I'm in the process of scanning the family's old film, photos, and converting VHS tapes. I'll save all the original scans, and digital video into a folder which will now become the new originals (old ones still kept and boxed away). This is going to get backed up off-site in case of a house fire.
First off, this is the hardest part. Once everything is digital, keeping a future copy is simple as long as people are interested. I wouldn't worry about file formats too much, just use popular image and video formats, and it'll be easy to access for the foreseeable future.
Things to keep these available...
1. I'll inform all of my siblings of the files I have backed up, and basically copy them to a large USB key or external drive and label it. If I die, they easily have another copy.
2. I'm going to issue a copy of the files to my siblings. They might not be quite as tech savy as the HN community, but they take a lot of photos themselves, and they know how to manage them, back them up on drives in folders, etc. The more copies, and more people that have them, the better odds someone will carry them on. I'll also give a copy to my parents and grandparents, simply so they can view them any time.
How is it practical? It's a beautiful design, but far simpler designs can run circles around it in every scenario I can imagine. A small version might make for a fun desk toy. When I think practical, I think Boston Dynamics.
I'm curious to see what happens as our age group gets older. Right now few focus on developing applications, games or social networks for elderly individuals, since there isn't a big audience. As we age, I think we'll see a lot more technology designed to helping the elderly, and hopefully it'll allow them to stay more mentally stimulated, less lonely, and provide ways for them to further contribute so society online.
Are comments ever deleted or hidden from view completely? I've been reading HN for a year or two, and I've never noticed an issue with comment quality. In topics with a larger number of comments, you get one or two heavily downvoted posts, but that's it.
My question, is there an issue with comments I'm not seeing? Do the popular topics on the homepage have dozens of spam or troll comments that are pruned out constantly, so I don't notice the problem? Or is the issue those 1 or 2 downvoted comments I mentioned earlier?
HN receives a small number of comments, so fine tuning algorithms isn't a big deal in my opinion. This isn't Reddit, where the number one post right now has 4,000 comments. That presents a lot of complications, since they need to try and cycle new comments so they all receive some visibility, allowing them a chance to rise if they're of high quality. On HN, you have 20 comments, or 50 comments, so regardless of the sorting, nearly everything gets read. As long as HN generally sorts comments, they're fine.
There are two ways for comments to be hidden from view. One is "dead" and the other "deleted". Comments can end up "dead" for a variety of reasons (such as if the commenter is banned), but they're not really hidden—you can turn "show dead" on in your profile to make them appear.
"Deleted" comments are hidden, but much less common. If a comment is deleted it almost always means that the author removed it or (very rarely) asked us to remove it later for a compelling reason.
When we talk about toxic and other low-quality comments, though, we're only concerned about comments that are live on the page. So yes, you are seeing them. I'm glad they haven't been spoiling HN for you! Personally I think the fading out of negatively scored comments is one of the best design choices PG ever made for the site. I once told him that, and he expressed surprise and said he never sees it. (The admin version of the software doesn't do any fading.)
> "Personally I think the fading out of negatively scored comments is one of the best design choices PG ever made for the site. I once told him that, and he expressed surprise and said he never sees it. (The admin version of the software doesn't do any fading.)"
I concur. It makes a big difference to how I read the site and react to comments, especially since comment scores are not visible. I'm kinda surprised that pg (as an admin) didn't experience this.
The gym has one main advantage, you invested time to get there. When I had a gym in my apartment building, I'd put on my gym clothes, go down there, and workout for an hour without a problem. Once I was there, I had no trouble staying.
Now, I have some gym equipment in my room. This doesn't work nearly as well. I'll start to workout, then check that forum post to see if anyone replied, then I'll browse YouTube for some music, then I might do a few sets, and finally I get distracted by something and quit.
For me, the gym, or biking outdoors works best. Once I'm on my bike, I'll mess around for hours. If I try to bike indoors, I'll last about 2 minutes.
This has been my problem also. I've kinda solved it by dedicating one specific empty space in my place to working out (a room or what not), with the one mental rule that I'm not allowed to exit this area at all until I've finished my workout.
Agreed, cheap labor isn't hard to find, and there are countless people that would answer captchas all day long for a few dollars. How many captchas could you answer in a day? Let's say you work 8 hours, and answer one every 20 seconds. That's 1,440 captchas answered for $3/day. You get 5 captchas for a penny. If you can make more than a penny off 5 captchas and whatever you're trying to post or accomplish, you have a business.
Crowdfunding web applications? Is this becoming a new thing?
Send us 100k, and we'll finish our beta application, and give you rewards, like your name in the code, or for $500, you can have a coffee with us on video chat. Or for $25,000, fly yourself here, and we'll give you a tour of the city and cook you dinner. Does this not sound crazy to anyone else?
If they raise an extra $150k, they'll develop extras, such as a plug-in architecture to enable an ecosystem of open-source plug-ins for different discussion and decision-making protocols that will scale to much larger groups. I don't know what the hell that even means, but isn't it a little irresponsible to even consider such features when you haven't made an official release, and proven the concept has any long term traction?
If you can't tell, this entire thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. After 18 months of beta they're unable to launch, or make enough sales to organizations to fund their development, so they're asking the crowd for a 100k donation? I don't believe their software is as life changing as the video makes it out to be, and I don't think they have a viable business. I expect them to burn through the money, launch, and fade away.
Hi, thanks for your comments. We launched a functional and useful alpha in early 2012, followed by a public beta in 2013, which was open to everyone to use. 15,000 people have already signed up and people are using the software right now all over the world. You're welcome to use the Loomio protoype right now, either the hosted version in the cloud, or install your own instance.
So if we're talking about the beta prototype, characterising us as "unable to launch" isn't fair. What the crowdfunding campaign is for is building Loomio 1.0, a redesign and expansion of the core idea we've validated.
The stretch goals would allow us to unlock matching funding from the New Zealand government, including taking on some big technical challenges. You are right that these are not yet well-defined, since we're still a ways off from starting to work on them. But there are serious challenges around scaling up meaningful online discussion and decision-making to large groups that I don't believe anyone has really solved yet. We want to take them on.
We've hung in there for 2 years already, and put together an amazing team. The incredible support of over 1000 people is now going to allow us to release Loomio 1.0 later this year. We're not going anywhere!!
So sorry it leaves a bad taste. If there's anything else you'd like to know that might help you understand it better, please let us know! We're a genuinely earnest and well-meaning group trying to build something we think can help people.
Why would you say unable to launch isn't a fair assessment? If you had a functional and useful alpha over 2 years ago, and 1.0 isn't released, I'd say that's spot on. You're going to be in for nearly 3 years, $100k from the crowd, and an unknown amount from your supporters and team before officially launching. 15,000 users on free software is a small number. I'd be worrying the small number isn't because the big launch has happened, but because the concept doesn't have enough appeal. I've launched a few different projects in the past that hit 15,000 users in a week, and the majority of those died within months or a year.
Nonetheless, congratulations on raising $100k from 1,000 users. That shows some dedication from the community, so you must be doing something right. Hopefully I'm wrong on my forecast, and good luck on the project.
appreciate your skepticism, thanks for sharing that.
for some context, Loomio is a bootstrapped startup that, though unlike many startups we're not selling equity nor selling advertising, because we believe these investments compromise neutrality. We're not doing this to get rich or to get someone else rich, we're doing this because we think it's something that can make a difference. And it already is
Totally agree. Want to build a discussion forum? Give it a .io domain, put some text boxes and voting buttons and launch a crowdsourcing campaign. Not saying its not effective, but just something to ponder upon where crowdfunding is headed in general.
Agreed. I had the pleasure of calling CRA last month to sort out a problem. I spent an afternoon trying to piece together all these letters, payments, refunds, etc, and what exactly went wrong.
Anyway, I call, and it was the closest thing to magic I've ever seen. I give reception my SIN, and ask for the woman that signed the letter I received. I'm on hold for only 10 or 20 seconds, the woman answers, and greets me with my name. I didn't say more than a couple of sentences explaining the issue, and she says she'll check her computer, taps a button and poof she knows everything. Literally a few more seconds, and everything is sorted, and a cheque is being mailed.
I was almost speechless, I was expecting a 30 minute call between departments, explaining numbers, CRA scratching their heads since this was taking place across multiple provinces, and then me having to physically mail in a variety of personal information. Instead, it was a 1 or 2 minute call with an incredibly friendly woman, and she was so organized, it's like she spent the day preparing for me to call in advance. And, to reiterate, this was the woman that signed the original letter I received, not someone from support or customer service.
Now, the CRA website is a nightmare, but talking to them on the phone was the most impressive service I've ever encountered.
Is there anything on the market to melt your printed parts or toys, to create a new spool of plastic for printing? In short, some type of recycling process you could do at home.
This isn't the one I remember seeing a few years ago, but I can't remember what that was, and this is what is coming up for me now when I search for the concept:
First off, this is the hardest part. Once everything is digital, keeping a future copy is simple as long as people are interested. I wouldn't worry about file formats too much, just use popular image and video formats, and it'll be easy to access for the foreseeable future.
Things to keep these available...
1. I'll inform all of my siblings of the files I have backed up, and basically copy them to a large USB key or external drive and label it. If I die, they easily have another copy.
2. I'm going to issue a copy of the files to my siblings. They might not be quite as tech savy as the HN community, but they take a lot of photos themselves, and they know how to manage them, back them up on drives in folders, etc. The more copies, and more people that have them, the better odds someone will carry them on. I'll also give a copy to my parents and grandparents, simply so they can view them any time.