M: Ask HN: best music background to work?  - creonik
For example, I am finding I prefer <i>not</i> to listen to songs I know since I would try to follow the lyrics and that would take part of my brain and distract me.What's your favourite music when you code,design or work in general?

R: kroger
Like many people, if I'm thinking and designing I prefer to have no music. If
I'm doing these things in a noisy environment I may listen to some rain
recordings such as [1].

When I'm coding I mainly listen to classical music. The problem is that I need
to listen to things I know very well or I'll get distracted, so I end up
listening to the same compositions over and over again, to the annoyment of my
wife ;-)

These days the compositions I list the most while coding are:

\- Beethoven String Quartets, for instance [2] (I really like the fugato at
5:00 ;-)

\- Mahler Symphonies, for example [3]

\- Ravel music

\- Some Monteverdi madrigals [4]

I like to use headphones, either a Sennheiser PX 200 [5] or a Sennheiser
HD-280 PRO [6].

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRv-243Cmk>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55PIXCQgEfE>

[3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkoeH5BtLyQ>

[4] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDyNzPUQbo>

[5] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-200-II-
Headphones/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-200-II-
Headphones/dp/B002VPDOHS)

[6] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-
Headphones/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-
Headphones/dp/B000065BPB)

R: creonik
Thanks.I am switching to classical music and works much better. Right now I am
listening to Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone playing Moses and Marco Polo Theme.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoQbusZ7os>. It's beautiful (when not
interrupted by Spotify ads!)

R: hboon
I've tried white noise, Naturespace, Kap Slap mixes, Pop mixes, Gregorian,
etc.

I've found that I am pretty productive in a cafe these days, so I started
listening to tracks of cafe background noise when I work from home recently,
such as "People Talking in Coffee Shop" by Finnolia Productions [1].

Might write more about this if it works well enough.

[1] iTunes affiliate link: [http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-
bin/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&...](http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-
bin/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Falbum%2Fpeople-
sound-effects-2%2Fid582685672&u1=h)

R: radq
I usually listen to one of the Music for Programming[1] mixes, and when I'm in
the mood for more ambient music I listen to Brian Eno.

[1] <http://musicforprogramming.net/>

R: creonik
I did not it. Thanks for the link.

R: deathwithme
Depends on your work. For instance, if you have a good software design a web
application, you can code it with heavy metal music because listing metal
music with programming is improving the velocity of coding.

R: creonik
You are right. As I listen to a lot of classical music, I realize I am
thinking better but also slowing down too much. Thanks

R: jlengrand
Best site I could find was created by a fellow HN follower :)

<http://www.getworkdonemusic.com/#>

I listen to it everyday and never get bored :)

R: rex64
I usually listen to slow tempo piano jazz or rainymood.com

R: whichdan
There are a couple threads on this already.

turntable.fm's "Ambient Chillout & Trip Hop" room is usually quite good.

R: keva161
I usually just go on 8tracks and listen to the first 'coding' or 'programming'
playlist that shows up.

R: vojant
Depends on the mood I'm in. From slow piano/classic to techno.

R: anons2011
soma.fm - Mission Control, Space station or Drone Zone

di.fm - Chillout, Minimal or Ambient

bassdrive.com (liquid dnb)


M: Physicists create hole in Time to hide events - ekm
http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/07/18/physicists-create-a-hole-in-time-to-hide-events/

R: glimcat
Normally I'd blame the media for putting a sensational spin on things, but the
paper is really at fault here.

The usual metamaterials cloaking trick involves spatial-domain cloaking. You
make the probe beam go around the target.

They're doing time-domain cloaking by selectively altering the velocity of the
beam. Not time cloaking.

R: evilswan
Awesome.


M: Show HN: I made an extension that adds time cost to Amazon products - vilvadot
https://moneyistime.vilva.io/

R: vilvadot
Hi everyone, author here! I just released this project I made for fun for
myself, I had the idea in my mind for forever now and wanted to try my best at
building and extension over it. So here it is. Hope you like it and
contribute!

Right now it only supports Amazon since it is the site I use the most, but it
is pretty trivial to add more shops.

BTW, I just searched for myself on the Chrome Store and found a surprisingly
identical extension O_o. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is-
money/oopp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is-
money/ooppbnomdcjmoepangldchpmjhkeendl) it seems it's more mature than mine,
so here you have another option!

R: elwell
I like the idea, what are the chrome permissions like? Is the code open-source
so I can analyze?

R: vilvadot
Sure, you can find the repo in the site, here it is:
[https://github.com/vilvadot/money-is-
time/](https://github.com/vilvadot/money-is-time/)

Only explicitily asks for storage access to set a flag when the extension is
enabled and to save the hourly rate.

It does have access to execute the code on amazon too, which basically is
reading info from html and inject another html node.


M: Ask HN: Is the stock market the AI paper clip machine? - sharemywin

R: SirLJ
How AI Could Destroy The Universe... With Paperclips:

[https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-
wit...](https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-with-
paperclips-a5b19901056e)

R: bulatb
Not just the stock market. Money is a measure that became a target, with the
usual results.

Goodhart's law is always in effect.

R: yasp
no?

R: sharemywin
obviously not literally. If jobs are paper clips. If the goal of the stock
market is to maximize corporate profits. The best way to do that is through
automation. Both, physical and mental. Doesn't that create a machine that
controls most of the wealth and eliminates a need for humans.


M: Why Good Visualization Matters: Rethinking the Food Label - apievangelist
http://blog.infochimps.com/2011/09/23/why-good-visualization-matters-rethinking-the-food-label/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+infochimps-blog+%28blog.infochimps.org%29

R: hugh3
I'm not sure this is great visualization.

Firstly, trace ingredients are often what's important to the consumer. Fine, I
know my peanut butter is mostly peanuts, but how much salt is there?

Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of
chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty
ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives
down in a tiny box in the corner.

Thirdly, apparently labellers aren't obliged to split up certain categories
(eg broccoli, sugar snap peas, green beans and carrots are all in a single
green square). So presumably this doesn't even solve the specified problem of
not knowing how much white vs whole wheat is in your food -- why would you
split up white and whole wheat into separate categories when beans and carrots
are the same?

R: calebmpeterson
> Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of
> chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty
> ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives
> down in a tiny box in the corner.

How about inverting the tree-map such that the smaller the amount, the greater
the portion of the tree-map taken up? You're going to need all of that space
anyway for the names of those potentially-nasty additives to be printed in a
legible font size...

R: hugh3
Ah, the homeopathic approach to food labelling. I'm gonna sprinkle a grain of
gold dust on every twinkie I sell, just to screw with the label.

R: oscilloscope
A few friends of mine built something similar. Loaded the USDA nutrition
database in a dropdown, and scaled 24 vitamins, nutrients, calories, etc by
recommended daily intake:

<http://exposedata.com/intake/foodpick.html> (takes a minute to load)

Many people have told me an added layer of discovering foods with particular
nutritional qualities (filtering, sorting) would be very appealing. A
recommendation engine for food.

If you're looking to hack on the dataset, check out this JSON version:

<http://ashleyw.co.uk/project/food-nutrient-database>

R: andreyon
wow, that's really cool!

can they make a side by side comparator? it doesn't have to actually compare,
can be just another frame ( or frames) where I can select the same and do the
comparison myself.

For example I want to see the differences in raw broccoli and steamed
broccoli.

R: oscilloscope
Open two browser windows ;)

Here are a few other concepts we messed around with:

<http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/rdi.html> (stacked bars)

<http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/groups.html> (hover to see
vegetable/nutrients)

<http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/matrix.html> (matrix plot)

R: SeanLuke
This is pretty bad I think. The amount of substance by mass is nearly
completely unimportant. Consider a package which has 99.999% Organic Apples
and 0.001% Plutonium. But hey, it's 99.999% organic! Look at all that red!

Much better is a simple ordered list of ingredients, so we're not bamboozled
into ignoring certain ingredients just because they're not the majority of the
content. But wait, thats ... what we already have on our packaging? What good
visualization!

R: rossriley
The new food labelling in the UK is based on a traffic light principle and,
imho seems to be clearer:
[http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44434000/jpg/_44434134...](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44434000/jpg/_44434134_foodlabel203pa.jpg)

The problem with this exaple is that it's hard to see quickly what the key
points are, since prominence is automatically given to higher scores, whether
they're good or bad.

R: aaronblohowiak
IMHO, the Nutrition Information box is actually a shining example of good
design already. It is very, very legible and has a clear information
hierarchy.

R: astarwithin
I like knowing how much of things is in my food. :)

R: notatoad
it's a cool idea, but i believe most manufacturers would claim 'trade secrets'
protections before putting proportions on their labels.

R: jzb
They'd claim something to avoid having to make it easy to visualize just
what's in processed food...

R: rorrr
His example with 5 ingredients in unreadable already. What will happen with
10-20?


M: HN Roundup: Hacker News Hacks - rcfox

Between browser extensions, Dotjs, Greasemonkey, etc., there are many ways of hacking HN. Most of them seem to be crappy or esoteric.<p>Let's round up all of the hacks that we actually find useful!

R: jawns
Highlight new comments on HN homepage (Greasemonkey script):

[http://coding.pressbin.com/74/Update-on-Greasemonkey-
script-...](http://coding.pressbin.com/74/Update-on-Greasemonkey-script-for-
Hacker-News-homepage)

R: rcfox
HNCommentTracker (Chrome extension) - Highlights comments you haven't seen
before, and shows an indicator of how many new comments exist for comment
pages that you've previously read.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnccaddiplgjjhbog)

R: rcfox
Hacker News Collapsible Comments (Chrome extension) - Lets you collapse entire
comment threads.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd)


M: Ask HN: Why are Americans always the good guys in video games? - turkthrower123

R: zabana
This is a very interesting question.

I've always wondered what the backlash would be if a studio were to release a
Call of Duty style game from the point of view of middle eastern factions
resisting the illegal invasion of their land and massacre of their people.

Because it seems to me that these FPS war simulations are very close to
reality (ie using real location names and sometimes actual 3D rendered
versions of said locations) and are somehow being used as a propanganda tool
to get most people on board with whatever the political agenda is at the time.
I know this sounds very conspiratorial and I'm open to counter arguments but I
can't shake off this feeling. Hope I'm wrong though because this is rather
depressing.

R: viraptor
> I know this sounds very conspiratorial

Not really. Some games got American military funding to promote the army.

> wondered what the backlash would be

For examples, look at backlash to farcry 5. See
[https://www.change.org/p/ubisoft-cancel-far-
cry-5](https://www.change.org/p/ubisoft-cancel-far-cry-5) where people just
can't handle white American Christians being the bad guys.

R: non-entity
> Us Gamers have had to endure a lot of crap over the last few years. The
> targeted harassment by the mainstream press through Gamergate, the terrible
> launch and outright lies of highly anticpated video games, the outright
> censorship of art through "localization" policies, the continued rejection
> of romantic partners when they find out our hobby, the appropriation of our
> culture by so-called "gamers" on twitter. NO MORE!

This has got to be satire. This reads almost like the gamers rise up memes.

R: viraptor
I remember seeing a lot of this kind of ideas at the time farcry 5 was
released. This site may be satire itself. But if it is, it's heavily inspired
by reality.

R: ajeet_dhaliwal
Because they _are_ the good guys of course :-) Almost all triple A games are
made in the US itself or allies (UK/Canada/Japan/EU) so it's expected these
games will have a positive view. Same reason it's true in Hollywood. Most
people just want to get on and have fun with a game, not overthink politics
and ethics and I don't see it as an issue. The more annoying thing is when
you're nudged to know random guy is evil due to generic Russian/Middle East
accent.

R: iDemonix
Because the Americans make a lot of those types of video games, and if you
want to pander to your biggest market, you make them the good guys.

R: LUmBULtERA
I've played a lot of video games where they aren't. In fact, I'd posit most
video games don't take place with real-world geopolitics/national boundaries
at all. And where they do, I don't think it's unusual that the antagonist may
be an American.

R: blaser-waffle
Because the US won the struggle against the USSR and now the global economy is
loosely based around US-style liberal capitalism. Most countries and their
place in the international order is relative to their participation in this
system. This is best explained in Jihad vs. McWorld by Barber[1].

What this means is that those who want to buy-in to this global system have to
deal with Western (US) media, Western (US) norms, and even the language of the
West (the language most common in the US). English is the new lingua franca,
and is the language of business. This creates huge incentives to develop media
(games, movies, whatever) that can be ported into English and sold to wealthy
US consumers (something the Japanese figured out in the 90s -- think of bad
Final Fantasy translations a la FF7). Plus many studios are in the US and make
games for the US market, and to a lesser degree the export market (Chinese and
Korean gaming leagues being the biggest pushes, IMO).

That said, I remember one of the Medal of Honor games (WW2 themed) which has
you killing Japanese in the Pacific -- and was still hugely popular in
Japan.[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld)
[2] [https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers-
love-a...](https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers-love-
avenging-pearl-harbor.html)

R: tsukikage
Because, as an English speaker, most video games you play are of American
origin.

R: turkthrower123
As a Turk, I Believe that _all_ games I play are of American or Japanese
origin.

R: krapp
There are European game studios as well.

R: stuxnet79
But European game studios have to cater to the American market or they risk
going out of business. The simple answer to OPs question is: Americans are
always the good guys in gaming because the American market is a large one for
gaming and a lot of what's trendy and tasteful in gaming has to have an
American bias for this very reason.


M: What should Apple do with the iPod? - barredo
http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/apple-ipod/

R: dpcan
Market it against the Nintendo DS.

I bought iPod Touches for my 2 oldest kids and my wife last Christmas. So,
this year, instead of buying $30-$40 games, they have been able to buy several
$2 games throughout each month.

It's been a blast, the savings are starting to really show, and they even like
the games better.

R: georgemcbay
"they even like the games better."

That's just what they tell you so you don't feel bad for getting them iPod
touches. They secretly play Nintendo 3DS games at friends' houses.

R: ericd
Yeah, I really wish people would start making some meatier games for the
iPhone to go with all the 5 minute junk food distractions that are about as
entertaining as bouncing a ball. There have been a few games of more
substance, but for the most part, it doesn't hold a candle to the DS' library.

R: mdemare
For "extremely meaty", try King of Dragon Pass, an indie PC hit from 10 years
ago just released on iOS.

R: ericd
That looks like what I was talking about, thanks! I just downloaded it. Any
other recs?

R: Gring
Carcassonne is also very complex and rewarding to master. It's also a great
social game when everybody sits around one iPad.

R: daimyoyo
I think as long as it remains profitable, they should keep it. The R&D costs
are already well recouped so it's basically little more than a profit center.
I understand Apple doesn't exactly need the money, but I think it would be a
bad idea to kill off a licence to print money like the iPod.

R: qq66
Apple likes to keep a limited product lineup, so if a model isn't particularly
necessary they can replace it with another product (such as an Apple TV
variant), as well as consuming display space in stores.

R: skizm
Please please please make a waterproof one. The only reason I use my ipod over
my phone for music is because I do not like to sweat all over my phone when I
work out. Also for running in the rain (maybe for battery life on a long plane
ride). If they made a waterproof ipod nano that would solve all my problems.
Also if they for that direction just make headphones and a case that I can use
to swim with. There is h2oaudio.com (which is awesome) but I would rather it
just come straight from apple.

</2cents>

R: gry
It will become like the Mac business. Routine updates with nothing to announce
unless it's special; unibody fabrication or designs like the Air.

That is until they reset their business.

The iPod product will be rebranded and remain iOS device that does everything
but have a phone. iPod rebranded with iPhone form and function, except no
phone functionality.

A Mac line, iPad line and a handset line. Face it, calling is now a feature on
a computer. It's not a phone with features.

R: tomelders
The only graph that matters there is the first one, and no one should be
surprised that units have dropped. They should be surprised that they've
dropped so little since the iPhone does everything the iPod does and more.

% of revenue presented like that is misleading. The iPhone and the iPad are
selling like hot cakes and making a ton of money, but they're not iPods.

Revenue growth at around -6% may look bad, but that just means they're making
1.48 billion minus 6%. If you don't think that's a lot of money, you're mad.

iDevice revenue breakdown.... what's the point of that graph?

Here's what Apple should do with the iPod. Keep innovating. $1.48 Billion is a
lot of money. It's a business in it's own right.

IT'S MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS!!!!

R: Steko
Obviously they don't have to do anything with it, it's still profitable and
has high margins. There's obviously some potential to grow though.

The touch is basically a prepaid phone with no phone chip. They could add that
phone chip and absorb the margin hit through scale in China, etc. Bound to
happen sooner or later.

The nano is a redesign away from assaulting the global watch market (over $40
bln this year).

The shuffle, I could seem them innovating the form factor, why not abstract it
right into the earbuds.

The classic is dead, growth wise so they can keep selling it but don't think
it'd shock anyone if they shut it down tomorrow.

R: ROFISH
I think the classic will die when you can fit 256GB into an iPod Touch, either
through flash memory or a thicker hard drive version. Otherwise the iPod
Classic still sells to those that _HAVE_ to have 200+ GB of music with them at
all times.

R: Steko
Yeah well there was still a market for x-serves but it wasn't big enough so
eventually they killed it.

The only way I can see them getting growth out of the classic would be to put
the massive memory to work hauling HD video around instead of music. That does
suggest an interesting iOS device maybe aimed at high end camcorders if they
can find a tiny 1 TB drive in the pipe somewhere.

R: nknight
They're probably selling 20-30 times as many iPod Classics/year as they ever
did xserves, even at their peak. The xserve also didn't do anything to act as
a draw toward other Apple products, and required frequent revisions to keep
up. I bet ongoing iPod Classic R&D budget is statistical noise.

R: Steko
I'm not making a close analogy and I'm not saying they should shut it down.

I'm just saying Apple will know when the classic isn't worth the
time/energy/shelf space and I wouldn't be shocked if they announced this is
the case in weeks rather then years.

And I guess I'm making a wild guess as to how they might keep an HDD based
idevice relevant although I don't think that's particularly likely either.

R: whichdan
For what it's worth, I have a relatively large music collection (100gb+) and
used an 80gb iPod for two years before getting a 32gb iPhone. The difference
in usability was /huge/, to the point where I didn't miss the 50gb of space.
If I didn't have a smartphone and had the option of a 128gb iPod Touch, it
would be a no-brainer for me.

Personally, I don't think anything would be lost by discontinuing the iPod
Classic, as long as something with a sizeable capacity replaced it.

R: jcampbell1
Apple would be nuts to get rid of the shuffle. Keeping the iTunes ecosystem
strong is really important, as the kid with a shuffle today is best served by
an iPhone in the future.

R: TallTalesOrTrue
Keep it around. Its a hook to get people to use the mac ecosystem. That's the
product that started the resurrection of mac. I'm sure Apple will keep it
around and keep on making minor changes to it overtime.

R: bkorte
They should do nothing. Keep upgrading the capacity upgrading periodically.

I bet that in the same keynote as the next iPhone release, Apple will rename
the iPod Touch to just "iPod".

R: signalsignal
With the iCloud service ramping up, I suspect that the iPod classic may get
PC-less syncing at some point. But then it would have to include some sort of
wireless option as well.

R: glhaynes
I'd be surprised if they spent the engineering dollars on writing the non-iOS
code to do that and integrating wireless equipment into what I _think_ is the
lowest-selling model of iPod, a product whose sales are rapidly being replaced
by iOS-based iPods and iPhones.

R: sliverstorm
If they thought about this ahead of time, perhaps developing for both
platforms is similar enough they could add the feature to both the
iPhone/iTouch and the iPod Classic at the same time?

R: marze
200M iPod users are nothing to sneeze at: they represent an enormous pool of
potential iPhone and iPad users, and Apple has been using the iPod Touch as a
"gateway drug" for iOS for years now.

The Retina display 16G iPod touch has to be the lowest margin product in
Apple's lineup, due to its place as a low cost stepping stone to the more
expensive iOS devices.

It would be cool if they made the Nano a wrist mounted remote display for the
iPhone, though.

R: p4wnc6
They should make it into a phone.

R: SurfScore
Apple has always been one to do what THEY think is best, and then make
everybody follow along. They did it with iOS and flash, basically saying "hey
we don't like this, you shouldn't either, so we aren't going to let you use
it." for better or for worse, this has always been Apple's Modus Operandi, and
whether or not you believe in it, judging by their stock prices, it's worked.

One of the biggest killers of the iPod is the fact that the iPhone is no
longer exclusive to AT&T. How many millions of people bought an iPod because
they had Verizon and didn't feel like dealing with AT&T? This is only going to
get worse with the iPhone 5, which will presumably be on all major carriers.

I think the emergence of Android has made all altogether killing the iPod
unrealistic. I have yet to see an Android phone that handles music as well as
the iPod does, and Apple knows this. I think what is going to happen is that
Apple will revamp the line again in a year or so, and do something to make it
relevant. I would say the iPod touch, ironically enough, is the one in the
most danger of being killed off, what with it's big brother iPad owning the
tablet market and the iPhone doing everything that it does and more.

R: smackfu
I still see a lot of nanos at the gym, but there are also a lot of people just
using their iPhones / Droids. (And for actual street running, the nano is a
bit better being smaller and lighter and not $600 to replace when you drop
it.)

R: georgemcbay
For street running I personally prefer my phone to a small dedicated music
player. Having a phone means having access to all of my music via Google Music
plus gps with apps to track my speed/distance progress.

R: smackfu
I just think it's a little heavy to strap to your arm, and holding it in my
hand seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

R: rob08
I actually hadn't thought of the rumored new iPhone 5 design as a possibility
of it being the next iPod Touch. Maybe that's why we haven't heard any iPod
Touch rumors yet?

R: jmmcd
The ipod shuffle is awesome, I use it everyday because it's tiny and I don't
care what happens to it. I almost never use my ipod touch or classic.

R: Apocryphon
Not everyone needs or wants a smartphone yet. Keep it.

R: pointyhat
I think they should bring back the "old" Nano. A lot of people haven't bought
the new one as they still like tactile controls and want a screen large enough
to watch a video. They also don't want an iPhone or to pay for the touch. They
shot themselves there.

There has been a lot of innovation with the iPod but some of it hasn't always
been that great. Consider the "stick" shaped shuffle which reverted back to
the old design in the latest revision. I consider the touch-based iPod Nano to
be the same sort of unnecessary crock.


M: Safari's text-shadow Anti-aliasing CSS hack (applies to Chrome as well) - coderdude
http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2009/03/safari-text-shadow-anti-aliasing-css-hack/

R: robflynn
I noticed this a while back when I mocking up a few designs in Chrome. It's a
pretty neat trick that I make use of on occasion when things look rougher than
I'd like.

Be sure to test in multiple browsers, though, as I actually ran into a
situation once where it looked great in webkit based browsers but looked oddly
blurry despite my settings in Firefox. That may have improved with recent
updates.

R: coderdude
Here's a convenient way to test it out: <http://www.elfboy.com/text-shadow/>


M: Edward Tufte - Technophilis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

R: mwexler
Forgive me for asking, but why is this link here on HN? I mean, he's a great
guy and all, but what is the relevance to HN at this point?

R: elblanco
Lots of companies/projects work in the field of information visualization, on
the bookshelves of almost all of them, you can find Tufte's books. He's
largely considered the leader in the theory of displaying information in as
dense and as clear of a method as possible than enables people to perceive the
encoded information as rapidly and as correctly as possible.

He's best known for sparklines we all enjoy when looking at tables of stock
prices, but those are likely the the least of his contributions to the field.

references:

<http://www.palantirtech.com/>

<http://www.futurepointsystems.com/>

<http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_(computer_graphic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_\(computer_graphics\))

<http://www.esri.com/>

<http://nvac.pnl.gov/>


M: People Keeping Mold-A-Rama Alive - artsandsci
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mold-a-rama-archive-retro-plastic-mold-a-matic

R: justinph
I grew up collecting these from the Milwaukee County Zoo. I never realized
they were a somewhat regional thing. Neato!

R: muttech
Just seeing the picture of the machine brings back the melted plastic smell. I
remember trying to collect each one at the Milwaukee zoo, and inevitably
breaking the head off of them before long.

R: hahamrfunnyguy
I've always found these machine fascinating, never seen one in person though.
I am surprised the molds are aluminum instead of steel. Typically aluminum
molds are considered suitable for smaller runs only. If they do 100 parts a
day that's 36.5K cycles per year.

R: anfractuosity
Why is aluminium considered suitable for smaller runs only out of interest?

R: mcphage
Aluminum is softer than steel, so the mold wears out quicker - the models lose
details.

R: anfractuosity
Ah cheers that makes sense. One thing I was wondering would they use stainless
steel for moulds, to prevent them rusting?

R: TylerE
Nope, "real" molds are made out of tool steel. Corrosion isn't really a
problem since machines are typically stored indoors.

R: mcphage
They have several machines at the Lowry Park Zoo, in Tampa, Florida. I got one
a few years back - the hippopotamus that is shown in the article. I love it, and
if I ever get back there, I'm going to get a few more. It was cool to do!

R: the_trapper
They're all over the San Antonio Zoo as well. My kids loved making them.

R: zafka
I am actually coveting one of those little plastic toys. I need to think on
this for a while :)

R: ChuckMcM
I find myself coveting a Mold-a-rama machine to make molds for it :-).
Injection molding is pretty expensive to do in small quantities, I would like
to have a 'table top' machine where I could trade time for money.

R: cr0sh
Combine this:

[https://makezine.com/projects/make-41-tinkering-toys/diy-
inj...](https://makezine.com/projects/make-41-tinkering-toys/diy-injection-
molding/)

With this:

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Plastic-Injection-
Moldi...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Plastic-Injection-Molding-with-
an-Epoxy-Mold/)

Alternatively, you can purchase a hand injection molding machine as mentioned
in the above instructable, if you don't want to build your own:

[http://www.easyplasticmolding.com/model_150/home.html](http://www.easyplasticmolding.com/model_150/home.html)

...for $1800.00. So - if you have more money than time, materials and skill -
well, it's possible.

R: ChuckMcM
And they are reasonably close in Scotts Valley. I'm definitely going to have
to get one of those.

EDIT: Interesting that the Makezine article has a pretty big problem. It
doesn't actually show you how to make the 'second half' of the epoxy mold. To
make the second half, you would have to assemble the mold and then pour epoxy
into the assembled mold. Depending on the material you'd probably end up some
how pumping that epoxy in, and you would need to pull a vacuum on it to avoid
bubbles.

Its a nit of course, but worth considering.

R: monocasa
Oh wow, I totally forgot I had one of those (the T Rex) growing up.

Ended up being one of my favorite bath toys.

Memories.


M: Dilithium crystal fusion impulse engine in development - aneth4
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57523867-1/star-trek-fusion-impulse-engine-in-the-works/

R: uvdiv
The other article has a nonzero information content, for a change:

[http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-
tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-
researchers-to-begin-fusion)

Summary: it's nuclear pulse propulsion (riding the shock wave of a nuclear
explosion). _Small_ nuclear explosions in this concept: they hope to create
small (~1 ton TNT eq.) pure-fusion explosions using nanosecond bursts of
extremely powerful electric currents (plasma Z-pinch). Basically, it's the
same problem as fusion power plants based on "inertial confinement" (euphemism
for "explosion").

Lithium is a progenitor of tritium. This is common D+T fusion.

This concept is not remotely close to practicality. Which is why the reported
goal ("a mind-bending 62,600 mph") is bizarre; it's only a small factor better
than chemical rockets. It's just as bad as e.g. nuclear thermal propulsion,
which was designed and built 40 years ago. So I really don't see the point.

R: WiseWeasel
The fuel has a much greater energy density than chemical rockets, making
longer distances practical, and the process is safer than nuclear fission.

R: uvdiv
That's my complaint, it _doesn't_ have much greater energy density, or more
precisely it's not usefully translated to momentum. The speed target in the
article is extremely low ("62,600 mph") -- only a small factor higher then
what chemical rockets achieve, and comparable (as I mentioned) to nuclear
thermal rockets. (It looks like they edited their article to mention NTRs.)
They have extremely energetic fuel, but they don't get any meaningful specific
impulse out of it. Maybe they don't easily extract momentum from high-energy
radiation. Or maybe they lose too much mass to radiation damage or
vaporization ("ablative shield") -- their mass consumption could be dominated
by shielding, not fuel.

 _Their ultimate goal is to develop a nuclear fusion propulsion system by 2030
that can spirit spacecraft from Earth to Mars in around three months - about
twice as fast as researchers think they could go with a nuclear fission
engine, another scheme that is being investigated but has not yet been built._

R: WiseWeasel
The speed doesn't tell us the whole story. If a chemical rocket can only
practically carry enough fuel to burn a couple times on a one-way trip to
Mars, while this has fuel to burn for maneuvers and a return journey, then it
is a big advancement. We weren't given enough info, so it's a bit early to
discount it as worthless.

R: sitharus
Dilithium crystals weren't used in the impulse drive though, they're used to
catalyse the matter/antimatter reaction through their crystal structure.

Also it seems to be fusion pulse propulsion. Pretty good for going fast.

R: Hoff
Original article:

[http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-
tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-
researchers-to-begin-fusion)


M: I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1B in revenue - saadalem
https://www.thefxck.com/interviews/product-positioning-april-dunford

R: gk1
Agh.

April is terrific, and I agree that the right messaging and positioning can
have disproportionately high impacts on revenue (speaking from experience with
Netlify, Gravitational, and others), but this click-bait title is a huge
disservice to April, other marketers, and founders who may be dissuaded from
trying new messaging and positioning.

The actual story is that the person (April) was asked by a manager to
interview a bunch of customers. When they brought back the data, the manager
(or the team, collectively) acted on it by coming up with new product
positioning.

Some years later, after countless product iterations and _three_ acquisitions,
the product landed at a tech giant that does $30B/year. The author speculates
it was then responsible for $1B in revenue, though doesn't know for sure.

So...

It's fair to say "I was there early and it was neat to solve these problems
for a DB that later ended up at SAP." But to imply that your work directly
resulted to $1B in revenue--as this title does--is just nonsense. What the
F*ck were the editors thinking.

R: whack
Why so angry. The title reads:

> _How I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1 billion
> in revenue_

It doesn't say _" How I single handedly repositioned"_ or even _" How I
repositioned"_. The author literally _helped_ in the process that led to
repositioning. By uncovering a key use-case for the product, which then became
the key feature and selling point of the updated product.

And regarding the comment about $1B in revenue, is there any good reason not
to give her the benefit of the doubt? She literally worked with the team and
rubbed shoulders with them every day. A lot of non-public numbers get talked
about casually at the water cooler.

There seems to be a trend where people are hyper-obsessed with nitpicking
titles and calling out "clickbait". In this case, the article title is a
pretty great representation of the article's contents - or at least as great
as you can get in one sentence. I personally enjoyed the article, and was
hoping to read a discussion about the main points raised in the article, or
similar stories others may have. Instead, the top comment is an angry rant
nitpicking the article's title.

R: smnrchrds
Two points:

1\. The title does not make huge claims directly, but strongly implies it.
That's how I read it when I was skimming the front page of HN. It's like
writing an article with the title "I taught Michael Jordan basketball" and
then explain how you showed him how to throw a ball for 30 minutes when he was
the 5 years old. Or the old maxim that if you are a cashier at McDonald's, you
can technically say that you "process high-frequency cash transactions for
multi-billion dollar company on rotating supply-demand cycle".

2\. I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only
presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says
you must quantify your achievements. You cannot just say I wrote the login
system. You must somehow tie it to a business objective and achievement
(increases sales by 7%, reduced support calls by 12%, etc). In reality,
projects are often team efforts and except for certain niches such as sales
and consulting, there is rarely a clear correlation between an individual
employee's actions and business's results. I don't like writing pretending
there is and writing it, and I don't like reading it.

R: noch
> I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only
> presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says
> you must quantify your achievements.

It's not about résumés but about how the skill of measuring/estimating one's
own effectiveness/impact/productivity is positively correlated with successful
outcomes and rate of progress in life in general.

Recall Mike Acton's principle questions[0] that a goal-orientated individual
must answer:

>> \- I can articulate precisely what problem I am trying to solve.

>> \- I have articulated precisely what problem I am trying to solve.

>> \- I have confirmed that someone else can articulate what problem I am
trying to solve.

>> \- I can articulate why my problem is important to solve.

>> \- _I can articulate how much my problem is worth solving._

[0]:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/doiq8ovho1k9d4b/fired.pptx?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/doiq8ovho1k9d4b/fired.pptx?dl=0)

R: bonoboTP
Or more cynically, keep on doing your thing at your core, but do know that
people expect to hear stuff like that so consciously sit down and architect
some answers to those things. You can reinterpret and rewrite the story later,
but you need to have one. Also you don't have to get too attached to it and
believe it too much. Think of it as your interface towards society. They
cannot all have time to actually latch onto your inner person. You must
present to them all the handles you want to be grabbable by.

R: andygcook
April Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome, is very good and worth reading if
you're a founder or marketer (or both.) We reverse engineered her workshop and
did it as a team at the end of last year for my startup. Was very much worth
the day.

R: kristianc
Second this - it's a great book, and one of the few truly actionable guides to
doing positioning (a lot of them get pretty academic).

Accessible to founders, and helps lay out the art and science of positioning,
and give a methodology for actually doing it. Would recommend it also to
technical people who are sceptical of marketing in general.

R: richsherwood
Do you have any similar books that you would recommend? I am always looking
for good marketing books but these days it's all some guru trying to sell
their book so hard to identify the solid through the noise.

R: kristianc
Josh Kaufman's 'Your Personal MBA' is excellent - its rare that you have one
book which goes through all of targeting, segmentation, positioning, marketing
planning, and how it all sits together. Often books will focus on one small
piece (like positioning, or value propositions) but without understanding how
these pieces sit into the wider whole it's hard to put them to really
effective use.

Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow is also a great book from one of the world's
leading marketing professors, and aims to lay out some iron laws about buying
behaviour. Byron is quite a spiky and contrarian personality, which makes the
book a lot of fun to read, but he also really knows his stuff.

R: redis_mlc
I'm going to give a lot of credit to April for this, and say the title is not
click-bait.

Long before sqlite, or CouchBase, there was SQL Anywhere.

And SQL Anywhere had something in the 90's that's still rare even today -
hands-off built-in production-ready replication.

(MySQL struggled for a decade to ship reliable replication after Yahoo paid
them $40k for the original statement-based replication, and Postgres still
doesn't have a great story out of the box.)

It's that multi-source production-ready replication that April shone a
spotlight on that made Sybase worth $5.8 billion when it was sold to SAP.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-acquires-sybase-
for-5-8-bi...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-acquires-sybase-
for-5-8-billion-but-why/)

So kudos to April for finding a huge diamond in the rough.

I've been to lectures on SQL Anywhere, but I hope some day to use it in a
project. It's a killer embedded database.

Source: DBA.

R: icedchai
I worked on some systems in the 90's that used Sybase SQL Server (AKA Adaptive
Server Enterprise, not the Anywhere version.) Maybe "Anywhere" is okay, but
you'd be laughed at if you suggested using Sybase SQL for a project these
days. It's legacy tech.

R: redis_mlc
> Sybase SQL for a project these days. It's legacy tech.

1) SQL Anywhere is not "Sybase SQL." Different products, with SQL Anywhere
being an embedded database that can run on a smartphone and replicate
bidirectionally to other masters.

Not many alternatives, even in 2020.

2) Legacy tech - when you care about your data, accept nothing less.

Fun fact: the #1 most popular and regarded RDBMS for the past few years is
considered to be MySQL, and it was the key technology that powered both Web
1.0 and 2.0. If that's legacy, I want more legacy.

Source: DBA.

R: icedchai
Yes, I know they are different products.

Early on, MySQL was known for anything but caring about your data. I've been
using it since the 90's. Without "strict" mode, fields would be truncated and
data types would be silently converted. Never mind the <5.x days where MyISAM
was the default table type.

R: wyck
This happened at the first start-up I worked at, 3 years in and almost
bankrupt, one large customer kept using the product for a different reason (
kinda hacking it all together), so we completely pivoted to survive with this
customers needs and it became a huge success. That pivot was towards such a
niche market that no one was really in the space, and no one outside it would
have really even know about it.

R: achow
Can you please give a link to the product page - assuming that you
commercialized it for others as well.

R: wyck
No sorry, but I can tell you it provides video/text/meta data archiving for
many countries' parliaments and state legislatures.

R: willart4food
It was the year 1999, remember that? I was working at a startup and we were
preparing to IPO. I got a cold call from a - I kid you not - "Color
Consultant"; I don't know why but I listened to her instead of hanging up, her
spiel was:

"Do you know [Inser name of recent IPO]? Well they hired me and I changed the
color of their corporate identity from Black on Green to Green on Black; well
4 months later they IPO's raising $250 million at a $1+ billion-dollar
valuation".

WUT?

Her implication was that she was taking credit for the successful IPO.

So, there it is.

I am not saying that April's contribution was not useful, but... everything in
a long process is useful, but not 1 single contribution is responsible for the
entire (or majority) of success. Except for grit!

R: pkaye
This reminds me of an early job. It was my first job as a mechanical engineer.
I was lucky enough to work in a R&D team on an entirely new product line.
Crazy but rewarding work from months on end. Near completion, I was moved to a
side team to help out with other smaller projects. At this point the marketing
guy comes in to decide on the name and color of the machine. So they bring in
the consultants and in the end decided to stay with the name the engineers
gave it and the same color as older machines (beige and black.) And the kicker
was at the launch party they forget to invite me but invited the marketing guy
who spent a couple days helping out. What a punch in the guts it was.

R: abraae
I've been in more than one meeting where, after lengthy discussion about
product name, the group circled again back to the original (temporary) name
created by the developers.

And in that time it had somehow subtly become adopted by marketing as theirs
:)

(To be fair, picking names is hard, even if you are in marketing. I'm sure
there's plenty of science, but one of the best ways IMO is to just blather
them all around for a while and see what feels right/sticks after a day or
two).

R: dblohm7
I did my first internship working at Sybase on SQL Anywhere. Some great people
worked at that office. Even some of the original Watcom guys were still there.

Fun fact: SQL Anywhere was still compiled using Watcom C++ long after the
latter was discontinued as a commercial product. Most of the people who worked
on the compiler still worked there, so they maintained it internally until SQL
Anywhere finally switched over to MSVC.

R: zaphirplane
> MSVC

I thought it ran on multiple operating systems

R: dblohm7
It does. I'm referring to the Windows builds.

R: astroalex
Completely unrelated to the content of the article, but I find it so annoying
when interview responses are rendered in italics.

For contrast, here's a nicely typeset interview from the NYTimes:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/25/magazine/hann...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/25/magazine/hannah-
gadsby-interview.html)

R: huangc10
Not sure why you're downvoted. I completely agree. I couldn't get past the
first answer because of the italics. Why would someone do that. I'm sure it's
an interesting Q&A, but I just can't read it.

R: tigerstripe
I searched online - seems that when SAP bought Sybase, net revenues of Sybase
were around $1b - this was only one product in their portfolio.

Is it true that the product was making $1b / year?

R: jcampbell1
It looks like the product was conceived in 1992, Watcom was first acquired in
1994 by Powersoft, which was bought by Sybase in 1995. SAP bought Sybase in
2010.

I'd bet the product has seen significant growth in the mobile / IoT era.
Applications that work offline and synchronizes later are a pain to build.
Seems like the kind of infrastructure that exists in every police car these
days.

R: teleforce
Despite the promise of Starlink of pervasive internet connection, there are
always blind spots where connection just do not exist or just pain
intermittent.

Personally I think the future of desktop applications should be designed
around the premise of localhost first and cloud second. The ability of the
locally host application to synchronize to the cloud or central repository
(similar to rsync and Git) should be the default not the other way around (I
am looking at you Microsoft Teams). Technically there should be no different
between people working independently with their local copy of data to be
merged centrally later, and an offline application with an intermittent
internet connection.

Now with readily available VPN tools like Wireguard becoming more popular the
notion of using web applications for distributed authoring and collaboration,
etc, is not necessary anymore. But if you insist to use web based technology
there is always protocol like webdav to the rescue. If you do not want either
of them (VPN and webdav), the recently announced SMB over QUIC can be a very
good alternative solution [1].

[1][https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/03/02/microsoft-smb-
ove...](https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/03/02/microsoft-smb-over-quic-to-
windows.aspx)

R: nojito
survivorship bias in full swing here.

Can't find any followup successes after this product repositioning

R: haltingproblem
Yes, more like narrative fallacy akin to sayin that one feature we added to a
product was responsible for its success.

R: andai
To read the article normally, open the web inspector and add

      em {
          font-style: normal;
      }

R: yuvalr1
I think that the talk here about taking the credit for the 1 billion is
missing the point. What I think she wanted to emphasize is that they almost
shut down a product that made more than 1 billion, and that she took part in
the process that saved it.

R: Traster
I think a lot of the discussion in here is about how whoever wrote the title
managed to destroy any chance of this interview getting any meaningful
discussion. Which I think is appropriate, because it's a blog about marketing
that manages to market their blog about marketing with the kind of deftness I
expect from my 8 year old daughter's rendition of _Let it go_.

R: haltingproblem
tl;dr version - Desktop DB product. She called customers, found most were not
using, one was and was crazy about the product. Product "repositioned" around
that use case. End of story.

I am sure there is a lot more to Dunford's book that this article reveals but
IMHO product positioning is the wrong takeaway.

Product positioning, which sounds management consultancy speak like "product
strategy" is top-down. Implies near perfect knowledge of the marketplace,
customer use cases, existing alternatives..... Anti-thetical, if not opposite,
to the Lean Startup method. Lean implies you have incomplete information but
you map out the profitable niches by experimentation. You want to build that
which is needed, not build and position it later.

Recommend Robert Fitzpatrick's Mom test instead.
[http://momtestbook.com/](http://momtestbook.com/). He also has an youtube
channel.

R: hodgesrm
SQL Anywhere was an amazing product. What's left out in the article is that it
was also really fast.

I had an assignment in 1998 to benchmark it against another pocket database.
SQL Anywhere was 100x faster. On the Excel throughput graphs I had to use
right and left Y axes for each product. Otherwise product #2 was just a flat
line on the X axis. ;-)

R: listenallyall
This is a strange story. Did the company really believe there was a large
market of people who "had to manipulate some data and write structured
queries, but you didn't want to do it in Excel"? What was the actual incentive
or opportunity that the product was meant to fill? Did anyone acknowledge the
popularity of dBase, FoxPro, FileMaker (with Access coming soon)? What was the
product failing to do for the 90% of customers who bought it then abandoned
it, surely some common themes must have arisen via all her cold calls -- and
why didn't they address those issues? On the other hand, Oracle compatibility
and sync surely weren't trivial to build, how were these features not already
a major part of the marketing strategy?

R: blunte
Lesson: know your customers and their needs.

R: sankalp221
Please add RSS to the site. Would've loved to subscribe via my Feedly reader.

R: nstart
They do have RSS. Unfortunately it's truncated at /interviews/rss.xml

R: suyash
Click Bait Alert

R: ykevinator
This is stupid

R: abiogenesis
> And we had almost killed the product!

Well, one could argue that you _killed_ the product. You just reused the
source code for a new product. A product is much more than the software.


M: Bitcoin Backlash: Back to the Drawing Board? - rbcgerard
http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2017/10/bitcoin-backlash-back-to-drawing-board.html

R: tzakrajs
Orthogonal, but related: Bitcoins are used in illegal arbitrage and they are
traceable to the current holder. Why shouldn't a Bitcoin holder worry that
their local government won't compel them with laws to relinquish their
Bitcoin?


M: CompTIA - A malicious site? - eznet
http://flickr.com/photos/mattezell/sets/72157606012121192/
I recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over until I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech work).  I headed to CompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a Firefox's "Reported Attack Site" warning.  According to Google's Safe Browsing Diagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in the installation of Malicious content without users consent...  Maybe the CompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information...<p>http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=88

R: eznet
I recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over
until I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech
work and no one wants a programmer with 'no' experience). I headed to
CompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a
Firefox's "Reported Attack Site" warning. According to Google's Safe Browsing
Diagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in
the installation of Malicious content without users consent... Maybe the
CompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information...

<http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=88>

R: icey
This isn't really related to CompTIA, but in regards to nobody wanting to hire
a programmer with "no" experience.

If you're having a hard time getting an entry-level gig somewhere, I would
suggest building a code portfolio. It should contain code samples (in multiple
languages, if you can) as well as some working program code.

Web development is going to be the easiest place to get your foot in the door,
so maybe you should build a web page with some forms, some javascript, etc etc
etc.

There are entry level jobs out there, you just have to put yourself ahead of
everyone else trying for them.

R: eznet
Thanks for the pointers... Yea, I have recently acquired a rough understanding
of Python and am picking up Django at the moment to hopefully increase my
marketability and show my ability to pick new skills...

R: icey
As someone who does hiring of entry level people from time to time; making the
effort and being enthusiastic has been the deal-sealer more than a few times.

Employers like to know if you're interested in the work or the paycheck. (At
least your primary interest - everyone wants to get paid lots and lots of
money, but for the real geeks like us; reading YC on a Sunday, we're in it
because we love to hack.)

R: eznet
Called CompTIA today - at first they said I was mistaken... Then I sent links
to my flickr account and to the various tech/certification sites making the
"maybe they should increase their Security+" crack. I was called back this
afternoon and told that their tech dept is working with Google (?) to resolve
the issues...


M: Jsteg, a package for hiding data inside JPEG - aloknnikhil
https://github.com/lukechampine/jsteg

R: aloknnikhil
More about the JSTEG algorithm:
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8893/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e4...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8893/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e42b9c454cfb7770.pdf)


M: Sept. 23, 1846: Neptune Right Where They Said It Would Be  - danso
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/09/0923neptune-discovered-where-predicted/

R: bdhe
The orbit of Neptune takes it ~ 164 yrs and 9 months and indeed, earlier this
year Neptune completed its first orbit around the sun since its discovery.

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/12/ha...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/12/happy-
birthday-neptune/)

This simultaneously puts into perspective how recent our knowledge of the
solar system is and how large the orbits of the outer planets are.

R: hugh3
Newtonian gravitation: it approximately works, bitches!


M: Airobotics has built a Transformer-like base station for its drones - JSeymourATL
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11989734/watch-this-robotic-arm-swap-fresh-batteries-into-an-autonomous-drone

R: sharemywin
what would be neat is to have drones that can pass a package from one to the
other while in flight using a battery charging base station like that. sorta
of like an internet router for things.


M: Review my startup - Plura Processing: Web Traffic = Grid Computer - westside1506
http://www.pluraprocessing.com/games

R: ynniv
You aren't the first company to try grid computing on personal computers, so
once people stop talking about how cool the idea of grid computing is or how
to protect the web surfers rights, they'll start asking the hard questions.
Like, how you're going to make money.

How do your paying customers feel about their data being strewn about the
Internet? How does your processing interfere with the game that the user is
playing? What kind of problems have you earmarked as being particularly
parallelizable like this (ie what is your marketing plan?), and how usable is
your API?

At the end of the day, is going through the effort to rewrite a program to
work on distributed Java applets going to produce substantially more
processing for the customer dollar than a $150 headless dual-core 1gz board
with a gig of RAM running C++? You say that you can provide a $1500/yr savings
over EC2, but this is only for applications that are "embarrassingly
parallel", and will certainly require hiring a programmer to write code to run
in tiny chunks on lots of clients. Will this cost less than $1,500? Worse, it
will be money up front instead of spread out over a year.

You could say that the system is best leveraged by clients looking for a lot
of compute power on a budget, but those are the people most likely to build
their own grid. When you can get linux running on a dual-core 2.0gz for $200 /
node, spending that money every year on an untested platform that will require
substantial development work and vendor tie in, your service is going to be a
tough sell.

You will be the only people interested in writing code for this platform, so
please repost when you know which algorithm you can run to gross $10 million a
year.

R: westside1506
These are all very good questions and we certainly know that we're not the
first company to do grid computing on PCs. :)

First, $1500/node-year (or even $200/node-year) comes to a very substantial
amount of money for our target customers. These customers use 10000s of nodes
and buy high-end computers and pay a ton for network, power, cooling, and
support personnel.

My background is in HPC and I've faced and solved these issues many times. We
have a multi-pronged approach to using the compute power: 1) We are definitely
writing our own apps on top of Plura. It's a great source of compute power and
we have lots of ways we want to use it ourselves. 2) We have a short list of
very high impact embarrassingly parallel customers that are evaluating Plura.
We intend to help our customers absorb the porting cost associated with Plura.
3) We are open to letting students and universities use Plura's excess
capacity for free. We've had several nibbles at this already.

That being said, we realize Plura is not for everyone. It is for a subset of
the class of embarrassingly parallel applications out there.

R: cliffy
Are there ample warnings to, or explicit agreement with the user that his/her
CPU time is going to be used by non-game functions? This seems suspiciously
like theft of services.

When I run any process I expect it to restrict all its actions to servicing
direct functions related to that process. Plura is expressly unrelated to ANY
process/game it is bundled with.

I would personally be annoyed/angry that a program I was using, web-based or
not, was using my computer's resources to make money without my knowledge. In
fact, you're not just using my computer's resources, you're also drawing more
power from my electrical grid, because a processor doing more work consumes
more electricity. That's something that directly costs me, the end user, more
money. So I would absolutely classify this as theft of service unless the user
explicitly agrees to have Plura running in the background.

If there is ample warning to the user, I am fine with this, and would consider
it a good idea. Otherwise, it feels really sleazy and wrong.

R: danielh
I can see your point, but wouldn't be any ad-driven website/game be considered
theft of service?

A ton of flash ads might have a bigger impact on your system performance (and
on your wallet, if your ISP charges by traffic)

R: wmf
At least ads are visible. A zero-pixel Java applet seems like it's over the
line IMO.

R: westside1506
Hey guys, we just launched our private beta for Plura.

I submitted our game page as the HN link, but www.pluraprocessing.com has more
general information.

Take a look and tell me what you think. We've been paying our alpha affiliates
for months now and are ready to take on a much larger pool of affiliates in
our beta. "Affiliates" are the people that put Plura on their site, browser
game, or other content (even download apps) and get paid for their user time.

R: jmatt
It seems like there is potential for a much bigger market than games.
Streaming video and audio... fantasy sport applets, etc. Is plura just
starting with games since they provide what I suspect are ideal conditions
(already using CPU and running long enough to for Plura to actually do some
work).

R: LogicHoleFlaw
There is a big search in the gaming industry for new sources of revenue.
Development costs are skyrocketing but income is not. Retail and subscription
are the big two, with online advertisements growing in popularity. If
harnessing players' compute time enables a gaming service provider to offer a
better product at a lower price, this could be a win for the gamer, the game
company, and the ultimate computing consumer.

R: jmatt
Sounds like you read one of my other threads ~
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=346832>

And, yes I totally agree.

R: bigthboy
I think this is an innovative approach to getting more people involved with
grid computing for major computations and a clever way to market it in
general. However, I agree with some other people here, there has got to be
some sort of licensing issue. As much as the whole "you clicked okay to the
TOS, you gave us permission." is a tank in court, it still seems to risky. If
nothing else, it would risk users no longer using the games from the providers
using that service if they found out that their computer slowed down at all
during playing that game because it was doing things it wasn't supposed to.
Not that I would likely have a problem with it, but lets face it...the general
public is slap happy with lawsuits.

Also privacy issues in the entire concept. I didn't notice any (note: I didn't
go out of my way to find one either) way for the end users to directly go and
see exactly what kind of materials were being processed and what data, if any,
was being collected from the user's machine. That might also be a source of
trouble in the long run.

R: westside1506
Interesting comments. First, let me explain that the client side runs entirely
within memory; the hard drive is not touched at all. All processing or
computation is done within the Java sandbox. In other words, you are not
giving us unfettered access. In fact, it's quite the opposite. :) We follow
everything listed at <http://java.sun.com/sfaq/>, whether we're running an
applet from the browser or from within a desktop application.

Second, although we encourage disclosure, we leave the disclosure up to the
individual sites and some have chosen to use some form of opt-out or opt-in.
That being said, we also provide a TOS that they can use for disclosure if
they choose. If the disclosure is done in a positive way, the users should see
the benefits of getting more game features for free.

R: bigthboy
Nice rebuttal, I wish you the best of luck, it seems like something with a
good amount of potential. I especially liked your perspective on because the
gaming services do this and you pay them for it, they can implement better
features for their own users.

R: Hexstream
Oh well, most Flash stuff already runs my CPU to 100% even when it's clear it
shouldn't. (100% CPU to display a static "Game Paused" screen? Give me a
break!).

\---

"After receiving the WU, the user's computer will perform the computation. The
game developer can control how much of the user's CPU is devoted to
computation by setting the % usage (either statically or dynamically)."

How do you accurately control the amount of CPU a program takes in user-space?
Can you really have a process that will restrict itself to using no more than
25% CPU? (Also, 25% of a fast CPU is more than 25% of a slow one)

R: westside1506
The apps that we're running right now control it pretty well using a sneaky
trick. We can't get much computer information from java in an unsigned app, so
we measure how long each sub-part of a work unit has taken and sleep an
appropriate amount of time. For example, if we are trying to use 25% and a
sub-work takes 100ms, we sleep for 300ms. This effectively gives us 25% usage
of the available CPU. It will be no higher than that anyway - it might be
lower if something else is using substantial CPU time.

As far as the fast versus slow nodes, we normalize everything based on the
average computer that completes work each day. So a fast computer may earn 2X
or more what a slow computer earns.

R: smoody
Very clever.

R: ced
_Monthly payment = $2.60 times # avg. simultaneous users times CPU %_

It sounds dishonest to summarize this as 2.60$ per user per month. It is 2.60$
per user, _if that particurlar user plays non-stop for 30 days straight,
assuming 100% CPU_

In other words, you get 1 cent per 3 hours of play time. To get 100$ per
month, you need 10000 users, playing one hour every week or so. (hopefully, my
math and interpretation is correct)

R: westside1506
We put it in terms of average simultaneous users because that's the way a lot
of affiliates think. They say, we have an average of N people playing the game
at any given time.

For websites and other affiliate types, we say we pay $15/MWU (million work
units) where a work unit is 15 seconds on an average node (the system-wide
Plura average node performance).

R: ced
Fair enough. Good luck.

R: Harkins
What's with the payment being per-user per-month? Why not just straight per-
work unit? Isn't a user who plays the game 20h/m (or at least leaves their
browser window open that long) more valuable than the one who only plays for
five minutes?

R: randomwalker
It is in fact per work unit. See the "How it works" page. It's $2.60 per month
per _concurrent_ user, which is the same thing.

R: olefoo
This does strike me as verging on unethical; you (and your affiliates) need to
make very clear statements to end users that you will be using their computers
to do other processing while they are playing.

That said this is a pretty cool model, and I'm sure that most people would be
happy to let a few of their CPU cycles pay for the game they are playing.

R: huhtenberg
I guess it's time to null-route pluraprocessing.com.

In other words I really really really don't like hidden or undisclosed
functionality in whatever the software I am running. Especially if it is
explicitly _designed_ to utilize my otherwise idle resources.

Few years back my friends and I were talking about putting a DES brute-forcing
client into a flash applet and then sticking it on a high-traffic site. It
never went anywhere beyond a discussion though exactly because of the ethical
issues involved.

R: tectonic
Run a distributed GA. Plura becomes self aware on August 29th, 2010.

R: poppysan
I applaud your effort. Great idea! Personally, I can see this widely used, on
both the user and customer side. Man, why didn't I think of that! hahahha.

R: shaunxcode
This is an awesome idea. I have actually been working on a game that I have
been looking for a platform/revenue model for - this is perfect!

R: westside1506
Great! Fill out the form on the website and we'll get you signed up in the
private beta.

R: sireat
This could be huge!

      There is no question there will be plenty of affiliates/CPU time (re)sellers.
      The real question is whether there is big enough demand from those who need grid computing.

You had a quote from some quant guy, I suppose sciences is another market, not
sure about others.

R: westside1506
Thanks. We are really focused on this as well. :)

Here's a blog post we wrote comparing us to Amazon's EC2 for HPC apps:
[http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/comparing-
pl...](http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/comparing-plura-to-
amazons-ec2-for-high-performance-computing/). Our numbers should be very
compelling for certain types of applications compared to the cost of building
your own clusters or using an EC2-type service.

There are definitely certain applications where this form of grid or cloud
computing (I hate to use such a popular buzzword) will enable apps that
weren't possible before. Previous attempts at grid computing for HPC depended
more on philanthropy instead of having a scalable business model that allowed
the addition of 100s and 1000s of nodes at a time.

R: musiciangames
1) I think this is a really smart idea, and hope it works well for you. It
seems like a win for everybody, as long as the end user knows what's
happening.

2) You maybe should look at the phrase on savings in your paper:

"if your application is suitable for Plura, you can save 7X on your compute
costs".

I take this to mean you save 7 times your compute costs, where it should be
six sevenths of the cost. There's a difference, and your customers will
understand it. Sorry if I've just misunderstood.

R: johnrob
Is it possible to use a "purchased" CPU to make internet (http) requests?

R: westside1506
Yes and no. We have created a signed applet capability in the Plura
infrastructure, but we have not pushed this out yet. In the future, if an
affiliate chooses, he can request work units for a signed applet that would
allow them to make http requests. We will probably pay more to affiliates that
do this and will certainly require user opt-in. Our normal applet is unsigned
and cannot make http requests due to the java sandbox.

We have one company (80legs.com) that is developing a web crawling solution
using Plura. We are using a different model to acquire the nodes for this.

R: kowlaga
Folding@Home is of April 2009 sustaining over 8.1 PFLOPS [1], the first
computing project of any kind to cross the four petaFLOPS milestone. This
level of performance is primarily enabled by the cumulative effort of a vast
array of PlayStation 3 and powerful GPU units.[2] The entire BOINC averages
over 1.5 PFLOPS as of March 15, 2009[3]. SETI@Home computes data averages more
than 528 TFLOPS[4] Einstein@Home is crunching more than 150 TFLOPS[5]

R: knarf
It's an interesting idea but it kind feels like cpu robbery to me..

R: ideamonk
[http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2007/06/ajax-based-
supercomputi...](http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2007/06/ajax-based-
supercomputing.html)

nice indeed ;P

R: kowlaga
i like what you are doing, i just don't understand the commericail opp when
these guys do it at the univ. for free?Folding@Home is of April 2009
sustaining over 8.1 PFLOPS [1], the first computing project of any kind to
cross the four petaFLOPS milestone. This level of performance is primarily
enabled by the cumulative effort of a vast array of PlayStation 3 and powerful
GPU units.[2] The entire BOINC averages over 1.5 PFLOPS as of March 15,
2009[3]. SETI@Home computes data averages more than 528 TFLOPS[4]
Einstein@Home is crunching more than 150 TFLOPS[5]

R: rrhyne
Would this work in a JS+HTML AIR app? The Plura for websites iframe code seems
like it would work if you got the AIR sandbox requirements right.

Also, what is the average CPU percentage your developers run on their clients
systems?

R: westside1506
No, we tried to do this, but we can't run Plura in Adobe AIR. AIR uses Webkit
for its browser, but Adobe has removed support for browser plugins, including
Java.

R: rrhyne
That's too bad, this sounds like a great monetization scheme that's close to
painless for the user.

R: westside1506
Yep, we'd love to find a way for it to work. If you have any ideas, let us
know. :)

R: trefn
Really cool concept. One cosmetic issue - when you mouse over the links on the
right side, the underline makes the text below look really cramped. A few more
pixels of padding would be nice.

R: dpapathanasiou
I'm curious about where the money is coming from, i.e., what kinds of
computational problems are you solving for your clients, and what kinds of
clients have hired you?

R: westside1506
Here's an example: [http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/example-
appl...](http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/example-applications-
using-plura/)

R: seemann
Hey nice concept! May be personal, but I don't like the color-scheme. Game
developers work for and with love, so probably they want some colors with love
;)

R: mseebach
Yeeess.. that one game out there that's not about killing, maiming, conquering
and dismembering various adversaries, I think it might be about love.

R: kirubakaran
It is probably a silly thing to say... but I was working on something like
this some time ago. Now I wish I had followed through with it.

R: chime
Does it have to be a game? What if I have a site or two that get good traffic
but not a lot of page reloads because it's all Ajaxy?

R: westside1506
No, it does not have to be a game. We're just focusing our initial affiliate
marketing on games because of the higher engagement.

The type of sites you mention will work well too. Send us a note through the
Contact Us page on the website and we can help you figure out how much you
could earn.

R: moonpolysoft
One of the issues that I see with this approach is that for most applications
the scaling issue is data scaling rather than CPU. Here's why I think you will
run into scaling issues:

Lets assume you have a gigabit line out of your colo. Lets also assume that
your average game client is on a cable modem with a 1megabit connection. That
gives you capabilities to stream work units to 1024 clients simultaneously as
an upper limit. In keeping with an average 1 megabit client, it will take 3
minutes to stream down a 20 megabyte work unit, maxing their connection. 1024
concurrent clients * 20 megabytes = 20 gigabytes. So you're looking at 3
minutes of overhead transfer out, and likely another 3 minutes or so of
overhead transfer of results back from the client. So that's approximately 6
minutes per gigabyte just in transmission overhead. And it gets worse as
clients are added to the system, since you would need scale out your
datacenter just to handle coordinating all of the clients. Which begs the
question: why aren't all those servers just doing the dang work already?

That kind of overhead limits this technique's usefulness only to applications
which have relatively high computational complexity and relatively small
amounts of data. And those applications do exist, however they're pretty far
from the day to day needs of most companies. Sun found this out the hard way
with their Sun Grid project, which last time I checked was a failure. Sorry, I
really wish you the best of luck.

R: westside1506
Yep, we quite aware of all of these issues. My background is in HPC and my
previous company was a successful exit to a major oilfield services firm. My
software and its descendants are used on nearly 100,000 CPUs.

We are definitely focused on the applications that have extremely high
compute/io ratios. In general, these boil down to either high compute problems
with no real data or problems where the data can be shared between multiple
work units. An example of the latter is stock market analysis - the nodes
download stock data for a few stocks and stay busy running different
combinations for a very long time.

R: moonpolysoft
So that brings up a good issue, namely the proprietary nature of the code
you're distributing. For instance, stock market analysis firms zealously guard
their algorithms. Let's say I'm a potential customer: How will you protect my
bytecode from being stolen by competitors when it has to be run on unmanaged
machines in the wild?

R: westside1506
Good question. There really isn't anything that stops someone from reading and
trying to interpret the byte code.

There is some protection in the fact that you never know what type of work
unit is happening at a given time. The algorithms are typically each snippets
of code instead of full applications, so someone would need to piece together
quite a lot of information.

Of course, if someone is particularly concerned, they can run a jar
obfuscator.


M: The cure for ebola - lisper
http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/the-cure-for-ebola.html

R: simonblack
If it sounds too-good-to-be-true, it usually is.

"I have this magical substance, but I have to keep it secret".

If the drug works, you don't need to have tests to show _why_ it works, you
just need to _show_ it works. (We still don't exactly know why general
anaesthetics work, but that doesn't stop us from using them every day.)

R: lisper
The causal theory adds plausibility that it might work, otherwise there would
be no reason to believe that the experiment is even worth doing.


M: Ask HN: What software can I use, that runs on Mac, to write a book? - iDemonix
I'm writing a book on basic monitoring for DevOps engineers, just for fun really and something for my CV. BookPrintingUK will print from a PDF, I'm aware I could use MarkDown, and I could use LeanPub - but I want a physical book.<p>Can anyone recommend some software they've used to write a book?

R: 100ideas
Try the gitbook editor by
[https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/), then export as pdf.

You can write in markdown or asciidoc, revision content in git/github, export
to pdf or ebook, and develop your layout with a custom theme
([https://toolchain.gitbook.com/themes/](https://toolchain.gitbook.com/themes/)).

Asciidoc + custom theme is probably feature-rich enough for you to accomplish
whatever content organization + layout you want.

Gitbook has some kind of subscription model if you use their site, but the
editor is free I believe.

R: 100ideas
O'Reilly Media has shared some of the toolchain they've developed internally
to help their book authors create content.

[https://github.com/oreillymedia/atlas_book_skeleton](https://github.com/oreillymedia/atlas_book_skeleton)

[https://github.com/oreillymedia/orm_book_samples](https://github.com/oreillymedia/orm_book_samples)

In particular, you might be interested in the asciidoc_only folder in that
second repo. Potentially you could author your book with the same asciidoc
structure... then see if O'Reilly wants to publish it.

R: oddlyaromatic
I've heard good things about Scrivener from several authors.


M: President Obama - Will Seek Approval of Congress for Attacking Syria - loupeabody
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/president-obama-speaks-syria

R: venomsnake
My take on that - he has decided on inaction but needs the congress to save
him from his "chemical weapons are a red line" remark from an year ago.

I am not sure if there is any salvage of the Middle East situation right now -
there are generational grudges and hatreds to unfold there. I don't think that
there are good moves on that board. The pessimist in me just wonders whether
the firewall should be on Bulgaria/Greece border or on the Bosphorus.

Disclaimer - I live in Bulgaria for now.

R: ankitml
This man had never deserved Nobel Peace, never.

Worst decision of committee till date after deciding not to give it to MK
Gandhi.

R: grandalf
The more moralistic and self-righteous the justification for war, the more
likely it is to be a dishonest reason...

R: awakeasleep
Sort of off topic, but I have never seen streaming video with such a high
resolution and framerate. How the hell are they doing this.

R: denzil_correa
Is it possible that Youtube provides the backbone infrastructure?

[https://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse](https://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse)

R: ExpiredLink
Disappointment, thy name is Obama.

R: kersif
Just concluded. Missed it.

R: loupeabody
Title updated to reflect the major takeaway.

Obama said that he and his various advisors feel that Syria must be attacked
in response to their usage of chemical weapons. He specified that there would
be no infantry sent to Syria, just a long distance strike of "limited duration
and scope". Congress will hold a vote on whether or not to approve the attack.
The President has the authority to order the strike, with or without the
approval of Congress.

*edit: see reply

R: thenmar
He didn't say he needed congress to approve, just that he was going to have
congress vote. He also emphasized that he does have the authority to strike
without congress's approval.

R: loupeabody
Yeah, you're right. I'll update my comment


M: Google Open Sources AMP via OpenJS Foundation - gumby
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/14/googles_amp_openjs/

R: usr1106
Title is misleading. I believe AMP has always been open source. Google just
tries breathe new life into AMP by trying to give it a more neutral image by
profiting from OpenJS and Linux Foundation labels. And Linux Foundation does
not say no to money from Google, although most opinions outside of Google seem
to be very negative on AMP.


M: San Francisco officials follow Mountain View with bid to ban free lunch - parvenu74
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/01/san-francisco-officials-follow-mountain-view-with-bid-to-ban-free-lunch-for-techies/

R: erkose
I like this trend. Companies were given huge tax breaks to set up shop in SF.
The least they can do is allow the local economy to flourish.


M: If You Can't Express Yourself By Email, You're Not Worthy of Anyone's Time - pieterhg
https://levels.io/email-cuts-through-bullshit/

R: jqm
Good article expressing something I have felt for a long time.

Emailing asking to set up a call to do something email could have handled
better drives me nuts.

R: rhizome
It's an incontrovertible fact that more people are adept at voice
communication than textual.

R: mariuolo
I wonder if they will also draft specs or ($DEITY forbid) contracts over a
Skype call.

R: uptown
Shouldn't this be published as an email?

R: adyus
I can't believe I'm saying this at 28, but that's a really young-person point
of view.

You have to understand most of us younglings grew up with the Internet and
have adopted text as the de facto mode of relaying information. Sadly, most of
the business world is made up of people who've learned to communicate (in
their formative years) before the Internet was a thing.

These business people cannot easily change their main mode of communication,
and will have a hard time adopting email the way a newer generation has.

The generation following you (and me) has already moved past email, to instant
messaging.

R: rabbyte
The finer point to me is that sometimes there are perfectly valid reasons you
wouldn't want to express yourself by email or online and I don't think that
has anything to do with age. We have evolved to understand face-to-face
communication. It's an effective way to relay a thought. People can waste your
time through any media.

R: greenyoda
_" People can waste your time through any media."_

That's true, but it's much easier to cut your losses with an e-mail than with
a face to face conversation. If, after reading the first couple of sentences
of an e-mail, you decide that the sender is an idiot and reading his message
is a waste of time, you can just hit delete (or reply, "Sorry, not
interested") and move on to the next thing. However, if you've agreed to meet
with somebody, and thirty seconds into the meeting you've come to the same
conclusion, most people would be too polite to ruthlessly tell the person to
their face that the meeting is pointless, and then get up and leave. (Also, if
the meeting is not in your own office, you'll have expended time just to get
there.) This is even true of a phone call: most people are too polite to hang
up on someone, except maybe a telemarketer.

If someone wants me to make time to meet with them in person, they should be
able to clearly express the purpose of the meeting in a few lines of text
beforehand.


M: Ask HN: Redditers want a product, can we help connect the dots? - zupa-hu
Hey HN-ers!
I came across this post on reddit where some are looking for an up-to-date Picasa equivalent. (It was killed.) I know lots of startuppers are looking for ideas, it seems there are at least some users who need this.
Is there a site where users can vote on ideas they need? I think I've seen one posted here some time ago but can't find it. Any ideas? Maybe we could help connect the dots..
https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/hbt3aq/i_wish_someone_would_create_a_real_replacement/
ps - I'm in no way benefiting from this

R: mtmail
There's a "Ask HN: What would you pay $10 per month for?" (or $100 or similar)
question about once per week, usually few if any responses. Maybe the question
is too broad or has simply been asked too often. The most traction recently
was "Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290536)

Picasa equivalent: "Ask HN: Personal photo library recommendations? Open
source, browser-based"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756110)
might have hints.

R: zupa-hu
Thanks, great recommendations!

R: Alupis
Picasa's equivalent is Google Photos... Google folded it into their Photos
service long ago, and it's quite nice (if you don't mind it being a Google
service).

Lots of AI, automatic categorization, face recognition of who's in photos,
location tagging, album generation, "This Day Last Year" (my favorite
feature), slideshows, etc.

R: zupa-hu
Unfortunately, Google Photos is the source of their grief. Thanks though!


M: The backdoor file named man.cy in Linux mint - cujanovic
https://gist.github.com/Oweoqi/31239851e5b84dbba894

R: elcano
Where I this file supposed to be located in an installed system, if I wanted
to check?


M: Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past) - llambda
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/02/why-cognitive-enhancement-is-in-your-future-and-your-past/252566/

R: tokenadult
Previous submission of canonical URL (no comments):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3562364>


M: Ask YC: Hacker Homes - catch404

We've had requests for peoples desks and screenshots - I thought it may be interesting to see/ discuss what people have done with their homes. Such as media centre setups, eco installs, or diy.

R: catch404
Until I move I've only really had a bedroom to work with: standing desk with
media pc, stereo amp on bedside table and a few lamps on the floor so far!
Looking for ideas for the next place.

R: Mz
Nothing exciting. I own almost no furniture. What little furniture I do own is
mostly to hold a flat screen TV, Wii, laptop and some CD's and game
cartridges.

We have our priorities straight. :-)

R: bemmu
We don't even have that. Instead of a TV, we have a projector that is on the
same desk with my computer, and just project on the wall. For music I have
Spotify, for games there is Steam, for books I have my Bebook. Instead of a
sofa we have bean bags that can be stacked when not in use, although it has
turned out not to be such a comfortable solution. Still, always looking for
ways to get rid of more things.

R: Mz
Bean bags are way more furniture than I have. I bet you also have a bed (or at
least a sleeping bag) too. Um, too much stuff for me. (No, I'm not neurotic.
I'm highly motivated. :-D )

R: bemmu
I guess we could switch to Japanese-style stoveaway futons, but I like sleep
way too much to make any kind of compromises there :)


M: The Four Finns Who Pioneered the Graphical Browser - bobbud
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2009/03/03/the-greatest-internet-pioneers-you-never-heard-of-the-story-of-erwise-and-four-finns-who-showed-the-way-to-the-web-browser/

R: wallflower
Two years later...

WWW-Talk Marc Andreessen () Thu, 25 Feb 93 21:09:02 -0800

"I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag:

IMG

Required argument is SRC="url".

This names a bitmap or pixmap file for the browser to attempt to pull over the
network and interpret as an image, to be embedded in the text at the point of
the tag's occurrence."

[http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0182.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0182.html)

R: henning
And thus was born the beginnings of Internet porn.

R: Ras_
Recent past of Finnish sci&tech includes a bewildering amount of similar cases
of wasted potential.

Telecommunication is the worst area. Its mega-successes, such as SMS can be
described as lucky mistakes, while several very potent innovations have gone
to waste in state telco's (TeliaSonera) and cell manufacturers.

If a product reached the market, it was often too premature, such as 1999
Benefon Esc GPS-phone (5 years premature), or its launch marketing failed
badly.

I believe Finland produces second most patents per capita. But lack of funding
(esp. in 1-5M range) and lack of marketing/commercialization skills destroys
the ample potential. Finns are generally seen as a "country of engineers".
This might be the key to understanding why recent extraordinary successes like
Skype (Sweden/Estonia) have appeared in neighboring countries. Finland has
succeeded lately in open source sw (Linux, MySQL), not much else.

I would place a lot of the blaim of not identifying these candidates to the
Finnish VC industry. It has been dominated by lazy state controlled
institutions. They haven't been greedy(?) enough to invest in big plays. Only
safe bets or dumping money to major players such as Nokia.

R: lacker
Another story that shows it isn't the idea, it's the execution. As they say in
the article, it was tough to get any funding in Finland at the time, but
that's probably faint consolation now. Who knows what might have happened if
they had actually released it and kept working on it in their spare time.

R: zandorg
Academics in Europe have an addiction to grants/funding (and that's as much
their fuel as coffee). I've met a few academic people who were astonished that
I'd work on software for free, for sale or glory.

There's also a perception that you need a PhD to commercialise your ideas and
run a business.

Footnote: I'm from the UK.