog20004.pdf](http://www.greensand.nl/content/user/1/files/rog20004.pdf)
~~~
Fej
This is a very interesting proposal. Hopefully this will become part of the
"throw everything at the wall and see what sticks because we were out of time
yesterday" strategy.
------
artur_makly
And if you think that's bad ... you check out what's happening in Siberia :
[https://www.wired.com/2016/12/global-warming-beneath-
permafr...](https://www.wired.com/2016/12/global-warming-beneath-permafrost/)
------
EGreg
Can someone PLEASE tell me why there haven't been more efforts underway to
have commnities around the world plant more trees and engage in planned
reforestation?
This is as close as you can get to a globally available mechanism for pulling
carbon dioxide out of the air (and methane can burn leaving carbon dioxide).
I mean this very seriously. Richard Branson is looking to fund ways to pull
Carbon out if the atmosphere. China has developed a way to leave carbon in
rock. Meanwhile we have had a way all along - TREES! Those and algae in the
oceans.
The "answer" I often hear is that the carbon will eventually be released when
the trees burn in forest fires. Well, first of all, what matters is the
overall biomass of trees. And secondly even if it didn't, that buys us many
decades.
PS: How come this is being so heavily downvoted?
~~~
koube
Trees are not a carbon processing factory, they are a carbon battery. If they
die the carbon will be released again during decomposition. Once they are
planted they must be maintained into perpetuity, unless they are planted where
they will naturally survive. Maintaining these forests will probably involve
energy usage that releases more carbon.
We need method of fixation that is both permanent and does not have the
constraints that tree planting does.
~~~
EGreg
They don't have to be maintained into perpetuity. The trees covered a lot more
of the planet when left alone. It is HUMANS that reduced the biomass of trees
over the last few thousands of years. And especially last 100.
"Maintaining" the forests simply involves restraining humans from interfering.
Or even better, chop the trees down and replant, using the wood for
construction after fireproofing it!!
------
syncopate
Couldn't one try to at least limit the feedback loop by spreading sulfur over
the affected regions by plane? (Simulating a volcanic eruption that reflects
sunlight)
~~~
ancientworldnow
We will almost certainly be spraying sulfur dioxide (and dealing with the acid
rain) in the next few decades. It will be too little too late though.
------
pfarnsworth
What sort of effect does this increased CO2 have on the plant life in the
area? Do they benefit from the increased CO2 leading to more plants/trees,
etc?
~~~
ams6110
Yes, undoubtedly.
------
StevePerkins
Worth pointing out that this article is over 3 months old.
~~~
cmurf
There are more recent articles than this one. New York Times, CNBC are all
reporting it in the last 24 hours.
[http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/08/22/permafrost-thawing-
faster...](http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/08/22/permafrost-thawing-faster-
feeding-climate-change-study/)
And they're citing an April 2017 published paper:
[http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n5/full/nclimate32...](http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n5/full/nclimate3262.html)
------
needcheapbw
Has the waterline changed:
[https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/AK/3_rid/waterfront_at...](https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/AK/3_rid/waterfront_att/globalrelevanceex_sort/62.034411,-146.189575,57.818429,-154.231567_rect/6_zm/0_mmm/)
~~~
mark-r
Sea levels are a lagging indicator of global warming.
~~~
needcheapbw
Citation? How long is the lag? Years? How long does it take to fill a bathtub?
If so much ice is really, actually melting in the world and has been for
years; no shoreline changes have occurred anywhere in the world, then that
must be some amazing lag.
~~~
mark-r
The ice that's melting today is floating ice in the Arctic and Antarctic,
because it's subject to warm ocean currents. Floating ice doesn't change sea
levels when it melts. The ice that matters is the glaciers in Greenland and
Antarctica. Glaciers weren't formed in a day, and they won't melt in a day
either.
~~~
needcheapbw
That is correct. Glaciers melt constantly, new snow forms as moisture
accumulates in higher elevations and condenses, falling as snow. The snow
becomes the beginning of the glacier. It's a cycle that repeats. It is
repeating right now, every year.
[https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/life-
glacier.html](https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/life-glacier.html)
[https://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm](https://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm)
[http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/11/Pio_XI_Glaci...](http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/11/Pio_XI_Glacier_Chile)
------
thriftwy
Launch solar shade!
@
Sea levels drop.
~~~
hyperbovine
a) We can't
b) What secondary / tertiary / ... / n-th order effects would that have? I'm
guessing you don't know.
~~~
gervase
This is a reference to a computer game, not a serious proposal:
[http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Council_Proposals](http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Council_Proposals)
------
cryoshon
and we can't even get people to agree that there's a problem.
and we have no leadership to guide our response.
and we can't winnow our way out of this alone.
what now?
~~~
nyxtom
Consider how lucky we are to even have spent any time at all to reach a point
in the cosmos to make this realization. Even if humanity manages to survive
past this problem, there are many more including the overconsumption of the
world's finite resources. Perhaps it is inevitable given a biological
imperative to be selfish. Our means of survival in future generations may be
determined by our ability to adapt to withering resources, reuse of existing
and exploring space for more. Consider the issue of water reuse; some amount
of research suggests that graphene filters when they come to fruition may help
with far more reuse and recycle of water. Other work such as the electric
transport systems, high speed hyperloops, and 3D print manufacturing combined
with a closed loop system may help bring down massive resource waste. There is
a lot of tech to be hopeful of but it won't be all positive. Many of it seems
to be adaptations to a world which is constantly at risk for extinction
------
memracom
Probably the asteroid Apophis, due to hit the Earth in 2029, will cause enough
cooling to prevent most clathrate from melting. If that works we have a nearby
supply of small asteroids that we can fire at the Earth to deepen the winter
effect. It works best if you hit a shallow coastal shelf area with lots of
limestone rock. Maybe we will sacrifice the Caribbean?
~~~
perilunar
If we are going to be re-directing asteroids, then put a couple of metallic
ones in a stable orbit and turn them into foil sunshades.
~~~
memracom
Tinfoil hats for the whole planet? I love it!!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Big Prometheus: Thanos, Cortex, M3DB and VictoriaMetrics at Scale - davidmr
https://monitoring2.substack.com/p/big-prometheus
======
cfors
Before anybody thinks that they need something like this at work, I have seen
single node HA Prometheus set ups work at one of the largest CDN's in the
country for metrics.
Reddit's own Kubernetes infrastructure team uses single node (pod) Promethei
as well. [0]
If you look all of the components that are required to run Thanos [1], the
operational complexity is incredibly high. I know its a shiny tool, that is
super cool but please make sure you have an actual need for some of these
before devoting resources to them.
[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kubernetes/comments/ebxrkp/we_are_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/kubernetes/comments/ebxrkp/we_are_the_reddit_infrastructure_team_ama_about/fbbk7jk/)
[1] [https://improbable.io/blog/thanos-prometheus-at-
scale](https://improbable.io/blog/thanos-prometheus-at-scale)
~~~
jrv
Prometheus author here (Julius).
Generally agreed that you can get far with a single Prometheus server (or many
independent vanilla Prometheus servers, potentially also using Prometheus's
own federation). But I still recommend Thanos as an extension to a lot of
people. I like Thanos because it's so easy to deploy alongside an existing
Prometheus installation, while itself being mostly stateless (long-term state
is kept in object storage), and it gives people:
\- a global view over multiple Prometheus servers \- deduplicated view over
servers in an HA pair \- durable long-term storage for little cost
The Thanos architecture diagrams (especially the one in their README.md) can
look a bit intimidating, but I find it sooo easy to get started with in
practice, since you don't even need to deploy all of the components to begin
with it. I usually tell people to just drop in a Thanos sidecar next to each
of their Prometheus servers, so they will get backups of all their Prometheus
server data (for those who are interested in long-term data retention). And
then later, they can add the Querier component for an integrated view over
multiple servers. And then later they can deploy the Store gateway to also
integrate back long-term data into that view. And then at some point, the
compactor...
Without being a Thanos expert, it took me ~15 minutes to deploy all those
components (+ Minio for object storage) in front of a training audience that
wanted to know more about Thanos (while reading Thanos + Minio docs). Of
course a proper production deployment always takes way more time, but still I
like how conceptually simple it is to integrate Thanos with Prometheus.
~~~
gnrl
Do you have by any chance recorded this?
~~~
jrv
No, sorry, it was a private commercial training.
------
ibspoof
When my team agreed to use Prometheus from the client side we looked at
Thanos, Cortex, and M3DB, but none of them gave us the flexibility and comfort
of adoption for a small team providing a service to 10s of internal groups. We
have many private internal DCs and needed metrics to be stored in the cloud,
pulling data to the cloud seemed awkward and required access rights we
couldn't get.
We ended up using Postgres 10 w/ TimeScaleDB and their Prometheus plugin with
a simple emulated push gateway that converts a prom formatted http post to a
postgres batch insert. Postgres is 3 nodes monitored with Patroni.
Working great for us and handling 1000+ metrics a second with ease and we get
SQL for both real-time metrics for monitoring and analytics for business
needs. We are using about 10-15% of our systems giving us room to grow.
~~~
jrv
> We have many private internal DCs and needed metrics to be stored in the
> cloud, pulling data to the cloud seemed awkward and required access rights
> we couldn't get.
You mean having a Prometheus server run in the cloud, but then pulling from
on-prem things from the cloud? Not sure how either Cortex or Thanos would
require that, as you'd still run on-prem Prometheus servers for them, but then
collected data is pushed to the cloud in the end. But maybe I'm
misunderstanding what you mean here.
> Working great for us and handling 1000+ metrics a second
Curious about this - I would expect any system to be able to do that easily,
as that's a tiny, tiny amount. A single big Prometheus server can do roughly
1000x that (I think someone once managed to do 1M samples/second ingested).
------
valyala
VictoriaMetrics author here. I like the post, since it is cleanly written and
it isn't biased to certain solution. I'd recommend readers trying all the
mentioned solutions - Thanos, Cortex, M3DB and VictoriaMetrics and then
choosing the solution that fits them the best.
Each solution has its own weak and strong points. The main selling points for
VictoriaMetrics are:
* Operation simplicity. This is especially true for a single-node version, which is represented by a single self-contained binary without any dependencies. It is configured by a few command-line flags, while the rest of configs have sane defaults, so they shouldn't be touched in most cases.
* Low resource usage (CPU, RAM, disk space and iops, network bandwidth).
* High performance.
See also an interesting talk from PromCon 2019, where all these solutions are
compared by Adidas monitoring team [1].
[1] [https://promcon.io/2019-munich/talks/remote-write-storage-
wa...](https://promcon.io/2019-munich/talks/remote-write-storage-wars/)
------
raisingtable
So here is my case. I'm running multiple Prometheus HA pairs to cover
different teams. At the moment, I'm using Thanos and VictoriaMetrics in
parallel to test them out.
Thanos was the first I set up as VM wasn't open-sourced yet. It wasn't hard to
setup and had it running in about a day together with Minio as an S3 backend.
To this day it's running without a problem, apart from an alarm every now and
then that the Store or Compactor couldn't get something done. But I didn't
look too much into it since everything graphing-wise seems to work. Upgrades
are also easy and I love the global querier option. I sometimes see people
having OOMs on a rather "large" servers on Slack, but Thanos team is suppose
to be working on optimizing memory usage and it's getting better and better.
After the last PromCon, I also configured VictoriaMetrics. Installation was as
simple as it can be, way simpler than Thanos, but I'm using a single node
version. It works really good for the last 3 months. Resource usage is a lot
lower than on Thanos.
Both solutions have their own Slack channels with developers and users there,
so it is easy to get help and resolve issues.
In the end, I think I'll go with VM in my case, since it has less moving
parts, doesn't need S3 backend (we are on-prem and don't have a production S3
storage) and lower resource usage. It can also ingest InfluxDB metrics, which
is a massive bonus for me, since NOC team is using a solution that can only
send metrics to InfluxDB (snmpcollector).
------
rektide
I enjoyed the post. Good links to a lot of relevant, recent stories & events.
Not the article's fault, but it cites the "ClickHouse Cost-Efficiency in
Action: Analyzing 500 Billion Rows on an Intel NUC" article that was published
January 1. It's a week old, & I kind of feel like I'm never going to get away
with it. It seems like a great, fun, interesting premise, but the authors took
what is a challenging, huge data-set, and, under the guise of making the data
look "realistic" they drained all the entropy out of the dataset, & then
claimed they were 10-100x faster.
Well, yes, maybe for some workloads maybe. Maybe the changes they made might
in some circumstances be "realistic" for some IoT use cases, maybe.
But I feel like I'm going to see this article come up again, and again, and
again. And each time, I'll have these frustrations, about how while they may
still be running queries on the same number of rows, they are running queries
on many orders of magnitude less data. It's a fun read, & genuinely useful- in
some circumstances- tech, but I don't expect to see this nuance showing up.
I'm already weary, seeing this Clickhouse article again.
~~~
manigandham
The difference between rowstores (Scylla/Cassandra) and columnstores
(Clickhouse) comes down to the physical layout of data with batch/vectorized
processing and other techniques.
There will always be a 1-2 magnitude increase in performance regardless of the
data. They also used the same number of rows, except with smaller cardinality
in measurements which would make an insignificant speed difference.
------
netingle
Cortex author here (Tom Wilkie). Great post that honestly highlights the
differences between these systems - thank you!
The biggest take home here - and the first thing the post mentions - is the a
single HA pair of Prometheus servers is enough for 80-90% of people. TLDR you
probably don’t need Cortex (or Thanos, etc)...
...unless you run multiple, segregated networks (regions). Then something like
Thanos (or Cortex) is useful - not for a the scale argument, but because you
need a way to “federate” queries and get that global view. IMO!
~~~
chucky_z
Isn't this the whole point of the federate endpoint? That you just run a
central Prometheus pair to federate metrics at low resolution from a ton of
places?
I only care about high resolution metrics for alerts. Otherwise I can just
take a handful of them at 5m intervals, but from a lot of places.
~~~
jrv
There's different tradeoffs... Prometheus's own federation is a pretty simple
scrape-time federation - a Prometheus server pulls over the most recent
samples of a subset of another Prometheus server's metrics on an ongoing
basis. Thanos does query-time federation rather than actually collecting and
persisting data for all "federated" servers in a central place (other than the
e.g. S3 bucket for long-term data). So with Prometheus federation you have to
choose pretty carefully which aggregated stats you'd like to pull into some
higher-up Prometheus layer, and then you only have access to those (in that
server). Thanos allows you to query over the data in multiple Prometheus
servers at once, in all their detail.
And I think Cortex is mostly useful for people who want to run a big
centralized, multi-tenant service in their org to keep all the global view and
long-term data. (most people tend to use Thanos)
------
freeseacher
Let me explain my experience with tsdb selection. in 2018 we understood that
we need something for long term storage. Selection was between thanos,
elasticsearch and m3db.
M3db looks promising but after reading issues and docs i found i have to test
it like database not like a drop in solution. for example that topic
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/m3db/6iG2NL7hJ7A](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/m3db/6iG2NL7hJ7A)
And cortex and thanos announced that tweet
[https://twitter.com/fredbrancz/status/1043060822988259333](https://twitter.com/fredbrancz/status/1043060822988259333)
Elasticsearch got disqualification because of no remote_read support. So i
stopped looking for anything for at least half year just updated retention
policy in Prometheus to 150d.
Also VictoriaMetrics was banned because of no source code. Also
[https://github.com/akumuli/Akumuli](https://github.com/akumuli/Akumuli) was
banned because of nobody hear about it. :(
Than after some time VictoriaMetrics appears to be open source and there was
no issues with rate function and useless extrapolation.
So i test it on a small setup at about 7k metrics per second on single server.
And it was amazing. Than 14k/s and 20k/s Previously i have the volume for
Prometheus data and it was about 30 gigs on smallest install to 70 gigs on
largest Moving from storing 30days in Prometheus to 90 days in vm was the huge
benefit. On every of three instances with 7, 14 and 20k metrics per second i
can extend retention from 3 to 5x on the same volume. With same dashboards.
With same alerts. Just added remote read and remote write.
Than i decide to take it on a real life web scale production. So i started
from 11 servers f2-micro on gcp. * 3 storage * 2 insert nodes * 2 select nodes
* 2 promxy * 1 grafana * 1 selfmon prometheus
Got lots of expected ooms on 60k per second. Than i move to n1-standart-1 for
storage and insert. It can handle at about 650k per second insert load for
several weeks without ooms or any unaxpected behaviors. That was real life
data from prometheus-operator from one of our rc clusters. node-exporters,
application metrics and kubemetrics.
Tuning it to n1-highmem-2 for storage nodes so get enough room for background
merges and so on.
Also i copy my Prometheus rules from prod to promxy (at about 200 in sum).
That makes some noise for read. So i got at about 70 reads per second and
pretty 90% cpu utilization on promxy servers. But almost no additional cpu
load on vm servers. So i just bump all numbers in queries from seconds i moved
to minutes, minutes to hours and hours to days in every query that have offset
or rate or increase. That add some load to vm but not that much i expected.
In summary i'm amazed with simplicity of scheme i got. Performance is also
great. My dashboards looks the same in Prometheus and VictoriaMetrics.
Oh. by the way i have some experience asking questions in issue tracker of
Prometheus and VictoriaMetrics. And honestly prefer Aliaksander style of
answering - long and with good under the hood info.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fin - ch
http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/
======
_delirium
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816055)
------
camperman
The Sun is strong with this one.
"GNU/Linux has been written by people with no sense of smell, no concept of
architecture, and no ability to advance any large-scale piece of work."
The cathedral vs. the bazaar. Which do you think has won?
"And even if systemd were properly scoped and executed well, it would be only
a modest improvement on SMF… which has been running in production on illumos
for 10 years."
That's impressive. illumos has only existed for 5 years.
Perhaps the fact that the licensing and the ownership of the OS, the viability
and attitude of the company that developed it and of the company that took it
over has been a complete clusterfuck since 2005 might go some way towards
explaining why people aren't using it.
------
davekeck
Geez this wesolows guy seems bitter as hell. I guess it's helpful to have a
reference of what not to become as we grow older.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FutureMe – write a letter to your future self - 1_player
https://www.futureme.org
======
1_player
Disclaimer: not affiliated in any way. Just a happy user.
Many know this site. I posted it as a reminder that, if you're feeling down,
depressed, or happy, excited about the future, you'll want to remember one
day. You're going to forget.
Do yourself a favour and share your emotions with your future self. Writing
down your feelings is good therapy already.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is the NSA Using Backblaze Storage Pods for PRISM Surveillance Data? - nantes
http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/06/09/is-the-nsa-using-backblaze-storage-pods-for-prism-surveillance-data-heres-what-we-know/
======
liotier
Backblaze knows how to milk an entirely unrelated event for attracting
attention on themselves !
------
RossM
> When SGI bought super-computer maker Cray in 1996, our CTO who worked there
> at > the time said the running joke was, "SGI sold no units this quarter,
> but made > a healthy profit." That wasn’t magic accounting. It was the NSA
> requiring > purchases not be disclosed.
Love this quote; when this kind of thing happens does it prove for some
difficult finances/auditing? Can you even report the units sold (SKUs,
quantities)?
~~~
stox
There are/were Supercomputer manufacturers that you have never heard of
because their sole clients are the NSA and/or DOD. It has been a joke, in
Supercomputing circles for some time, that the real top 10 machines are
missing from the top 500 list for this very reason.
------
ancarda
Are those calculations taking in a healthy amount of redundancy? BlackBlaze
Storage Pods were designed without any redundancy as it's done purely in
software by the company. They just let the hardware fail and replace the
drives. The data is then copied from a near-by, healthy pod.
I'm sure the NSA has redundancy in their design but I wonder to what extent.
Are there off-site backups? Could a physical disaster cause them to lose most
or all of their data?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linux Has a Marketing Problem - mikenew
https://hackaday.com/2019/10/31/linuxs-marketing-problem/
======
simonblack
Linux doesn't need marketing. It's perfectly usable without it. Those who want
Linux will use Linux. Those who don't know enough about Linux will be excluded
by their own choice.
Sure, that may be an elitist attitude, but it's worked perfectly well for the
Benz, Lexus, Porsche (etc, etc) users down through the years.
The 'Year of the Linux Desktop' crowd seem to think that to be labelled as
such, Linux users need to be more than 50% of the total. Using that same
logic, when is the "Year of the Mercedes Benz on the Roads"? That's a silly
question, isn't it? The truth is that _sufficient_ Mercedes Benz owners are
very happy using their Mercedes cars on the roads. And that _sufficient_ Linux
users are very happy using our Linux Desktops.
I've been using Linux on _my_ Desktop since 2001, and using one commercial
UNIX or another in the 10 years between 1991 and 2001. I've never ever used
Windows as my everyday Desktop. But if _you_ want to use Windows, then go
ahead, I won't stop you. Same as I drive my fourth Benz in the last 20 years,
and don't care a bit if you want to drive your Ford.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Analyzing Big Data Is Returning an Edge to Microsoft - sew
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/technology/microsoft-renews-relevance-with-machine-learning-technology.html?hpw&_r=0
======
hooande
What bothers me is the triviality of the examples in the article:
_Next year’s version of the Excel spreadsheet program, part of the Office
suite of software, will be able to comb very large amounts of data. For
example, it could scan 12 million Twitter posts and create charts to show
which Oscar nominee was getting the most buzz._
_A new version of Outlook, the e-mail program, is being tested that employs
Mr. Horvitz’s machine-learning specialty to review users’ e-mail habits. It
could be able to suggest whether a user wants to read each message that comes
in._
Google is building _cars that drive themselves_. Microsoft is still analyzing
real time data and improving email.
I was hoping to hear about sweeping changes and products that would affect all
of our daily lives. I still believe that the OS itself could use a lot of
optimization and personalization. A truly adaptive information management
system could be a real edge for any company in the OS space.
It could be that the author cherry picked examples that were easy for the
average reader to understand. If not, another example of companies that are
really big thinking really small.
~~~
nivla
> Google is building cars that drive themselves. Microsoft is still analyzing
> real time data and improving email.
What makes you think one is important but not the other? Google is building
cars that drive themselves but they are also analyzing real time data and
subsequently improving their email. It will be stupid for Google to ditch
Gmail and direct those engineers to work on cars.
>It could be that the author cherry picked examples that were easy for the
average reader to understand.
Well since NYTimes has a broader demographic than just IT professionals I
think the examples do fit perfectly in.
~~~
rbanffy
> What makes you think one is important but not the other?
Because Google already did that and is doing other, more radical, things?
------
rjurney
I wrote about this here: [http://hortonworks.com/blog/dinosaurs-are-real-
microsoft-wow...](http://hortonworks.com/blog/dinosaurs-are-real-microsoft-
wows-audience-with-hdinsight-at-strata-nyc-hortonworks-inside/)
It includes raptors.
~~~
skrebbel
Well, that's a damn entertaining blog post, and interesting too. Do you know
whether the screencast is online?
~~~
rjurney
Working on it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quiz: What Type Of Entrepreneur Are You? - motoko
http://idiotstartup.com/what-entrepreneur-are-you-test
======
jwecker
The Geek. Figures.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A critique of Gmail's “smart replies” - userbinator
https://medium.com/@okh/please-resist-googles-attempts-to-make-you-more-robotlike-2f5babd786aa
======
sp332
"As a Google ML ethics guy, I need a drink."
[https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1060991160494120961](https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1060991160494120961)
~~~
lgregg
I started reading the thread and laughed fairly loud and disruptively when I
read this:
so, it turns out that our users are using our product for...
[spins Wheel of User Behavior]
... divination.
[https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1060991848280256512](https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1060991848280256512)
------
glacials
The author seems to imply the smart reply buttons immediately send an email
with the chosen phrase. This is incorrect. They open an email draft beginning
with the chosen phrase.
There are many times I've used one of these buttons to begin a much more
detailed email. Not only do they save a few keystrokes, but they help you get
past that first wave of "blank canvas" writer's block.
~~~
ben509
Heh... despite seeing them on literally every email I've responded to, so
possibly hundreds of times, I have never been okay with sending a derpy "That
sounds great!" email, so I never realized they don't automatically send it.
It's amazing that they managed to fail at discoverability despite putting the
controls right in front of me.
~~~
abainbridge
I have the same problem with messaging apps, where I can't tell whether
pressing return inserts a newline or sends the message. I find myself avoiding
newlines altogether because I'm scared of pressing return. Or, accidentally
hitting return and sending a half formed jumbled mess to my boss/customer.
Please, developers of the world, make return insert a new line. It's much
easier to undo than message-send.
~~~
userbinator
_where I can 't tell whether pressing return inserts a newline or sends the
message._
Do you have any examples of messaging apps where return/enter inserts a
newline? I can't think of a single one where it _doesn 't_ send the message,
probably because inserting a newline is an uncommon case but sending is not.
It's been that way since the days of IRC, from what I remember.
~~~
setr
There's always been a division between "(IRC) messaging" and "(BBS) forums",
and the relevant influence-trees, with I think the biggest line drawn is how
the return key is handled. From this one UX feature, every other
differentiation is natural.
This division was fine, because they served different purposes. Messaging
(return => send) was always short term, quick communications; Forums (return
=> newline) was always longer-form posts, sentences to paragraphs, in a single
post. The forum for discussion worth archiving, and the messaging app to
replicate daily communications.
But slack and its kin crossed that line. They pitch themselves as the utility
of forums (archiving, search, "starring", etc), with the quickness of
messaging (rapid response times, notifications, etc), and now everything is
fucked. Forum-like conversation get stuffed into a Messaging application, and
gets broken up into a hundred different messages (ala 1/20, 2/20..20/20
twitter multi-posts), perhaps collapsed into a single proper post but usually
not; Logs get stuffed into it, into a separate channel whose sole purpose is
to be muted. Documents and emails and any work gets stuffed into it, because
it can be made to fit.
And naturally, the archiving, the search, the document storage, everything
breaks down, and its awful. Until you realize that you can't use slack like
slack wants you to. It's a better, smoother, more maintainable and convenient
BBS forum, trapped in a messaging shell.
The return => send is feared, and it is a fear special to slack, and its many
recent derivatives. Because slack crossed the line, without crossing it.
Messaging apps _should_ have return => send; slack (and its kin) _should_ have
return => newline, because it is not a messaging app. It is _not_ IRC, and it
is not counted amongst IRC's friends.
It is a forum in denial.
------
derefr
I've always taken these Smart Replies as equivalent to Facebook Messenger's
"button that sends a big thumbs-up emoji to acknowledge something." (It
replaces the Send button when you don't have anything in the input box.)
I.e., these responses are there to serve as various textual forms of "I
acknowledge that I received your message and am hereby discharging your social
expectation that I will reply to it, by doing so with an information-free
message."
I assume that Gmail _would_ just suggest using an emoji rather than text,
except for the fact that 1. etiquette says that an emoji is too "casual" for
office work, but a one-word answer is just fine and exemplary in its
professionalism; and 2. there are devices still in use that _can_ receive
email but are old enough that they _can 't_ display emoji, so textual
equivalents are a better lowest-common-denominator.
------
jetrink
For an interview last year, I interacted with Google recruiting almost
entirely using smart replies. One of the suggestions to the initial email was
fit to send without modification and the idea was so amusing to me that I
stuck with it as much as possible throughout the process. It wouldn't surprise
me if the other end of the conversation was mostly machine generated as well;
two Google systems talking to each other with a bit of human editing here or
there.
~~~
QML
I did this recently as well! It kind of reminds me of a Black Mirror episode,
“Hang the DJ”, where a dating app used ‘cookies’ to arrange matchings between
people. I actually wished someone could invent this for the recruitment
process—a stand-in AI that deals with all the boring parts of life.
~~~
remify
There was a thread a few weeks ago about a guy who did a bot that responded to
recruiter asking them relevant question about job (salary, relocation etc...).
------
flatline
What I find more disagreeable is the newly enabled autosuggest feature. Few
things are more annoying than seeing bad suggestions pop up for every word, on
a desktop device where I type at 100wpm.
Edit: word.
~~~
stcredzero
I'd say that's true efficiency. They are managing to annoy you at a rate
approaching 100 times per minute!
~~~
ben509
The robot uprising has already begun!
~~~
stcredzero
Annoying us is probably their maximum capability for now.
[https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/)
------
userbinator
_When you respond with “Thanks for sharing!” or “Glad you enjoyed it!” or
“Very cool!” to an email message, you are not responding as an in-the-wild
human. You are responding as a human that has been prompted by a robot._
I know someone whose blog is configured to filter out such vacuous "empty
praise" comments, because 99% of the time they are from spambots.
~~~
dbcurtis
In fact, that could be a feature. Instead of “smart reply”, how about “smarter
not to reply”:
“The reply you have entered is not actionable. Do you still want to send it?”
Nip vacuous e-mail in the bud.
~~~
hammock
Gmail sells ad impressions. So less email is not good for business.
------
vl
_With the largest pile in the world of written natural language representing
dynamic human communication, Google is able to use deep learning, combined
with the methods of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to draw inferences about
the essential content and intent of your emails and sort them into types._
_Using these same machine learning methods, a trio of possible responses to a
given type of email message is generated and tested. Every time a human uses
one of these three responses, a datapoint is supplied to Google that says
“given message type A, a human has chosen response X as an appropriate one.”_
_Multiply this last step by a thousand or a million or a gazillion, to the
point where a clear statistical pattern emerges, and Google can conclude with
some confidence that when a person expresses ideas, thoughts, feelings, or
questions that can be classified as type A, it’s reasonable for another human
to respond with utterance X._
This is usual attribution of magical powers to "AI" (and really they mean
"ML") by the people who don't know how it actually works.
In this case:
* Sensitivity detector checks if email is sensitive, smart reply is turned off for sensitive emails (obviously didn't trigger in this case). I personally think this is questionable feature - imagine your keyboard turns off if it thinks topic is sensitive.
* Encoder model produces embedding which is compared with pre-computed and pre-clustered embeddings for whitelisted replies. Top replies for three top clusters are selected (selecting replies without clustering will produce very similar replies). All potential replies are white-listed for obvious reasons.
While clicks produce useful metrics (really, this is the target metric), they
don't produce useful training data for two reasons: (roughly speaking) you
can't train a model on it's own output and there is no way for model to learn
to suggest something new. Fundamental challenge for training such models is
that production metric is different from training metric: model is trained to
select likely reply that was typed, production metric is reply that is
clicked.
There is bunch of blog posts and papers from Google Research describing how it
works.
------
nimos
My main concern with things like this and autocomplete is can they actually
influence how the user thinks and what they say? It would be interesting to
have users write about a subject with a "good adjective"/"bad adjective"
biased AI and see if there is a measurable difference in opinion on the
subject afterwards between groups.
~~~
vl
For Google, Facebook and others, as a companies, best users to maximize long-
term revenue are people that have income and choose to spend all their
disposable income (and thus generate ad and lead conversion profits). As such,
Google should show/suggest/autoplay search results/ads/YouTube videos/smart
replies/assistant answers/News/Google Now cards to increase life-time
likelihood for the given user to become working professional and mindless
spender.
For specific hypothetical example, it's not hard to imagine, that training
users to prefer things like "experiences" or entertainment that need to be re-
purchased is better that promoting physical goods, like board games or
bicycles.
~~~
TheDong
This has got to be some sort of fallacy. It rings similar to the "if evolution
selected for good traits, why can't we fly and shoot lasers out of our eyes?"
Yes, its to their benefit if their users have money. No, I don't think there's
any chance that any company is able to optimize for someone gaining a middle-
class life that meaningfully.
Companies do small-scale user studies and measure things like engagement and
increased clicks on a small scale. They do not perfectly capture their user's
income and spending level for many years and correlate that well enough with
the company's auto-suggestions that said suggestions optimize for that very
macro goal over the very micro measurements they make.
I think it's very hard to imagine Google successfully optimizing itself to
meaningfully lead do that outcome for users, just as it's very hard to imagine
humans evolving the ability to fly.
~~~
vl
Current recommendations systems for FB, Google/YouTube have switched from
models that try to increase immediate engagement to models that try to
increase retention because it turned out that optimizing for immediate
engagement decreases retention. (Latter is obviously much harder ML task
requiring Q-learning, longer data series, etc.) In other words companies
choose to sacrifice immediate revenue in order to increase long-term
(optimally life-time) revenue from each particular user.
You can see it an example of early precursor of ML that shapes user behavior:
learning what motivates user to return and then displaying it.
------
_cs2017_
If you write an email to someone, and they respond with one word
"Interesting", you should take a hint that you're boring them out of their
minds. Don't blame robots for that :)
------
eslaught
I do find it surprising how often a short reply (of any kind) just isn't
appropriate, but Google goes ahead and makes a suggestion anyway. I would have
thought that "no quick response" would have been one of the options they
trained against.
~~~
fifnir
They trained against the champions of get-the-last-word from all over the
internet
------
fipple
Gmail Smart Replies often suggest things that I’d like to say to my fiancée
but have the common sense not to.
------
tyingq
My android has suggested "Thanks Honey" as a SMS reply to people where that
wouldn't go over well. Gmail hasn't done that yet.
------
kristianc
Use them if you like, don't use them if you like, write a self-aggrandising
piece to draw attention to how smart you are if you like too. This is faux-
problematizing.
------
bitpush
Next thing you'll say is I miss the world where everybody's mail looked
different because of unique handwriting, and this email thing has made me look
like a robot.
------
Konnstann
Auto-replies save me the hassle of personally typing out an acknowledgement of
receipt or confirmation of a meeting, which I find very useful. I don't get
the problem with an optional feature which clearly makes certain types of
common emails easier to deal with.
------
lazyasciiart
> The thing to remember about email is that it is a conversation.
I think this is a big claim and not obviously true enough to just assume.
Email is just a medium, and can be any kind of communication within that -
just like not all spoken communication is a conversation.
------
scarejunba
Nah, it’s fine. I like it. I have autocomplete in my IDE but I sometimes write
unique code.
------
taude
Can't read article, it wants me to pay $5.
~~~
shopkins
Obligatory life-saving browser extension:
[https://makemediumreadable.com](https://makemediumreadable.com)
~~~
pickdenis
Why do people even use Medium? Doesn't this kind of stuff go against the ethos
of being a computer scientist?
~~~
QML
Easier to set up / integrate and looks better than most Wordpress themes that
I’ve seen set up.
------
gambiting
An honest question - have you ever used any of these auto replies, ever?
I don't recall any situation, not even once, where they would be relevant to
what I received. The most insane thing is that I receive auto-reply
suggestions in English, even when the email was not written in English.
If this is the best that Google's "world-leading AI" can come up with, then
I'm not worried about AI taking over the world. Not even slightly.
~~~
vasco
Most of the times they are correct but not sufficient, but I've used it enough
times that I don't mind the suggestions being there 100% of the time. I do
write tend to write terse emails though.
The newest "press tab to auto-complete word/sentence" while I'm typing though,
that's incredible and I've used it in every email since I got the feature. A
real time saver - and sometimes makes me sound more eloquent too!
------
j45
I'm sure it's coming, but it would be nice if the smart replies used more of
my phrases instead of Google's reccomendations, and mixed them up so it's no
so obvious that you clicked on a smart reply. Also, clicking a smart reply
doesn't automatically send the email, and still requires another click. It
might be a good feature to "feel lucky" with when clicking.
------
xte
I switch from GMail to a personal mail tired of their non-standard IMAP, their
more and more heavy webUI more and more tied to Chrome. So...
BTW switching to personal mail not only improve my workflow but also push me
to expand my knowledge like never before. Now my personal, notmuch
based+scripts automation automate far, far, far more than Google and far
better. If I'd like to have template replay I can add them in a snap.
------
ken
> Users of Gmail — and there’s at least a 50 percent chance that’s you — have
> noticed an “upgrade”
I wonder: for all the people in the world using Gmail, how many use their web
interface? I'm a "Gmail user" but I only access it via native mail clients. I
haven't actually tried logging in to Gmail using a web browser in forever, so
I never see their latest feature that everyone loves/hates.
------
tareqak
I do wish the smart reply could pick out the intended recepient's name, or
have the ability to pick it off of a drop down / additional three options. I
can see people considering smart replies to be inauthentic, but all I need to
say is "Thanks X!" or "That's great X", and get back to whatever else I was
doing.
The four maxims in the article are really spot on.
~~~
Casseres
Some people might find that too creepy or think Google is "reading" their
emails.
~~~
tareqak
The smart reply feature is already doing just that. If they aren't going to
stop and we can't make them, then they could at least add the finishing
touches to the feature.
------
moneil971
I have used these on LinkedIn, especially to respond to requests from people I
don't know or am not actually connected to -- as the writer notes, it isn't
really appropriate to actual email from friends and family. Though I suspect
all of these are meant for people replying from a phone or watch who don't
want to bother typing.
------
goodmachine
"Thanks, I'll check it out"
------
colanderman
You know what's worse? The damn "Smart Compose" dialog box that pops up _and
stops me from typing_.
I cannot begin to fathom what deranged design flow led to Google creating a UI
element that is _objectively worse than Clippy_.
------
homero
I love these. They help me start an email otherwise I write ok or something.
They're also getting better and more variety. They do need to get longer
though. Give me a few sentences I can personalize.
------
cpv
LinkedIn also happens to have interesting answers. Which I don't use.
Or skype, I had to disable it, because it looked like complete gibberish (some
English suggestions for non english messages).
------
rajacombinator
I’m as google-pessimistic as the next guy, but I really struggle to see the
problem in providing these quick reply options. Their phrase complete is great
also.
------
dools
Haha I love those things. Because I'm Australian one of them says "Got it,
mate!"
A constant reminder that AI is thousands of years from taking over humanity.
------
avitzurel
On a slightly unrelated note, when did Medium start blocking content and
prompting you to upgrade? I can't read this article.
~~~
avitzurel
When logged in, I was prompted to upgrade. Incognito let me read the article
------
NelsonMinar
Thanks for the link!
------
p0nce
Well said.
~~~
NelsonMinar
I agree.
~~~
p0nce
Thanks!
------
tkcins
He shouldn't have blurred the text in [0], as blurred text could be read using
techniques I admit knowing nothing about. It's better to just use a black
block or something like that. Pixelating is bad too.
[0] [https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*h8cIVhi7n9-vuNJ-1...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*h8cIVhi7n9-vuNJ-1pWBhg.png)
Edit: I just noticed parts of the concealed text have been "smudged" before
blurred. So no risk here. Still valid as a PSA :)
~~~
51lver
Personally I prefer replacing the text and then applying a light blur. Let
them feel smart for a few seconds.
------
jbhatab
This is ridiculous... I hate when robots auto fill in boring emails I have to
send 100s of times a day!!!
~~~
dang
Could you please review the site guidelines? This comment breaks two:
_Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._
_Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize._
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
------
RRRA
very simply, it never makes sense...
------
moftz
I try not to respond to emails with one liners. If it deserves a response, it
deserves a complete thought. I hate sending something to someone and getting a
"thanks" reply back. I get that you appreciated what I sent you but if your
reply isn't going to affect anything, don't respond. Shoot me an IM if you
really need to give me a one liner.
~~~
reaperducer
_I try not to respond to emails with one liners._
I have a co-worker who does this. She sends me data files with "Please
review."
So I've started responding with things like, "It had a good beat, but I
couldn't dance to it. Three stars." Or, "Excellent datas!!eleven! Fast
shipping! Goog eBayer, would buy again!"
She's still sending me the one-liners, but at least I'm having fun.
~~~
ben509
Just run file against them and send the results back.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paypal down? - juanherrera
======
grexi
[http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/paypal.com.html](http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/paypal.com.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OSCAR 1 - shpx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSCAR_1
======
tlrobinson
If you think to you might enjoy messing around with satellites, ham radio is
pretty easy to get into these days. This is especially true for VHF/UHF, which
is what amateur satellites use, and only requires the Technician license.
For equipment you just need a handheld VHF/UHF radio (as cheap as $25 for a
Baofeng [http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-
Black/dp/B007...](http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-
Black/dp/B007H4VT7A) but I'd recommend a Yaesu, Kenwood, or Icom if you can
afford it) and a simple yagi antenna (Google "tape measure yagi", or something
like this if you don't want to DIY:
[http://www.arrowantennas.com/arrowii/146-437.html](http://www.arrowantennas.com/arrowii/146-437.html))
[http://www.amsat.org/](http://www.amsat.org/)
[http://www.heavens-above.com/](http://www.heavens-above.com/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0CWz4Emyro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0CWz4Emyro)
[https://hamstudy.org/](https://hamstudy.org/)
~~~
tlrobinson
Here's a good example of someone "working" a popular amateur radio satellite,
SO-50:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhBs5DlKaVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhBs5DlKaVU)
------
creeble
In American Morse Code, "HO" sounds like "HI" in international Morse Code, "HO
HO" became "HI HI".
Huh?
~~~
mullr
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Morse_code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Morse_code)
says that 'o' was encoded as 'dit <space> dit', whereas 'i' was encoded as
'dit dit'. International Morse Code changes 'o' to be 'dah dah dah'. I cannot
see any evidence American Morse was used for radio, though it may have been.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Save MySQL Now? - jp_sc
http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/2010/01/wht-save-mysql-now.html
======
euroclydon
A commenter says that no fork will be able to offer a dual license, and that a
fork is only for the GPL portion of the license. Even so, what's the big deal
there? Any sizable company can offer to sell a support contract for an open
source license of the DB. What am I missing here?
~~~
tentonova
I'm firmly disagree with Monty's duplicity, but I'll try to shed some light on
it.
The "big deal" is that only two things provide a revenue stream around MySQL
sufficient to support the heavy R&D costs associated with building a database
product:
\- The name ("MySQL")
\- The copyright.
If you own the name, you can sell branded binaries and services. If you own
the copyright, you can sell non-GPL licenses to commercial interests. Without
these, creating a viable revenue stream is incredibly difficult.
I think this ties into this discussion, as well:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028638> \-- I Love the GPL (Except When
it Applies to Me)
~~~
gaius
_Without these, creating a viable revenue stream is incredibly difficult._
Yes, and Monty knew that when he chose to structure MySQL the product that
way. Everything is proceeding exactly as he foresaw and intended.
~~~
tentonova
I agree -- and I think Monty has no business taking umbrage with the bed he's
made -- but it's worth exploring why this is the case.
~~~
euroclydon
Would it be fair to speculate that he never foresaw the largest proprietary DB
vendor eventually buying MySql?
~~~
IgorPartola
The only thing we can speculate about is what we would have done in his shoes,
unless he provides a convincing insight. If it was me, and I cared about a
project of mine for the sake of the project and thought it was a vital project
(as opposed to one of my tinker toys), I would have open sources the whole
thing, no dual license. That way nobody can "steal" it from the community, by
buying some company. I would also have tried to give it to someone like the
Apache Foundation, so that when I die, my project does not.
On the other hand, if I thought my project was going to be a cash cow, I would
have done exactly what Monty did, except the whining after the fact. I think
if I buy a car, then sell it to someone and that person sells it later to my
arch nemesis for a discount and he plans on wrecking the heck out of it, my
screaming about how this is not right is not going to attract many supporters,
is it?
~~~
tptacek
When you say "I would have open sourced the whole thing", what you really mean
is "I would have BSD-licensed the whole thing". There is no difference between
dual-licensed GPL code and straight-up GPL code. In both cases, your rights as
an end-user are identical. In neither case can you pick up the codebase after
it's sold to Sun and start a new commercial endeavor on it that _isn't_ GPL'd.
------
mellis
An open-source project is more than the code. It also includes the community
and the resources for continuing development. Although the code is under the
GPL, Sun (and now possibly Oracle) has control of the brand and many of the
potential revenue streams. A fork would lack the benefit of a clear,
centralized community and many resources to fund development. Both of these
things threaten the future of MySQL as an open-source project.
~~~
senko
Forking + rebranding is perfectly viable option. A similar thing happened to
the popular Mambo CMS, which had a big community and user base. Over time,
everyone switched to Joomla, the rebranded free version - I don't see Mambo
mentioned anywhere anymore.
If the same zeal and effort being spent to oppose Oracle were being spent to
create a community around a fork, helped by the controversy it'd be a widely
known thing already. Couple that with OS vendors choosing the fork over the
"mainline", and in a few years the fork would be "the" MySQL, albeit with a
different name.
------
gaius
I can guarantee that for the $1Bn Sun's shareholder's paid him for it - 14% of
the total price Oracle is paying for _all of Sun_ \- Monty could buy MySQL
back from Oracle and do with it as he pleased. So why doesn't he?
~~~
nailer
Really? Java (which is most of the value of Sun) and MySQL are the only Sun
products in mainstream use. Solaris is in the same state as HPUX was 10 years
ago, VirtualBox and Sun's Xen Product don't have significant market share. Why
would Oracle want to sell MySQL back?
~~~
mseebach
Because they bought Sun for the hardware-business and Java. They sort-a
already have a database, and if selling MySQL to Monty can save them some
trouble with a bored EU regulator that gets its kicks from telling US business
how to operate, I'm sure they'll be happy to. It'll have to be at market
value, though, and it seems a bit like Monty wants a solution where he stays
very rich.
~~~
nailer
So they didn't buy Sun to get the largest OSS database in the world?
Sun's storage products are top notch but I doubt Oracle specifically wanted to
move into the field. Selling replacement SPARCs to the banks that still have
Solaris won't last long, Oracle know that.
~~~
mseebach
Sun has a very good range of hardware that goes far beyond SPARC, and Oracle
is marketing it aggressively[1]
They specifically cited Java and hardware in the acquisition announcement, and
I have a really hard time seeing the strategic value of the MySQL asset.
Oracle has much more to gain from a "come to us when you're ready to sit at
the grown-ups table" position.
1: [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/29/oracle-scolded-by-
ind...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/29/oracle-scolded-by-industry-
group-for-sun-ad/)
~~~
nailer
FYI your citation is a link to an ad for SPARC.
~~~
gaius
Well, yes. The aim was to show that Oracle is actively marketing SPARC. What
better way to do that than by citing an ad?
~~~
nailer
Ah, I thought you were using to site that 'Sun has a very good range of
hardware that goes far beyond SPARC'. Yes, Oracle are marketing SPARC, because
they're going to own it. It doesn't mean that it has a future and people will
start running new projects on SPARC again.
------
jacquesm
Moral of the story: you can't sell your cake and have it too.
------
figital
This is the perfect example of why I will continue to hedge my bets on
permissively-licensed open source (X/MIT/BSD).
Postgres and SQL are great products and should fill any gaps should you
consider switching from MySQL (or Oracle).
------
elblanco
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994584>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Joy of Handles or Anonymity and Privacy on the Network (1992) - tux
http://readtext.org/computers/joy-of-handles/
======
greenyoda
This article was written in 1992, but it's still extremely relevant today. In
1992 online communication was in the form of Usenet and BBSes (plus
proprietary services like AOL), the web was still experimental, and Zuckerberg
was only 8 years old, but the government was already snooping on what people
were writing online. The article contains this quote from Risks Digest:
"I just had an interesting visit from the FBI. It seems that a posting I made
to sci.space several months ago had filtered through channels, caused the FBI
to open (or re-open) a file on me, and an agent wanted to interview me, which
I did voluntarily... I then went on to tell him about the controversy over
Uunet, and their role in supplying archives of Usenet traffic on tape to the
FBI..."
UUNET was one of the biggest providers of Usenet feeds.[1]
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUNET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUNET)
------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8870845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8870845)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nushell – a modern shell written in Rust - bryanrasmussen
https://github.com/nushell/nushell
======
obituary_latte
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006)
------
pcr910303
While I fully appreciate & support the structured shell approach (I believe
it’s the future), I wish the efforts in making a mew shell should be more
directed to a small selection of projects.
elvish[0], uxy[1], ngs[2] and basically all shell projects that allow other
languages(e.g. python: tako[3], racket: rash[4] janet: janetsh[5]) are all
similar attempts; and there are numerous more alternative (non-structured)
shells like fish[6], and a whole lot more.
As a daily user of fish and a person hyped by elvish (but not using it as a
daily driver :-(), I hope some structured shells get at least some traction,
but there are too much approaches.
Well, I didn’t start as a rant but it became one anyway.
[0]: [https://elv.sh/](https://elv.sh/)
[1]: [https://github.com/sustrik/uxy](https://github.com/sustrik/uxy)
[2]: [https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs](https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs)
[3]: [https://takoshell.org/](https://takoshell.org/)
[4]: [https://rash-lang.org/](https://rash-lang.org/)
[5]:
[https://github.com/andrewchambers/janetsh](https://github.com/andrewchambers/janetsh)
[6]: [https://fishshell.com/](https://fishshell.com/)
------
e2le
Nutshell looks like it's shaping up to be the new hotness in shell land.
------
ertucetin
It looks great!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Transcribing Piano Rolls, the Pythonic Way - gcardone_
http://zulko.github.io/blog/2014/02/12/transcribing-piano-rolls/
======
eliteraspberrie
The faster way of doing this:
def fourier_transform(signal, period, tt):
""" See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform
How come Numpy and Scipy don't implement this ??? """
f = lambda func : (signal*func(2*pi*tt/period)).sum()
return f(cos)+ 1j*f(sin)
is using the FFT.
What you want is the _power spectral density_ in the discrete case, called the
power spectrum. It can be calculated by multiplying the discrete Fourier
transform (FFT) with its conjugate, and shifting. NumPy can do it. Here is an
example: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15382076/plotting-
power-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15382076/plotting-power-
spectrum-in-python/15388340#15388340)
~~~
zulko
I knew I was going to have this remark :) Now correct me if I am wrong, but I
think the FFT (which computes the __discrete __Fourier transform) cannot
replace the continous fourier transform in my case, because the optimal
periods I find are non-integer values. In the first case, the holes are
separated by 7.5 pixels. The FFT could only have told me that they are
separated by 7 or 8 pixels, which is not precise enough. Same thing for the
tempo, a beat corresponds to 7.1 frames of the video, and a FFT would have
told me 7.
If someone knows a way to use the FFT to get non-integer periods (apart from
oversampling the signal) I'll gladly change the code.
~~~
peterwoo
The maximum frequency you can detect is limited by your sampling rate, but
there's not a limit on the precision with which you can break those
frequencies up.
It's controlled by a parameter NFFT -- the PSD will compute (NFFT/2+1) values
evenly spaced between 0 and the Nyquist frequency.
So say the frame rate is 15Hz and you compute with NFFT=2048, then PSD[970]
contains the amplitude at 7.09Hz.
This was a really cool project by the way!
~~~
zulko
Thanks, I learned something. I will try it and amend the blog when I have
time.
~~~
Serow225
Forgot to say, great post! :)
------
rfleck
See a master at work making original rolls at QRS.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FTaGwfXPM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FTaGwfXPM)
If was a fun place to see in the 70's after watching my father rebuild our
player piano.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Interesting that they used computers to make them. It seems obvious in
hindsight; player piano music is digital!
~~~
userbinator
Also interesting that we had digital data storage, in the form of punched
cards and tape, decades before digital computers.
~~~
vajrabum
Longer than that. The Jaquard loom was invented in 1801 and the player piano
was first demonstrated in 1876.
------
msvan
What a fascinating convergence of math, music and Python. Many people I meet
who don't specialize in math but have taken university-level courses in it
seem to remember the Fourier transform as a highlight, probably because of its
many applications.
------
kbd
I love the abundance of Python. For those unaware, even the youtube-dl command
line utility he used to download the video is written in Python.
~~~
w1ntermute
And in contrast to what its name suggests, youtube-dl supports 150+ different
services: [http://rg3.github.io/youtube-
dl/supportedsites.html](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html)
------
stevetjoa
Very cool!
Relevant: Zenph makes "re-performances" of old piano recordings. They take a
recording, do music transcription magic to get the exact timings and
velocities of each note event, and then feed that into a player piano. So it's
as if you are listening to the ghost of Rachmaninov sitting at the piano, as
shown here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevzbV6Hkkk&t=28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevzbV6Hkkk&t=28)
(music starts at 0:28)
(I just visited [http://zenph.com](http://zenph.com) for the first time in
about a year, and it appears that they've pivoted into a music education
company.)
------
nanidin
Interesting question - is the author's transcription a derivative work of the
video? And if so, is he actually allowed to release his transcription into the
public domain (without the permission of the author of the video)?
~~~
shakethemonkey
No, it's only derivative in the sense of process. The video lacks originality;
for the musical notes it is merely a mechanical reproduction of the punched
holes. Similarly, a photograph of a public domain painting is also in the
public domain. See: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191
(S.D.N.Y. 1999). At least this is the law in the United States, which is
sensible; absurdity of other jurisdictions may vary.
~~~
nanidin
It's nice to know our system accounts for cases like this. Thanks for the
detailed info!
------
ntoshev
What if you tried to transcribe the music solely from Fourier transform of the
audio source? I expect the piano has an abundance of harmonics, but there
should be some way to distinguish them from the keys. Hasn't someone done it
already?
~~~
gtani
i've seen NNLS/chroma referenced in a few places, like the chordify papers:
[http://isophonics.net/nnls-chroma](http://isophonics.net/nnls-chroma)
Here's chordify:
[http://ismir2012.ismir.net/event/papers/295_ISMIR_2012.pdf](http://ismir2012.ismir.net/event/papers/295_ISMIR_2012.pdf)
That conference has great references but unfortunately hasn't been repeated
since 2012
[http://www.ismir.net/proceedings/index.php](http://www.ismir.net/proceedings/index.php)
------
selmnoo
That was a lovely read, thank you so much for writing and sharing it.
------
elwell
Really fantastic hack. Now try transcribing with just the audio track.
~~~
anigbrowl
That's a hard problem. If you have some material like that with a clear
recording, the only good commercial solution that I know of is Melodyne, and
he's not saying how he does it. In theory you just look for multiple peaks in
the FFT, but this is much easier said than done.
~~~
d_loemax
i built a plogue bidule patch before melodyne rolled out "dna" and it is
extremely difficult to get the optimal fft parameters to get an accurate
conversion. i cant imagine an algorithm that would get it right from analyzing
the sample would be any less difficult. ableton's and cubase's options are
pretty rough too. i am a drummer though, i am just trying to make up for my
ears.
------
bede
My favourite blog post of 2014. Thank you for sharing.
------
analog31
I think this is a nice solution because it takes care of the hardware side of
things by making use of a garden variety video camera.
------
StavrosK
This is beautiful, it's one good idea after another, good job!
------
peapicker
This is really nice, thanks for sharing it with us.
------
cdelsolar
So, so cool. I love posts like this.
------
evidencepi
Nice post, thanks for sharing!
------
smortaz
fantastic. with your permission, i'd love to use this to demo python!
~~~
zulko
Yeah, sure.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work - benaadams
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/12/05/always-connected-pcs-enable-a-new-culture-of-work/
======
benaadams
built in 4G LTE2/Gigabit LTE and week long battery life
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: HaxlSharp – Concurrent data fetching and request deduplication in C# - ppcsf
https://github.com/joashc/HaxlSharp
======
zzzcpan
> Writing asynchronous code is error-prone; Asynchronous code obscures the
> meaning of what we're trying to achieve; Programmers are bad at reasoning
> about asynchronous code
This is simply incorrect. There is a lot of FUD about this, but it doesn't
make a smallest difference for a code with essential complexity of a typical
CRUD app. But once you need to deal even with slightly more essential
complexity, like managing a pool of connections, cancelling them,
reconnecting, asynchronous code comes to the rescue, with all the callbacks
and higher-order functions. Synchronous looking code cannot help with
asynchronous problems, no matter how hard you try. It can only introduce
additional accidental complexity. It's better to have and get used to a solid
asynchronous foundation to begin with.
~~~
ppcsf
I'm not sure that "the areas of the complexity spectrum where the problems are
too simple for async/await" overlaps with "the areas of the complexity
spectrum that async/await can't handle", but I agree that there's an issue
there. Async/ await is definitely an incomplete solution, and Haxl attempts to
address one area where the abstraction fails. Of course, there are always
places where you can do better dealing with the asynchronous/ concurrent
primitives, but just like there's a place for both manual memory management
and garbage collection, I think there are use cases where these abstractions
can provide real value.
------
bbcbasic
This style of programming reminds me of SQL where you specify intent and let a
query optimiser work out the execution plan. I like it. Not sure this is
production ready but it'd be fun to try at work.
------
NKCSS
When reading, I thought: do I really need a framework for this? I've written
simular batching before in c# but for the more elaborate cases, it makes sense
and the de-duplication and only retrieving once to ensure all instances are
the same looks nice; well done!
~~~
ppcsf
Yeah, it's certainly preferable to use Task.WhenAll or Promise.all in simple
cases.
For more complex cases, I like to make the analogy with asynchronous code.
There's a few problems with complex async code that only uses a minimal
abstraction, like callbacks:
* Writing asynchronous code is error-prone
* Asynchronous code obscures our intent
* Programmers are bad at reasoning about asynchronous code
So we developed abstractions like async/await and promises, allowing us to
write async code in a sequential-looking way. Unfortunately, introducing
concurrency into the mix breaks this sequential abstraction, which means
certain familiar problems emerge:
* Writing _concurrent_ code is error-prone
* _Concurrent_ code obscures our intent
* Programmers are bad at reasoning about _concurrent_ code
Haxl attempts to reclaim this sequential abstraction, allowing us to write
code that _looks_ sequential, but is actually concurrent "behind the scenes".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EEVBlog analyses the Banksy shredder prank [video] - okket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKdQWhlNTY
======
coolspot
Those blades that have no way to be shredding mechanism made me wonder too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bathroom hand dryers may leave your hands dirtier than before - kimsk112
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/bathroom-hand-dryers-may-leave-your-hands-dirtier-than-before-gross-new-study-says/ar-AAvPtOr?OCID=ansmsnnews11&ffid=gz
======
MajorSauce
At this point we should soon see recommendations to insert our hands in
sterilized Ziploc bags after having washed them.
I fail to see why so much concern is directed toward this instead of door-
knobs, workplace keyboards, payment PIN entry pads, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I fixed a bug in one of the U.S.'s systems for detecting nuclear explosions - edward
https://twitter.com/vaurorapub/status/1265335071130566656
======
seesawtron
cool. This serves as a reminder why both human intelligence and machine
automation to control weapons of mass destruction from launching and killing
us all are so vulnerable and need to be denuclreaized before its too late.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google indexer is two-pass, first run is without js - josephscott
https://twitter.com/Paul_Kinlan/status/1039852756113080320
======
jazoom
A comment from JohnMu is even more informative:
_Yeah, there 's no fixed timeframe -- the rendering can happen fairly quickly
in some cases, but usually it's on the order of days to a few weeks even. If
your site produces new / updated content frequently & you want it indexed
quickly, you need that content in the HTML._
------
Something1234
Does this really surprise anyone? Why should my scraper have to execute your
arbitrary code bundle, and why should I as a reader have to run your bundle to
get any content? The default dom with content should be the one that gets
delivered.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why algorithms are called algorithms - jonbaer
https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/why-algorithms-are-called-algorithms/p07gdlwf
======
derrick_jensen
is it because of Al Gore
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My idea on connecting job seekers to companies - fivesquare
http://vamshisuram.blogspot.in/2014/05/connecting-job-seekers-with-companies.html
======
jsphdnl
you rock
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How high ($'s) should you go when showing pricing on your website? - jusben1369
We're all familiar with sites that have 3 or 4 plans for different categories of usage. Then there's the "Need Enterprise pricing? Contact us" or something similar. When, why and how to you make the determination to have pricing that you don't show? Why not show it all or show none vs show some and then tell your biggest prospective customers to contact you? How do "enterprise" buyers feel when they see that? Catered to or potentially manipulated?
======
monkeyspaw
My argument against showing no pricing is that general consumers are similar
enough that you can bucket them. They want to see pricing. And they're smaller
dollar values, so you can't afford to take the time to customize a quote for
them.
Enterprise buyers are used to the effort to get a quote. And they want to feel
special. Combine that with how different they are (is enterprise 100 users, or
10,000?), and you can see why they aren't sufficiently similar to treat in one
plan. The high dollar value also means you can afford to have a high touch
sales process.
Normal customers often shop on price. Enterprise customers often don't. You're
selling to the normals, and sending a signal to enterprise folks that you can
handle a customer of their size.
------
ig1
Once you start getting to large scale purchases you'll tend to need to do a
lot more hand-holding to close the sale in any case.
It's not about pulling out a credit card and just paying for the service, but
about multiple people in the customers company having to approve of the
purchase (including the team manager, their manager, the CIO, the purchasing
department, legal, etc.)
One of the key parts of an enterprise salespersons job is to help the
individual at the company who wants to purchase the product to navigate their
own internal purchasing process.
Enterprise sales can often involve more work in-term of onboarding and
ensuring your capacity scales to handle them correctly. Enterprise customer
will also often want to negotiate pricing and have custom legal terms drawn up
(NDAs, etc.).
Because of all these factors it doesn't make sense to have an upfront price
because the sales price will vary from customer to customer.
------
mazumdar
You might find this article (currently on the front-page) to be useful:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5435862>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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