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What the game 'Werewolf' teaches us about Trust and Security - gwern https://eaves.ca/2013/11/07/what-werewolf-teaches-us-about-trust-security/ ====== mindcrash For those of you who want to see how 'Werewolf' plays out, there's a great implementation of the concepts of this game on Steam in a indie game called 'Town of Salem' so you can try it yourselves: [http://store.steampowered.com/app/334230/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/334230/)

The Tau Manifesto - acjohnson55 http://www.tauday.com/ ====== fdej Both tau and pi are inconvenient because you often need fractional multiples like 1/6 or 3/4. We should instead take the fundamental unit of angle measurement to be pi _divided_ by a highly composite number, say 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 5 = 180. Most common angles will be then be integer multiples of this unit. Let's give this unit a name, say "degree". One full rotation = 360 "degrees" Half a rotation = 180 "degrees" 1/10 of a rotation = 36 "degrees" etc. I can't believe I'm the first person to think of this. It's so simple that even the ancient Greeks could have figured it out. I should write a full internet manifesto and try to convert the world. ~~~ sunfish It's bugged me as well. It feels like whenever you have a unit where all your measurements contain a multiplication by a constant factor, you should just pick a more convenient unit. This applies to radian measure regardless of whether one uses Pi or Tau. It's odd that the unit of radian measure is a quantity which one almost never encounters, and that the quantities one most often encounters are all transcendental (except 0), even in the most basic of situations. But instead of picking an arbitrary number like 360 or 1337 or whatever, how about we pick 1? Let's give this unit a name, say "turn". One full rotation = 1 "turn" Half a rotation = 1/2 "turn" 1/10 of a rotation = 1/10 "turn" etc. What do you think? ~~~ alecrn I always liked this as well, and in this case, tau is basically that unit. In fact, maybe we could think of tau as being short for "turn". One full rotation = tau Half a rotation = 1/2 tau 1/10 a rotation = 1/10 tau ~~~ harperlee I especially like that this conversation went full circle and back into tau. ------ giech I think this whole argument is silly. I really do not think one is fundamentally better than the other. Factor of 2 constants will exist no matter which one you choose. Might as well go with pau [http://xkcd.com/1292/](http://xkcd.com/1292/) ~~~ mfisher87 I don't like to think about it this way. I think it's silly to go all out and insist one is always objectively "better" than the other (it's a tradeoff), but to have this discussion is illuminating. Look through the comments at how many people gained a better understanding of geometry as a whole by reading. ------ sunfish I distinctly remember when I was learning geometry that there were some things that never really made sense. Why was pi defined in terms of the diameter when literally _everything_ else we learned about circles used the radius? Why did radian angles feel off by a factor of 2? When I later stumbled upon the Tau Manifesto, it felt like a lot of things fell into place. And by that time, I had also studied calculus and had a familiarity with the kinds of things that happen in formulas which relate lengths and areas, so the discussion of the circle area formula resonated as well. Despite all the cheap dismissals one sees, this feeling of "woah, that would have actually made sense!" is a big part of what makes the Tau Manifesto popular. ------ hugs I didn't really understand why tau was "better" than pi until I understood the relationship to radians. Figure 8 [1] in the Tau Manifesto was the eye-opener for me. With tau, instead of pi, I now have a more intuitive sense of how to think in radians when doing trigonometry. [1]: [http://www.tauday.com/tau-manifesto#fig- tau_angles](http://www.tauday.com/tau-manifesto#fig-tau_angles) ------ jackmaney [http://www.thepimanifesto.com/](http://www.thepimanifesto.com/) ~~~ thomasahle I like Terence's suggestion of using 2 _pi_ i as the fundamental constant. Sqrt(pi) could also be useful given how often it appears. ------ lkbm Numberphile also has a really fun debate on Pi v. Tau: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPv1UV0rD8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPv1UV0rD8U) ~~~ thomasahle But changing our number system to base 12 would destroy pi day! ~~~ lkbm Yeah, but as Vihart pointed out, Pi = a half rotation, so Pi day is in June. :-) ------ ebbv Do we really need to do this every year? Come on. ------ amalcon This is probably the most pointless math argument. Apparently, some people consider it too cumbersome or confusing to write two glyphs instead of one, and would prefer to replace the whole thing with a single glyph. The chosen glyph happens to be one of the worst possible options, because it conflicts with torque (an angular force, which frequently appears in the same calculations as pi). This despite there being dozens of completely unused glyphs in the non-English non-Greek alphabets (Hebrew, Russian, etc). It seems almost like a parody. ~~~ DSMan195276 I think most of your arguments are valid, especially about the choice of glyph, tau is already used a ton. However, I think there is something to be said for the fact that, by virtue of being the ratio of C/R, there are exactly tau radians in a circle. This really does simplify the math, and gives more meaning to the constants on tau vs. pi. There's more meaning from '3 * tau / 4' vs. '3 * pi / 2' because the constant tells you that you have exactly '3 / 4' of a circle. With pi, this is less obvious because there are '2 * pi' radians in a circle, but the 2 frequently disappears (like in my example), which leaves you with '3 / 2 of a _half a circle_ ', which isn't obvious how much that actually is. pi definitely _does_ have it's uses when you're talking about the diameter, but when you're talking about something like _rad_ ians, it makes more sense to use the ratio of circumference to _radius_ rather then circumference to diameter. If we were using diameterians then it would make sense to use pi, since there would be exactly pi diameterians in a circle. Having them mismatched like we do creates a mess. ~~~ tomp > which leaves you with '3 / 2 of a half a circle', which isn't obvious how > much that actually is I like pi. I think it's quite obvious too, but maybe you need to stop thinking about circles and start thinking about planes or lines instead. Pi is simple, straight line, or equivalently the whole half-plane above the x axis. Pi/2 is half the turning needed to get back to the straight line, i.e. right square. And so on... ~~~ DSMan195276 I get what you're saying, but you can say the _exact_ same thing using tau and it's simpler: Tau is a simple, straight line, and stretches the entire length of a circle, starting from the x-axis in the positive x direction, and ending at the x-axis from the negative x direction. So Tau / 2 is the amount of turning needed to go half-way around the circle. Tau / 4 is the amount of turning needed to go a forth of the way around the circle, IE. a right square. Pi might seem easier or obvious to you because you've already been dealing with it for years, but it still creates a situation that is more complex then it needs to be. Tau creates a simpler unit-circle, because Tau uses the _radius_ , and we're talking about _radians_. Using something that's calculated using the diameter, when you're talking about a unit that's measured in radius's is asking for a mess. ------ cplease e^(τi/2) = -1 Didn't think so. ~~~ StefanKarpinski Yes, which means "a half turn around the unit circle in the complex plane is -1". Try explaining that in words without saying "half" or something equivalent to it. ~~~ tomp Opposite of 1 on the unit circle in the complex plane is -1. Pi just means "enough of a turn to get back to the straight line". ~~~ stouset You mean a vector in the opposite direction. Clear as mud. ------ bau5 Do not want.

Mystery in Wuhan: recovered coronavirus patients test negative then positive - ceejayoz https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/822407626/mystery-in-wuhan-recovered-coronavirus-patients-test-negative-then-positive ====== eanzenberg Literally false positive and false negatives. In other words, if you test millions of people, there will be more people tested positive who DON'T have the disease vs. those who test positive and HAVE the disease. ~~~ devy Exactly! For any medical tests, there are 2 measurements: sensitivity and specificity, one to judge false positive and another judge the false negatives. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity) ~~~ AzzieElbab Spain sent testkits back to China because they were unreliable ~~~ tehjoker In the NYT article on Italy today, frontline medics were saying that clinical symptoms were anecdotally more reliable than the tests because there are too many false negatives. Not sure whose tests they're using but I've heard similar things about US PCR tests. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/27/world/europe/...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/27/world/europe/coronavirus- italy-bergamo.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage) ~~~ devy Yep! CT scans and clinician's experience is more reliable than any tests for COVID-19 diagnostics (which should only serving as a definitive confirmation). This also why I believe human doctors are still unbeatable by AI ~~~ dirtyid I remember an article early in the outbreak that Chinese doctors found the most reliable diagnosis comes from CT scans. Test was merely the first filter. They tuned the settings to increase scan speed at the cost of resolution and setup a process to scan up to 200 patients a day per scanner. I wonder if this is still best practice that other countries aren't adopting. On the other hand I expect tests to have improved since the early days. There's also the consideration China simply had more CT scanners that could be mobilized to Wuhan which makes this less practical elsewhere. ~~~ tehjoker My doctor friend who got the minutes of a call with a chinese doctor said they were also swabbing multiple areas of the body for PCR and doing an antibody screen as well (in addition to CT). ------ cs702 My key takeaway after reading this article is that I cannot blindly trust China's official figures. NPR reports that "under its newest COVID-19 prevention guidelines, _China does not include in its overall daily count for total and for new cases those who retest positive after being released from medical care. China also does not include asymptomatic cases in case counts_ " (emphasis mine). One of the Wuhan doctors interviewed for this article told NPR that "I have no idea why the authorities choose not to count asymptomatic cases in the official case count. I am baffled." All doctors and individuals in China who were interviewed for the article "requested anonymity when speaking with NPR because those who have challenged the government's handling of the outbreak have been detained." \-- See also: [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/27/china-re- closes...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/27/china-re-closes-all- cinemas-over-coronavirus-fears) ------ canada_dry When you factor in this news: [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/27/china-re- closes...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/27/china-re-closes-all- cinemas-over-coronavirus-fears) It would certainly appear that this virus is not yet finished with China. More importantly, it would seem that premature lifting of restrictions is done at our peril. ------ jankotek Czechia got some quick tests from China. Their reliability was about 60% compared to lab, false positives and false negatives. I think DNA and RNA research is severely lacking in most countries. In a few years we will look at this year as 1960ies of computer engineering. Edit: source [https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/ostrava-rychlotesty- kor...](https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/ostrava-rychlotesty- koronavirus_2003231414_sot) ~~~ netvarun Initially skeptical on your first claim but did find a source: [https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-spain-says- rapid...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-spain-says-rapid-tests- sent-from-china-missing-cases-2020-3) ([https://outline.com/uBBJvY](https://outline.com/uBBJvY)) ~~~ dmix Sounds like a test from a single Chinese company and the results were closer to 30% accurate: > The Chinese Embassy in Spain said that the Bioeasy tests were not part of > China's medical donations and that the firm didn't have a license to sell > its products. ~~~ lopis 30% accurate? Does that mean it's better to believe the opposite of what the test says most of the time? ~~~ samsonradu Then it would be 70% accurate ~~~ DeonPenny Agreed the worst test would be 50% accurate ------ gojomo The journalists here haven't mentioned what kinds of tests each the 4 unnamed sources – 2 doctors, 2 citizens – had at each stage of their 'positive then negative then positive again' journey. They haven't mentioned if any of the individual tests were followed-up with multiple confirmatory tests of alternate methods. To the extent they mention test types at all, it is quotes from "February" or "a professor... by email" – nothing about _these_ persons' tests. Yet, the tests in use have some level of false-positive and false-negative. Some variants have had quite high error rates – which may still be acceptable for mass-screening, but not for understanding the course of a single person's infection status. So, among many millions of people tested in China, a handful have had alternating results not correlated with their symptoms? Not a surprise, even with tiny test error rates, unless each contributing result to the "+/-/+" pattern was reconfirmed by multiple-tests/multiple-methods. (Note this also suggests many accounts of 'asymptomatic cases' may just be false-positives who never had Covid-19.) ------ nico_h Favorite line from the article: "In terms of those who retested positive, the official party line is that they have not been proven to be infectious. That is not the same as saying they are not infectious," one of the Wuhan doctors who tested positive twice told NPR [...] "If they really are not infectious," the doctor said, "then there would be no need to take them back to the hospitals again." So why are the asymptomatic cases required to quarantine under medical observation for 14 days but not counted? ~~~ ceejayoz "Not proven to be infectious" and "proven to not be infectious" aren't the same thing. Quarantine/observation is warranted for the first. ~~~ nico_h Well if you know they are infected, and are worried they might be infectious, _why not count them_ after all they _are_ occupying a bed. ------ hprotagonist Couple of thoughts: \- I think we need to know a LOT more about the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of every test that's being deployed right now. I am 100% willing to believe that "testing negative and then positive" means "you have a pretty low viral load and our tests suck more than we're willing to admit out loud right now". \- I think we need to be very clear that there are two kinds of tests: "you have an active SARS-CoV-2 infection _right now_ , and also "you have once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection in the semi-recent past". One tells you who needs care, one tells you who is at least temporarily immune we hope. ~~~ baxtr _In general_ PCR tests are highly sensitive. Even smallest viral loads can be detected (Edit) added in general above due to valid points in the comments below ~~~ hprotagonist if: \- you do them right \- your reagents are good \- the kit was assembled properly \- there's no contamination in the machines \- you got a good sample \- ... The capability for a highly sensitive and accurate test in no way guarantees that a randomly sampled administration of that test is going to meet the high standard that the test may be capable of. ~~~ twic And if you swabbed an infected part of the body in the first place! _In 205 patients with proven COVID-19 [...] bronchoalveolar lavage fluid was positive in 14 /15 (93%), sputum 75/104 (72%), nasal swabs 5/8 (63%), brush biopsy 6/13 (46%), pharyngeal swabs 126/398 (32%), feces 44/153 (29%), blood 3/307 (1%), and urine 0/72 (0%)._ [https://www.jwatch.org/na51116/2020/03/17/pharyngeal-and- nas...](https://www.jwatch.org/na51116/2020/03/17/pharyngeal-and-nasal-swabs- may-not-have-adequate) ~~~ hinkley Hol' up. > blood 3/307 (1%) Why isn't their blood rotten with virus? ~~~ gojomo I suspect it's because this virus is optimized to enter cells that line the lungs/respiratory tract, then also sheds back that same way. Meanwhile, cells in, and along, the bloodstream aren't infected – and _are_ most-trafficked by the body's immune response, including virus-destroying antibodies. (Why are rodents more prevalent in the walls/crawlspaces of a dwelling, rather than the hallways?) ~~~ hinkley But the lungs are full of blood, that's how we breath. So it's spreading mucosally or through connective tissue? ~~~ gojomo Sure, but if an initially-infected respiratory cell releases its "baby coronaviruses" out to the respiratory linings, away from the blood, they'll find lots more of the respiratory cell surfaces they're optimized to infect, and maybe get a ride out to other hosts on sputum. To the extent an infected cell releases its "baby coronaviruses" into the blood stream, they find a hot, chemically active environment – which is already inhospitable to their continued survival – plus a relative dearth of the respiratory cell-walls they're optimized to enter, plus a growing number of hostile antibodies. (I don't know _if_ a coronavirus-hijacked cell _can_ direct its fresh viruses one way or the other, but it'd probably prefer to do that if it could, and I can understand why viruses wouldn't persist long in blood compared to respiratory-membranes.) The coronaviruses are definitely active in mucosal surfaces, and carried by mucus. I haven't seen anything about, nor do I think any activity is necessarily implied, in other connective tissues. ------ rmu09 Every test in the real world shows false positives and false negatives. I would expect that doing multiple tests on a massive number of people could show such results. ------ wangii as far as I know, cases of 're-positive' have been reported in Chinese websphere for a while, and there had been doubts and official clarifications: re-positive report: [http://www.bjnews.com.cn/feature/2020/03/05/699575.html](http://www.bjnews.com.cn/feature/2020/03/05/699575.html) (2020/03/05) expert stance: [http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/03/12/702870.html](http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/03/12/702870.html) (2020/03/12) it's about lives and I don't think anyone believe in govt. lightly. so do you. ------ 4restm Med Cram had a segment on this, its believed to be false negatives. As some the current PCR test are highly inaccurate ------ guscost Related case report: [https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17319/v1](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17319/v1) ------ rurban This is entirely expected. Ex-positives develop antibodies, so that they are immune against further infections. Since the virus is so infectious it can easily lead to further infections, but the antibodies can contain it. Same happens with flu vaccination. The new PCR tests are so overly precise, that they can measure the new losing virus cells. Big question is if the re-positives are infectious again. Doesn't seem to be plausible, but could be. It's a new virus with a different, stronger header. ------ gentleman11 > They all requested anonymity when speaking with NPR because those who have > challenged the government's handling of the outbreak have been detained. We need to be more hesitant to praise their pandemic response ~~~ jsight I don't understand this. I haven't seen "praise"? I have seen realistic assessments of the ultimate effectiveness, but I see this as vastly different from "praise". I think the majority of people in the US that have observed how they handle it see their approach as overly harsh. ~~~ snapetom While social media has been more critical depending on the source, the mainstream media has definitely been carrying the water for China. [https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/124324375891486310...](https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/1243243758914863104) I think it's been interesting wave. When the cases first started, China got blasted. As it hit the US, Administration political opponents have criticized the US response, but many have gone to the point of praising China's response and forgetting about China's actions in December/January. ~~~ wwweston If China did in fact ship emergency medical supplies to Italy, that's a gesture worth recognizing and praising. "Carrying water" is a weird way of characterizing that recognition. China also deserves criticism; its initial response was dysfunctional in some ways (albeit somewhat different ways than the United States dysfunctional response). Fortunately, as you say, it's been blasted in some discussion. But recognition of ways in which its response has been respectable is less the mark of someone "carrying water" and more part of the process of learning things and having our political institutions learn things. ~~~ uncoder0 I've never seen the mainstream media question the veracity of the statistics about Covid that came out of China until the evidence is too obvious to ignore. There is plenty of proof that they regularly manipulate their statistics such as GDP. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/china- s-g...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/china-s-gdp-growth- pace-was-inflated-for-nine-years-study-finds) [https://time.com/5811222/wuhan-coronavirus-death- toll/](https://time.com/5811222/wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll/) etc Why should any respectable journalist quote their statistics about COVID and conclude how effective their response was without mentioning that they've been known to fabricate statistics? Let alone calling them a 'Global Leader' in response. I've not seen this qualification mentioned once with respect to China's stats on this virus. ~~~ dirtyid >mentioned once I don't see it frequently in writing, but the majority of TV and podcast reporting from news sites has the disclaimer. And there's enough China bad articles out there that I feel like this is implicitly assumed. Either way, no one trusts Chinese stats, including the Chinese public themselves, and the Chinese government most of all. The ability to collect accurate statistics when there's so many different development levels country- wide simply isn't there. For example, China doesn't use GDP internally, they use LKI, LiKeQiang Index which aggregates a value from measurable indicators like freight cargo volume, electric consumption, bank loans. There's also TSF, Total Social Financing. They can still be gamed, but physically (running empty trains), but much harder to fake via submitting fake excel sheets to central government. Chinese GDP is basically a back of the napkin estimate to appease foreign investors, it's also used to set growth targets instead of reflecting it. Most of the mainstream western reporting on Chinese GDP does not understand this. It's well understood among China watchers. The most comprehensive study on Chinese GDP so far, by CSIS, suggested China was under reporting their GDP. As for stacked urns in Wuhan, the city is still under quarantine so urns would not be picked up. Also necessary to account for other sources of death. The article quotes 56K cremations in Q4 2019, so a few thousands urns especially as restock doesn't seem atypical. Like LKI, it's an useful oblique indicator, but should be considered in other context. If there's mass death, enough to measurably affect hysterical people in quarantine, it would be on Chinese social media which would leak to China watchers. There's many expats and Chinese people with VPNs, things that affect the public on a mass scale inevitably leaps over the firewall, it's not opaque like politburo politics. People need to stop looking at Chinese numbers and instead extrapolate from oblique indicators. When expats in China talk about things returning to normal, when Chinese diaspora aren't mourning about sick or dead family members en-mass, then you can assume that reflects ground reality. ------ m0zg Here's probably why: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/coronavirus- te...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/coronavirus-test-kits- withdrawn-spain-poor-accuracy-rate) ------ dang A similar thread from 10 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608676) ------ DeonPenny You've locked healthy people inside with sick people during the quarantine. Wouldn't that cause some reinfections? After your immune system got beat down the first time. ~~~ cjbprime Catching a virus normally provides you immunity for some time frame from three months up to years or forever. We aren't expecting reinfection (yet) because we're expecting immunity, but might be wrong. ------ anotheryou Of 6 people I know with corona 2 tested negative despite showing the same symptoms as their positive partners... I think it's just false negatives. ------ grugagag Related: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/stacks- of...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/stacks-of-urns-in- wuhan-prompt-new-questions-of-virus-s-toll) China is likely hiding the real numbers for unknown reasons ~~~ robocat The “stacks of urns” can almost be answered by the quote from the article: “There were 56,007 cremations in Wuhan in the fourth quarter of 2019”. (Edit: I shortened quote). After a month of lockdown, the number of backlogged urns should be over 18000. ~~~ oefrha (More than) two months of lockdown, not one. So ~38000 cremations “normally”. Spread out to eight funeral homes, you’d expect 4k-5k at each location. (Since people were allegedly locked into apartments or at least apartment complexes, apparently they weren’t picking up ashes until now.) So “thousands” at each location tells us precious nothing. Article is intentionally misleading, burying the “normal” stats that way. ------ m3kw9 But they were not found to shed viruses. ~~~ wizzwizz4 Doesn't mean they were found not to. ------ urda It's not a mystery. China is for sure not telling the truth. Remember this is a country with massive censorship issues and have even kicked out foreign reporters. I'd like to know what the downvotes are? Because everything here is factually true.

Elon Musk and Bezos used to be just like you, says Y Combinator’s Daniel Gross - rahulshiv https://www.recode.net/2017/12/6/16728982/daniel-gross-y-combinator-cue-apple-ai-machine-learning-kara-swisher-casey-newton-decode-podcast ====== dwaltrip They both likely have IQs of at least 145, it seems, which is in the top 0.13% or higher. Just like the rest of us, indeed. [https://www.quora.com/Who-is-smarter-Elon-Musk-or-Jeff- Bezos](https://www.quora.com/Who-is-smarter-Elon-Musk-or-Jeff-Bezos) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Rules_for_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Rules_for_normally_distributed_data) ------ angersock I'm pretty sure both of them came from monied families? Or is that the point?

Ask HN: Do you use Wolfram Alpha? - raphar I'm curious about the usage of Wolfram Alpha. How frequently do you search with it?<p>I think I'll use Wolfram Alfa<p>a) once a month b) once a week c) dayly d) hourly!!<p>[have you found a killer application of the engine???]<p>(also have you found a use to it?) ====== raphar I think they have some interesting concepts implemented in their engine, but without users it will be difficult to maintain it running. Thats why I was asking. I also ask here because the marketing campaign hit us plenty in HN. by the way I use it at most once a week, generally when Im reading news. ------ mronge I tried it and was disappointed. For example search Wolfram Alpha for "Abraham Lincon's Height" and it won't be able to figure it out. Search Google, and it will be parsed out nicely at the top of the page, no wading through search results necessary. ~~~ nailer Same here. Based on the demo video, I thought a natural language query about some oft repeated numbers - 'Web browser market share by year' would be doable. It wasn't. ------ davi Good question. <http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll> (Dunno if it still has a karma threshold) ~~~ buugs It's 20 karma to create a poll, you can see when your logged out and try to create one. And I never use wolfram alpha, maybe when I start classes again. ------ oomkiller I probably use it daily or just about daily. Usually to do some basic physics calculations, just for fun. I also use it to check my answers to homework. ------ dca e) never

Two bills target video games following Sandy Hook tragedy - mbenjaminsmith http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/184997/Two_bills_target_video_games_following_Sandy_Hook_tragedy.php ====== ck2 I don't personally care for the existence of video games and movies that are super violent just for the sake of being violent. But here's the thing - plenty of other countries have full access to all these video games, movies and even their fair share of mentally ill. What they do not have is constant mass slaughters like this, and that's because they don't have the guns-are-toys mentality we do and open access to as many guns as you want, as powerful as you want, without tracking, liability or lack of social pressure to stop. Sadly nothing will be done and in a decade we'll have a mass-killing anniversary for every day of the year and everyone will just be desensitized. Instead we'll have armed guards at every place where more than 10 people gather and like the TSA everyone will say "oh well, what can you do". ~~~ CamperBob2 Or, you know, we could just stop spazzing out in reaction to vanishingly-rare events. You can't shrink-wrap the world. ~~~ ck2 Uh, over 1000 people have been killed by guns since Sandy Hook a month ago [1] That's not a rare event - it's just distributed far apart enough in the news and localized to the point where you purposely do not notice. I think it would be a great service if every national news program would open with a list of the names of everyone killed by guns and drunk drivers, every day. It would only take a minute but if you did it every day, people would start to get a hint. PBS News closes with all the people (mostly teenagers and twenty-somethings) killed in the military every night, it could be like that. 1\. [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/1...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html) ~~~ hayksaakian How many were obtained illegally? How many were suicides? How many more people died from more preventable causes? Sound bites are sound bites are sound bites. ~~~ ck2 Isn't the proper question "how many deaths happened in other countries of the same population density" ? Because I assure you, it's lower in the UK, Japan, etc. You cannot just say "oh well what can you do, it's the price we pay to have our toys". ~~~ philwelch You're right. Let's ban cars. Though that's a bit too extreme, let's only ban assault vehicles. You know, those black SUV's that look a little too much like military vehicles. That is a good solution to the number of people killed by drunk drivers. ~~~ ck2 Nah let's remove speed limits and drink all you want when you drive. Because people should have all the freedom they want and people are rational and intelligent. Screw the rights of other people to be able to drive safely. Heck, why restrict fully automatic M16s and bazookas - why dare impose limits at all. People are rational and intelligent their freedom should not stop where others begin. In fact you should be able to drunk drive and carry around your loaded M16 out the window down the highway. We should be like the middle east with people firing fully automatics in the air anytime they want and gangs roaming around in pickups fully armed. The gun bans they are trying now are the only place they can start. Because anything more sane would insanely be ignored. At least they are trying and it's a start. Guns are not toys and that's the whole problem, people want to play with them because they think it's a game. ~~~ unimpressive >The gun bans they are trying now are the only place they can start. Because anything more sane would insanely be ignored. At least they are trying and it's a start. The thing about legislative efforts, is that on an issue where there are parties who want to take certain laws to one extreme or the other (Ex: Banning all guns.) and the sliding scale is freedom vs regulation, there will inevitably always be push from both of the extreme sides. So even if you enact "reasonable" gun laws, there will always be parties trying to push them forwards or backwards. This means that the sensible thing for guns rights organizations to do is turn even a minor gun regulation into a shitstorm so that the opposing forces on the other side have to spend all their energy maintaining reasonable gun laws. Internet activists may want to take notes. ~~~ ck2 As long as people enjoy killing animals, guns will never be illegal in this country. There are plenty of lefties in the senate who really enjoy killing animals so guns are always going to be legal. What they are trying to restrict is the use of guns as toys and I have zero problem with that. I think hunting is ridiculous and horrible in this day and age but I guess that's part of the compromise I have to do. I am not accepting anything further than that though, guns are not toys. ~~~ fusiongyro There are environmentally sound reasons to control the population of wild animals. A population boom/bust cycle wreaks havoc on the environment. We've already interfered with nature on this continent to such a degree it cannot self-regulate. I don't enjoy killing animals, but those that I know who hunt are in fact doing us all a public service we would otherwise have to pay the government to do. ------ unimpressive As somebody who played _tons_ of these newfangled murder simulators for years, I can say with 100% confidence that the worst ideas I ever had as a kid came from cartoons, not video games. [0] Games don't mess around with casuality very often. Usually when you do lethal things, they kill stuff. In cartoons, very dangerous things are portrayed as being something you can walk away from with only soot on your face or a lump on your head. To give you an idea of how bad we're talking here, there was a time very early on in my life when I didn't know that strangulation could kill people. I'm not even joking. [1] [0]: Keep in mind of course that one person is a single data point, not a set. (And not even a rigorous data point at that.) [1]: Thankfully nobody died. ------ bdcravens Why is no one targeting music that advocates gun violence? Video games and movies are pretty obviously works of fiction. Some rap music, for example, advocates murdering real people in real situations ~~~ malandrew Throwing another art from another medium under the bus isn't going to help things. If anything, doing so just legitimizes these ridiculous laws. We should be against these shenanigans regardless of the medium in question. ~~~ jlgreco It _might_ help things. If we threw in books for example suddenly the 1st Amendment implications would become very clear to everyone. Right now pretty much only video games are involved, and a very large portion of the population considers these to be alien, "not art" and frankly just a second class "speech medium". Music (well, rap music) probably sits somewhere between the two. ------ diminoten After reading the bill, I'm not opposed to it on practical grounds. For a $60 game, it's $0.60. Who cares. Furthermore, the revenue would go exclusively towards the treatment of mental health conditions, which is just fine with me, as I believe the real cause of these violent outbursts is a lack of support system for those who need it most. What I disagree with in this bill is the use of the privately run, industry controlled ESRB as the measuring stick for what is and isn't violent. Not only are they terrible at accurately rating games (in my opinion), they're not even being given the chance to distinguish between violent video games and other kinds of mature video games (complex plot, general adult themes, etc.) ALL T rated games or higher would be taxed, _regardless_ of the level of violence in the game itself. That's simply inaccurate, and displays a very fundamental lack of knowledge on the topic. Don't try to regulate what you don't understand, please. Not to mention the fact that, if this wins, it's further legitimizing the absolutely absurd notion that video games are the cause of these exceptionally rare and exceptionally violent outbursts. I can't agree with that. ~~~ jlgreco Media should not be taxed based on it's content. Permitting that puts the government one step away from being able to create de facto bans based on content by merely cranking the tax rate. ~~~ diminoten Why shouldn't media be taxed based on its content? ------ graeme What research has been done on this? When I played FPS games, I would have visualizations of walking around with a gun (in a game world). These continued for a few years after I stopped. Now I don't have them. I was never violent, nor had any urge to violence. But I had tons of violent images. That's an interesting effect. Did anyone else have anything similar, and is there any research on this? ~~~ MartinCron Reminds me of the well known "Tetris effect" where you see falling blocks long after you stop playing the game. I have experienced both sensations, but have neither shot nor dropped bricks on anyone. ~~~ sukuriant Same thing happens with falling arrows and DDR ~~~ mistercow True story: I got DDR not long before the second time I took the SAT. The night before the test, I played until around 4 AM. On test day, this is what I saw every time I blinked: <http://i.imgur.com/hTk7Q.png> ------ charonn0 I find it hard to believe that video games (or movies, songs, novels, etc,) even extremely violent ones, could compel someone to murder unless they were already seriously mentally ill. Such an ill person, deprived of violent media, would not miraculously be cured nor would they pose any less a risk to those around them. ------ jrockway What about violent books, conversations, thoughts, and lectures at school? (Have you ever read a history book? They're twice as violent as Grand Theft Auto.) ~~~ rhdoenges Violence in books is textual, so it's going to be far less vivid for the reader than a video game where you actually cause the violence. Additionally, violent books/conversations/thoughts/lectures often focus on the _negative_ aspects of violence rather than glorifying it the way movies and video games do. ~~~ r0s Some would disagree: <http://www.merrycoz.org/yc/BADLIT.HTM> It's a familiar horse to beat, this NEW media is special, and different and scary. It happened with jazz, rock&roll, comic books, movies, novels, heavy metal, many scapegoat has met the whip of the righteously ignorant. It's always been a meaningless argument, totally void of scientific fact. Were there wars before fiction? Was there crime before video games? ------ malkia Games, cartoons, books reflect the society we live in, hence they would portray violence. ~~~ philwelch I would argue the opposite. Violence is very dramatic and exciting, it's always going to appear in fiction more often than in real life for that very reason. ------ meh01 Sigh. Let's blame video games and mental illness instead of tackling the real problem. This is going to work out great.

Boyfriends are more popular than Girlfriends on Social Media - austin_e http://blog.gochime.com/boyfriends-are-more-popular-than-girlfriends ====== jiggy2011 Not that surprising, I think it's the same in real life. When my girlfriend sees her female friends they seem to just sit around and gossip about their boyfriends all night. When I see my guy friends we want to talk about pretty much anything _but_ our girlfriends. ~~~ laironald yeah definitely! it's like academia... the ideas being tested are often very obvious but when empirically tested and validated that's when you start developing the capacity for deeper thought/theorems and business frameworks. cool stuff austin_e! keep mining that data. ------ sonyasonya I think what's surprising here (to me) is that boyfriends aren't discussed more. Guess girls have more to talk about than their boyfriends....

The Future of Television - robteix https://www.cringely.com/2019/06/07/the-future-of-television/ ====== tapanjk > 5G wireless networking, [...] has pretty much nothing to do with mobile > phones. It has to do with replacing every other kind of data network with 5G > wireless. No more land lines, no more cable systems, no more wires. Going > all-wireless almost completely eliminates customer-facing labor. No more guy > with a tool belt to keep you waiting for service. No more truck rolls. This struck me as the most illuminating part of the article. I know this may not sound like an insight to many here, but to me, it was, because I never thought of 5G as the cutter of the last mile wires of the networked world.

BlackBerry Bold Touch previewed in leaked tutorials: prepare to pinch-to-zoom - evo_9 http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/04/blackberry-bold-touch-previewed-in-leaked-tutorials-prepare-to/ ====== jrsmith1279 Anyone else feel like RIM is grasping at straws here? As an ex-blackberry user I feel like the more that RIM tries to fit in with the "cool kids" the worse their products get quality-wise. That, coupled with the fact that using corporate email on one of their devices is so much more difficult than using an iPhone or Android with activesync, is going to be what kills RIM. Unfortunately it seems like they're either oblivious, or that they're too arrogant to care.

Solving the Traveling Tesla Salesman Problem with Python and Concorde - _dps http://mortada.net/drafts/the-traveling-tesla-salesman.html ====== jordigh I was excitedly reading through this article eager to learn how the solution worked. Instead, there was a bunch of (to me, as a mathematician) uninteresting detail about how to massage the data with Python. Once the data was in the right shape, feed it to something we will treat as a black box. I get it that sometimes this is ok. It's perfectly fine to not care about how everything works. I am just disappointed that a blog post about the TSP doesn't contain any actual details about how to solve the TSP. If I were to write such a blog post (and I have written things of this ilk), I would spend a lot more time trying to elucidate the solver's algorithm. I _like_ explaning algorithms.[1] That's how I feel that I've really understood a particular subject. I suppose overall this makes me quite a different sort of person than the author. I could never tolerate running Mac OS X for any length of time, because being inconvenienced to use the debugger I want (Mac OS X's signing makes it very annoying to run gdb) and being unable to put debugging calls into my OS kernel are unacceptable compromises for me. But people who like black boxes seem to _really_ like black boxes all the way down to the OS they're using. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medcouple#Fast_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medcouple#Fast_algorithm) ~~~ glaberficken Checkout the link below for a sublime iPython exploration of the TSP problem. By Peter Norvig: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/TSPv3.ipy...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/TSPv3.ipynb) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9481423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9481423) ~~~ jordigh Thank you. This is indeed more to my liking. ------ pvdebbe The map doesn't actually show the optimal path. It is proven that "loops" (the ways crossing each other) can be straightened, and the new version will be shorter. There is one east of Alberquerque. ~~~ _dps That's an interesting result; do you happen to have a citation? I couldn't find one with a few minutes of Google Scholar. If I understand Concorde's claims correctly, there is still the question of finite numerical precision (it doesn't seem to use MPFR or any other arbitrary precision library). Perhaps the suboptimality of the path is less than 1e-7 or 1e-16 (depending on precision) times the distance between the "looped" cities? Having said that, one of the authors of Concorde is R. Bixby, a co-author of CPLEX (which was for decades, and may still be, the industry standard LP solver including for branch-and-bound problems). And Chvatal is another very widely regarded LP researcher. So I would take Concorde's claims of optimality at face value (though of course there could be a data input error somewhere). Edit: Ah, I misunderstood the sense of "loop"; I thought there was a subcircuit (which I believe can be optimal in some cases), but instead there are two segments crossing each other that, per wrk1's comment below, should really be shorter if their destinations were "swapped". Rough Google-maps math suggests that would reduce the distance by ~10 miles out of ~16k, which seems well above numerical precision. ~~~ pkhuong In operations research, it's common to stop when a solution is provably within 1e-4 of optimum. Off the top of my head, reasons include: we don't want to optimize FP error, limited precision in the input data, and negligible real world impact. That said, it's also well known that non-OR practitioners have less confidence in our results when there are trivial local suboptimalities, in some cases even when they don't affect the objective function (e.g., off the critical path in a scheduling problem); I've heard of several professionals who pass the output of exact (modulo stopping criteria) methods through stupid local searches just for that reason. ~~~ Bill_Cook Concorde produces a provably optimal tour, but it follows the TSPLIB input format and requires that all distances be integers. There will thus be rounding error in converting the geodesic distances to integers. To obtain greater precision, the geodesic distances should be scaled to meters rather than kilometers. ------ ohitsdom Tesla superchargers lend themselves well to this problem because of the way the sites were selected. Tesla obviously wants these sites to form clear routes, and they advertise when they hit certain milestones ("NY to San Francisco all on the supercharger network!"). Which explains why the optimal route looks so nice. Very interesting read, well done. ------ karussell We've a similar example using real world travel times here: [https://graphhopper.com/api/1/examples/#optimization](https://graphhopper.com/api/1/examples/#optimization) (use the temporary API key: 7e76e228-d7fa-4795-a8c5-ad1048de42f1) This demonstrates that jsprit and GraphHopper combined (both open source) can be used to achieve similar performance with a lot more precise output (due to read real world data) and if you need to calculate the optimal route with multiple vehicles, time windows, capacity etc that is also not a problem. Also not by bike ;) And if there is no charger for the Tesla I recently thought also about a solution :) [https://karussell.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/solving-the- elect...](https://karussell.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/solving-the-electric- vehicle-charging-problematic-fast-with-graphhopper/) ------ Scea91 Just a side note: The mentioned Christofides algorithm only works for metric TSP. In metric TSP the edges satisfy triangle inequality. There doesn't exist any polynomial approximation algorithm for general TSP. If it existed we would be able to solve existence of Hamiltonian circuit in polynomial time by a simple reduction and therefore would be able to prove that P = NP. ~~~ gus_massa I agree. Another side note. From the article: > _Note that we are making the simplifying assumptions that the Earth is a > perfect sphere, and that the distance is a simple Euclidean distance, > instead of a driving distance. Although one can certainly plug in a > different distance metric and follow the same procedure outlined here._ I think that the deformation of the Earths surface are not important, and just change the values but not the metric properties. But the driving distance (or driving time) are not long a metric, in particular the driving distance between A and B is not equal to the driving distance between B an A. Anyway, the superchargers are so far away that the polynomial algorithm will give the correct result (probably). ~~~ chiph _I think that the deformation of the Earths surface are not important_ This probably only matters if the distances are larger. Probably larger than the distance a Tesla can go on a single charge. And so can be dropped from consideration. ~~~ greglindahl It's important to take into account up/down distances and wind conditions to accurately estimate energy consumption (or range) of a Tesla over a given route. ------ haser_au Great write up. Question: At the moment, you have Columbus -> Dayton -> Lima -> ... -> Indianapolis -> Cincinnati. What's the extra distance travelled if you were to go Columbus -> Lime -> ... -> Indianapolis -> Dayton -> Cincinnati? The second option just looks like a shorter path, so I'm curious. ~~~ sirclueless Not to mention the situation in New Mexico, which is trivially suboptimal by the triangle inequality. I think there was either some kind of rounding error getting data into the TSP solver, Concorde is just giving an approximate solution, or the data preparing code in python has a bug. ------ carlob Kinda the same thing in the Wolfram Language: With[{ geopositions = ParallelMap[ First[ StringCases[ URLFetch["http://www.teslamotors.com" <> #], ("https://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=" ~~ a: Except["\""]..) :> Interpreter["StructuredGeoCoordinates"][a] ] ]&, StringCases[ URLFetch["http://www.teslamotors.com/findus/list/superchargers/United+States"], "/findus/location/supercharger/" ~~ WordCharacter.. ] ]}, GeoGraphics[GeoPath[geopositions[[Last[FindShortestTour[geopositions]]]]]] ] and the result [http://imgur.com/THIwnIY](http://imgur.com/THIwnIY) ~~~ joehuchette I believe they also use Concorde behind the scenes to actually solve the TSP instance. ------ jashkenas The resulting "optimal" path sure doesn't look it. For example, Phoenix: [http://cl.ly/bewA](http://cl.ly/bewA) Surely it would be more optimal to cut straight across from Casa Grande to Gila Bend, and then hit the next station on the way north. No? It would be fun to throw these same markers into the Google Maps Directions TSP engine, and see how it does... [https://developers.google.com/optimization/routing/tsp#solvi...](https://developers.google.com/optimization/routing/tsp#solving- tsps-with-the-google-directions-api) ------ stickydink Billings MT to Lusk WY is ~380 miles. That puts it well out of range of any model? A solution that accounts for routes which are possible using only the Superchargers, would be interesting! ~~~ vvanders You could do it at 35MPH but that's pretty unrealistic. ~~~ toomuchtodo Or include destination chargers that are open to the public: [http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82...](http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82,-124.38999999999999?search=supercharger,destination%20charger), ------ hackguru Is he gonna run out of charge between any two stations? ------ shashwat986 There's an appreciable suboptimality in the path near Chicago. It would be shorter to go from Pleasant Prarie to Highland Park and then Aurora and Markham, instead of the path shown. ------ willvarfar A great read but I really was hoping it would involve at least one jet leg using the real Concorde :) ------ callesgg The Concorde site is Gone. 404 ------ ck2 Tesla should have a contest, visit all 200 chargers and take a photo of yourself and get a model X ------ NoWhiteHorse Nice code examples. ------ _dps Disclosure / for dang: I edited the title per my interpretation of the guidelines. In context it's not misleading, but on HN I figured "The Traveling Tesla Salesman" in isolation would cause many mistaken clicks and could be taken to be linkbait. Dan, please edit back (and bury this comment) if I overstepped :) ~~~ dang It looks fine to me.

SF restaurants are suffocating - tarr11 https://medium.com/@azhar.hashem/why-sf-restaurants-are-suffocating-795392211c66 ====== freyir > _the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment at an insane $3,447, > according to a 2018 rent report by Adobo. The U.S. Census revealed in March, > the median rent in San Francisco in 2016 was roughly over $1,600 /month. > These numbers are worrisome in a few ways: 1. The egregious rent amount that > is required for somebody to live in the city today. 2. The jump in median > rent in a mere two years. 3. The $1,600 median rent from 2016 also included > rent-controlled apartments which indicates their rapid disappearance._ She's comparing apples and oranges, and doesn't even realize it. $3,447 is the asking price for apartments now on the market. $1,600 is the median rent price people are actually paying, including people with rent control and affordable housing. People who have been living in rent-controlled apartments for many years pay a fraction of the current market rate. As a result, her second and third conclusions don't follow. If this is the kind of critical reasoning that comes with "an MBA from a top school, the rigor of an engineering education and a decade and a half launching and managing some of the most successful businesses for Google and other tech companies," it's worrying. In fact, it's easy to find actual market rate rent prices from 2016. According to the sites below, it was around $3,500, so rental prices have remained very flat over the last few years. [1] [https://www.zumper.com/blog/2016/05/zumper-national-rent- rep...](https://www.zumper.com/blog/2016/05/zumper-national-rent-report- june-2016/) [2] [https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco- ren...](https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/) ~~~ closeparen >$3,447 is the asking price for apartments now on the market. $1,600 is the median rent price people are actually paying, including people with rent control and affordable housing. People who have been living in rent-controlled apartments for many years pay a fraction of the current market rate. Which is why this problem is a slow burn. It's not like everyone was evicted and the worker pool cratered overnight. But as existing low/middle income workers leave for whatever reason, they cannot be replaced. Their numbers are on a one-way ratchet downward. ------ usaar333 This article was a bit scattered over the various sources of issues (high living costs, low labor pool (leading to high salaries and high turnover), reduced high-skilled chefs, high taxation, complaints about customer base with some nativism thrown in); figured I'd try simplifying it. On the labor side, there's enough labor competition to drive salaries of line cooks to $50k/year. That's about $38k post-tax, which even after spending spending $19k/year in rent (split a two bedroom maybe 40 min from downtown) leaves $19k. Not great, but mind you the average line cook in the US is pulling $30k/year pre-tax (24k post-tax) -- the COL difference is pretty much compensated for. Where things break down badly is with older, more experienced workers that have/might have families (e.g. the cook with 4 kids in the intro paragraph). Space comes at a premium in the Bay Area and if they prefer to not be crammed in to a small place, the salary an experienced worker can make isn't going to cut it to cover the desired marginal living space. The final piece in the puzzle is that the desired salary multiple of these experienced workers (over entry-level ones) is higher than their productivity gains. That is, if the experienced cook needs twice as much take-home ($110k pre-tax) as the entry-level one (due to family needs), unfortunately, there is insufficient customer demand to pay 2.2x as much for food for this higher quality. (but mind you much more base demand in SF than elsewhere!). Result is that experienced folks move to areas where housing costs (per-sq feet) are lower as a percent of salary. Net effect might be that the dominant strategy for someone in the restaurant business is to start out in SF but later move to a somewhat lower COL area. With such a strong economic incentive, restaurant composition will likewise follow; city policies, etc. are likely secondary. ~~~ jurassic One of the challenges, I think, is that landlords don't want to rent to you if your salary isn't three times annual rent. I'm not a real estate professional, but I've been told that multiple times when looking for my own apartments. In your example, you have the worker coming out okay or possibly slightly ahead (compared to lower COL areas) by spending half their net on rent. But by this 3x rule the landlords renting a property that costs $19k/yr would want to see an income of at least $57k and the worker wouldn't qualify. ------ boulos Not mentioned here is that Tawla had a slightly rough start [1] (that they purportedly righted): > My reactions were mixed on my first visit, but by the third, I was a major > supporter. Flavors blossomed, and I could sense the kitchen becoming more > confident. I went early on, found the food to be reasonable but not great, and ultimately didn’t return. Roughly, she shot for Mourad-level prices, but without the track record or execution. I grew up with this food, and while (again) it was okay, it simply wasn’t great. For $16, that should be an amazing dish of mujadara. I assume many people felt that they’d rather get tastier middle eastern food, rather than feel hip with the pretty decor. I’d love to see an upscale middle eastern restaurant succeed, but the food has to come first. [1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/diningout/article/Ta...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/diningout/article/Tawla- is-the-Mediterranean-restaurant-that-S-F-9124825.php) ~~~ eigenvector This is a serial problem with Middle Eastern restaurants. For lovers of the cuisine, there's always cheap and delicious alternatives, so we feel a little betrayed paying 2 or 3x for the same dish and finding it isn't as tasty the hole-in-the-wall joint with plastic tables. This isn't a knock on Tawla specifically, but as you said, the food has to come first. I am willing to pay, but when I leave I don't want to be thinking of a $15 meal I had that was better. ------ crazygringo According to the laws of economics and supply and demand, restaurant prices should be rising accordingly, if customers are still demanding restaurant food. In other words, if the tech industry has produced so much wealth that has driven up rent prices, it should be driving up everything else too, right? People need to go out to eat somewhere, right? (And my experience says this is true -- I live in NYC and I get sticker shock at SF restaurant prices.) Presumably other restaurants are thriving? Are we sure this particular one just didn't have the right business model, like most attempted restaurants don't? The restaurant industry is notoriously competitive, and the customer is always right -- you've got to give them the food they want (not the food you think they should want) at the location they want at a price that's competitive. As long as plenty of other restaurants are managing to pay their staff enough so that they'll commute... and it doesn't seem like restaurants are disappearing from SF... then isn't this just the case of a bad business plan, or product-market-mistmatch, for this one particular restaurant? ~~~ staticautomatic There are somewhat hard limits on the availability of labor though. I know a guy who owns a very popular and expensive restaurant that had to start closing one day a week because he couldn't find enough staff, and not because he pays them peanuts. ~~~ Mikeb85 > not because he pays them peanuts Not paying peanuts still doesn't mean it's enough. ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife But if customers pay in peanuts and you have to offer staff cashew or macadamias to attract enough skilled employees, you might find you have a non- viable business. ~~~ Thriptic This is my general response whenever these types of articles appear. If your labor costs are insanely high, you need to raise prices. If people won't pay more for your products, you need to create better products worth more money, give staff equity and reduce profit, or shut down. ~~~ closeparen These types of articles are based on the assumption that we would like to continue having restaurants & the fact that they are (slowly) becoming economically nonviable is a social problem. ~~~ xyzzyz If rising prices reduced the demand so much that they become economically nonviable, then it means that we actually don't like having restaurants all that much, otherwise we'd pay. ~~~ closeparen Voting with your wallet is only one way of expressing a preference. San Francisco in particular also likes to vote with its votes. We may not care enough about restaurants to pay what they really cost, but by all accounts we’ll care enough to vote for a ballot measure that makes “big developers” and “the techies” pay for them. ~~~ xyzzyz Indeed, residents of Bay Area definitely like trying to vote away the microeconomics of supply and demand. ------ protomyth I can tell you why the whole _Service Charge Inclusive_ irritates customers. Its false advertising. You are increasing the cost of the meal but not reflecting it on the menu. People find it dishonest like every other time in our lives where we are told a price, but then we get hit with a fee. Ask bank customers about it. Just be honest, the meal needs to cost more because the cost of production is more. ~~~ terandle I’m all in favor of abolishing tipping culture from the US but that’s not something you can expect a single restaurant to accomplish on their own. Given the reality of US culture I think this is a good compromise for now. It’s much more honest then pretending that the restaurant isn’t expecting a 20% tip on every order. ~~~ protomyth If you expect a mandatory fee and its not on the item's price, then its dishonest. Sales tax in the US is bad enough, but at least we all know about it and its the government. If they want to break out the "labor" cost on the menu like auto folks do, then fine, but this fee crap is just plain irritating. ~~~ gamma-male Most engineers in the bay area don't tip anymore. ~~~ linksnapzz I'm sure this has done wonders for the degree of warm feelings the SF service- sector has had in the past for techies...I'd just tell everyone I worked as a landscaper. ~~~ gamma-male Why would you care? Waiters don't expect tipping as much as in the rest of the country. ~~~ linksnapzz Hopefully, that'd be because the majority of restaurants are including a service charge with every meal, and not because the waiters have become inured to their techie clientele being chiselling niggardly prats. In circles I move in, being a bad tipper is right up there with shoplifting, dog-kicking or vandalism as a moral failing, and how one treats service employees a touchstone of one's character. ~~~ gamma-male You should change friends. People shouldn't decide what you do with your money. ------ dawhizkid The tone of the article was really off-putting. I get that it is a hard business, especially in SF, but it felt like she was blaming everyone (including her staff) for her restaurant's failure and taking zero responsibility herself. ~~~ 2arrs2ells I used to live on the same block as her restaurant (Tawla) and only went once (despite eating out pretty frequently). The concept - upscale Mediterranean - just didn't resonate. There's a similar restaurant across the street serving upscale Burmese that seems to be doing really well. That said, a friend who runs one of my favorite places in SF posted this article to Facebook and said it's really spot on. Diners expect food to be cheaper than the labor market permits. ~~~ boulos This is part of the reason that “service included” places don’t pass it through to the menu prices. It’s a mistake to be the only ones doing it (the Bauer review I linked to above just quotes the prices directly, “nobody” mentally compares by adding/removing the 20%). Since you lived nearby, I always felt that the location was unlikely to succeed. Is there actually a lot of foot traffic there? ~~~ 2arrs2ells Orenshi Ramen, Burma Love, and Shizen all opened in the past few years and seem to be doing really well. On the other hand there’s a spot between 14th & 15th on Valencia that went through 3 restaurants in 3 years. The places that are succeeding are all second or third efforts - maybe experience really pays off? ------ trimbo I don't disagree with the problems outlined. But, for this particular case, start and end with the fact that the restaurant has 3.5 stars on Yelp and people were consistently dissatisfied with the food and service? SF has incredible 4-5 star restaurants of all price levels. So who wants to eat at a very expensive 3.5 star one when there's a Michelin Star place 5 minutes away? If SF's problems are so insurmountable, how do other good restaurants do it, even ones not owned by some major group? ~~~ flaque This argument is silly. If restaurants are harder to run, the average quality of the place goes down. The existence of high quality restaurants does not refute the possibility of the average going down. ~~~ mcv Maybe, but if staff is in short supply, it makes sense that they will prefer to work for restaurants that can afford their wages. ------ lebanon_tn I'm reminded of this part of David Chang's take on "the next global food mecca" being Houston, a city in many ways the complete opposite of SF: _I 've always wondered where the food in a Blade Runner-like future would appear first and what it would taste like—and I genuinely believe it's here. Partly that's due to a demographic reality: By some measures, Houston is the U.S.A.'s most ethnically diverse city (a bunch of New Yorkers just choked on their halal kebabs reading that, but it's true), and when you get a collision of immigrants, the food scene is guaranteed to be bonkers. Houston also has cheap commercial and residential rents—oh, and no state income tax—which means broke-ass cooks and chefs can afford to live and open here. Zoning laws are more permissive than an Amsterdam brothel. And customers have cash to spend._ Source: [https://www.gq.com/story/david-chang-houston-food- city](https://www.gq.com/story/david-chang-houston-food-city) Added disclaimer- I grew up in SF and left in 2005. I live in Houston now. ~~~ jnwatson Every Christmas, I go home to Houston for a week or so. Every time I budget 5 pounds weight gain. It is never enough. Houston is a crossroads of different food cultures. It is the South, the West, and the bayou rolled up into one. At first it was Cajun, Creole, Soul, Mexican, and it has been like that for 50 years. But in the last 25 years, lots of more has mixed in like Vietnamese, Central and South American, and a significant New Orleans diaspora due to Katrina. Plus, you have a car culture where it isn't uncommon to travel 20 miles in 25 minutes for a weekday dinner out. There's so much money sloshing around that lots of folks eat out every night. That plus a healthy supply of labor means it is a very good restaurant city. ------ almost_usual This is the first time I’ve heard the entire state of Illinois being labeled a “rich locale”. I’m assuming the author meant Chicago suburbs? That or they’ve never traveled through rural Illinois (95% of the state). Illinois is also home to some of the most violent and poor metropolitan areas in the country. East St. Louis which ranks in around 18x the national homicide rate and South Side Chicago which is consistently one of the most violent places in the country. ------ s1mon I've lived in SF for 25 years, and eat out often. While I never visited this particular restaurant, as others have noted, 3.5 stars on Yelp in SF's hyper- competitive market is telling. 3.5 is maybe enough to keep the cheap place you go to across the street when you're lazy in business. Less than 4 stars isn't going to get enough people to make a reservation, travel across town and shell out $$$. We have over 4500 restaurants listed in Yelp, and roughly 7% turnover of openings/closings per year. It's physically impossible for anyone to eat at all, let alone a fraction, of the places here. Foodie places which are successful may be a big hit when they first open, but if they don't keep up the quality, they will die quickly as that crowd moves onto the next shiny thing. It takes a lot to stay in business here. The way that some restaurants blame their success and failure on the high cost of labor makes about as much sense as when people review restaurants on Yelp and complain how surprised they were by the bill at the end of the night. It's a math problem. Other people are managing to balance their costs and revenue and stay in business. ~~~ abalone Nah, closures are up and openings are down all across the city due to higher costs.[1] You may have lived here 25 years but that’s no substitute for hard data. [1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/2017-wasn-t-the- gre...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/2017-wasn-t-the-greatest- year-for-San-Francisco-12480441.php) ~~~ s1mon That’s where I got the data. That article mentions higher costs, but the Harvard study they referenced links review stars to closures. Clearly costs are one of the main pressures on restaurants, but there are plenty of things that restaurants can do to improve diners’ experiences which don’t necessarily cost more. Hypothetically, restaurant A and B are the same except A is better organized and your food gets to the customers table faster and at the right temperature. Or restaurant B’s staff doesn’t notice when your wine glass is almost empty and doesn’t sell that second or third glass. Little things can make a huge difference in revenue and ratings, and yet you can see restaurants making stupid mistakes all the time. ------ refurb Oh the irony that the author is a former Google executive, who I assumed started the restaurant after cashing out big time. She doesn't realize that she has a role in this as well? How much did she pay for her house/rent? Did she outbid someone in cash? Yes, I realize the supply side is a major issue to. SF should build more. It's just the finger pointing (those evil landlords with their Ellis evictions!) made me chuckle a bit. ------ mcv Why the service charge? Why not simply raise your prices to that same level, while still letting people tip if they want to? More specifically, why does the cook only make $24 per hour while the waiting staff gets $42-48? I understand that San Francisco is an expensive city, but doesn't that simply mean you should raise your prices? Of course that will mean poor people won't be able to eat at your restaurant, but it sounds like poor people have trouble affording anything at all in San Francisco anyway. Clearly the only viable market to focus on is the rich people who can afford to live there. I don't mean to be callous about this: it's terrible when a city is so expensive that only rich people can afford to live there, and kicking poor tenants our of rent-controlled housing should be illegal. But if your employees are leaving because you don't pay them enough, the solution seems obvious: pay them more. Raise your prices correspondingly. If the market can't bear those prices in such an expensive city, then clearly there's not enough demand for restaurants in San Francisco, which would be sad, but it may be the reality. Meanwhile, the city would do well to invest in some affordable housing if they don't want to turn into a rich people's ghetto. ~~~ aeternus Raising prices does seem to be the right answer. Many expensive restaurants in SF are packed and it is quite difficult to get a reservation. There is clearly market demand in that segment.. if the food is good enough. The low or mid-range segment demand is likely shrinking. Why go out to get mediocre food when it is increasingly easy to have food, groceries, or meal- packs delivered to your door? ~~~ mcv Yeah, I read in other comments that it's not actually that good a restaurant. If it's expensive and mediocre, I guess they may have to look for an easier market. ------ threadify > In nearby San Francisco, only 0.1% of restaurant staff can find affordable > housing in the city, with the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom > apartment at an insane $3,447. Lack of affordable housing is doing the suffocation. America was built by a strong middle class, and SF is setting an example of what happens when people stop caring about the middle class and $70K/year becomes low income. ~~~ changoplatanero Just because the median apartment is not affordable doesn't mean there isn't affordable housing. Half of all people have apartments that are cheaper than the median. ~~~ closeparen The stat doesn't mean that on its own, sure. But if you've searched for downmarket housing recently... it's pretty bleak. ------ robk It's amazing that front of house staff are making $80-90k. That's starting salary for engineers in many parts of the country. Absolutely boggling. ~~~ ido That’s _senior_ engineer salary in most of Western Europe, and the vast majority of the rest of the world has significantly lower salaries than Western Europe. ~~~ gamma-male Senior people definitely make less than this in europe. Unless you're taking about large corp in london. ~~~ richardknop Pretty sure in big tech hubs like London, Amsterdam, Dublin, senior engineers make at least this much. Probably more. I can only offer my experience from London, not sure about other places but for sure there you can make over 100k as senior engineer. ~~~ gamma-male Oh. But then we're not talking about equivalent levels of senior. Senior in the US can be reached in 2 years. ------ mberning “We thought hard about all the ways we could help from tapping our networks to find a more dignified temporary place for our cook to stay, to figuring out how to pay him more without having him lose access to different low-income programs for which he currently qualifies.” Wow. Or you could actually pay them a living wage that doesn’t require public subsidy. If this were Walmart making this statement they would be crucified. ~~~ narrator Many people are unaware of the huge impact of the welfare cliff, especially when it comes to families with children: [https://www.learnliberty.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/welf...](https://www.learnliberty.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/welfare-e1471458574375.png) If you are a single parent with two children you get the same net income at $30,000 as at $80,0000 due to benefits getting cut off above $30,000/year income. ~~~ kaveh_h That’s ridicilous. The system has clearly been setup to fraud the majority who needs welfare and is a political virtue signaling. I bet the mean salary was right in the Middle of the ”cliff” (around 55k$) when this was decided to ensure very few would get the benifit and cost on government would be minimal. The logical policy would perhaps be to equalize income to a certain treshold depending on available funds and budget on a particular year. This would also make investments in transits and housing more stable for everyone involved, simplyfing business decisions and quite possibly increase long term profitability. ~~~ usaar333 > The system has clearly been setup to fraud the majority who needs welfare > and is a political virtue signaling. It has this effect, but I'd blame the need to simplify over malevolence. SF's below market rate housing is a great example of a huge welfare cliff. Make under $60k? You can get a 1 bedroom for $1600/month. Don't? Join everyone else fighting at $3k/month or what not. So yah, it's a bit ridiculous that we have a system where someone making $59k does better than $70k. But it's really hard to administer everything as a phase-out system, especially with non-cash benefits. (currently the apartments are required to charge X rent.. so what should happen to the person making $70k/year?) Hence, these blunt-edge qualifications. ~~~ kingaillas >Make under $60k? You can get a 1 bedroom for $1600/month. Don't? Join everyone else fighting at $3k/month or what not. Sounds like SF should experiment with marginal rent, based on how marginal tax rates work. Something like: landlords charge a base $x rent, if you make above $50K a bit more is added one, make above $60K a bit more is added, etc. That was the person making $1 over some arbitrary cutoff isn't much worse off. ------ diiaann A bar closed in my neighborhood and and when I was chatting with them they too blamed the spending habits of the tech crowd. I think if anything, people spend more money on eating out and drinking than the average person. So I don't think it's that people are _unwilling_ to spend it. I'm not sure it is technology folks or millennials, but I find there are increasing amounts of people who want the "best of" everything...shoes, falafel you name it. People aren't okay with just a "good experience", they want the best experience. As a result, I think there are plenty of people who aren't very forgiving. Especially if you eat out regularly and have a lot of things to compare it to. Oh yeah and the housing situation is broken. ~~~ eigenvector I agree with you on the 'best' thing. Every time I'm in SF hanging out with SF friends I feel like 'let's get a drink' becomes 'let's find ___the best_ __cocktail bar in the Bay Area '. And nobody will step into an establishment that has less than 4.7* on Google (or whatever their preferred rating platform is), let alone just walk into a random place that looks OK. Walk-in foot traffic is non-existent. ~~~ nanoseltzer That’s an excellent filter for who I wouldn’t want to hang out with. ------ TomMckenny The state is paying the price for two decades of anti-tenant rule. So long as no one is working to repeal the Costa-Hawkins (and to a lesser degree, the Ellis Act), the noose will continue to tighten around Bay Area quality of life and raise the price of doing business in all of California. A similar problem with sky rocketing housing cost occurred in the 70's True rent control was established in the communities that needed it and the threat of it in other communities stabilized prices. And California 1972-1995 is unambiguously a success story. In '95 Costa-Hawkins passed, and prices have been rising faster than the 1970-1995 period ever since. With an accompanying rise in homelessness. Particularly interesting about Costa-Hawkins, it was soundly defeated when written as proposition measure and only passed the legislature by one vote and with strong backing from the real estate industry. But today it has somehow become politically impossible to repeal. Unless California has become a lot more conservative since 95, it is clear money in politics and political advertising are to blame. ~~~ elgenie Nah, the core problem is Prop 13 (and its extensions). There's no solution to allocating dramatically less housing than people demand, regardless of how pro- or anti-tenant the law is. Rent control, which Costa-Hawkins limits, is a form of artificial price controls that remove a bunch of housing inventory and the incentives to create more. But it's a mere footnote in the margin of Prop 13, a state wide regime that has been in place twice as long and has the effect of removing a bunch of housing inventory and the incentives to create more. ~~~ TomMckenny Yes, the theory is that rent control causes reduction in inventory. But housing is not an ordinary good and the evidence shows that this theory is incorrect. New York has had rent control for most of the 20th century with 2 million units still under rent control. Yet it has plenty of development. And as I point out, housing prices rose slower and housing supply was greater before Costa-Hawkins than they are now. Furthermore, renters favor rent control while landlords oppose it. So whatever the mechanisms, clearly it benefits renters at the expense of landlords, clearly by reducing housing costs. And while it is definitely worth adding as much housing as possible, all new housing will price at the top of the market. And at this moment there are thousands of high end units with vacancy in SF and essentially no low priced. So clearly this does not relive pressure on middle or low end housing. Repealing prop 13 would raise revenue, much of it from large land holders (of which Howard Jarvis was one) so that's nice. It would lower mortgage payments by the amount which property taxes rise thereby converting some mortgage interest into tax revenue. So that's nice. And it makes it easier for new buyers by driving those who can't afford the higher property tax out of their homes. The advantage of this is less clear. The main problem is that it is difficult for people to believe that which is in their financial interest to disbelieve. ~~~ leetcrew > Furthermore, renters favor rent control while landlords oppose it. So > whatever the mechanisms, clearly it benefits renters at the expense of > landlords, clearly by reducing housing costs. this is a questionable line of reasoning. it's not uncommon for people to unknowingly support policies that don't actually benefit them. the only group of people who rent control clearly benefits are people who already have leases. it's not at all obvious that it helps new renters or people who want to move to a different place at all. it seems plausible at least that people in the business of renting buildings (ie landlords) are the group with the most information about the market, and are therefore in the best position to see the distortion. ~~~ TomMckenny >it's not uncommon for people to unknowingly support policies that don't actually benefit them. The presumption of democracy is that this is a minority of cases. To suppose it is the case here is to assume that the less likely is happening here. And assume so on an apparently evidence free theory about the effects of a single pricing policy. >it seems plausible at least that people in the business of renting buildings (ie landlords) are the group with the most information about the market, and are therefore in the best position to see the distortion. And so are not voting against their interest when they oppose rent control. Being as rent is rentier income, it is zero-sum, and so is to the disadvantage of tenants. ------ tchaffee The article seems to be transparent at first glance with giving lots of numbers about salaries and so on. Why no numbers on profit and what the owners take home? Also, there is no mention of trying to raise the prices of their products in order to pay their employees a living wage. I guess that could mean you go out of business if your competition offers a similar product but doesn't raise prices. But I would personally be ok with that. Otherwise what's the service you're really providing? Guilt free eating for your customers who you shield from what those prices are paying the welfare dependent cook? I'm ok with not being in that business. ------ reasonablemann It does not make sense that this person is attempting to run a reasonably priced restaurant and has FOH staff. SF needs to adopt more Japanese style ordering machines. You choose and pay up front. When you are done you just leave. It's beautiful. ~~~ tokyodude You're basically talking about fast food places though not "restaurants". Yes, Ramen is considered fast food in Japan even if some of it is amazing. Also curry rice and most other things that are served in places that use those machines. Sure, a few places that have those machines have tables but it's still a different vibe from a restaurant. The bigger issue with those particular machines is they aren't compatible with western or in particular USA culture. Japanese generally don't ask for exceptions. Westerners often ask for tons of exceptions and substitutions either for medical reasons, religion reasons, personal convictions, or preference. ~~~ taurath I think in the tech capital, sitting around waiting for someone to seat you, come by and take your drink order, come by and take your food order, bring your food, and check on it (if lucky) is sort of... antiquated. It feels Victorian or something - good food is good food, regardless of who serves it. You’re paying to be pampered, but if the economics of being pampered don’t work then maybe it’s something people can give up? Go sit down, order from kiosk at table (or from kiosk up front). Panera for instance pretty much does this now. ~~~ general8bitso Sheetz and McDonald’s also have food ordering kiosks, although neither serve upscale mediterannean food. ------ lisper This kind of complaint drive me nuts. It is manifestly untrue that "restaurants are suffocating in San Francisco." San Francisco is chock-full of restaurants, and the vast majority of them are not going out of business. The author's real complaint is not that _restaurants_ are suffocating, it is that _his_ restaurant suffocated. But the reason his restaurant suffocated is not because there's a systemic problem with the restaurant business in San Francisco, it's because the market didn't conform to the author's preconceptions. If it were really true that there was some kind of systemic crisis among San Francisco restaurants, they'd be closing left and right. The survivors would then be able to raise prices to the point where the crisis went away. That's how the market works. But this isn't happening because there is no crisis, only a market operating just as it should by occasionally weeding out businesses that, for whatever reason, don't conform to the market's needs. ~~~ thebradbain Sure, maybe the market is working "just as it should," but if it is: why is that an excuse for all of the collateral damage done to waiters/cooks/hosts/cleaners throughout the whole city? It's an objective fact that the vast majority of the service staff cannot afford to live alone in or near the city they work in, much less support their families. Is that success? Is that fair? Should we really be content to let these people suffer the fear of not being able to put food on their table and a roof over their head simply because the equilibrium point of two lines on a graph says so? Maybe the state of the restaurant economy is fine – I don't doubt that – but what about the service staff who make it up and work there daily? Or is the solution just to get a job in tech? If we're advocating for market-based approaches, though: lower the cost of housing by building more housing, and building it fast. Both affordable and market rate. That would solve a lot of the Bay Area's problems. ~~~ lotsofpulp Yes, the solution is to get a job in tech. The purpose of prices is to inform participants in a market what to supply. ~~~ thebradbain The 1:1 ratio of $ to societal value is something I will always fundamentally disagree with, not least because we don’t live in an economic model: life is messy, chaotic, complicated, and there’s a sizable group of the educated population that would argue it can’t be precisely and accurately quantified. Economics is a tool we can use to improve our society in equitable ways, not some omniscient diety we have to worship blindly. And that’s still my belief after studying economics, too. ~~~ lotsofpulp Then society (government) should try to fix the problem structurally, by shifting the demand curve and supply curves. Increasing supply of housing, of kids who can perform high wage jobs, etc. The prices coming down will be a marker of successful efforts to make society more equitable. And if everyone wants to live on the California coastal region though, since you can only shift the supply curve of ideal real estate so much without affecting its ideal-ness and then it becomes a problem of how to triage, which thus far has been letting people who can afford it, pay for it. Only other option I see is some type of random lottery. ------ jellicle > figuring out how to pay him more without having him lose access to different > low-income programs for which he currently qualifies Wow, the charitable impulses here are overwhelming. You'll pay him more, as long as it doesn't lift him out of poverty. Wow. Wow. If you want more staff, pay staff more. This easy equation has been understood for thousands of years but business owners find it difficult to comprehend when it is their business. ~~~ Johnny555 _Wow, the charitable impulses here are overwhelming. You 'll pay him more, as long as it doesn't lift him out of poverty. Wow. Wow._ If a salary increase makes him ineligible for the services that he's using to stay in the city, the higher salary could be an effective cut in pay. While it's possible to pay him a large enough salary to make up for those services, it's likely more than the business can afford. ~~~ sampo Not very capitalist to run a business that is dependent on the employees being able to live in assisted housing. ~~~ Johnny555 San Francisco is not a good model for capitalism. The housing market in particular is highly skewed not just because of politics, but also geography. ------ chinathrow "We, among others, tried to be innovative. We tried to go the ‘service charge inclusive’ route, automatically including 20% in every check." I wouldn't call that innovative. Innovative would be paying a fixed salaray which allows your staff to live in SF without relying on tips. Others have done it in the US too. In lots of countries the world over, tipping is a plus, not a requirement. [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/dining/danny-meyer- restau...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/dining/danny-meyer-restaurants- no-tips.html) ------ lsc eh, I think the real problem is that we're building/converting space into office space at a much faster rate than we're building/converting space into residential. I personally think that to get zoning approval to build an office tower in this area, you should need to get someone to agree to build an apartment tower nearby with a similar number of units. I mean, I'm not saying they need to be owned by the same people or that those apartments will be occupied only by people who work in that office building, but you need housing nearby where there are jobs. ------ BadassFractal This is obviously extreme, but we're in an extreme situation here. Vote with your feet and get out of the city, move away from the Bay. Only once the upper middle class feels some pain will anything be done about it. Until then, it's not their problem, they can work around it thanks to the flexibility wealth affords you. I don't see how else this will be fixed, it has to get much worse before it gets any better. ~~~ dahdum SF ballooned their deficit by billions _during_ the last bull market. Over $10 billion of unfunded pension and healthcare costs. The next recession is going to be brutal. ~~~ shostack How does that work exactly with the massive surplus the state is running? [1] couple those Donna be used to fill this gap? [1] [https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2018/dec/18...](https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2018/dec/18/jerry- brown/does-california-have-budget-surplus-nearly-30-bill/) ~~~ dahdum California has $63b and growing in unfunded pension liabilities. The surplus is only a cash cushion. The problem is vastly reduced if you can shift healthcare costs from the unfunded pensions to single payer or Medicare for all, I think that’s likely to happen in the next 20 years. ------ matchbok What's the breaking point here? Are we there? SF needs to make the NIMBYs shut up and start building more housing yesterday. ~~~ rectang There's no breaking point, just ever-increasing inequality as an inevitable consequence of structural factors. Feudalism persisted for centuries, and it can again. ~~~ cc439 You'd think there would be a breaking point somewhere around "we could pay 25% less and still attract top talent to relocate to literally anywhere in the Western world". The cost of living in the SF bubble has long since passed the point of being insulting and the salaries being commanded by those who are driving the continued growth could go so far in other major metro areas that most employees would think they're living like kings even with such a paycut. ------ droithomme > our servers were making $38 per hour or the equivalent of $70,000 to $80,000 > a year ... assuming 36% on rent after tax, that would mean you have about > $1,460 available for rent per month. > Cheryl Young, an economist for Trulia, found that in nearby San Francisco, > only 0.1% of restaurant staff can find affordable housing in the city, with > the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment at an insane $3,447. $80,000 is vastly too much pay for restaurant servers. It's understandable that if one-bedroom rent in the bad part of town is $2447 that restaurants simply can't exist in this economy. That's just the way it is. ------ fredophile San Francisco isn't unique as a city with very high rents. Somehow places like London, NYC, and Washington DC all still have a nice selection of restaurants. This makes me think that it'll sort itself out even if it is painful for some of the people currently affected. It probably doesn't help that San Francisco has been shooting themselves in the foot over housing for years. This link from a couple weeks ago has a lot of details on that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18778496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18778496). ------ 0898 Excellent article. Key take-away: "There is no amount of money an owner could pay an employee within the economics of a small business to allow their employee to live within the borders of the city or even within a reasonable radius that doesn’t have them traveling for two-plus hours a day to come to work. This is the reality of where we live." ~~~ oh_sigh I don't see how or why the employer should care how long their employees commute is it is incumbent on the employee to make the decision if the commute is worth it. Maybe people would prefer a 2 hour commute to a place where they can make $80k/year, over working 10 minutes from home and only being able to make $35k/year. ~~~ jurassic Small business owners do care about the health and happiness of their employees. But even if we pretend for a moment that they do not, it's a threat to the business viability if workers cannot afford to live within a reasonable commute. If rents continue to outpace wages, those workers will eventually leave the area or the industry. The article talks about the business impacts of people leaving in detail (loss of talent, reduced quality of service, direct hiring costs associated with turnover, etc). ~~~ oh_sigh 'Reasonable' is defined differently by everyone. Some people would balk at a 30 minute commute. Other people like long haul truckers and sailors choose to be away from home for weeks or months on end. Some people would be okay with and even prefer a 2 hour commute if it means they get paid 3x what they would get paid with a 15 minute commute. ~~~ jurassic That may be, but good luck running a business that relies on all of your staff deeming 4 hours of daily commuting reasonable. ------ kenneth This article is ridiculous. Yeah, SF is expensive, but $80k+ is a ridiculously large income for front-of-house service staff. When I first started working as a software engineer in SF, I was making $70k/year and I survived just fine. I got roommates and spent <$900 on rent. Obviously, I increased my earnings over time and as soon as I could moved into a 1br. I now pay right about average, which is more than I'd like but which I make do with. ------ eigenvector One of the things the author points out is that restaurants in SF are moving toward "fast dining" type setups that require less labour as well as simpler dishes. For the sake of argument, let us imagine that skyrocketing labour and housing costs make the traditional sit-down restaurant extinct in SF (or reduced to a handful of ultra-high-end establishments). This in turn makes being a waiter or a line cook no longer a viable profession in SF. If - and I recognize this is a gigantic if - enough of the massive amount of wealth being created by the SF tech industry can be taxed and shared with the people impacted by the loss of those jobs, so that they can continue to maintain a decent standard of living, is there actually a problem? When a waiter loses their job, I don't imagine it's the loss of waiting on tables that puts them in a tough spot. It's losing their income and their ability to afford food and shelter. The problem now is that the externalities of the tech industry fall upon low-wage workers whose jobs become economically unworkable. The rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. But on the whole, total wealth is increasing. Why can't we redistribute some of the tech wealth to these put-upon low-wage workers and leave everyone better off? ------ rdiddly Hear that everyone? People from New York and Chicago haven't heard of small business, good food, or getting food from farms nearby. But on to the main point. It seems obvious Bay Area restaurant prices need to come up to keep pace with everything else costing more. But if you're going to charge more, you make it part of the price. You don't tack on an "extra" charge of any kind; that's madness, and sends the wrong message psychologically to the customer. The same people complaining about a service charge will gladly pay a higher base price exactly equal to that charge. It makes them feel "upscale." Paying a service charge makes them feel penalized. Or something. Anyway it sounds like the type of thing that has reasoning or an explanation attached to it. You want to be in a business where people pay more, and either the reason/explanation is obvious, or even better, there is no explanation and they just pay more anyway. Like Apple. But either way, you _don 't_ want to be in the business of explaining/justifying a charge, ever. It's tough to make money? Your workers can't survive? The food sucks? Charge more. Pay the workers more. Make better food. Nothing about "the economics of a small business" prevent this. You may still fail. The macroeconomics of the Bay Area are difficult. But you'll fail for sure if you under-charge, under-pay, and under-produce in complete disregard of those economic conditions. In a tough market it's always the mediocre who fail first. But if you survive, and enough other restaurants fail, eventually the few that survive will be able to... you guessed it, charge even more, pay their workers even more, and make even better food. ------ syntaxing I wonder how the numbers compare nationally. I thought restaurants has a tendency to close more often than any other business (30% close within 3 years). Also, why is this only a phenomena in SF? The real estate price in NYC should be higher and the business seems pretty good for even the nonfamous restaurants. Even small coffee shops thrive like crazy here. ~~~ boulos Coffee shops have become nearly all day affairs. Like a bar, the key product has really high margins and you don’t need many employees. So once you sell enough {coffee, tea, beer, wine, cocktails} to cover your rent plus a handful of employees, you start making a (small) profit. tl;dr: Hot water is cheap! ------ vinniejames "That also allowed us to give our employees _private_ healthcare instead of relying on the broken Healthy SF system which has proven to be very hard to navigate" ------ aceon48 So why don't some of these restaurants come to South Bay? Sunnyvale and San Jose have like nothing... Way less competition, at least somewhat more affordable ~~~ usaar333 Because it's about where the customers are, not the workers. SF's demographics favor these restaurants well (high income, low percentage of people with children). If you want to count gaps, the entire East Bay has a single Michellin Star restaurant; South Bay has 3 (4 if you are willing to count Palo Alto in the South bay) ------ gamma-male In the bay area people: * Don't want to tip * don't want to see taxes added at the very end * Don't want the service (seating, waitering, etc) If restaurants don't evolve they will die yes ------ z3t4 I'm a big fan of Turkey and Greece home made food. Where I live, one such meal, and if I bring the family, would cost up to 10% of my monthly salary as an engineer with 20 years of experience. The chef at the restaurant earn more then I do. ------ drawkbox Inequality is a big problem. In the meantime, retail and restaurants are going to have to come up with a transportation system for their workers. Time to helicopter in the help... then shuttle to where they need to go. Until there are robots that can do the work either remotely run by chefs/cooks/retail or removed entirely, there needs to be better transportation systems to allow people to live elsewhere and work in the metro/city if the metro/city is unwilling to fix the rent/housing problems. ------ Mikeb85 > When I set out to open a restaurant in San Francisco’s vibrant restaurant > market, I thought I’d employ all I’ve learned from an MBA from a top school, > the rigor of an engineering education and a decade and a half launching and > managing some of the most successful businesses for Google and other tech > companies. Furthermore, I wasn’t naive to think that I knew better than all > those who’ve been tenured in the industry. I actively sought out the > mentorship of many titans who’ve been generous with their time and knowledge > of the industry. So I opened Tawla, a restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission > district. I'm curious what the author is actually adding to the restaurant's value? In the current economic climate in the US, there's more capital than places to put it. Everyone wants to open a restaurant. Not everyone knows how to run one. If she's not cooking, managing the front of house, etc..., what is she doing? > culinary cultures of Turkey, Greece and the Levant area There's shawarma shops everywhere in the western world. They all offer Mediterranean/Levantine cuisine, what does this restaurant offer beyond that? > Over the past two years, it was quickly and often apparent that there’s > nothing that a small and young business in SF could do to make the city a > living option for its employees. Yes there is, pay more. And to pay them more, raise prices. If people can afford to pay rent and they still want to go out to eat, they'll pay more. That being said, you need to have a compelling product. Not sure someone with no restaurant background selling a commoditized product is going to be able to produce a compelling product. > As alluded to earlier, the mass exodus of individuals from this workforce > leaves fewer people and less reason for those people to excel. Yes, people leave because they're not paid enough. Pay more and maybe they'll stay. > The impact is seen when we tried the aspirational ‘Service Charge Inclusive’ > model. Diners were so dismayed by it. Of course they were. No one likes add-ons that they weren't told about. Instead of adding a 'service charge', just raise the menu prices. You know, the same as in Europe and other places where service is included. All I see when I read this article is someone who knows nothing about restaurants, adds no value to her own restaurant, claims she's innovative and knows better but then reverts to the restaurant status quo and claims it doesn't work. This is what I don't get about restaurants. Some of us work in them for 10-40 years. Do our apprenticeships in restaurants that win awards, have Michelin stars, are top 50 in the world, and work 80 hour weeks for decades on end. And then someone who got a little money from Google thinks they can just open something, hire people and be successful. Just imagine if Sergei Brin and Larry page were restaurant managers who thought they could hire a few programmers, rent an office and create Google? ~~~ anonuser123456 >what is she doing? Innovating. ------ _i____ii_______ If you work BOH in restaurants you develop a distaste for servers. Not only do they make far more money but they do it in half the time. Time is money and money time. I've worked in the industry in SF and I can tell you there is no shortage of coke habits amongst them. They are also less skilled than the cooks and much more easily replaced, which gets to the point the author was making about the need for skill in cooks and the damaging mercenarial culture arising out of desperation. In a cook you want someone you can retain who will develop a deep understanding of the workings of a particular restaurant and its menu. It's far more of an investment than a waiter who can cram homework for a few days enough to sell a menu. But training to prep and cook that menu properly will easily take weeks if not months at a high end place. You don't want those people to bounce for a dollar more; that is a huge waste. You'd rather lose half your FOH staff than your lead line cook or heaven forbid sous chef. However the tip culture succubi aren't the perpetrators as regards the pie cutting of restaurant earnings; it's tip culture and diner expectations. But good luck changing that or getting the public to understand the changes. I see a lot of hard-nosed posts here about basic economics, supply and demand, and what about's regarding the "successful" places (you mean places hanging on another year). I understand a lot of you take pride in your ability to cut through the fat in that way. But you're glossing over perhaps the main point of the article which is that without skilled cooks restaurants slide more into the spectrum of dummy-proofed food processing and thus weak, boring menus. That goes for the yelp darlings as well who are likely hoping nobody notices drops in quality and absence of ingenuity. The average self proclaimed foodie or just frequent diner I doubt knows enough about cuisine to realize the hollowing out of the scene they're in. Restaurants continuing this decline will keep it hidden and the tech crowd won't notice the difference as their favorite haunts continue to provide what they really have always wanted anyway: a place to see and be seen. A major priority for restaurants will be maintaining image and hype in an increasingly superficial SF hellscape. Maybe diners, in an honest moment, will say "fuck it" and head to the nearest Burger King. ~~~ leetcrew if BOH employees are much more costly to lose than FOH, why does FOH get paid more to begin with? is it just that minimum wage plus tips is already way more than the cook gets paid? I don't disagree with your core claim that cooks are more valuable. anecdotally, when I worked at a takeout pizza place the main pizza guy got paid about twice what we made in the front, even including tips. ------ newshorts Is no one considering the impact of foreign investment on housing and sunbsequently rent prices? Sure tech workers play a part, but they often pay a better part of their salary to the land owners who are more frequently likely to be foreign investors ------ JshWright A little off topic, but the idea of a "celebrated" pizza shop in SF strikes me as a little funny... I try a different pizza place every time I'm there, and I've yet to not be disappointed. ~~~ gamma-male Yup. But I would say that pizza in the US is disapointing in general if you know italian pizza. ------ mbrumlow You can't have it both ways. Either change the city and build upwards or stop complaining about the price of living. The notion that a city should not change and keep it's "feel" across sunch long times is backwards thinking. Cities grow. I say this because the same people who want lower rents seem to also vote down big new apartments because it will ruin the atmosphere. But I can't for the life of me understand why anybody would want to preserve the current atmosphere. The one you think you are defending is long gone. ~~~ hrdwdmrbl They literally don't see how they constrain supply and how that leads to higher prices. ~~~ astazangasta You apparently literally don't see how high net worth individuals and speculators can drive up prices much faster than new construction can possibly keep up - remember, the demand side of price? Also, there are other forces at work on the supply side, like a bonkers property tax system which incentivizes never selling your home. But your tidy narrative is better for real estate developers, so let's blithely parrot it as often as possible. ~~~ pascalxus Well... yes, this problem has been developing for a long long time, over the last 50 years CA has been restricting supply ever more, like those WWII frog experiments where they boiled water very slowly to see if the frogs would jump out. Some of those frogs jumped out and some died out. Now, we're facing the same dilema in SF. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to lower the temperature. Every last apartment or house can help. We desperately need as much housing of every type we can possibly get. I don't understand how anyone with a conscience can continue to advocate for "character" with the current housing crisis. And, why are people concerned if a developer makes a profit. If people are starving, you dont say, geez we better not grow any more food lest those pesky farmers make a profit. If developers are making too large profits, then more will enter and we'll have even more housing which will lower the prices even more. ~~~ astazangasta No, this problem appeared acutely starting in 2008. When I moved to SF, rents were not exorbitant; they were high, but ordinary people could pay them. Then they climbed dramatically in a short period. This is easy to ascertain; just look at any graph of rents. This graph has no relation to the graphs for new construction or population growth, both of which grow at a steady pace. This is an acute crisis caused by a spike in demand due to the sudden inflow of new wealth, not by a supply constraint. When one person can buy up every house in the Mission, the supply side of the equation is not as relevant as the demand size. This is blindingly obvious, and only some serious denial seems to be preventing people from acknowledging this. As for concern over whether developers are making a profit; apparently you have never read any history of redevelopment. Here is a good place for you to start, learn something about your own city: [https://hoodline.com/2016/01/how- urban-renewal-destroyed-the...](https://hoodline.com/2016/01/how-urban- renewal-destroyed-the-fillmore-in-order-to-save-it) What will happen, over and over, is poor people will be moved out, rich people will move in, and developers will make a profit. Your econ 101 fantasy will not take place. ~~~ ubercow13 Why would that speculative new capital be interested in the property if not because they know there is a supply constraint? ------ fourstar Quite poetic that a Google exec talking about the issue she's contributed to (high rents/housing prices) is complaining about it and blaming the failure of her business on it. Survival of the fittest. Plenty of great restaurants in Tokyo and it's almost as expensive as SF. ------ abalone Having >10K karma on here and knowing people involved in this restaurant and the SF scene in general.. I can make these observations: 1\. The vast majority of people on HN are in complete denial about the impact of a massive sudden influx of demand on SF housing. 2\. They will exclusively talk about supply constraints and also totally ignore the concept of price inelasticity due to inexhaustible levels of demand. 3\. pg himself had noted the importance of a vibrant restaurant scene for startups.[1] 4\. This truly is a widespread problem for all SF restaurants. Nopa, one of the most prestigious midrange restaurants, has been advertising for cooks in their menu for years now. 5\. In order for the market rate price of housing to become affordable to cooks and servers, it would first become dirt cheap for tech workers making 2-4x their compensation. Therefore all of that worldwide demand for SF tech worker housing would need to be satiated before the market solves this problem. (See point 2.) 6\. Most tech workers don’t give a shit. They are here to hopefully make their fortune or at least get their career started in the next 5-10 years. A vibrant restaurant or working class community is not a priority. If they burn through it, it’s fine. Long term community development goals are a “nice to have”. 7\. Only reserved means-tested housing for the working class will solve this problem. This is what divides the “market YIMBY” and “affordable housing PHIMBY” political groups in local SF politics. It’s not just about ethics.. If you want a vibrant city rich with interesting restaurants and cafes then you need to provide housing for the service industry. Otherwise you face a real macroeconomic problem. [1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html) ~~~ selestify Why can't they pay their chefs more until the chefs too can afford to live closer? ~~~ abalone Is this not obvious? Seriously, this question always comes up in these discussions. The answer is it’s a macroeconomic problem: SF restaurants have already increased prices to $34 for a pork chop and $13 for a cocktail (Nopa.. which I attest is a very good value by SF standards). Restaurant margins are low. If they triple their cook salaries it will result in a net decline and they’ll close. What we’re seeing is a shift towards “fine casual” formats like Souvla that have lower labor costs. But there are just fewer midrange restaurants opening due to labor and rent and the ceiling on what they can sustainably charge. The high end and low end / fine causal are doing ok. ~~~ selestify So then why not let them close? Seems like the supply-and-demand problem will eventually reach a new equilibrium. ~~~ abalone Because then chefs would be even worse off because half would lose their jobs? A better solution is to provide them affordable housing. ------ technics256 An excellent article that highlights the biggest issues facing SF and the Bay Area overall, and the people who do not do a lot about it. ------ mensetmanusman Really points to how low cost robotics could potentially revolutionize food in cities with impossible living conditions for the poor. ------ tschwimmer I don't mean to come off as unnecesarily dismissive of the author, but I have serious doubts about the quality of their MBA education after I read this sentence: "The situation in this industry has created a mercenary frenzy where everyone is running around trying to maximize what they’re able to make per hour." That describes the general trend in human behavior worldwide for the past six thousand or so years. This seems like such a foundational truth that I question if the author is writing it in good faith. The author seems to have the numbers straight in terms of personnel costs required to run a sustainable business, but what's confusing to me is that this analysis was not run before they decided to start this business. It seems like the numbers were hopelessly unfavorable pretty much any way you cut them. To me, that says that there simply wasn't a business worth creating. I acknowledge that the problems outlined in this piece are real. The commentary about the SF healthcare plan only being available within the city limits when many of its beneficiaries live far away calls attention to how badly dysfunctional our healthcare system is. Nevertheless, I keep coming back to the conclusion that most of the hardship (on behalf of the author) here was self inflicted. Running a restaurant is generally a very poor means of making a living as the author repeatedly points out. It's great that this person was following their passion, but doing so is usually expensive. As a mental exercise to the outraged reader of this article, try substituting the word restaurant with the word yacht and all the positions with various nautical ones. I think you'll find yourself a lot less sympathetic. I'd argue that they're semantically identical in this case. ~~~ krschultz How would a restaurant be in any way analogous to a yacht? I own a boat, it is not a place of public accommodation. The neighborhood is not better off because I have a place to hang out with my family and friends. The point being, this article is not one person complaining that they can't "follow their passion". It's someone pointing out that the economics make running a restaurant untenable in SF. Restaurants have always been run on razor thin margins, but the piece makes a compelling case that it's tipped beyond that. ~~~ repsilat > _How would a restaurant be in any way analogous to a yacht?_ The GP meant that it's a business people get into because it's their passion, and it is a lot of people's passion when compared against the market for it. I'd say a comparison against "glamourous" creative industries like acting and journalism is more apt -- good profit to the ones people remember the names of, and cutthroat for the 90% fighting over the rest of the market. > _Restaurants have always been run on razor thin margins, but the piece makes > a compelling case that it 's tipped beyond that._ Maybe it's an echo-chamber thing, but a large fraction of my friends in SF rarely/never cook dinner. Almost none bring their lunch to work. We don't have a shortage of places to buy prepared food. The cost of eating out will probably scale closely with the cost of running a restaurant. Demand is solid (though not entirely inelastic.) Profits will always be thinner than in other industries. Lower rents would help, but there would probably also be negative second-order effects of lower meal prices. And positive third-order effects of increased demand because of price elasticity... ------ boltzmannbrain > the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment at an insane $3,447, > according to a 2018 rent report by Adobo. The U.S. Census revealed in March, > the median rent in San Francisco in 2016 was roughly over $1,600/month. > These numbers are worrisome in a few ways: 1. The egregious rent amount that > is required for somebody to live in the city today. 2. The jump in median > rent in a mere two years. 3. The $1,600 median rent from 2016 also included > rent-controlled apartments which indicates their rapid disappearance. median != average Fun example: In 1987 the average starting salary of University of North Carolina geography graduates was over $100,000. In 1986 Michael Jordan graduated. ~~~ p1necone I was taught in school that average can refer to mean, median _or_ mode (is that common everywhere?). Mean seems to be the default when not specified but journalists really should be specific (also as you point out, median is more often than not the best/least misleading one to use). Edit: wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average)) seems to suggest that they can all be considered "averages". ~~~ Hupriene I think it would be very unusual to refer to the mode as the average, especially if it wasn't close to the median or mean. ~~~ torstenvl Mode is the most common meaning for "average" in vernacular English. When someone says "I'm just your average guy," they are not doing math. They're comparing themselves to what the majority (or perceived majority, i.e. plurality) of other people are like. ~~~ neumann or perhaps implicit in the language of "I'm just your average guy" is that the central limit theorem applies. ------ chenpengcheng The author is just one of these people who has benefited from a system and pretends to care for the underprivileged. And through this article, she makes me feel that she is entitled to success in all her endeavors and if that is not the case, then it’s others fault. This makes me sick. ~~~ dang Please don't post denunciatory rants to Hacker News, regardless of how entitled you feel someone else or their article is. Even if you're right, the cost of making this place more toxic exceeds the benefit. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ~~~ chenpengcheng I don't agree with your comment on "rage" and "inferior". ~~~ dang Yes, those were two provocative words in what I posted. I can see how that could be unhelpful. I replaced "rage" with "denunciatory" and "inferior" with "entitled". Hopefully those changes make the core point smoother. ~~~ chenpengcheng thank for setting a good example ------ zozbot123 Tl;dr: The rent is too darn high! It's not just individuals that are suffocating because of it, but marginal, specialty/niche retail businesses like this restaurant. They should pack their stuff and move out. ------ jelliclesfarm Am I the only one who is appalled that a person with a wife and for children(one under 6 months) is working in a minimum wage job? 1\. They should have either not had four kids or 2. should train to pick a higher paying job. 3. Or move to a cheaper part of the country. The question is: how do we train people for better jobs or when jobs aren’t available, how do we make sure they ..well..live? These are the questions we should be asking and not talking about SF restaurants and housing unavailability. Where is the ‘Linkedin’ and retraining resources for people like this cook? This author with a MBA just didn’t make compelling reading. ~~~ throwawaysea I share the same sentiment. In my opinion, having children is a huge responsibility, and should not be treated as a default right. If one cannot get themselves into a stable position financially, they shouldn't be raising children. And certainly not four. Having four children without substantial financial security is outrageously irresponsible - people I know that are very well off would hesitate to have even three despite having the technical ability to afford that life. ~~~ jelliclesfarm That detail was rather jarring to me.

TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds an US audience - baylearn https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks-beijing-roots-fuel-censorship-suspicion-it-builds-huge-us-audience/ ====== core-questions Facebook et. al. implement a ton of censorship. You can be banned in seconds for posting content they deem offensive, even if it's not threatening / obscene. Why would we expect any other social network to not also have censorship? Why is Chinese censorship going to be any worse for Americans than their own? ~~~ Fjolsvith Because the topics that China can censor can influence American election outcomes. Wait, I guess Facebook et. al. can influence them with censorship, too. [1] 1\. [https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-google-search- bia...](https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-google-search-bias- elections-20190322-story.html) ~~~ core-questions What if the American election outcome actually just does, in reality, reflect the will of Americans? What if they really do want Trump, and it wasn't some kind of scam? ------ artsyca in communist china, television watches you -- hmmmm this is well outside of Orwell territory by now because it would've been unheard of for the governments of his super-states to spy on each others' citizens!

Demonstrations to protest NSA spying planned for July 4th - pvnick http://restorethefourth.net ====== mtgx If Brazilians can create a 1 million strong protest over a 0.1$ bus fare increase, I'd hope Americans from the "land of the free, home of the _brave_ " would be able to do the same over the revealing of a massive spying apparatus that's used against Americans and completely infringing on the 4th amendment. But even more importantly it's infringing on their human rights that should guarantee that they don't have to live in fear in a surveillance state and they have the right to anonymous speech or being able to have confidential conversations with people, without having to think that everything they say is being recorded by the government, and if if they even say the "wrong words" they may end up on certain "lists" that are monitored more heavily. ~~~ mpyne Is the protest over the bus fare increase? I was always told it was merely the latest in a long string of events drawing in protesters. Likewise, didn't the group that incited protests over the bus fare increase later support ending the protests, since the protests are said to have been co-opted by militants and fascists? Likewise likewise, neither anonymous speech or confidential conversations have gone away (that is, where they were possible before). But you may have to choose to enforce that by technical means (a capability we _didn 't_ used to have, by the way, just ask people who lived in the age of letters and phone calls). Likewise^3, the prioritization of who would be monitored by warrant is certainly a legitimate function of the security apparatus, unless you're trying to claim that picking random conversations to get a warrant for is somehow more effective in breaking up terror cells or criminal conspiracies. I would argue that taking action against people _merely_ for what they believe in is screwed up, but I not only wouldn't blame people for keeping a closer eye on those who advocate large changes to government, I'd be offended as a taxpayer if they weren't doing exactly that. ~~~ outworlder > Is the protest over the bus fare increase? I was always told it was merely > the latest in a long string of events drawing in protesters. Brazilian here, and you are right. The big protests started in one capital and not all capitals raised their fares, at least not recently. One week before that, in my city, we had thousands of protesters, who wanted something to be done about the violence (873 people were murdered by gunshot in the first quarter alone, out of a population of 2.5 million, giving over 60 per hundred thousand people). After the demonstrations in São Paulo, it spread like wildfire. Since not all cities have the same problems (at least, not in the same priority), the protesters had different agendas. But they were (and stil are) all over the country. ------ diminoten Okay, so let's not become the next Occupy movement with this, can we figure out what it is we're protesting _for_ in the first place? And "FREEDOM" or "PRIVACY!" aren't things you can protest for and expect to get. Maybe something like, "We want to require the government to announce ALL FISA court rulings" or "We want to require the government to declassify details about the PRISM program" or something along those lines. We no longer live in an age where rhetoric tears down walls and opens doors. Somewhere along the line, people in power recognized they can just ignore pretty words and they'll usually go away. ~~~ auston I think it's fairly clear: [http://www.restorethefourth.net/press/](http://www.restorethefourth.net/press/) 1\. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court; 2\. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance; 3\. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance. ~~~ tptacek (1) Is never going to happen. Even _civil cases_ in the US can be conducted under seal, and those very rarely pertain to national security. This is exactly what the parent commenter was referring to when he said that people should figure out exactly what their demand is; the demand in item (1) here is totally unrealistic. (2) and (3) seem very straightforward, realistic, and productive. ~~~ scythe (1) should be broken among its parts. The state secrets privilege is hard to get rid of, but it is realistic to call for the repeal of the "library records provision": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_records_provision#Secti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_records_provision#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA) Notably, Google itself has launched a campaign against the gag order related to NSLs, which we should all (hopefully) support! ------ pvnick Glad to see HNers are excited about this. Shameless plug - if you live in or around Gainesville, FL, I encourage you to attend the one I'm organizing for my town: [http://gatorsrestorethefourth.com](http://gatorsrestorethefourth.com) ------ oddball28 This is just an opinion because my personal experience with protesting is null, but isn't the strategy of protesting in hundreds of communities ineffective? It's easy to ignore or contain 50-1000+ protesters [1][2] at some 600 locations (see Occupy Wall Street), whereas a centralized protest (maybe in DC?) of 70,000+[3] will hear their voices ringing across the world. It's easy to feel like your working together and making a difference with someone across the globe, but really to be heard you need to work together,as a team, in close proximity. Change isn't easy. [1] Wrong: [http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/ows_gallery_121...](http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/ows_gallery_1212/ows_gallery_05.jpg) [2] Meh, street performers pull bigger crowds: [http://media.syracuse.com/news/photo/10265946-large.jpg](http://media.syracuse.com/news/photo/10265946-large.jpg) [2] Here we go: [http://wakingamericaup.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/i-have-a-...](http://wakingamericaup.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/i-have- a-dream-2.jpg) ~~~ lettergram You're probably correct, however starting off, if you start with say 10 people protesting on a local public street you may get 10 new people to notice you. After a time you can double, triple, quadruple, etc. your numbers. Then go to DC with 70-100,000 and get attention. ~~~ oddball28 After giving this more thought, I agree. Large demonstrations don't happen over night, and it's necessary to start somewhere and gain traction, with the ultimate goal of snowballing into a large centralized demonstration. Maybe what's needed is an agenda that clearly works towards such a demonstration, one that's broken up into attainable goals/milestones. If demonstrators don't feel that they're continually making progress, they lose interest -- or maybe its hope that they lose. And at some point, you need strong leadership to reign in all the pieces. ------ jdp23 If you're interested in getting involved, there's discussion Restore on the 4th's subreddit at [http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/](http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/) and daily IRC meetings at 5 p.m. ------ temp1234567 Just a quick note, remember to turn off your cell phones at these events. Protestors are tracked by their cell phone records by the police and govt. ------ chrsstrm I know setting the date of most of these events to the 4th of July is very symbolic, but is that really the best choice? That is the one day that Americans already gather in large numbers to celebrate. In DC alone the entire national mall area and surrounding are gridlocked with people who come to see the fireworks. How would you be able to tell who is there protesting and who is there to celebrate? It seems like your protest message would easily be lost in the noise of the Fourth. Why not set it for the day before? 100,000+ people on the steps of the Capitol or in front of the White House on the evening of the 3rd would get much more coverage than doing anything on the 4th. ------ relak If you want to spark mass protest, here's how you do it: cut all government programs. Once people realize how much government is artificially inflating their livelihood and how little corporations have really left for them, they will get angry and start rioting. It no longer will fit the left/right paradigm. If a Walmart employee can no longer feed their family because they have no access to government programs and Walmart pays their employees an awful wage, do you think they are just gonna take that? No. They'll demand actual change. ------ bobwaycott The only way public demonstrations are going to have an effect is for them to be _massive_ and _concentrated_. That does not mean widespread protests are a bad idea _per se_ , but that if none of the protests actually have mass, they are going to be ignored by both officials and your fellow citizens as a temporary annoyance for which they will hold little sympathy. Development of public support _against_ greater security at the cost of freedom is the only way to make meaningful change. Yes, marches/demonstrations can be part of this. But small demonstrations do not alone capture the public's interest. One must capture the public mind--and that means informing the public and winning their support of having _less_ "security" where weaking or violating the protections of their basic rights are concerned. Right now, as various polls have showed, far too many Americans desire the feeling and theater of security. They are content to be invaded at airport security because _eventually_ they can still fly. They are content to have their communications slurped up because they can still send that email and make that phone call. It's not until they're staring at a public fountain from which they are not able to drink because it has a stupid printed sign above it that says "Whites Only" that the public will accept that things have gone horribly wrong. I think demonstrations would be excellent to see, but not if they're anything like the Occupy movement, which the wider public opposed against their own self interest. It is very difficult to get the public's attention when they do not _feel_ the effects. The public is rather shitty at evaluating and appreciating things in the abstract. Demonstrations that are massive and concentrated would have a much more significant impact. Think of the Civil Rights March on Washington. That level of mass and concentration. Doubling it would be even better. And yet, even that basic right to protest has been severely weakened by the fact that one must get a _permit_ to protest in many of the locations that would be tactically good choices. This is madness. The 4th is not the only Amendment that the People have allowed to be weakened over the last two centuries. Americans have become very lazy where protecting their rights are concerned, because the vast majority of Americans do not participate in protecting those rights when they are violated against minority factions. ~~~ paulkoer > The only way public demonstrations are going to have an effect is for them > to be massive and concentrated. That does not mean widespread protests are a > bad idea per se, but that if none of the protests actually have mass, they > are going to be ignored by both officials and your fellow citizens as a > temporary annoyance for which they will hold little sympathy. This statement sounds a little defeatist and gives an excuse for not participating in demonstrations (since the required _massive_ scale is likely not reached, one might be better of not going). Actually demonstrations, even if they do not effect immediate change, will still have a number of positive outcomes. First, they will likely be reported on in the news (at least that would be the case in Germany), raising awareness. Second, demonstrators will meet like minded individuals with whom they can network and form strategies. Third, demonstrators will realize that they are not isolated and feel more empowered as a result. Last, it will at least remind the public and politicians that some people do care about this. Is any of this enough to affect change? Likely not. But it is a first step and if we can't even go demonstrate against this then we might as well stop caring. The possibility that demonstrations will not have the immediate effect we desire should not stop us. ~~~ bobwaycott Apologies. I did not intend to sound defeatist at all. ------ aclevernickname Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I can't help but think this is the worst idea ever. You have a highly-strung government, watching everyone for signs of domestic terrorism, and then protest, which the government has considered an act of aggression since at least the Dubya administration. The only remedy we have in this country is lawsuits. Not class-actions, either; individual lawsuits for $500k each, for egregiously prejudicing your individual rights guaranteed by the constitution. ten thousand or so of those, with the president's name in all caps (head of the Unitary Executive) listed as the defendant. or, you know, you could try to make a well-regulated militia of 3D-printed pea shooters, so you can overthrow the largest and most heavily-armed military in the history of the world. that'll definitely work. Myself, I appreciate the disclosure I'm being given that Scott McNealy was right all those years ago when he said we have zero privacy anyway. The government has the right to do whatever they want with their property. if you use/are their property (isn't that ARPAnet thing US military property?), expect them to enforce their interest in that property. TL;DR for the downvoters (+6 to -2 in less than 20 minutes? hilarious): PROTEST BAD. LAWSUITS GOOD. ~~~ pvnick >You have a highly-strung government, watching everyone for signs of domestic terrorism, and then protest, which the government has considered an act of aggression since at least the Dubya administration. That's a terrible justification for not protesting. Free societies require courage. ~~~ aclevernickname Not wanting to be in harmony with the 800lb gorilla is a terrible justification for not being in harmony with the 800lb gorilla. As for being courageous in a free society: Let me know when you find one. we can both move there and be courageous together. In the interim, I'm going to play by the rules of the game, as I'm stuck in the system. Perhaps you guys don't understand this: they have _really_ big guns. waaaay bigger than anything we have. and they have the authority to use them when they're threatened by acts of mass protest. the Executive's powers used at Kent State ages ago have only gotten stronger. Don't be like those poor bastards. or the Seattle WTO protesters. or the DNC/RNC protesters. Seriously, they _want_ you to sue them. Just do it. ~~~ wavefunction I guess we'll give you a call from the protests then. Look for us being mocked on the TV, if we're not intentionally ignored by corporate media. ~~~ aclevernickname please do. I'll be home all day on the 4th. ------ w0ts0n Why is this US only? ~~~ bobwaycott There is no reason it has to be. However, invoking the 4th of July as part of the American public consciousness is not guaranteed to resonate with the wider world population.

Neural network AI is simple. So… Stop pretending you are a genius - NicoJuicy https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/02/neural-network-ai-simple-genius.html ====== singhrac This is a pretty stupid article. No one is pretending that they're a genius, but this guy is just full of inaccuracies. Let me break it down to save other people time and energy (I have a little to spare): 1\. "but that complexity comes from repetition and a random number generator" \- Most of the complexity comes from trying to solve non-convex optimization problems via SGD. "Repetition" doesn't make sense unless you're talking about vectorization (you're not), and an rng has little relevance. 2\. "Congrats! You took the above code, and looped the loop again." \- sure, if that were true then people would have trained deep neural networks in the 90s. Instead we needed researchers (see? geniuses) to invent batch normalization, highway networks, CNNs, dropout, etc. Also, that's not an "recursive neural network", that's a recurrent one. 3\. "So you trained a neural network using Nvidia GPUs and moved it to the phone…" \- this entire section makes so little sense I don't know where to start. Neural networks are, for the most part, robust to small rng differences - that's why they have surprising generalizability. I have no idea what this guy is trying to say about phones and GPUs though. 4\. "What it does well is help you visualize what is happening in those 11 lines" \- well, that's not the point, but I'm starting to understand that this guy doesn't get it. 5\. "Building a neural network with 1 trait for every word in the English language would require a network that used as much computing power as all of Google." \- I'm just going to let that one sit there. ... "There is neural network code in my tool box."; sure, you sound like you've imported Tensorflow before (possibly?). But maybe before dismissing an entire field you should figure out how any of it works. ~~~ wjnc Agree. Statistics is pretty basic at it's linear algebra core as well. Add some optimization. You can study most of the theory in a year or two. It's mastery and smart application that makes all the difference. ------ jackconnor This is a terrible article. He makes a total straw man out of neural networks by pulling code from an "Intro to Neural Networks in Python" tutorial and saying "What's so hard about this?" He also doesn't explain it correctly, not even close. Maybe he should actually do the tutorial. What's the point of this? That he's as smart as people who build AI? This person, Brandon Wirtz, needs to work on his self-confidence, not just intelligence. ------ mining Almost all of that blog post was complete bullshit. Recursive neural net? I don't understand why that post was written. ~~~ NervousTechno You can find the difference between recurrent and recursive neural nets on wikipedia. No need to edit your post then flag someone when they point out how lazy you are in understanding a simple rant post, pointing out how lazy people are in understanding the "AI" fads. ------ julvo I assume this article is directed towards people new to neural nets who think they mastered AI. However, in neural network research noone cares about of the things the author is making fun of. These are examples from tutorials beginners learn in the first week, not what experts are remotely concerned with. ~~~ opless Agree. I think there's some (a lot?) of context about /why/ the article was written. It sounds like some[one|thing] has wound the author up. Also it's a post from another blog... I'd wander over there and try to figure it out, but lunch beckons... ------ zamalek Anyone who is learning something new is a genius in my opinion - especially if they are excited about it and want to share their results so that others can learn. This is just condescending vitriol.

Show HN: ZodiacGraph – A general-purpose, circular node graph GUI - cornibies http://www.clemens-sielaff.com/the-zodiacgraph/ ====== f4q Looks visually Impressive. Is there a Demo of how to use it programmatically? Like for example for a visual scene graph like threenode.js? ------ fiatjaf Wow, it seems amazing. ~~~ cornibies Thanks! :-)

Estonia publishes its e-voting source code - duggieawesome https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine ====== duggieawesome Relevant article: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia- publishes...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/estonia-publishes- its-e-voting-source-code-on-github/)

Verizon to offer daily deals based on tracking your phone data - trendspotter http://news.verizonwireless.com/news/2012/12/verizon-selects.html see GigaOm to learn more about this phone-tracking twist: http://gigaom.com/mobile/att-verizon-offer-daily-deals-with-a-phone-tracking-twist/ ====== trendspotter GigaOM has a story about this phone-tracking twist: [http://gigaom.com/mobile/att-verizon-offer-daily-deals- with-...](http://gigaom.com/mobile/att-verizon-offer-daily-deals-with-a-phone- tracking-twist/)

Detecting electoral fraud - martingoodson https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.0741 ====== martingoodson Figure 1b is very striking.

Solving Big Startup Problems With Email: The Square Case - elie_CH http://blog.mailjet.com/post/64682818912/solving-big-startup-problems-with-email-the-square ====== wbeckler I don't see how it solves a bigger problem: no use cases. Paypal started out trying to make it easier for people to give each other money. That foundered, so they pivoted into a commercial payment tool. It's like Square is reenacting the Paypal timeline backwards. ------ tonylemesmer I haven't used Squarecash so not sure how it solves the problem of phishing. Reciving an email, clicking a link and typing in my credit card / bank details. Are we just expected to trust Square? ~~~ dominiclee It's as easy as Paypal (or easier) using email to sending money. If they can figure out the secure concern (time will tell) or say it's 100 percent secure, it would be quite awesome. I agree, not sure how it prevents spoofing or email being compromised problem. ~~~ elie_CH It wasn't that easy for Paypal :) [http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1028](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1028)

Ask HN: Anyone else going to the AWS S3 Conference in London next Thurs? - mcdowall ====== mcdowall Myself and a few colleagues are going along, would be cool to meet up with some fellow HN members for a beer or two.

Strcat Linux kernel bugdoor - DyslexicAtheist https://twitter.com/bleidl/status/943714277403357185 ====== tinus_hn I think 'strcat' refers to the handle of a person the author is talking to, and not the system call.

Sean Spicer: ‘Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons’ - Bud http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/sean-spicer-hitler-didnt-even-sink-to-using-chemical-weapons/#.WO0iPn5f_Lw.facebook ====== antman He didn't use them because he was hit by mustard gas in the WW1 trenches and was blinded and lost his voice for some time, but the CyclonB he used in the concentration camps should also count.

Giant magnetic fields in the universe - upen http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11632.html ====== DrScump Blogspam of [http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2017/4](http://www.mpifr- bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2017/4) with research team credits and contacts removed.

Zillow prices IPO at nearly $400mm valuation, to raise $55 million - slapshot http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/06/zillow-prices-ipo-now-has-nearly-400m-valuation/?source=facebook ====== slapshot Net income is negative, so it's another growth-plus-revenue deal, with the hope that the revenue line will cross above the expense line soon. Pricing is about 12 times 2010 revenue, with growth at 71% year-over-year growth from 2009 to 2010. ------ tomkarlo Given that they've raised $87M in VC over 6 years (<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zillow>), kind of a small outcome to be $325M pre-money.

Red Gate is sending a DBA to space - neilgd http://dbainspace.com ====== dasmoth It's a suborbital flight. At first glance, I assumed Virgin Galactic, but actually looks like it will be an Armadillo spacecraft. Interesting...

Storklancer.io FeedBack - sylarruby Built with Ruby on Rails and Reactjs, Storklancer aims to bring anyone who needs help with a project with developers, programmers and business partner together etc.<p>Functionality:<p>* ReactJs Live Search * Sendgrid email notification (disabled) * Twilio Integration – SMS notification (disabled)<p>Your kind feedback would be based on layout, features to add&#x2F;remove and color. I have many features to add but this is just a starting point.<p>Web link: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.storklancer.io<p>Many thanks. Dave ====== aismail Feedback link in the upper band does not work. Putting in real project offers instead of lorem ipsum certainly would help. Most people are using websites like this to look for work. So why would they visit if there's no work in there, regardless of the features they find? Good luck w/ your project!

Thinking of Travelling to Europe This Summer? - prawn https://www.lawfareblog.com/thinking-travelling-europe-summer ====== junto We have a common jovial saying in Europe, "Thank God only 4% of Americans have passports". In all seriousness, we should actually be thankful that the vast majority of that 4% are genuinely awesome travelers, spending lots of money in our European economies. It is only a small minority, as with every nationality, that have a tendency to taint the barrel.

Simpson's Paradox - mmaia http://vudlab.com/simpsons/ ====== tlb The Omitted Variable Problem is part of my mental framework that causes me to not believe most epidemiological studies, especially ones that confirm a popular belief. The almost universally omitted variable is health-consciousness. Some people are health-conscious and some aren't. People who are health-conscious do a whole bunch of things, some of which help (like exercise, sleep well, eat moderately). They also do things that are widely believed to be good for you, like eating broccoli. So if you do a study, you'll find that people who eat lots of broccoli are healthier. You'll be able to confirm pretty much any widely believed health folk wisdom, unless it's something quite harmful, as long as you omit health- consciousness as a variable. ~~~ rthomas6 Surely some studies account for this? If you look for people who do X and people who don't and just analyze their lives, yes this problem is likely to exist. But if you take two randomized samples of a the population and say to group A, "do X," and to group B "don't do X," you have an effective control group. At least I think so. Don't some dietary studies even provide the participants with custom food regimens to try to eliminate extra dietary differences between study participants? ~~~ defen You're describing a randomized controlled trial and not an epidemiological study. ~~~ dbecker You are mistakenly confounding that epidemiological and observational. Epidemiology studies can be randomized or observational. ~~~ defen Interesting...what would be an example of a randomized epidemiological study? ------ tel Simpson's Paradox is scary if you've not seen it before, but you should not stop here and instead proceed _immediately_ on to omitted variable bias and the conversation here ([http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/simpsons- parad...](http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/simpsons-paradox- explained/)). In short, Simpson's paradox occurs because probability distributions and causal claims _are distinct things_ which behave differently. It's nothing more than a particular, insidious example of correlation not implying causation. It's perfectly possible for a probability distribution to have a "contradictory" shape, but perfectly impossible for logical statements about the world to be contradictory. The resolution is that you shouldn't let your probability distributions turn into logical statements without analyzing your causal assumptions. This will lead you to whether or not excluding a variable is omitted variable bias (and whether including an improper one will lead to included variable bias, which is rarely recognized). ------ teamonkey The point of an interactive illustration like this is that it should make it more intuitive and easier to understand than the core concept, not more confusing. What is the meaning of the green and purple lines on the graph, why do they have different gradients and why can't I adjust them? Why does the Simpson's Paradox apply sometimes and not others? Why are there so many bars and donut charts? What does the gray circle around the donuts mean? Information overload. ~~~ publicfig I feel as thought both graphs with purple and green lines are accurately explained. Were you trying to skim through the article or were you still left confused after reading it? The top one is explained in the accompanying text and the bottom one is explained with a labeled x and y axis and relies on the information provided above. ~~~ teamonkey If the article describes the subject adequately, what is the point of the graphic? I found the interactive graphic more confusing than the description. Compare and contrast to the clarity of their central limit theorem demonstation [1] vs its wikipedia page [2]. [1] [http://blog.vctr.me/posts/central-limit- theorem.html](http://blog.vctr.me/posts/central-limit-theorem.html) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem) ~~~ publicfig By that, I meant that the article described what the graph was representing, not that the article described the information presented adequately. Also, I absolutely disagree with the assumption you made that graphs shouldn't be present if the information is presented in the article. It's good to provide visual demonstrations when applicable in order to help clarify subjects. ------ sp332 Reminds me of Anscombe's Quartet: four datasets that have the same mean, variance, correlation, and linear regression, but are really very different. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet) ~~~ lewis500 maybe we'll do that one next! ------ jasonwatkinspdx Judea Pearl has formalized a resolution to Simpson's Paradox: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.34....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.34.8955&rep=rep1&type=pdf) An oversimplification of his idea would be to say that given assumptions about the causal independence of variables, it becomes clear which way you should group the data. Although it's not always possible to make these independence assumptions, _much_ of the time they are obvious and uncontroversial. Taking the Berkeley gender bias case as an example: We know it's possible that biological gender influences which department graduates apply to, but that it's impossible that the department a graduate applies to influences their biological gender. This fact alone tells us that we need to look at the data by department rather than in aggregate, resolving the paradox. ~~~ gweinberg Well, it certainly makes more sense to look at the by department data rather than the aggregate data. But I would say that the fact that we see such large disparities in which departments are applied to is already enough to refute the idea that male and female applicants are pretty much the same, and that therefore it would be pretty reckless to conclude any sex discrimination based on the difference in acceptance rates. ~~~ tel And Pearl's point is that the "real world" logic you just applied is both important and not statistical—you need to augment your analysis with these causal assumptions in order to translate probability into meaningful causal statements. ------ alexPetrov Reading up on Simpson's Paradox again made me realize something: women retrieving custody more often than men appears to me to be a perfect example of Simpson's Paradox. Overall, women get custody more often than men, this is true, but if you consider only the cases where men actually asked for or attempted to retrieve custody, this is no longer true[0]. [0]: [http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2012/04/chi...](http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2012/04/child_supportcu.html) ~~~ Tichy How to interpret that, though? Seems likely to me that who asks for custody would be influenced by their chances of receiving it. How many of those cases are "contested custody"? Then that article places the claim "Additional evidence, however, indicates that women may be less able to afford the lawyers and experts needed in contested custody cases (see “Family Law Overview”) and that, in contested cases, different and stricter standards are applied to mothers." without providing any data. So it ends up being a propaganda piece, which makes it not very trustworthy. ------ wunderlust FWIW, Simpson's paradox is a "veridical" paradox, not a "vertical" paradox as noted in the article. Apparently veridical isn't yet accepted by spelling checkers. (As I'm writing, Chrome offers the single suggestion "vertical" for my "veridical".) ------ dsego For me this was far better explained in the following text (also posted on HN not so long ago): [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt- impl...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply- causation-then-what-does/) ------ trains It's nice visually but the text-based information could be more thorough - which would result in less links at the bottom.The more info contained on the page the better! ------ tensafefrogs Anyone interested in this stuff should definitely watch the lectures from the Stats 110 class from Harvard that's up on iTunes U (and perhaps other places). Lecture 6 talks about this paradox and if I recall correctly he might even talk about this exact case: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/statistics-110-probabilit...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/statistics-110-probability/id502492375) ------ maxk42 That is some sexy javascript. ~~~ ZoF My first thought as well ------ martimoose I had a hard time understanding the last graphic, because I was reading on an iPad, and the sliders don't work. I thought it was all static, and couldn't match the numbers in the graph with the previously mentioned numbers, as the defaults of the sliders do not give a simpson's paradox. ------ cfontes Really interesting text, thanks. But I think this last statement "or Texas schools to waste money copying Wisconsin." was meant to be the other way around ~~~ yen223 I may have read it wrong, but I think the statement is correct. Texas minorities outperformed Wisconsin's, but the stats made it look like Wisconsin's minorities did better. ~~~ penrod To elaborate: Black students in Texas outperform black students in Wisconsin, hispanic students in Texas outperform hispanic students in Wisconsin, and white students in Texas outperform white students in Wisconsin. Overall test scores are higher in Wisconsin only because white students in both states are the highest scoring group, and Wisconsin schools have a higher proportion of white students than Texas schools. To the extend that any of this can be copied, it would probably be better for Wisconsin to improve the test scores of its ethnic groups to Texan levels, rather than for Texas to emulate Wisconsin's lilly-whiteness. ------ xerophtye Those interactive charts and graphs!! (My first encounter with vudlab and am loving it!)

Meteor framework moves to NPM - nkoren http://www.infoworld.com/article/3048806/javascript/meteor-javascript-framework-moves-to-npm.html ====== lollipop25 Finally. After struggling with their own package manager, they ultimately moved to npm. ------ diegorbaquero Great decision. After NPM's policy update I can see this as a safe and wise move.

iOS Bug – crash iphones with a simple text message - hoare http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/27/iphone-crash-bug-text-imessage-ios?CMP=fb_gu ====== ljk earlier thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609129)

Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system - ploggingdev https://www.qubes-os.org/ ====== magnat Joanna's (Qubes OS Founder) blog [1] is a gold mine when it comes to hardware- software boundary security. Especially "State considered harmful" [2] and "x86 considered harmful" [3] papers are eye-openers. [1] [https://blog.invisiblethings.org/](https://blog.invisiblethings.org/) [2] [https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/state_harmful.p...](https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/state_harmful.pdf) [3] [https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf](https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf) ~~~ jstewartmobile That's why I don't get Qubes. She knows what a steaming pile PC hardware is, and decides to write a spinoff OS for it??? Seems like she'd have more effect designing hardware. ~~~ dillon I believe I remember reading she aims at solving the issue of hardware and software vulnerabilities. I can't find the source, but she mentions that there's too much code out there that it would be impossible to secure everything. Qubes' design means hardware and software are all separated so a vulnerability in one doesn't mean exposing another. I like that in their docs they mention an approach they take and when it isn't secure[0] That being said the main point of security contention is the admin (dom0). [0]: [https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/copy-paste/](https://www.qubes- os.org/doc/copy-paste/) ~~~ jstewartmobile But those two things are not independent. If your hardware is fundamentally broken, hypervisors can only paper over so much. Between the twilight of Moore's law, and the success of open-source software, I just don't see that much long-term value left in x86+PC. ------ AaronFriel I'm very excited that Microsoft is moving in the same direction. The feature Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) runs Windows applications, right now only the Edge browser, in a virtualization isolated container[1]. Under the hood it's using what Microsoft calls "Hyper-V Containers", which are lightweight virtual machines that share some host resources such as a read- only filesystem. The closest open source analogues to that are Intel(R) Clear Containers[2] and Qubes. The closest you can get to Qubes on Windows would be to follow Microsoft's Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) guide, but it requires a lot of additional infrastructure[3]. That infrastructure allows you to do remote attestation of the virtual machines, but makes it costly to deploy in a SMB or homelab environment. I don't expect it'll be very long before PAW and WDAG are usable at the same time, with colored window borders indicating the origin virtual machine. I hope this is on Microsoft's roadmap. Video on privileged access workstation use, starting at a demo: [https://youtu.be/3v8yQz2GWZw?t=41m48s](https://youtu.be/3v8yQz2GWZw?t=41m48s) Video on privileged access workstation setup: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPhfRTLXk_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPhfRTLXk_k) [1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/threat- protection/w...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/threat- protection/windows-defender-application-guard/wd-app-guard-overview) [2] [https://clearlinux.org/features/intel®-clear- containers](https://clearlinux.org/features/intel®-clear-containers) [3] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- server/identity/sec...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- server/identity/securing-privileged-access/privileged-access-workstations) ~~~ mtgx I'm only half-excited about this because I worry Microsoft has no intention to do either one of these: 1) Support anything other than Edge/its own apps 2) Allow the feature to be accessed by users of all Windows editions I understand for now it's still experimental and whatnot, but I'm not getting my hopes up. ------ Jeaye What I'd really love to see is a marriage between NixOS and Qubes, allowing for full-system declarative configuration, including the various systems which will be running under Qubes. NixOS has containers that show how this could work, but they're only via systemd-nspawn, so not as jailed as Qube's domUs. ~~~ akavel Me, I'd like to see such a marriage between NixOS and GenodeOS (which provides capabilities management and has the advantage of using a microkernel as base, so much smaller attack surface, aka TSB, than Xen + Linux) [http://www.genode.org/about/index](http://www.genode.org/about/index) ~~~ ohpauleez Genode now has its own package management system with the 17.05 and 17.08 releases, informed/inspired by the work from Genode/Nix (linked in the other comment). This means you can run Genode on NOVA with VirtualBox 5 fully integrated as the VMM, all with the improved Noux/POSIX interop components in place, and have a decent package management solution (that handles API compatibilities, multiple version installs, src vs binary deps, packages, and more). There's also Xen support with the most recent release (for cloud appliance work with Genode) What's more, based on the roadmap and challenges, they should be bringing VirtualBox5 support to the seL4 kernel, and they even have a goal for being the virtualization foundation of QubesOS. [https://genode.org/about/challenges](https://genode.org/about/challenges) With the recent toolchain update and new package management system, its easier than ever to cook up your own Genode-based systems. ~~~ akavel Interesting, thanks for the info! Though from the article about the system ([https://genode.org/documentation/developer- resources/package...](https://genode.org/documentation/developer- resources/package_management)), it's not clear to me how to: a) tweak compilation flags of libraries & apps b) describe full set of runtime config files of an app and thus build a single full configuration of a whole system, like in NixOS. Hm; or can this maybe somehow be solved with the "run scripts" mentioned at the end of the article? I'm even less than a noob with regards to Genode, so I'm not sure about that. Or does the package manager only provide Nix-like functionality, with no way for NixOS-like features? ------ xtanx I've been running Qubes 3.2 for about 10 months on a intel skull canyon nuc. I love it. I have separate vms for media and browsing, for music (spotify), development (python, rust), skype, personal email, work email and password manager. It needs 16gb of ram to be able to run all of these at once and about 150gb of disk if you actually create separate template vms. My only real pain was coping and pasting between all of these vms (you need to ctrl+c then ctrl+shift+c for copy and the ctrl+shift+v, ctrl+v for paste [1]) I solved that with a custom solution that automatically distributes the clipboard contents (for text only) to multiple vms (depending on the source of the clipboard change). I know it defeats the purpose of isolation for the clipboard but it's ok for my use case. [1] [https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/copy-paste/](https://www.qubes- os.org/doc/copy-paste/) ------ snvzz Their weakest point is the hypervisor, Xen, which while a better choice than Linux/KVM, is still extremely bloated and has a poor security history. Thankfully, better designs such as seL4's VMM do exist, although it might need a little more work [1] until usable for the purpose. [1] [https://sel4.systems/Info/Roadmap/](https://sel4.systems/Info/Roadmap/) ~~~ mmrezaie Xen's hypervisor's size is very small. Qubes is about security and trustability of the whole system. In operating systems for measuring the trustability of the system, one very important measure is the lines of the code. Xen has a smaller footprint in the hypervisor part. Additionally, Xen has a robust model isolation for the drivers. That's why they went for Xen not KVM. But boy I wish to see more seL4. It was sad to see Gnu Hurd/seL4 didn't make it. ~~~ xyzzyz The problem with Xen is that no major industry player is backing it, especially with Amazon going KVM now. (disclaimer: working at Google on virtualization security) ~~~ ryacko Any chance Google will sponsor secure processor architecture standards? I mean, the US government no doubt had influence on the Trusted Computing Group (too bad the EFF totally shunned it), and through the magic of product binning and chip fab costs, we all have trusted platform modules. ASLR currently seems wimpy. I'm certain you are in a position to accomplish a great deal, no matter where you are in the hierarchy. Maybe the future is x86 hardware emulation for user mode processes. ~~~ standupstandup It's Intel pushing that stuff forward, with SGX. ~~~ ryacko Then from recent Defcon and Black Hat talks, they are an absymal failure. ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh- TdpVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh-TdpVg) Memory Sinkhole - Unleashing An X86 Design Flaw Allowing Universal Privilege Escalation ) (I don't understand it beyond what everyone says it can achieve) Intel should be considered to be totally unreliable and incompetent. I mean, no one buys office store safes and expects their things to be secure in them. But a processor is a little more expensive than a cheap safe and holds more valuable things. Edit: and besides, Fortezza is an SSL protocol option. ~~~ ryacko >SGX is designed to shield software against SMM exploits. Perhaps if we add one more thing, x86 will finally be secure. You are right, Intel should be left to their own devices. ~~~ standupstandup I'm not arguing that x86 will ever really be secure. However you handwaved a hypothetical "secure processor architecture". Realistically the way you do that is by making a very simple CPU, however, that would then be too slow to be usable for many applications. As a consequence nobody is doing so. SGX is at least a middle ground - it integrates the memory access checks very deep into the memory access circuitry, sufficiently deep to block all other privilege levels on the CPU. Whilst there may well be implementation flaws in SGX itself so far most attacks have been mounted via side channels, not directly exploiting CPU bugs. In this sense my original statement was correct. Intel is pushing secure CPUs forward more than any other vendor. ~~~ ryacko I think a secure processor is very complex, not very simple. The smartest person's working memory cannot operate on more than a few hundred lines of code. A high performance processor that induces a fault when a programming error occurs is certainly very complex. It is the wrong sense. Intel is playing catchup more than any other vendor and are selling a product that is nothing more than a bunch of cobbled together features, my opinion in the view of the statement that AMD is glued together. ~~~ nickpsecurity They're actually pretty simple if you're mostly trying to defeat software/firmware attacks. You just add some part to run in parallel with the processor, which can be arbitrarily simple or complex, that checks certain things about the data such as length or data type. The first one was implemented in 1961 hardware with it being secure from code injection until the invention of ROP. That's a long time. I'll add a modern take on that which led to a flexible mechanism that can do a dozen or maybe more policies. [http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...](http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burroughs%20B-5000.htm) [http://www.crash-safe.org/papers.html](http://www.crash-safe.org/papers.html) A more complex one is below that was also designed by one person for his dissertation. Knocks out all kinds of issues without modifying the processor. It has stuff to improve for sure but it think it proves the point pretty well. The stuff corporate teams were designing comes nowhere near this because they don't know much about high-security design. A critical part of that isn't features so much as a balancing act between what protection mechanisms do and don't that tries to minimize complexity to low as is possible. [https://theses.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-10112006-2048...](https://theses.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-10112006-204811/unrestricted/edmison_joshua_dissertation.pdf) And one open-source one on MIPS for capability-based security that runs FreeBSD: [https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/) A company or group of hardware volunteers could develop this into something at least as usable as a multi-core ARM CPU on RISC-V or OpenSPARC. It wouldn't take tons of money esp if they worked their way up in complexity. The hard stuff is already done. People just need to apply it. They could even pay these academics to do it for them with open-sourced results. They even get a huge discount on the EDA tools that can be six digits a seat. You're right that Intel is screwing up and playing catchup cobbling together features. There was stuff in the available literature better than most of what they're doing. They even have a separation kernel from Wind River they're not employing. Managers without security expertise must be pushing a lot of this stuff. ~~~ gggvvh Ain’t no problem that couldn’t be solved by adding another layer of indirection, eh? ~~~ nickpsecurity Maybe in web or application software. In hardware, it all runs in parallel. The mechanism of something like SAFE becomes another component receiving input in the CPU pipeline. A conditional of sorts is added so the final write back to whatever memory doesn't happen unless the safety/security checks passed. The failure mode might also do an interrupt for OS so it could log the where and why of the failure. As in, application flaws could be patched quickly. ------ drawnwren I ran Qubes on a laptop for a while. 1) It's a huge battery hog. 2) It's a real pain to run a non rolling release distro (i.e. Arch). Some dependency is going to try and upgrade itself that can't and it will brick your whole distro. Even being locked to a specific release proved a bit of a pain. It just adds a lot of complexity to your day to day operations (i.e. opening a program is a tiny bit more complicated) that turned out to be a huge drain for me. ~~~ kakarot Running an HVM with a separate kernel should alleviate those problems. Qubes is phasing out PV support anyway. I encounter an equal amount of complexity in my KVM workstation as I did in my Qubes workstation, and _more_ problems. For example, lack of a secure copy/paste mechanism, meaning I must type passwords by hand to avoid every VM being exposed to the clipboard. ------ notfed Note that while Qubes OS uses full-disk encryption, it runs on Xen, which does not support hibernate. This means that, if you use this OS on a laptop, you'll be vulnerable to cold- boot attacks, even after you close your lid, unless you configure it to shutdown on lid close. (I.e., if a highly skilled adversary steals your laptop then, even if your laptop lid is closed, they will be able to read your RAM and therefore decrypt your entire hard drive.) Despite the major security implications, it doesn't sound like a fix will be implemented any time soon. [1] [1] [https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- issues/issues/2414](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2414) ~~~ bearbearbear If a highly skilled thief wants to break into my house they could jimmy the latch on the window and let themselves in. I don't have any bars on my windows to prevent that. You need to draw the line somewhere. ~~~ carlmr Yeah, I'd say it depend on if you're a normal user or Edward Snowden. Do you have really sensitive data that could cost you your life? Then you have to worry about these edge cases. Are you a normal guy who wants to browse for porn safely, then this is already pretty good privacy. ~~~ notfed Do you consider your credit card number sensitive? Your username and passwords to all of your, bank accounts, social media accounts, and email accounts? Your personal photos? Your personal notes with personal information about your family? Your track record of your interests and hobbies? I do. And, if I have a choice, I'd rather not have to wonder if this data is in the hands of a stranger after my laptop is stolen. ~~~ carlmr It has to be stolen a) while it's on, and b) by someone who immediately knows what to do. I'm quite sure if you look at your average thief and multiply these to chances together that's less than one in a million chance to happen. Assuming you're not some high profile person where the right person is out to get you and knows which OS you use, and knows how to steal from you. ------ spiraldancing Whatever happened to the Qubes-Purism marriage? They were on track to start Qubes-certifying Librems, and selling Librems with Qubes pre-installed ... then they cancelled the plans, and I never heard why? ~~~ xkarga00 FWIW, it seems that when you buy a Purism laptop there is an option to include a Qubes live usb in the deal. I just came across it while skimming through their website[1], not sure about anything else. [1] [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/) \- see the Operating System choice ~~~ spiraldancing Thanks. I know about that. They used to sell Librems that had Qubes pre- installed, and they were on-track to get Librems to be the first officially certified hardware for Qubes. Then they canceled the whole thing, and now, as some kind of consolation/compromise, they offer Qubes-on-a-stick purchase option. ------ superasn Can it also protect against key-loggers, i.e. if i'm running an app in a qube, can an app in a different qube read my keystrokes? ~~~ 0x17A Yes, it will protect against keyloggers. Unless you install the keylogger on both qubes. You can have a separate "qube" that is not connected to the network where you would store your passwords, etc. ------ jnwatson 10 years ago, I helped design a similar system. It was a capabilities based OS on a formally modeled microkernel. I'm still not sure than there's a market for this stuff. It must be free, and it's hard to build a business model around that. ~~~ nickpsecurity When Joanna said nothing like Qubes existed, I told her INTEGRITY PC was doing it around 2005 using separatiom kernel approach with stronger security. You must have worked on that one given 10 years remark. Im curious about your experiences with that. Email me if you want details confidential. Rarely meet folks doing the kinds of architectures I research and push for further adoption. ------ tonetheman I wish there was a way I could try it. The hardware requirements ... [https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/](https://www.qubes- os.org/doc/certified-hardware/) Is anyone running this on a laptop? I get the feeling after reading that page that this is really strictly desktop only. Maybe the page has not been updated in a bit? ~~~ hyperfekt I'm running Qubes 3.2 on my laptop right now (Dell Latitude E5470) and it also fulfills all the requirements to run 4.0. The _certification_ requirements are higher, but that's basically if people want to stick the Qubes-certified label on their devices, signaling to customers that it measures up to the highest standards of security. They're not necessary to run Qubes, they're just ideal. ------ txgvnn How about Subgraph OS? It has grsecurity patch, tor network, container isolate, firewall. It's another good choice also [https://subgraph.com](https://subgraph.com) ------ bsdnoob openbsd vs qubes os, which one will you prefer? ~~~ JoachimSchipper As an OpenBSD fan: consider Qubes instead if you want a "desktop" experience. OpenBSD works fine, but the open-source desktop is quite vulnerable (consider how many things need to go wrong for [https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.nl/2016/12/redux- comprom...](https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.nl/2016/12/redux-compromising- linux-using-snes.html)), and a lot of OpenBSD's hardening is in the (simpler) base system, not in GNOME / KDE / Firefox / Chrome / ... Alternatively, consider not running a full-blown desktop or using Windows, which has grown a _lot_ more secure since the Windows XP pre-SP2 days. ~~~ rebuilder Wow, your recommendation for desktop security is either not running a full- blown desktop or running Windows? As in, Windows beats the popular Linux distros in desktop security? ------ jlgaddis Damn, I was really hoping this was an (early) announcement for 4.0 (or at least an -rc3). ~~~ 0x17A Same here. I'm waiting for 4.0. ------ known I use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Portable_Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Portable_Security) ------ partycoder QubesOS won't protect you from Intel ME though. ~~~ bluepirate Purism laptops do. ~~~ morganvachon I wouldn't trust that company at all, they lied and misrepresented themselves for nearly three years before finally claiming to make good on what they sold their customers. Beyond that, they didn't fix it themselves as they say, they relied on the work of other projects then claimed they did it alone. Considering the researchers who actually disabled IME require physical access to the machine[1], Purism's claim that they can do it to previously sold devices with only a software update[2] stinks of BS to me. [1] [https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Install_Guide/Di...](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Install_Guide/Disabling_the_Intel_Management_Engine) [2] [https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely- disab...](https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely-disable- intel-management-engine/) ~~~ floatboth IIRC they didn't really lie, everything was always worded like "will be free in the future". Also the post you linked to directly gives credit to me_cleaner and Positive Technologies. The reason the researchers required physical access: > Although some systems do allow the full contents of the BIOS flash chip to > be reprogrammed using software tools only (so called 'internal flashing'), > on most PCs this facility is either completely unavailable, or can only > write to the unprotected areas of the flash filesystem (excluding the ME > area), or will only write vendor-signed images. Accordingly, we will > describe the approach of using 'external' flashing in this guide, as that is > the most reliable. Purism being, uhhhh, the vendor, allowed full write access. ~~~ morganvachon > _" Purism being, uhhhh, the vendor, allowed full write access."_ If that was the case they could have shipped IME-free machines from the start. They are selling whitebox machines for an exorbitant markup with their own spin on a Linux distro. ~~~ cyphar That's incorrect. Allowing internal flashing just requires setting certain parameters in the flash to being read-write, and doesn't require any of the flash modification necessary to disable IME. Disabling IME can have other impacts, and Purism even has a blog post explaining what the issues were and how they resolved them -- once they figured out what IME modules were needed for their laptop to work properly they _could_ disable IME with a software update. I don't know if that's how they did it, but you're misunderstanding the difference between disabling IME and enabling internal flashing. ------ mtgx Version 4.0 should be out soon (at RC2 now): [https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2017/10/23/qubes-40-rc2/](https://www.qubes- os.org/news/2017/10/23/qubes-40-rc2/) Some exciting changes are coming: [https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2017/10/03/core3/](https://www.qubes- os.org/news/2017/10/03/core3/) [https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/releases/4.0/release-notes/](https://www.qubes- os.org/doc/releases/4.0/release-notes/) EDIT: Downvotes for providing relevant sources, really? ~~~ ZenoArrow > "EDIT: Downvotes for providing relevant sources, really?" Sometimes the downvotes on HN make no sense. Looking through your comment history there are a number of recent comments that were unfairly downvoted. Just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same people doing it. ~~~ Drdrdrq It would be interesting if HN detected such behaviour... Then it could ignore some downvotes. I know it doesn't sound like much, but undeserved downvotes hurt... ------ qrbLPHiKpiux Fun fact. The developer does not believe in using a password on her private keys. ~~~ trizinix If you have your keys on an air gapped computer with an encrypted hard-disk, I don't see the need to use an additional password on the private keys. ~~~ hateduser2 If they somehow break the encryption on your hard disk it’s just more security.. isn’t that what security’s all about? Getting the most safety you can get? What need is there to have an encrypted hard drive if your computer is air gapped? It’s just a better safer idea, no? ~~~ avar Security is not about getting the most safety you can get. Otherwise why stop there? You could store the password protected private key itself as an encrypted file on the encrypted disk, and add one more layer, or double- encrypt it and add yet another layer etc.

Startup advice: When to hire professional branding/logo design - mellavora We&#x27;re building an eHealth startup marketing to individuals. The team is three engineers&#x2F;scientists, so we have great tech-- and limited graphic design or marketing skill.<p>We&#x27;re getting ready to push out a beta version, and realize that our corporate image is terrible. We need a name, logo, color theme, etc.<p>Minimum price from decent brand agencies seems to be around 1,500.<p>99Designs&#x2F;Upwork can give us something for a few hundred, but it isn&#x27;t the full package, which means inconsistencies and lower quality.<p>How would you frame the question? ====== kennyasare *I will preface this with the statement that I came into tech from running a creative agency - so take this for whatever its worth. I think that image is just as important as tech, and those that can put the two together will have a much easier time finding users/customers, and partners. The cost to have your brand built-out, by a creative agency actually worth paying is in the $15,000-$25,000 range. The math behind that is basically: good agencies work for about $200 per hour (per person) and typically a job like a brand buildout will require 3 people, for about a week. That is 120 hours of work @ $200 per hour, or about $25k. I can tell from experience that you can find deals - sometimes; but I would go into with my eyes wide open, and look into groups that work at that level/rate. Edit: I did not answer your actual question. The answer is, as soon as you can put together the money to do it. ~~~ mellavora I completely agree that image is as important as tech, if not more so. Likewise, that it would be 15000 well spent (noting that this figure is 10x the budget in our original post)-- if we were close enough to product/market fit that we could afford it. ------ warewolf If you're just in need of a brand kit $1,500 sounds pretty reasonable if it's a profressional agency. Specially if that covers a name, logo, icons, colors and fonts. I would stay away from 99Designs because if you're launching a beta you'll need someone to also help iterate any changes based on feedback. So quick and close communication is important. if you need any further input on what kind of things you should be looking for from a designer send me an email. I've helped over 12 startups with branding including 2 YC startups. ~~~ mellavora Thanks. ~~~ warewolf Sorry emails in my bio. ~~~ mellavora no worries :) ------ mellavora The question is 1500 vs 300/400, under the assumption that whatever we do will need to be redone in 6 months. ------ doozy $1500 pays perhaps one day of salary for your team of 3. What kind of business has problems affording that? ~~~ mellavora A business funded out of the founders savings, where we aren't making 500 bucks per day each. ~~~ doozy So your "business" has not enough capital to pay its founders a below market rate salary nor to pay a graphics designer. Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds to me you don't have enough capital to start even a pizza joint. Are you sure you should be doing this startup of yours?

Alike: light kNN library for Node - mck- https://github.com/axiomzen/Alike ====== yid I can see two problems with this: \-- A naive linear scan for a lookup will not scale as the size of your database grows larger. You should be looking into space-partitioning trees, or approximate methods like locality-sensitive hashing. \-- Euclidean distance is a terrible metric for kNN on non-metric spaces, which is what your movie example is. It will also be beaten to a pulp by the Curse of Dimensionality: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality#Distanc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality#Distance_functions) ~~~ mck- Thanks for the feedback/ideas :) You're right, it won't scale as well as could be for large datasets -- or work on large dimensionalities. It's meant to be a light-weight solution for the more common use-cases.. For larger cases, it would be good indeed to resort to better methods.. I wanted it to be stateless and functional, whereas with space-partitioning trees, don't you need to maintain the tree (and not generate it on the fly for it to be scalable)? As for your second point, could you elaborate on why the movie example is non- metric? ~~~ yid > I wanted it to be stateless and functional, whereas with space-partitioning > trees, don't you need to maintain the tree (and not generate it on the fly > for it to be scalable)? Yes, but it's essential to maintain some sort of summary or index data structure to make the method scalable. A linear scan may be stateless, but that's hardly an issue when the method won't scale beyond a few hundred examples. > As for your second point, could you elaborate on why the movie example is > non-metric? No triangle inequality. ~~~ mck- The simple algorithm as is uses sorting, hence nlogn -- scales reasonably well into thousands of examples.. a tree would be klogn -- minor improvement unless n >> k? ------ mck- Alike is a versatile light-weight kNN/similarity library that can be useful for many Machine Learning projects. Whether you are building a recommendation system, or an optimization model, comparing objects is pervasive -- feedback welcome! ------ flockonus I've been looking for this! ~~~ mck- I'm glad it's useful :) What is your use-case? ~~~ flockonus I am making a website to match people with similar values and ideas! It just happens that we measure these properties on values from -100 to 100, I think it could fit perfectly. It even has ability to attribute weights to different properties.. sounds like fun =)

600 days of postmarketOS - ollieparanoid https://postmarketos.org/blog/2019/01/16/600-days-of-postmarketOS/ ====== priansh Congratulations! This is one of the most amazing projects I've seen on here and I can't believe I haven't heard of this earlier, especially since you got the phones to boot it as well! Amazing article as well. I learned 600 new things from this :) Do you have any more information on sh.rt and its use cases? ~~~ wezm You can read more about sr.ht at [https://meta.sr.ht/](https://meta.sr.ht/) as well as on Drew’s blog [https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general- availabilit...](https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general- availability.html) ~~~ ollieparanoid To anyone who would like to see sr.ht grow, please note that Drew DeVault is running it on donations. He chose to go work full time on free software with these donations: > I need to clarify that despite choosing to work full-time on these projects, > my income is going to be negative for a while. I have enough savings and > income now that I feel comfortable making the leap, and I plan on working my > ass off before my runway ends to earn the additional subscriptions to sr.ht > and donations to fosspay et al that will make this decision sustainable in > the long term. [https://drewdevault.com/2019/01/15/Im-doing-FOSS-full- time.h...](https://drewdevault.com/2019/01/15/Im-doing-FOSS-full-time.html) ~~~ Sir_Cmpwn Thanks ollie <3 ------ hawski As my old ARM Chromebook gets nearer to it's EOL I start to look for how to install Linux on it. I'm wondering if postmarketOS could be used to do this. Has anyone tried to do something like this or where should I look? I'm slowly dabbling on my own Linux distribution [0]. I'm using Void Linux packages and build system to prepare a rootfs image. Thanks to how it's done in Void I can build the whole image without root on newer kernels. I intend to have the update model of ChromeOS (two partition scheme, reboot to update), but Void being a rolling release only distribution may bring me same pains as Alpine edge brings to postmarketOS. So I wonder: how's Alpine build system in comparison to Void's? Does pmbootstrap bring the isolation or is it already an Alpine feature? [0] [https://github.com/hadrianw/tomatoaster](https://github.com/hadrianw/tomatoaster) ~~~ m45t3r > I intend to have the update model of ChromeOS (two partition scheme, reboot > to update), but Void being a rolling release only distribution may bring me > same pains as Alpine edge brings to postmarketOS. You're kind of reinventing NixOS, but worse (NixOS has atomic upgrades and allows you to return to any generation of your system, not only the last one). ~~~ hawski No, I'm reinventing ChromeOS. I started on this project with my father in mind, to make it easier for me to maintain his computer. My father would not run NixOS, but maybe I'm wrong. This will give a single image and very little tooling outside of end user parts. It probably will be much simpler. If totally seamless and _automatic_ updates can be achieved with NixOS I'm all ears. ~~~ roblabla Put whatever update command (nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade I believe? haven't touched nixos in a while) in a crontab and you get automatic updates. If the update fucked it up, you can boot back into the previous configuration. In this way, it's really, really hard to brick a NixOS install. That's the beauty of it. Of course, it's not going to be as transparent as ChromeOS: If the update failed, you'll have to manually select the previous configuration in the GRUB menu. That's definitely something solvable with a bit of code though. So, yes, automatic and seamless updates can be achieved with NixOS, given a bit of configuration and maybe a bit of code. Whether it's the right approach for your use-case remains an open question though. NixOS has many other rough edges (many applications don't "just work" on it) which might make it a deal- breaker, depending on your use-case. But you might want to look into its update models, you might get some good ideas :). ~~~ m45t3r > Put whatever update command (nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade I believe? > haven't touched nixos in a while) in a crontab and you get automatic > updates. It is even easier, really. Just add the following to your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix file: system.autoUpgrade = { enable = true; dates = "daily"; }; ------ eltoozero What is the best way to help the project? I’ve got an old Sprint Samsung Epic 4G slider (WiMAX, the old 4G), that would love to be a little mobile terminal...might be a little too dated though... Anyway, this is a fantastic project and I’m eager to contribute! ~~~ ollieparanoid > I’ve got an old Sprint Samsung Epic 4G slider (WiMAX, the old 4G), that > would love to be a little mobile terminal...might be a little too dated > though... Give it a try then, here's the step-by-step porting guide: [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device) > What is the best way to help the project? See [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Contributing](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Contributing) > Anyway, this is a fantastic project and I’m eager to contribute! Happy to read that \o/ ------ vardump It's nice to see obsoleted hardware made useful once again. I can see this becoming only more popular over time. Phones show already a slowing pace of improvements, so maybe in the future devices can be useful (at least in some form) way beyond current 2-3 year period. ------ _bxg1 Much as I admire the goal and the scrappiness, doesn't it make way more sense to start with an AOSP foundation (without Google Services) and invest one's energy improving (or even forking) that experience instead of reinventing such an enormous wheel? ~~~ geowwy They give pretty good reasons for what they're doing on their website: [https://postmarketos.org/blog/2017/05/26/intro/](https://postmarketos.org/blog/2017/05/26/intro/) ~~~ cwyers The reasons don't really seem to address why Android has the issues it has -- device manufacturers don't upstream their code changes to the mainline Linux kernel, Linux doesn't have the same level of abstraction around hardware as eg Windows does, and the state of ARM SoCs isn't like the x86 platform where there's a lot of standards you can follow, everybody just ships bespoke code to boot their SoC and only their SoC. I don't see how shipping a "real" GNU/Linux userland addresses that. ~~~ Twisell The reasons are very clear, while I trust Apple so far, it’s both important and awesome that a bunch of nice peoples start building a real FOSS alternative in case they are actually screwing us. Android can’t be trusted anymore unless major change of policy. By extension AOSP are better but still dubious since they can’t totally cut the cord from Google if needed (as far ad I understood). ~~~ ewoodrich What do you mean by "cut the cord?", AOSP doesn't use Google Services and it could be forked at any time (but would admittedly be difficult to maintain without Google's resources). ~~~ zozbot123 The mainstream Linux stack is getting closer to parity with AOSP and ChromiumOS anyway, gaining features like touch-screen-first input, small- screen support, phone calls & SMS, GPS location, privacy-focused sandboxing etc. It's all about having a _single_ system for the community to focus on, thus reducing fragmentation. AOSP app support can then be layered over the basic system if needed. ~~~ majewsky > The mainstream Linux stack Without taking away anything from your argument, I'd like to point out that by most objective measures, Android is _the_ mainstream Linux stack. ~~~ bubblethink I think they meant mainline. ------ petemc_ Really good idea, fair play to everyone working on it. I generally try to keep my phone as long as possible but the main driver to make me get new phone is the diminishing battery capacity. This isn't helped by the fact it is very hard to get a replacement battery shipped to where I live. ~~~ zozbot123 If you control the OS and hardware drivers on your device, you can preserve its battery capacity substantially by keeping its state-of-charge around 50% as far as practicable (keeping it from reaching not just "lows" which you should _always_ do, but "highs" as well). We aren't even close to reaching the _full_ amount of battery optimization that's possible on mobile. ~~~ yorwba I wonder how that advice applies if the battery capacity has already degraded significantly. For example, my current laptop's battery reports itself to be "100% charged" at 60% of its original capacity. Should I keep it around 30%? I don't really know enough about battery chemistry to understand how high levels of charge cause damage. ~~~ zozbot123 No, keep it hovering around 50% as much as you can, provided that it _never ever_ reaches really low states of charge, 15% or less. State of charge is always relative to the capacity at current time, not the original factory capacity. ------ amiga-workbench I've got piles of old devices, I wouldn't mind having a go at getting this to boot on my Xperia Z5c and Z3. I'm so glad this project exists, with smartphones being designed to be disposable embedded devices with none of the conveniences the IBM PC architecture provides this is going to be an uphill battle. ------ herogreen Very very nice project. Did you communicate with the lead developper of the Zero phone ? ([https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone](https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone)) These two projects could be a great match I think. I hope to start hacking on my Motorola E 4G (surnia) for which works has started on the wiki but it is my main phone and I need to keep it working :( ------ bodo-rab Nice blog-post and nice project! Rock on! ~~~ ollieparanoid Thanks! :) ------ ac130kz This is something really interesting and great. Unfortunately, even to get the basic functionality (calls, audio) working, one has to spend a lot of time and effort. ------ opless I am sure I’m missing the point, but surely getting the GSM/3/4G radio working for a voice call would be the whole point here and there’s zero calls made yet by postmarketOS, in over 600 days that’s a pretty bad state to be in. No? Is this supposed to be a Linux phone or not? __confused __ ~~~ em3rgent0rdr Getting radio working is not the sole point. The original motivation as was presented to me in early announcements was to give smartphones a 10-year lifecycle [1]. So more about getting extra life out of all these old phones people have laying around rather than specifically getting them to work as people's primary mobile device. [1] [https://liliputing.com/2017/08/linux-based-postmarketos- proj...](https://liliputing.com/2017/08/linux-based-postmarketos-project-aims- give-smartphones-10-year-lifecycle.html) ~~~ opless Hmm. I can't say I can see the utility of doing that. But if they're enjoying themselves doing it, that's utility, in a way, all on it's own - I guess. ~~~ em3rgent0rdr The utility is that instead of throwing away your old phone every two years, you can reconfigure it into become something else useful. ~~~ opless Usually by the time two years are up, my phone is usually not holding much of a charge and the mechanical bits are starting to fail. I'm pretty sure iPhones are not alone in being designed to last around 18-30 months ------ alrs I've found that it kinda-sorta works, on some hardware. I really wish they were targeting Debian instead of something as prone-to-broken as Alpine, but beggars can't be choosers. ~~~ ollieparanoid > something as prone-to-broken as Alpine How do you come to that conclusion? Sure, Alpine's edge repository has breakage, but so does Debian sid. ~~~ morganvachon Alpine doesn't make for a stable desktop OS, however it was never meant to be used on the desktop. I wonder if OP was referring to that.

Fresh idea for about page. Move mouse and enjoy - UE http://userlook.com/about/ ====== UE Don't forget to place mouse over cheese.

Project Bloks: Making code physical for kids - runesoerensen https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/project-bloks-making-code-physical-for.html ====== edtechdev There are some more kid-friendly programmable robots/hardware and coding tools listed here: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r1b2CM1uTdST47IbWa7zlZYm...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r1b2CM1uTdST47IbWa7zlZYmbfoqrgYSeym2inUvnFo/edit?usp=sharing) Project Bloks isn't out yet, but a similar one is littlebits. The ones I've used with elementary school aged kids though include Sphero, Edison, and Lego Wedo, along with software/sites like code.org, Lightbot, and Hopscotch. ~~~ hamstersoup My 4-year-old is really into The Foos app. In the beginning he was just messing around but after a month or two he's really getting it. I was wondering what to use next, thanks for the list! ------ natevw At first glance, seems a lot like [http://littlebits.cc/](http://littlebits.cc/) only not shipping yet. Might have a bit more emphasis on programming though when it's released? Their own list of "prior art" [https://projectbloks.withgoogle.com/research](https://projectbloks.withgoogle.com/research) shows some even older "block-based" electronics kit projects. ~~~ Michie I agree. I thought it was another version of [http://littlebits.cc/](http://littlebits.cc/) But upon exploring some works, it seems like writing code but with a tangible object. The User Interface are like the usual toy blocks kids play and they can write code with it. Interesting move by Google on this. ------ IIAOPSW When I was a kid we had "logiblocs". But I guess I was an odd kid and no one else had that experience so Google gets to invent it again and pretend to innovate. [http://www.logiblocs.com/](http://www.logiblocs.com/) ~~~ packetslave This seems unnecessarily harsh ("pretend to innovate"). The team called out a bunch of prior art and inspiration here: [https://projectbloks.withgoogle.com/research](https://projectbloks.withgoogle.com/research) and seem perfectly happy to acknowledge they're not the first to play in this space. ------ Impossible This is really cool. I want to build a system like this that works on VR\AR platforms, to get around limitations of programming in VR like text input being a pain, hard to read text, etc. It's also possible to get around some of the limitations of actual physical hardware like costs, being able to code abstractions (a complex function can shrink to a single block, you could build custom interfaces and types without making new custom hardware, etc). Does anyone know of any other good tangible\physical programming resources out there? ------ nikolay Please, don't use misspelled words in kids' products! ------ spike021 I like to think that a classic Rube Goldberg machine or even just a Hot Wheels track is similar to the idea of a program. You have the main loop, which is the track or route of the car/ball, and then if certain factors come into play, they may change what happens to the car/ball or what happens to something else. ------ Devodevo2002 this is great and all because it will introduce more kids to programming but now that we've got a couple different things like this I think that we should start to focus on more syntax oriented learning where the kids can learn why that syntax makes that happen on the screen and what each individual part of the code does. For example, if we were using Javascript to check a variable and see if it is the same as another variable and then log "yes", we would use this: var a = true; var b = true; if (a === b) { console.log("yes"); } now, this may seem obvious but to children or someone who doesn't program they might not under stand what console.log does or any other part, also we need to teach kids where they can find the resources they need to learn more if they are interested. ~~~ xyience Kids need a motive. With a motive, they'll figure things out, you don't have to handhold them every step or create broken abstractions for them to play around in then get bored. We already have "visual/physical programming" for kids, in the form of Minecraft. And for the kids who want to go the extra mile, well, they learn Java. Not enough Java they could work at BigCo, because they learn Java with the motive to do stuff in Minecraft, not to actually understand the semantics of Java -- but if they got bored with Minecraft, their retained Java knowledge would be enough that they could then teach themselves the more formal aspects, or even another language. Kids don't want to know the difference between '=' and '==' and '==='. ~~~ zeta0134 The motivation is key here, and I could not possibly agree more. Lots of people tried to get me interested in Programming when I was younger. I was given a very dry book on PASCAL, and had Visual Basic installed on my very first computer. Never did a darn thing with either of them, because I was more interested in games. In the 7th grade though, I was given a TI-82 graphing calculator, with a built-in programming language (BASIC) and the ability to type in programs from the math book and let them run. On its own this was neat, but I barely understood what I was doing. Then I got curious one day, read the instruction manual, and arrived at the getkey function. The TI-82 instruction manual has little to say about the getkey function, except that it "can be used to create Video Games." There is no more dangerous thing to tell a young student bored with Algebra homework. I had a working PONG clone later that same week. ------ hoodoof This is _precisely_ what the new BBC computer education project should have been. Not the BBC microbit - a useless computer with blinking lights, but instead the BBC should have designed a standard for other companies to build interesting and interconnecting computer bits and pieces. ~~~ vanderZwan You're comparing Duplo to Meccano here: the projects targets completely different age categories. The microbit has two built-in buttons, and accelerometer and magnetometer sensors, and Bluetooth. It's got everything required to connect it to your smartphone or tablet and make it a hackable wearable. ------ dominotw i get a feeling all these programs are doing more harm than good. anything taught in school becomes mundane, dry and boring at somepoint. did anyone ever become a history fan because history was taught in school. ~~~ infectoid When I was in high school in the early 90s I had the option of doing music or computing studies. I chose the latter. While I agree that some of the material was boring and mundane, it really did play a major role in me becoming a software developer and enjoying it. I had a teacher friend once tell me that she generally doesn't expect students to learn everything, she just expects them to recognise it when they see it again. So a child learning the ABC's doesn't really understand what they represent but it's through recognition that they do the actual learning. At some point there is a brainfart and concept become linked and you have your first mindblow. More recently I finished up some post-grad studies and one of the courses I did was HCI (Human Computer Interaction). This was very dry and boring for the most part. But it was the one that left the most impact on me. It didn't connect with me at the time but now I regularly think "Oh shit, that's what she meant! UX is so fucking important". Again, this has shaped my relationships to users and the constant blame game I'd play when someone couldn't use what I had built. I very rarely, if ever, blame the user now. TL;DR: So yeah, school can make things boring but don't underestimate how the subtle accumulation of knowledge can change your life. p.s. Be humble. Never stop learning. Let your brain fart. ------ blowski Reminded me of: [https://www.primotoys.com/buy/](https://www.primotoys.com/buy/) ------ HIlthere It reminds bug shaped toy learning code.

Steve Blank: The Sharp End of the Stick - lrm242 http://steveblank.com/2009/05/04/the-sharp-end-of-the-stick/ ====== swombat How does this argument mutate when considering "self-service" applications like, say, a lot of SaaS out there? My feeling is that the product development team (with a focus on optimising for more sales) is the equivalent of the sales team in that case... Would love to hear other people's thoughts on this though. ~~~ dmix For most business applications the only thing thats self-service with SaaS is usually the purchasing process. They can begin using the software with little involvement from the company. But that only comes at the end of the sales process - you would still need marketing/sales to get to that point. Although, if your targeting a technical crowd then having a great product and some PR would most likely make the product dev team most influential in a sale.

Show HN: A device simulator that cycles through many mobile device simulations - magicmouse https://github.com/magicmouse/beads-examples/tree/master/Example%20-%20cycler ====== magicmouse This is an example of an open source program called cycler that you can customize to run a program inside a simulator that shows what your program would look like when running on desktop and mobile hardware such as Kindle Fire tablets, Apple IOS devices, etc. You can set the time per device (currently 0.8 seconds), and after it runs through the portrait orientation, it switches to landscape. The only "gotcha" in this product is that you have to write in the Beads language.

Getting your heart rate using R and Ruby. - benarent http://blog.airbrake.io/guest-post/exploring-everything/ ====== sadga Apps that do this using your phone: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=si.modula.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=si.modula.android.instantheartrate&hl=en) Similar: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4062216> " Eulerian Video Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World (mit.edu) 555 points by clockwork_189 57 days ago | comments " ------ EzGraphs Interesting read. I think that the combination of Ruby (for data aggregation and preparation) and R (for calculation and visualization) is great. For instance, in the related-but-not-exactly category: [http://www.r-chart.com/2010/10/max-heart-rate- calculations-c...](http://www.r-chart.com/2010/10/max-heart-rate-calculations- compared.html) It seems like folks who use R tend to be from a scientific community where Python has greater respectability and acceptance. But I see some similar "Lispiness" in R and Ruby that make them somewhat natural to use in conjunction. ~~~ buckwild I second this. I'm a scientist who also happens to program (as more of us are finding we need to do). The two languages I use the most are R and Python. Most of the time, I don't even give Ruby a second thought because it seems to be primarily geared towards web development. In general, I shy away from web development, but I know that Python is more than capable if I wanted to try it out. There really doesn't seem to be any incentive for us to learn Ruby. ~~~ JonnieCache There is nothing in ruby that is geared towards web development, not any moreso than python anyway. It just happens to be mostly used for that. Ruby does however lack a lot of the ecosystem of scientific libraries python has, there is no real equivalent to NumPy for example. ~~~ a_bonobo Ruby also has the reputation of being much slower than Python, and speed is crucial in the scientific community when it comes to handling data-sets in the range of terabytes. Edit: Also, when it comes to computer-technology the scientific community outside of CS generally lags far behind what CS is coming up with - for example, blastn, the most commonly used algorithm in biology for nucleotide- comparison, still doesn't have a proper 100% multithreaded solution. There is also no adaption of NoSQL or any other of the "modern" data-storage solutions. ~~~ irahul > Ruby also has the reputation of being much slower than Python, and speed is > crucial in the scientific community when it comes to handling data-sets in > the range of terabytes. If we are talking computation speed, the difference between Ruby and Python is a floating point error. > There is also no adaption of NoSQL or any other of the "modern" data-storage > solutions. NoSQL solutions are "modern", but that doesn't equate to being better. I am more than familiar with almost all major NoSQL players(redis, mongo, couchdb, cassandra etc), and for 99% of the cases, RDBMS is better solution. There is no adoption in scientific community(or most communities) because there isn't a clear benefit. I neither try to use RDBMS as a key-value store, nor do I twist my relational models to fit into a NoSQL offering(mongo makes the translation easier, but lacks things I need). ------ sausheong Thanks everyone for the upvotes and the positive comments! I'm the author of the blog post and the book. ~~~ spsaaibi I've been reading your book for a week now Sau Sheong Chang, I can't stop! It's a fascinating read! I'll let you know when I'm done, thanks for writing this! ------ gautamc The idea of detecting change in the amount of light is also used by the PulseSensor - [http://pulsesensor.myshopify.com/blogs/news/6326816-anatomy-...](http://pulsesensor.myshopify.com/blogs/news/6326816-anatomy- of-the-diy-heart-rate-monitor) ------ danso Before anyone jumps in with "Why do all that coding just to do what I can do with my hand and chest?"...this is a cool hack that shows practical code for breaking down a video file and measuring changes. The same concept could be used to, for example, count number of unique faces that pass through a room/hallway. Or, for a C-SPAN clip, gauge when who speaks when (depending on whose face is center-frame during a debate). And other less pedantic ideas. ~~~ zheng Plus computers actually remember things. I think anyone here can see that a computerized method of gathering data isn't interesting for the method per se but the ease of keeping and analyzing said data over a period of time. ------ deepGem This is very cool. A very useful demonstration of what you can do with R, for those of us who are non-researchers. ------ benarent Thanks for the up-votes everyone. I have a coupon code for anyone interested in getting Saus book / e-book. ~~~ diego I'm interested if you still have it. If it's gone I may still buy the book, it looks very promising. ~~~ benarent Send an e-mail to me ben@airbrake.io.

30 years for the TJ Maxx hacker (copied 40 million credit cards) - opticksversi http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3772.html ====== opticksversi From the article: _one man found to be guilty of the crime, a 25 year old Ukrainian by the name of Maksym Yastremskiy, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison. Yastremskiy, who went by the name of Maksik, is thought to have sold hundreds of thousands of stolen credit card numbers following the theft which in turn caused tens of millions of dollars worth of losses for retailers and banks. Maksik will serve his time in a Turkish prison, following his arrest along with other gang members there last year._

Russell’s Paradox and Frege’s Mistake - anacleto http://cs.smith.edu/~jhenle/sr/Files/russ06.pdf?trk=object-title ====== mcguire Rather overwrought, in my opinion (and I'm a very big fan of Frege). That second paragraph is especially sketchy. (Check out Augustus De Morgan, Georg Cantor, Mr. Boole, and another of my favorites, Pseudo-Scotus.)

How to say nothing in 500 words - irahul http://web.archive.org/web/20101124040620/http://www.apostate.com/how-say-nothing-500-words ====== Cyranix If I ever go back to language teaching, I think I've just come up with an engaging and rewarding lesson: * assign students the task of writing an N-word or -page paper and explicitly instruct them to use as much fluff as possible (creatively, i.e. not using "really" x100) * allow them to read each other's papers and vote on the most vapid essays * assign a follow-up task to ruthlessly edit a partner's paper to distill the real content * never attach a word or page count to any future assignment, preferring complete coverage of assigned topic, and hold students accountable for use of fluff Hands-on experience is a great learning aid. A frank acknowledgement and analysis of filler content (instead of just discouraging it in the abstract) coupled with an educator's willingness to forgo artificial targets or limits could go a long way in improving this aspect of writing style. ~~~ Ralith It will be neither engaging nor rewarding for the person publicly voted "most vapid." ~~~ scott_s I don't see a problem with it: being vapid is the stated purpose of the exercise. Cyranix did not propose blindsiding the students with this exercise by applying this criteria to essays the students wrote in earnest. ~~~ Ralith Oh, I see that I missed that. That's a pretty good idea, then! ------ samdk This advice, as with much other good advice, should be taken and understood in context. It is an essay about how to write a good essay, and there are times when you want to break some of these rules. As one example, expressions like "I think that" and "in my opinion" can be useful if used purposefully. When reading an argument, we have a tendency to fixate on the points that we take issue with personally. By saying "I think X is true" instead of just "X is true", you make it easier for someone to disagree with your specific point rather than your entire argument. In some contexts (like HN comments), this can help to reduce animosity and get much more of your point across to people who don't fully agree with you. ~~~ scott_s I use "I think" it to distinguish widely agreed upon facts from my own conclusions. ~~~ msellout You're giving too much credit to things that people widely agree on. Going by majority vote, intelligent design is a fact. ~~~ AsylumWarden I believe the concept of majority rules has worked well for America. Some would disagree of course but then they are just the minority. ------ latortuga This article reminded me of "Thank You For Smoking" where the young kid asks his dad what he should write about on the topic of "Why is the American government the best government in the world". Aaron Eckhart's character ends up explaining that the question is ridiculous because it carries implicit assumptions (America is the best government in the world, 'best' can somehow be measured) without explaining them. He follows that with an explanation that this is basically an invitation to write whatever you want - write about tariffs, write about executing felons, write about our appeal system. It's not about the question, it's about the writing. ------ irahul Hey folks. There is currently a flame war going on about using grammar as litmus test for hiring. I thought it's a good time to re-post this. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904584> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008246> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=239147> Sorry about the archive link. The original post is gone. ~~~ corkeh Original post is here: <http://apostate.com/how-to-say-nothing-in-500-words> Looks like the URLs changed when they switched from Drupal to Wordpress. ------ wccrawford I guess I had really good English teachers, then, because I never worried about using unique arguments. I simply wrote the most obvious thoughts on the subject and called it a day. And I always got good grades. However, I did follow a lot of advice from the post without knowing it, other than the 'don't be obvious' bit. For instance, I didn't use a lot of filler words. I simply wrote out my ideas, explained them, and then opened and closed it with a summary paragraph, as we were taught repeatedly. 5-3-5 and all that. It never failed to get a good grade. If I was short of my 500 (or however many) words, I didn't start adding useless words. I added more content. Obviously it wasn't a good argument if I didn't say enough to meet that requirement yet. However, I think this only happened a few times. I was more likely to go over the maximum number instead, if there was one. College's basic courses were simple if you knew the rules and followed them. I found out later that they were harder for others because they didn't know the rules, like the 5-3-5 pattern. Everyone that I have introduced that to has loved it and it helped them tremendously. Why isn't that taught everywhere? It seems awful obvious in retrospect. ~~~ UnFleshedOne I went through hight school and university without using that pattern (not that I wrote many essays, and when I did I made a point of writing against the topic) and was only introduced to it in ESL class I took after immigrating to canada. I'm not a very creative person -- I rather like rigid structures and perfect formatting of my code -- but I hated this immediately. It is probably just me, but somehow the idea of making an "essay" according to the rules of making essays as defined just highlights the utter pointlessness of the process and saps all energy and dispels any delusions about making meaningful arguments I might have had... ~~~ psykotic My wife is going through an intensive one-year college ESL course with an emphasis on writing. This was my first encounter with the rigid structure of American college essays. Initially I found it silly and counterproductive, but I have since softened my stance. My wife, despite having a degree from a top university in her country, had hardly any practice writing essays even in her native language. Because of that, she has had her hands full just worrying about her ideas and how to express them in correct and idiomatic English, so the fixed structure has been invaluable for her--it helps organize her thoughts and removes one whole class of tricky decisions from the writing process. Think of it as training wheels. Once you don't need the formal structure anymore, you can and probably should stop using it. ------ gmac This is fine as far as it goes, but -- ironically, given its subject -- I found it a little vapid. Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is my preferred commentary on English writing style: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4272608> ~~~ pizza I love his 'all writing is political' idea. On many occasions have I asked myself "Why am I writing this?" and surprised myself with my answer. ------ bicknergseng I'd like all newspaper editors to read Mr. Roberts' article. I've been working on blogging for a while. Mostly thinking about it, some writing, no publishing to the internet. I would draw a line from undertones in this article to my hesitancy to hit the "post" button. At the risk of sounding ignorant, arrogant, or both, I'm going to make sweeping generalities. The problem as I see it is that most low hanging blog topic fruit falls under the category of "Obvious Content." If you're writing about hiring, as HN articles are wont, I promise you someone has written the same point argued the same way before. I could head up the same topic from the "Less Usual Side," but I have no personal interest in playing devil's advocate and choosing to argue for something I don't believe to be true. There's a place for that, and I'm not arguing that original thought can come out of debate or rebuttal. Unless you're publishing some kind of original research, what I have to say has probably been said already more eloquently than I could say it myself. I'm afraid I would simply be adding to the noise. My interesting HN social experiment of the day: I would like to challenge every one to only post truly original thought. I suppose posting a unique argument to an existing topic is OK, but I'd shoot for completely untouched topics to expand the reaches of our collective thinking. ~~~ primatology I claim there is no original thought. We're too shaped by our experiences. I think you'll find most "original thoughts" are a) reversals of commonly accepted arguments for the sake of being contrary or b) bad ideas. Hence why most of us tend to held unoriginal thoughts—because the common beliefs are [often] the least-bad. Only occasionally does someone strike gold. Then again, increasing the attempts at original thoughts should increase the quantity of good original thoughts, if not the proportion. I'm rather intrigued. ~~~ bicknergseng Cue Inception music. ------ brittohalloran There are some really good gems in there: "Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words." ------ sp332 _If these are the points that leap to your mind, they will leap to everyone else's too, and whether you get a "C" or a "D" may depend on whether the instructor reads your paper early when he is fresh and tolerant or late_ I don't think this is true. If a teacher asks 100 students for a paper on an assigned topic, they're not looking for originality. They just want to see if you can write or not. I always had felt that I should write something original and was worried constantly that I was re-hashing an idea the teacher had already seen dozens of times. But then I asked several teachers about it and they said they weren't looking for originality. After all you can't expect thousands of students of the same age in the same class at the same school with the same teacher to think very differently from one another. ~~~ nocipher Of course they aren't looking for originality. It can't be expected. When you give students a really difficult test, you don't expect everyone to make an "A". You expect some to fail ("D") and many to be just average ("C"). Some select few, however, will defy the norm and manage an "A". The situation with assigned writing is the same. Some will elegantly write many droll, boring statements and back them up with some personal anecdotes or stories they came across while doing research. Those will stand out against the poorly written droll, boring statements. They'll get higher scores. The few that break the mold and do something completely unexpected will definitely stand out. If they can back up their originality with half decent ability, they'll stand out even more than the "standard excellence". Those people will definitely get an A. The conclusion is sound. If you beat the expectations people have of you, good things will likely happen. ------ pizza Just read Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_. ~~~ hkmurakami Just discovered that this is available free of charge on Kindle [1]. [1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-of-Style- ebook/dp/B005IT0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-of-Style- ebook/dp/B005IT0V8O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital- text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342806430&sr=1-1&keywords=elements+of+style) ~~~ Simucal That isn't Strunk and White. That is just Strunk and is an earlier edition of the work long before White came on. ~~~ decklin And in case anyone is not familiar with just how long "long before" was: [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001604.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001604.html) ~~~ hkmurakami Thanks for the corrections! ------ ctdonath "All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting." I respectfully submit Monty Python's _The Meaning of Life_. ------ moron This strikes me as good advice, but it also matches a lot of the advice I have gleaned over the years, so it may just be my bias talking. Getting rid of mush-mouthed "in my opinion" stuff and cliche phrases, moving from the general to the specific, all good advice.

An Intro to the Plan 9 OS [video and slides] - jff http://sse.se.rit.edu/programs/tech-talks/plan-9 ====== jacquesm Every now and then a _really_ new thing comes along, and Plan 9 is one of those things. It's been quietly waiting in the wings for its moment to shine. There are days I wished that Plan 9 had been released as GNU licensed open source back in the days when Linux first got going, or something more along the lines of QnX, lots of things are unnecessarily hard the way they are now. ~~~ jff We (the Plan 9 community) figure that not initially releasing it as open source cost us Linux's current place. As it stands, we didn't open source until 2000. But we wouldn't have put it under the GNU license in any circumstances, we have grievances against GNU :)

Government study finds racial, gender bias in facial recognition software - anigbrowl https://thehill.com/policy/technology/475350-government-study-finds-racial-gender-bias-in-facial-recognition-software ====== anigbrowl This is the underlying study: [https://www.nist.gov/news- events/news/2019/12/nist-study-eva...](https://www.nist.gov/news- events/news/2019/12/nist-study-evaluates-effects-race-age-sex-face- recognition-software) I linked the news article about it both as a simple summary and because I think readers (especially anyone working in this space) should look at the comments on the article to see how carefully curated data is received by a biased audience, and reflect on the idea that reproducibility or technical merit are not self-executing or self-perpetuating.

El Chapo and the History of the Heroin Crisis - coris47 http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a46918/heroin-mexico-el-chapo-cartels-don-winslow/ ====== mjevans It worked for marijuana, so do it for the other things too (but with more regulation for the harder drugs). Instead of reacting to the symptoms we need to look in the other direction. * Cartels are a symptom of opportunity for profit that isn't being serviced in a legal way. * Drug addiction is a symptom of a sick society. * People chemically (or psychologically) addicted to the affects of drug treatment are a symptom of incomplete medical treatment. Maybe if everyone had a place to be and a job they could do, a sense of security in work and health, as well as the opportunity to have a life worth living we could actually win the 'war on drugs'. ------ Crito Of the people I've known who died due to heroin, _all_ of them got started off on narcotic pain killers prescribed by unscrupulous doctors. One of my friends in university got hooked on pills his doctor prescribed for his back pain. The guy was 300+lbs, _maybe_ that had something to do with the pain? Who cares, pump him full of pills! A year later he was on heroin. Three years later he was dead. Nobody but a _complete_ degenerate wakes up one day and says _" You know what, I think I'm going to mainline some heroin."_ Opioid addiction starts with pills. If you take heroin out of the equation, they're going to start making krokodil or some other shit. You can't solve the drug problem until you solve the doctor problem. ~~~ MichaelGG Why did he move to Heroin? Was it because it was cheaper/easier due to artificial restriction on regulated, proper, opiates? Why didn't he move to OxyContin, morphine, methadone, oxymorphone, etc.? "Krokodil" is also an alright medication on its own. Just another morphine- related molecule. The big complaint with it is, once again, unregulated producers making incredibly unsanity products. Which, if you shove it into your arm, will cause all sorts of infections. If we had to buy vaccines from some guy making them in a barn, we'd probably see a huge incidence in infections from vaccinations. I'd also disagree that no one wants to inject heroin. I've been on IV morphine once, due to an injury, and it was _fantastic_. Unbelievably great. I fail to see why someone wouldn't want that, if they could afford it, have proper healthcare and equipment, etc. It's just a weak form of wireheading. Doctors aren't _the_ problem. The legal penalties for seeking medication are. The social views that addicts are inherently a problem -- that's a problem. The high cost of medications due to gatekeeping is a problem. Allow people to buy the medications they want (if only on personal liberty grounds!). Then engage in adverts, education, sell help, etc. if it's really a problem. Opiates are so cheap that even a part time job can easily afford to be high all the time -- if they were in a proper competitive market. ~~~ saiya-jin well, you have elections, and bunch of people that don't want to live/raise kids next to people like you describe. or at least the image of junkies they have in their head. it's easier and beneficial for politicians to have hard line stance against drugs in many places. don't expect much beyond +-weed legalization anytime soon, and even that might be rolled back at one point. ------ misiti3780 If anyone wants to read a really great book about this topic i suggest "Chasing the Scream"[1]. This book made me think about drug addiction in a completely different way and also change my mind about legalization -- of all drugs, including heroin. [1] [https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last- Drugs/dp/16...](https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last- Drugs/dp/1620408902) ~~~ dmix I'm curious if there are any other analogies in history of societal problems that was so widely misunderstood yet spent ungodly amounts of human time, money, and jail time was spent trying to stop in all the wrong ways. The war on drugs really are the crowning achievement of anti-scientific public policy. Decades of ignoring the results and continuing to try the same thing. The west isn't the only one with this problem. The DEA has been exporting this failed strategy to other countries for decades. The Philippines has taken the American style war to the extreme: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/in- philippines-war-on-drugs-deal...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-philippines- war-on-drugs-dealers-choose-retirement-over-death-1468509951) They've demonstrated that the only way to actually win it like a war is via death squads and the total destruction of human rights. Otherwise governments have to face reality and accept it doesn't work. ~~~ hackaflocka Marijuana has been consumed in India forever. It was smoked just like tobacco is today. By a lot of people in society (including high and low status women). Never was a problem. Probably led to some of the spirituality and mathematics of ancient India. However, it was the natural variety. Not the genetically optimized powder keg stuff available today. ~~~ stuaxo True, though they made some pretty strong stuff like charas. ------ mattnewton > If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills > two hundred people a week, take a hard look at the legalization of pot, > which destroyed the profits of the Mexican cartels. How did they respond to > a major loss in revenue? Like any company, they created an irresistible new > product and flooded the market. That seems like an unfair potshot. Why not emphasize: "An increasing number of Americans were addicted to prescription opioids such as Oxycontin." ~~~ rcarrigan87 Agreed, the cartels are just reacting to an increase in demand for heroin. ~~~ MichaelGG And it's the strict scheduling, the intimation tactics with doctors, that causes people to resort to buying street opiates instead of certified, regulated, opiates like OxyContin (or cheaper alternatives). ------ leftnode If you haven't, I highly suggest you read Don Winslow's two books about this: The Power of the Dog and The Cartel. Both are fantastic. ~~~ charlangas Agreed! It is also interesting to try to match the characters to the real life drug lords that inspired them by the crimes and strategies detailed in the book, though it can get confusing since Winslow often merges two real drug lords into a single character or branches out a single drug lord into two or more characters. For example, Adán Barrera—the main antagonist in The Cartel—is based on one of the Arellano Felix brothers in The Power of the Dog, but then takes on Chapo Guzman's persona in The Cartel. But when you realize that a lot of what Winslow describes actually happened in real life it puts a lot of things into perspective—especially the US's involvement on both sides of the coin. ------ bluedino Heroin is cheap. Really, really cheap. It's really, really addicting. It's easy to overdose on. And people mix it with shit like fentanyl which makes it even easier to kill yourself with. It's a really terrible drug. ~~~ MichaelGG Heroin can be a useful medication. Street opiates are bad because there's no regulation. It's not inherent in the medication. Take _anything_ and vary the strength/purity by 50x and see how many people die. A 50x dose of Tylenol will kill you just as well (more painful, actually). ~~~ x1798DE You don't really need regulation to get consistent strength/purity, branding (Buy Mack's Heroin - guaranteed 99.99% pure with no adulterants!) and tort law (you said this contained 20mg of heroin, it contained, dangerously, twice that amount, you are liable for my consequent overdose) should be enough to handle that, if producers were competing on quality and not "ability to operate in a black market". ------ DigitalJack So with people here talking about opioids from docs leading to heroin, a question came to mind: If you have been given opioids for pain, did they work? I ask because for me they don’t. I get buzzed, euphoric, but they don’t do squat for pain for me. Same with marijuana. No effect on my pain at all. In fact, for me, marijuana makes me even more accutely aware of physical discomfort. Am I just an oddball? ~~~ k-mcgrady >> "In fact, for me, marijuana makes me even more accutely aware of physical discomfort. Am I just an oddball?" Nope. It's the same for me. What I eventually worked out (I'm not 100% sure of this but I'm pretty certain) is that the strain of marijuana is important. Unfortunately I don't get to choose in my country :) But if it's a strain that gives a body high I become more aware of the pain, if it's not I become less aware. Edit: If someone with knowledge on this matter can confirm (or refute) my assumption I'd appreciate it. ~~~ pm90 Here is another reason for the decriminalization of Marijuana: I'm pretty sure there would be a lot more research into genuine medical benefits of marijuana if it wasn't dissociated with breaking the law. I'm curios if Federal research grants can be allowed to study the medical benefits of Marijuana? I know states have made medical marijuana legal but most funding in research comes from Federal agencies. ------ bogomipz Firstly what has happened with the quality of journalism in Esquire, you can not call this serious journalism when the author writes: "You can't make this shit up ...", "The story's goes ..." "The Mexican authorities had a line on the little bastard." This is like listening to a person in a bar recounting a story. Second, the increasing legalization marijuana in the US and the current flow of heroin into the US are orthogonal. Legalization of marijuana is not the cause of an influx of heroin. Mexican marijuana has always been considered cheap and inferior quality. The fact is that US has developed a taste for highly cultivated quality weed, the same as the US has with coffee and craft beer. Its "conspicuous consumption", quality weed, is a status symbol - a sign of discerning taste. The people that were hurt by the legalization of marijuana were the small time neighborhood dealers not the Mexican cartels. Mexican cartels most significant revenues have always been Cocaine which needs to transit Mexico to get to the US. While Cocaine production is still centered in South American the trafficking and logistics were taken over from the Colombian Cartels by the Mexican Cartels after the demise of the Medellín Cartel in Colombia. The real reason the US is seeing an uptick in Mexican heroin is because there has been a market created for it by those who have become hooked on prescription opioids. When they run out or can no longer obtain their Oxycodone or Hydrocodone they satisfy their withdrawal with street dope. ~~~ John23832 I think that's what they were going for... They're following the "Vice" model (which I actually like). News the averge modern person can relate to. Walter Cronkite is dead and gone man. ~~~ bogomipz That would be the Vice of 15 years ago then. Vice the news channel(HBO) is respectable journalism. Shane Smith had the good foresight to see that they could grow with their audience. It doesn't have to Cronkite but it doesn't have to be "brah" either. ------ nobleach The opener really frustrates me. It's basically saying that if these folks have no choice but to engage in illegal activity. If their product somehow becomes legal, well.... we shouldn't have done that... because now they have to sell something worse. OR, OR, they could stop manufacturing poison and perhaps get a legitimate job and stop making money off of people with serious problems. Weed doesn't kill.... heroin does nothing but kill. I guess I can't lay the blame totally on the manufacturers, but my god.... quit acting like their careers somehow deserve to exist one way or another and it's the USA's fault. ~~~ tmp-20150107 > Weed doesn't kill.... heroin does nothing but kill Not at all. There are plenty of people using heroin that are not your typical junkie, just like there are many recreatioal weed users that aren't unemployed stoners. Take me - I've been working in IT for twenty years, and have been a heroin addict for just about the same length of time. My career is going pretty well, I'm in charge of a team of engineers, I speak about my particular subject at conferences around the world regularly, I have plenty of work up on GitHub that people use. What _does_ kill people is stigmatizing addicts, and preventing them from getting the help they need to allow them to live a normal life and become usefully employed. Instead, attitudes like yours mean they are forced to become criminals and marginalized. ------ rwallace Okay, here's a warning if you haven't read this article yet. Up near the beginning, there's a really, really unfortunate line about pot legalization being the cause of this and that. I'm sure it's tongue in cheek, but that doesn't come across in text, and people are tripping over it. Just skip over that line and keep reading. The rest of the article is excellent. ~~~ burnitdown It's not tounge in cheek. Pot sales dropped by 40% so they pivoted to heroin. ------ joering2 I stopped reading after the lead: > If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills > two hundred people a week About 3,000 people died today and about 60,000 got seriously injured in car accidents TODAY, according to ASIRT. I think the word "grips" is a bit of stretch here, no? > take a hard look at the legalization of pot, which destroyed the profits of > the Mexican cartels. How is that legalizing sales of Apples will somehow made Oranges' lovers to switch? Hard to believe. Any proof of that?? ~~~ thenewwazoo > I think the word "grips" is a bit of stretch here, no? No, because there isn't a $50bn domestic and >$10bn international market in car deaths. There isn't a massive machine that perpetuates car deaths; indeed, quite the opposite. > Hard to believe. Any proof of that?? Yes: a 40% drop in profits from marijuana, and a corresponding spike in the rate of production (and because supply/demand, a drop in the price) of heroin in (and from) Mexico. You really should have kept reading. ------ graycat Deleted. ~~~ jjulius You're using a browser version from January 2015 (it's currently at 48.0 as of 8/2/16), and your OS has not had support from Microsoft since 4/8/14\. Your system is in desperate need of an upgrade, which could help prevent viruses. The longer you operate an outdated system, the likelier you are to encounter a virus. ~~~ graycat Deleted. ~~~ gruturo While I agree with you on Windows versions later than XP being markedly worse from a technical guy's usability perspective (actually Windows Server 2003 + nlite/ xplite was the best client OS setup I ever used ), you are denying yourself a very significant amount of security patches and I would define this behaviour as a bit irresponsible of your PC only contains your own data, and possibly illegal if you have any customer personal data or payment information. I hate the newer Microsoft OSes as much as you but run Windows 10 (plus a healthy amount of Non-Microsoft OSes). At least upgrade your browser because that's the main entry vector for malware nowadays, you will find that recent versions of Firefox are quite enjoyable - latest one even started running some tasks in dedicated processes (just experimentally for now) resulting in a more responsive interface. ~~~ graycat I have no solid information at all that indicates that any Microsoft operating system is more secure than Windows XP SP3 with the latest Microsoft patches. None. No such information at all. For all I know, all Microsoft patches for later Microsoft operating systems are only for bugs in those operating systems and not for bugs in the XP version I am running. I have no even reasonable information that there are any security bugs in the XP installation I have. I have no reason to believe that Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 is more secure than XP; as far as I know, XP is more secure than those operating systems. And similarly for Windows Server. How the heck Flash could give malware to my XP system is beyond me, and I've seen no explanation. XP should be able to run any user mode software at all safely. I have heard no claims that it can. It it cannot, then I very much want to know why not. For decades several time sharing systems apparently could run any software at all, including operating systems, safely. These systems are essentially all multiple virtual memory systems built on the Intel x86 architecture with hierarchical file systems with capabilities and access control lists. If there are security holes, I sure as heck want to know why; but apparently there have been security holes, and I never got even reasonably good information on why. A few years ago, I saw that Microsoft had patched a security hole caused by a buffer overflow bug. Outrageous that Microsoft should still have buffer overflow bugs. I intend to bring up an instance of a recent version of Windows Server, but I have no solid information or even an idea, none, not even zip, zilch, or zero, what the situation is on bugs or security. I would have no idea at all on how to run a _secure_ Windows system attached to the Internet. Looking around at my XP system, I was just outraged to the point of screaming to discover that Microsoft had started some _message service_ that was later seen to be a security risk. I didn't ask for that message service. I wasn't informed that it was running. I wasn't using that message service. I had no intention of using that message service. What the heck other obscure, hidden, secret software is Microsoft starting, not telling me about, and that could infect my system? I'm torqued. But there isn't much I can do about it. To me, that moving to Windows 10, that apparently keeps _phoning home_ , would solve security problems instead of causing them is a really bad joke. Windows 10 apparently has a lot of new software that likely has bugs. That new Microsoft software, I want nothing to do with it. Also I have long been totally torqued off, even screaming, as I clicked and clicked and clicked and said over and over and over, for years, to NOT, under any circumstances at all, NEVER but NEVER, ever, read any removable media unless and until so instructed. Don't look at it. Don't check it. Don't permit even a single bit to be read at all. Of course, if you automatically read and execute software from removable media, you should be dragged by two horses in opposite directions. But such screaming didn't work. Yup, USB thumb drives are a special case. Instead, of course, I want IP port by port, program by program, each DLL one at a time, and anything and everything else, what the heck is running on my system, why, and what the heck the risks are. But I have no reasonable way to get such information. For my startup and its Web server, for now it will store nothing or next to nothing on users -- no cookies, user IDs, user passwords, etc. My site makes no use of cookies. Users don't login or give passwords. Users don't give e-mail addresses. Yes, the Web site log file likely has the user's IP address, but actually that does not much identify a user. Maybe at a high end site, are supposed to put outside of a computer running Windows some special boxes. All IP, maybe even all Ethernet, traffic flows through these boxes, and they check, track, and analyze the heck out of every packet, every bit, that flows through. That data plus some more such tracking on Windows may be enough. But I have no idea what such boxes or associated Windows programs might be. Of course, the server should make no use of wireless. That a server could get malware from a USB drive is outrageous. ------ delbel We need a stronger border to prevent heroin from entering our country. ~~~ justinhensley There is no evidence to suggest that would be successful. A "stronger border" and "higher walls" are nothing but campaign slogans. ~~~ devopsproject Bullshit: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323928](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323928) ~~~ jjulius OP's comment was about the smuggling of drugs, specifically heroin, into the country. You said "bullshit" and then cited that NPR article as your source. The article discusses a decrease in apprehensions, but it clearly states the following: > This is still an active smuggling route, especially for drugs. I'm a little confused as to how this article supports the argument that building a wall helps limit drug smuggling. Care to explain? ~~~ burnitdown Not the op, but it seems to me that stopping huge numbers of bodies crossing the borders illegally would free up resources to focus on the smaller amount getting through and the drugs in particular.

Controlling interfaces in the browser with JavaScript and the Kinect - wesbos http://blog.polarmobile.com/kinect-meets-mediaeverywhere/ ====== dmethvin We got started down the wrong path when Apple defined touch events and heuristics for faking mouse events from them. As a transitional measure a library like this is about all we can do for Kinect, but it is _not_ the right long-term solution. If we all have to add special code to our apps and web pages for dealing with every input type (mouse, finger, Kinect, pen, eye-tracking, voice, etc.) it will severely limit the user's ability to interact with a device full of apps with varying levels of support. We need a unified set of actions and gestures that apply to all the input types. I'd love to see the W3C adopt Microsoft's MSPointer model, assuming Microsoft will let go of any patent claims. ------ rand_r > and our solution involves many moving parts working in perfect unison What did the full stack look like? ~~~ ndaversa depth.js for the safari extension + a web plugin

I'm flying tonight - are there any decent NodeJS PDFs/ebooks? - bdickason I've been dipping my toes into learning Node over the past few weeks and have had alot of trouble finding great documentation. I generally learn best when coding, but will be on a four hour flight tonight with no wifi and would love to take a Node 'book' with me.<p>Any suggestions? ====== RDDavies I'm actually looking on a good "starter" on NodeJS. Most of what I've read seems to dive right in at a level above my head. (I'm reasonably familiar with Javascript, although 90% of what I write is utilizing jQuery nowadays, so I'm hazier about the core than I used to be. ~~~ bdickason I found the 'How to Node' blog to have the best examples that actually contained working code (Express and other sites' example code doesn't seem to be updated or work): <http://howtonode.org/> I also stumbled upon this node project on Github and was learning from how he put stuff together: <https://github.com/kelper/Poll> ------ auganov I don't know of any, let alone decent. I think the best you can do is find some tutorials but even in that department there's nothing to be crazy about. So far it looks like the prime way to learn about it is to experiment (well I guess that's the best way anyways). It would be a good idea to look into some general JavaScript specific stuff if you're not very familiar with it. Or just download some sample projects from github and look at that during your flight, haha. 4 hours is not that much anyways, so you might just as well give up on it. ------ mcotton Peepcode has a great screencast. It is a little dated but you can follow along using older versions of node. This is a good place to start. I am starting to do my own 5-minute screencasts. <http://mcottondesign3.appspot.com/blog/screencasts> ------ klaut Sometime ago I came across those two (but haven't started reading them yet): <http://nodebeginner.org/>, <http://nodetuts.com/handson-nodejs-book.html>

Mobile is eating the world - kevinbluer http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/12/8/mobile-is-eating-the-world ====== mooreds Loved the focus on retail and cars as future opportunities for software to remake the world.

Ask HN: What is your startup idea? - shubhamjain HN has plenty of smart folks from variety of industries, backgrounds, and experience who can give valuable feedback and suggestions to a business idea. Even though the community&#x27;s judgement has proven to be fallible (cue: dropbox launch thread), I think it&#x27;s worth taking the feedback into account.<p>Do you have a business &#x2F; product idea in mind that you&#x27;d like to start? Tell us about it and how it can solve a problem. ====== shubhamjain Better Cloud Logging — Most of the logging solutions I have seen rely on sending big dump of log files which, then, can be searched. I think it creates unneeded noise as most of the logging data generated with server applications, by default, might not be useful enough. A better approach might be to send logging messages as events manually from various parts of your stack. It can be a better solution to debug a problem as following the flow becomes easier. For eg, instead of relying on stack trace generated by an exception, we can ask developers to carefully log every step in the application flow ("request from user", "starting database", "user authenticated", "authentication failed") as it'll give a clearer picture on how the error happened. In some ways, it combines the features of Mixpanel and Rollbar. In fact, sometimes, I have found event logging to be more fruitful rather than using something like Loggly. ------ jnunoferreira The timing is probably not ideal, as the system is not yet fully functional, but there will be very interesting opportunities using the Galileo satellite navigation system...the paid version will have up to 1cm precision, which will revolutionize many GIS/navigation areas (and likely open up a lot of new ones) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_\(satellite_navigation\))

Malcolm Gladwell, Meet This Genius Called The Indian Parent - npguy http://statspotting.com/2013/01/malcolm-gladwell-meet-this-genius-called-the-indian-parent/ ====== rikacomet hmm, I would have loved to hear, more proof of the naming pattern, but from what I read, it refers that naming your child with A, gives them a significant advantage, well that might be true uptil a point, for ex: my own name starts with A,so for 12 years of school, I was the Roll no1, It did had its own advantage, in the form that I used to sit in the front, thus being more attentive out of the fear of getting caught by the teacher, and was exposed to more of their attention. But as I said, that advantage stays uptil a point, it doesn't mean that those who were named by any other letter, were not able to be successful in life, as its not just the name, but also, genes, emotional structure,influences, exposure, self discovery, etc. One fat guy racing another slim guy to the burger joint, might be at disadvantage by more than few grams, but that doesn't mean he can't find a shortcut, or what if the burger joint is too far away, and the slim guy loses out on stamina :) ~~~ npguy True. Some of these variables do not matter in the long run. But it gives some short-term positives, that might get amplified. Life has big amplification effects - [http://statspotting.com/2012/12/life-has-huge- amplification-...](http://statspotting.com/2012/12/life-has-huge- amplification-effects/) ~~~ rikacomet but it is also true, that whoever has lots of such visible advantages, becomes the favorite, and this energy/advantage is counter balanced by one big point, which is that people prefer to have a soft side/support for the underdog. So it might give you advantage, in certain way, but then again, people aren't gonna just start naming their kids with A only :D The guy B in your sited article above, have a way to turn around, what if while Candidate A was getting accostomed to the job at XYZ company, during that time, he founded his own company, and even if in one year it is still in natal stage, it would count in many cases as a better experience. Since He took the challenge head on. Its as simple as they say: Success comes to people who find ways, and Failure to those who find excuses.

Video-to-Video Synthesis [video] - nakami https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1OwOd-war8 ====== John_KZ It's nice but I wonder why there's still nobody that tried to create a spatially coherent 3D space from the input before re-synthesizing the output. It's definitely possible and lots of work on this was done in late 2017. There should be more papers on creating and rendering 3D representations by now. ~~~ rzzzt I vaguely remember a demo showing a 3D model of a winter trail, which was recreated (and textured) from a sequence of photos. It was done with Photosynth, I believe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth) ~~~ piceas I didn't find the winter trail video but stumbled upon some interesting links: 2018 3D Scanning: A Comprehensive Survey [https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08863](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08863) 2012-2014ish BigSFM: Reconstructing the World from Internet Photos [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/bigsfm/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/bigsfm/) David J. Crandall [https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~djcran/#research](https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~djcran/#research) Andrew Owens [http://andrewowens.com/](http://andrewowens.com/) Also check out his on/offscreen audio source separation work. It's pretty neat. (2018) Audio-Visual Scene Analysis with Self-Supervised Multisensory Features [http://andrewowens.com/multisensory/](http://andrewowens.com/multisensory/) Noah Snavely [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~snavely/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~snavely/) (2018) MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photos [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/megadepth/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/megadepth/) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGbMWAFMMBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGbMWAFMMBQ) With live demo page :) [http://megadepthdemo.pythonanywhere.com/](http://megadepthdemo.pythonanywhere.com/) ------ pwaai Does this mean that in the future we could literally be able to play FMV games? Basically, an AI that has been trained on every digital film there is which in turn also generates unique permutations to further increase the training data.... Will be able to conjure up things like Breaking Bad Season 8: 'Lil Heisenberg and pretty much even helmet cam videos from war zones in Donetsk that you could control in real time.... Singularity indeed. ~~~ abraham_lincoln I want remakes of movies where characters can be swapped out from unrelated movies. Basically, a simulation, with the plot as objectives. ------ person_of_color Interesting but how do we know the examples are not cherry-picked? ~~~ gwern Well, first, Nvidia has a good track record. This is not their first video-to- video paper, and they've also released impressive things like ProGAN; they release not just the source code, but trained models as well. People have trained their own models (slowly) and poked at the released models. The average result might not be _quite_ as good, but they'll be close. Second, in this case, they've also released source code and the trained models. The trained models aren't in the Github repo, but hosted on Google Drive and they provide scripts for downloading them: [https://github.com/NVIDIA/vid2vid/tree/master/scripts](https://github.com/NVIDIA/vid2vid/tree/master/scripts) If you are doubtful, simply install Pytorch, download the models, and give the video generation a try. (You don't need a GPU, even, since for generating some samples once, a CPU will be acceptably fast.) ~~~ screye Wait, this algorithm works at real-time on consumer grade hardware ? I am impressed. I thought a forward pass for the model would be a lot more expensive than that. ~~~ gwern I never said it was realtime. I said it was acceptably fast on CPU ie. it'd take a few minutes/hours to generate some samples and convince yourself that they did not cherrypick a tiny handful of good quality samples out of a universe of lousy ones. I would very roughly guesstimate their 2000px model probably would take ~0.5s/frame on a GPU, so multiply by the usual >10x CPU slowdown, you can generate a 30fps 30s snippet in maybe an hour or so. ------ cjdell Wonder if this can be used to do video upscaling on steroids. Would love to watch classic TV shows in glorious 4K resolution. ~~~ drcode What I want is classic movies in full 360 vr... I'm guessing this will exist in a few years, at the current pace of things. ------ Keyframe What is the state-of-the-art in segmentation mapping in video?

Why Shamans Stand Apart - wormold https://www.sapiens.org/culture/shaman-uncertainty-specialists/ ====== uptownfunk This is one of those realms that is hard to penetrate with traditional hypothesis-based scientific study. I doubt we will ever get to a point where we can do some type of double-blind study as to the efficacy of shamans and shamanism. The data will largely be anecdotal and will thus easily lead to speculation. The result? I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it's one of those things we will have to explore on our own, individually. Each of our experiences will be unique, and more likely than not, in contradiction with one another. I applaud and respect those, particularly in academia, who can both acknowledge the boundaries of their knowledge, and yet be open to the idea that there remains a lot beyond our understanding currently. And those that partake in these substances, via anthropological study or for personal reasons, can let the experience speak to them for what it is, beyond the need or reflex to break it down in an academically rigorous, scientific manner. The author of the article tries to make some analogy between shamans and financial money managers. I don't think anything could be further off. It's speculation like this that results in the ill-informed decisions that lead to potentially life-saving treatment modalities being branded as Schedule I restricted substances. In any case, an academic trying to make sense of the ancient healing mystic wisdom traditions is like Einstein trying to make sense of a Dali painting. Maybe you can get somewhere, but you're not going to really _get_ it until you voyage there yourself. Anyhow, whether it's Golden Teachers, or Bufo Alvarius, may your experience be enlightening, magical, and transformative! ------ kingkawn I’d argue that the sleep deprived decade-long social isolation of modern physicians make them science’s equivalent of a trance practitioner.

IPhone And Android Now Make Up 25 Percent of Smartphone Sales - Concours http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/iphone-android-25-percent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 ====== potatolicious From the article: > _"Can Android sales catch up to the iPhone?"_ Yes, of course it will. We're talking about a free OS that all the major manufacturers have jumped behind - no way Apple can beat that. The better question is: will the dominance of Android actually change anything for the consumer, or will things be the same as they are currently (i.e., fractured UIs, no consistent experience, poor compatibility even within a single manufacturer, etc) Google IMHO has done a poor job so far keeping Android as a single unified platform - it seems more and more like it's just a marketing word for Motorola, HTC, et al to latch onto. ------ mclin Yes, take that J2ME! Now I'll never have to learn you and your ridiculous acronyms. ~~~ Concours care to elaborate for the rest of us? ~~~ pohl Probably in reference to the various API "profiles": IMP, MIDP, CLDC, and myriad lesser-known acronyms: <http://www.ericgiguere.com/j2me/acronyms.html>

Scotland plans to make petrol and diesel cars obsolete by 2032 - prostoalex https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/05/scotland-petrol-diesel-phase-out-ev/ ====== djrogers Obsolete is a pretty strong term, as is the date: "Come 2032, not all cars will be ultra-low emission, but Scotland hopes that the majority will either be powered purely by electricity or have a hybrid option." Good goal, bad headline. ~~~ cag_ii Obsolete does not mean nonexistent. If the goal as the article claims is to "phase out all petrol and diesel car sales", then obsolete seems about right. ~~~ djrogers Obsolete is defined as: "no longer produced or used; out of date." No longer sold in Scotland does not equate to no longer produced or used, and even at that they do not actually plan to forbid sales of ICE vehicles by 2032. ------ therealidiot Does any manufacturer make 'simple' EVs? I mean that as in fewer computers. My current car is about 18 years old and besides the ECU there's not that much going on. No touchscreen controls, no telemetry. I hope that one day I'd be able to switch to an EV but I'm disappointed by most of them (and yes I understand I'm a minority in disliking smart everything) ~~~ kagamine You're not as alone as the media might lead you to think. There is a lot of hype and marketing going on with EVs to get people to adopt this change in technology that is consumer funded. I agree with you, there are too many nice-to-have features in cars that add to the [unnecessary] complexity of these vehicles. Late 90 cars started with this, adding air-bag suspension and corner-leveling systems and it has since grown into automatic windscreen wipers when it rains, automatic lights when it gets dark (like you aren't sitting there looking out the big window), touch screens and gadgets. Some things are useful, for example electric mirrors, others not so much for example 5 different memory positions for the driver's seat where before you just pulled the lever under the seat to move it forward or back. IN case you think this is not a problem it can cause problems with other critical electronic components: I had a dealership's workshop turn off my electric seats in the BCU (BCU = body control unit, the PC of the car) and this meant that because the ABS is linked through the seat, something to do with collisions and the seat moving, the ABS warning light came on leading to a MOT/EU-control fail. I had to buy a code-reader machine to turn it back on myself. On models of this car without electric seats this is not a problem. So many other things I could mention like this example. Simplicity, as I a m sure HN coders and the like will agree, is best. ~~~ jlebar I also don't want tons of screens and so on in my car. But automatic headlights? Where I live, I see (or, well, don't) cars driving at night without their lights _all the time_. Automatically turning them on when it gets dark seems like a no-brainer. The worst thing that happens is the sensor breaks and then they become manual headlights... ~~~ kagamine I see the opposite problem where I live. Driving lights as they are referred to in Norway must be on during the day as well as at night. These are on the front of the car. On the back newer vehicles have the lights off by default and come on when they sense darkness. This means I have followed many cars in hard rain on dark/dusky days and you can't see them up ahead. The law is that rear lights have to be on in conditions where they are necessary, but ignorant drivers see light coming from the front of the car and don't think that people behind them travelling at 110km/h need t see them up ahead. Automation didn't solve any problem, cars used to have lights on front and back at all times, day and night (lots of tunnels in Norway), automation _created_ a problem. ------ melling The real push for electric cars is coming from China, the world’s largest. They are requiring 8% of cars next year need to be electric or plugin hybrid. They want to get that to 20% by 2025. [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up- new...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up-new-china-jv- with-dongfeng-motor-for-electric-cars.html) ~~~ dmoy Oh man that will be glorious, I can't wait for future trips to Beijing without getting respiratory sickness. So far I'm like 7 for 7 on getting sick in Beijing. ~~~ ams6110 So why do you keep going back? Family? ~~~ dmoy Family, have to fly to Beijing then take the train, but typically spend a few days in Beijing visiting friends who live there. ------ yCloser All the "plans to do stuff by 2050" are completely useless. The one who did the plan will not be in charge till that date, someone else will take over and change/destroy the plan (or worse, add +20 years), and in politics this is simply the way to go. This is procastination at his finest and means "doing nothing now". ~~~ smcl I see the point, but this doesn't necessarily mean its an empty gesture as there is a precedent. Back in 2005 the Scottish government aimed for 18% of electricity consumed to be generated by renewable sources by 2020 (later adjusted to 50%). This was met and exceeded in 2015 (59%). Granted this is a smaller timeline but there is real backing for renewables here, especially since the collapse of oil prices hit the local oil industry ~~~ andygates In the case of electric vehicles, the long timeline means they can ease charging facilities in without having a massive spend - they just come in when infrastructure gets renewed. Visible charging facilities are one of the things that breaks the "chicken and egg" adoption problem. ------ ZeroGravitas A pragmatic money saving decision. The price of batteries is falling steadily. EV prices are falling as a result. By 2022 a new EV will cost less to buy than an equivalent ICE car. It would be foolish to get to that point and have people wanting to buy the cheaper option but not feel able to do so due to lack of charging points etc. Of course, if you take into account the lowered fuel costs and maintenance, then the EV car becomes cheaper even earlier (though it depends on exactly how far you drive and the relative costs of electricity and gasoline) but figures like 2020 are mentioned for the TCO to be lower on a new EV. Of course that figure doesn't take into account costs/benefits like reducing pollution in cities, health impacts, higher imports of fuel, meeting carbon obligations, balancing grid electricity and other externalities, which is why governments are currently subsidizing EVs to make them cheaper than ICEs (and should probably continue to do so, even after they are cheaper than equivalent ICE cars pre-subsidy, though it probably makes more economic sense to further raise gasoline prices and introduce a carbon tax). ------ pjc50 I'm very much in favour of this, but the article alludes to one of the problems: the "long tail" of remote life. The majority of the Scottish population lives in commuter range of Glasgow or Edinburgh. Here in Edinburgh we already have some hybrid buses so I can see a change to pure electric happening gradually as they become available. There's also no shortage of renewable energy to power the things. But there are also some people who live remarkably remote lives in the Highlands and Islands. In the Highlands "range anxiety" is very real if your nearest large shop is 100 miles away. Whereas the islands may have limited generation capacity. I can see there being a range of exemptions for these circumstances, although once petrol cars start to become unusual the petrol pump prices will go up. ~~~ jacquesm One immediate consequence of transportation revolutions of the past is that some regions that were considered un-inhabitable before suddenly became viable possibilities. It stands to reason that if in the future the 'energy budget' per person gets reduced to the point where vehicles that can do 800 Km un- interrupted are extremely expensive that such locations will only be affordable to the rich with poorer folks condemned to living in or around the cities. ~~~ pjc50 > 800 Km un-interrupted That's half the length of the UK! More realistically the longest journey required for a remote place to be habitable might be a round-trip from Durness near Cape Wrath to Inverness, which might require a 400km range. Or half that if you can rely on recharging. Much of that would be on the A9 which the article mentions will have chargers added to it. Already you have the dynamic that much of the really hard poverty is urban. People already move to cities if possible to be where the support facilities are or, if all else fails, to beg on the streets. What I expect we might see a bit more of is modern self-sufficiency and techno-crofting, where people's cash flow looks low but they grow their own food and don't have to pay rent. Already renewables are making this easier on islands. H&I also seems like a good place for medium-range air cargo drones; rather than send a van on a 100km trip round the mountains, send a drone 25km over them. ~~~ ZeroGravitas I can think of some potential benefits of an EV if you lived somewhere remote like that. Charging at home would be even more convenient if your nearest petrol station was some distance away, possibly wasn't open 24 hours, and had higher than usual prices due to the low traffic throughput. You'd also probably drive more miles than average, meaning the lower fuel costs and maintenance of an EV would add up faster. (I seem to recall a story about a rural delivery driver in the US that realised his per-mile reimbursements for fuel meant he could afford to buy and pay off a Tesla Model S with his fuel savings) An EV with a range extender for those emergency unexpected long trips could be the best of both worlds, though a higher capacity EV may relatively soon be cheap enough to make that a poor choice. ------ gozur88 That's a weird headline. Governments can ban technology, but they can't make it obsolete. ~~~ iainmerrick Sounds like you're assuming a ban on combustion engines is the only thing a government can do, but they have plenty of other options. They could offer tax incentives for EVs, for example, or fund research into EV technology. ------ StephenMelon Great to see the Scottish Government leading on renewable energy again. I was worried that adding over 30 million cars to the grid would cause problems but having looked into it it looks like it would add less than half a percentage point onto UK energy consumption at current utilisation rates. I do wonder how it will affect the PCP market though as the future value of petrol and diesel cars will presumably become more difficult to predict? ------ edh649 I've heard that these future 'bans' on ICEs are actually just bans on pure ICEs and apparently vehicles with even just stop-start technology are classed as 'Micro-Hybrids' which would be allowed after these 2032, 2040 dates. ------ nmeofthestate Pedantry - the UK government isn't the "English" government as it's referred to in the article. England isn't the same thing as the UK. ------ afsina ...by subsidizing with oil exports. Like Norway. ~~~ pjc50 The revenue from the oil fields goes to the UK government, not the Scottish government, a subject of some controversy. ~~~ afsina Thanks. No wonder they could not secede before. ~~~ pjc50 Secession or "UDI" as some people keep talking up _would_ give the Scottish Government the oil revenue, as well as several billion other headaches and be a disaster. The only viable route to independence is the legal one. Unless we get the "full collapse" Brexit. ------ merrua Is that the same as the India deadline? ------ jkingsbery The article didn't say what the source of the energy powering those charging stations will be in 2032. Presumably much of it will still be carbon-based. ~~~ mikeyouse Nah, less than 30% of their electricity is carbon based today. They won't have any problem decarbonizing entirely over the next 15 years. They actually just shuttered their last coal plant in 2016, so I'm curious what last year's generation numbers looked like. [http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendE...](http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendElectricity) [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/24/longannet- power-station-closes-coal-power-scotland) ~~~ jkingsbery Cool, I didn't realize. Learned something new today. ------ stretchwithme I've decided to reduce the use of internal combustion engines by 90% worldwide in the next 50 years. That's right. I'm setting this goal. But then it's easy to set goals in the distant future when there are inevitable trends that will already make it happen. ~~~ prawn A headline/goal is unlikely to come without practical, supporting actions which nudge people towards that goal. The headline is something though that spreads and is repeated frequently, getting more and more people thinking about their actions - collectively these things will get people to that goal. I don't think it's without value. ~~~ stretchwithme The move away from ICEs is already well underway, in my opinion. Headlines aren't going to slow it down or accelerate it. Companies like Tesla make it happen. ------ trapperkeeper74 Banning all FFs sounds like a worthy objective overall but it seems like bikeshedding to ban small ICEs yet trains, tractor trailers, farm and mining equipment, jet aircraft and industrial sources receive little regulation. Instead, the average person is taxed, penalized, inconvenienced and regulated for the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater polluters. ~~~ DaiPlusPlus > ...the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater > polluters A quick google search found this article with numbers pulled from a 2012 US Energy Information Administration (eia.gov) report: [https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil](https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil) Transportation is the main consumer of petroleum, accounting for 70% of usage, of which 58% is light vehicles alone - so that's 40% of total - that's still far higher than "industrial" use of 25%. Tack on medium/heavy trucks which I assume includes F-150 trucks and giant off-road dump-trucks alike and it's more than half of total petroleum consumption. So no - eliminating fossil-fuels from personal transport alone, while leaving industry alone, will still have a huge beneficial impact on greenhouse gas production. But you forget the halo and knock-on effects: as the market adapts to service non-petrol consumers (e.g. fast EV chargers, battery-swap stations, etc) then industries will adapt to take advantage of them too - it wouldn't surprise me this meant the introduction of an EV John Deere tractor powered the same hot- swappable EV battery pack that might power a hypothetical Ford truck. ~~~ djrogers I think the problem is that you're eliminating the cleanest and most regulated segment of the market, so even if it's 40% of the FF used, it's a much smaller fraction of pollution produced. ~~~ mikeyouse Which is mostly irrelevant if carbon is your concern since CO2 emissions are fixed per unit of fuel. ~~~ DaiPlusPlus > CO2 emissions are fixed per unit of fuel. Is this true though? Does it matter on the grade of fuel, or petrol vs diesel? I think I read that leaded fuel emits less CO2 than unleaded fuel, but I'd definitely choose more CO2 than lead in the air, tyvm. ------ dsfyu404ed If they have the desire to make this a priority and are willing to sink the money to pull it off then power to them. IIRC CA had a similar target about electric cars for 2000ish and we all know how that worked out. It's easy to dream big. That dirty thing called reality likes to get in the way. Being an early adopter is expensive. ~~~ DaiPlusPlus I recommend watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" \- it explains most of the history of EV cars in California. I disagree with its conclusion that battery technology was not to blame - I feel that range-anxiety is a real concern and the GM EV1's range of under 100 miles using bulk lead-acid or 140 miles using NiMH batteries was, and remains, inadequate. Compare to today's Telsa's S and X 250-300+ mile range. That - and the program was open to easy sabotage. ~~~ cptskippy 100-140 miles is inadequate for a lot of people however it is more than enough for others. Even if a multi-car family adopts 1 EV it makes a difference. ~~~ Teknoman117 100-140 miles is more than adequate for nearly all of the United States. While there are people who drive farther, the vast majority of the citizens of this country travel less than 40 miles for work, and I don't know anyone who would drive that far for groceries. People tend to want to buy a car for the largest trip they can imagine they'd take, even if that event may only happen a few times in the vehicle's lifetime. ~~~ Zanni You're assuming that you always start from a full charge (an assumption I used to make before I got an EV). That's not always the case. I live in a townhouse, so I'm in the process of getting a charging station installed (it's been six months so far and we're still in the paperwork stage ...) In the meantime, I charge where I can. That means I almost _never_ start my day with a full charge. Worse, there are only a few places I _can_ charge, and my best options add 20 miles of range in an hour. Say I start my day with 70 miles of range, which should be more than adequate for my ~45 miles of round trip commute. But an emergency comes up and I have to run an errand. It's just a short 10-mile trip, but now I'm coasting in to home with just 5 miles of range left ... if my meter is accurate (it's not), if traffic's not bad (it might be), etc. Charging stations are few and far between, which means the nearest one might be outside of my remaining range. Or, if I can get to one, it might be occupied. At a gas station I can just wait five minutes. At a charging station, I might have to wait _hours_ for someone who's trying to get a full charge.

One-Third of U.S. High School Students Now Own an iPhone - fhoxh http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/03/one-third-of-u-s-high-school-students-now-own-an-iphone/ ====== PagingCraig "extensive survey of 5,600 U.S. high school students" So extensive...

Saving Science - Hooke http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science ====== lutusp Quote: "First, scientific knowledge advances most rapidly, and is of most value to society, not when its course is determined by the “free play of free intellects” but when it is steered to solve problems." But the history of science boldly and flatly contradicts this claim. The most productive and society-reshaping products of science arise in pure, not applied, research. Quote: "Second, when science is not steered to solve such problems, it tends to go off half-cocked in ways that can be highly detrimental to science itself." Also contradicted by history. As just one example, the success of Bell Labs over the decades resulted, not from a focus on solving particular problems, but a focus on research for the sake of research -- pure science. The author of the article raises an alarm about a supposed scientific crisis, and eventually reveals what he thinks is the source of the problem -- a waste of scientific talent spent on pure research. He needs to read the history of science with an open mind. Quote: "It was military purchases that kept the new transistor, semiconductor, and integrated-circuit industries afloat in the early and mid-1950s." That's true, but it's misleading because the development of the transistor at Bell Labs wasn't an applied science project, it resulted from pure research in materials science and physics. The author isn't reporting on the state of science, he's complaining that it's not what he thinks it should be, in a way that stands at odds with science's history. ~~~ yummyfajitas I think your claims require a bit more backing than mere assertion. Certainly, some of the most important research (now described as "pure") was done with applications immediately in mind. For example, Newtonian physics always had the goal of calculating artillery trajectories. Nuclear physics had the goals of energy/weapons. Probability theory, operations research, and most of our modern computational infrastructure came directly from people trying to do applied work. Nonlinear wave equations, to discuss a niche example I know well, are primarily motivated by applications in photonics. I'm very well aware of the many anecdotes of very pure research turning out to be useful later. But there are also a huge number of anecdotes of pure research being directly motivated by providing theoretical justification for/analysis of applied work. So I don't see any compelling reason to believe your unsupported assertions. ~~~ ssivark Here are a couple of examples: 1\. Quantum mechanics was never motivated with the thought of semiconductors (therefore computing technology). If you were motivated by building a computer, you would never have discovered quantum mechanics. 2\. Probability theory was "invented" to understand/solve gambling problems. Nobody anticipated how widely it would be used. When paradigm shifts occur, it takes a long time for the effects to percolate, before we can even get a feel for the space of possible applications. However, if resources (including smart people's time) are not spent laying the foundations, one could never have taken aim at the applications! If one is always chasing applications, who spends time and money on the preliminary legwork? At any point, if resources are directed through some small set of people who decide and enforce the directions to be pursued, then the outcomes will be more representative of their biases than reality. Those few people effectively act as a bottleneck for human ingenuity. ~~~ yummyfajitas First of all, quantum mechanics _was_ motivated by the thought of semiconductors. One of the primary use cases of it was explaining the photoelectric effect [1]. Secondly, other primary motivations for QM were explaining and predicting chemical reactions, radiation sources, and nuclear energy. Secondly, probability and statistics - as you note - were invented to understand/solve gambling problems. Virtually every early advance was then made by people attempting to _use_ it. These include Gauss predicting the orbit of Ceres, Graunt and Halley (yes, he also spotted Halley's comet) doing insurance, Galton and Pearson studying evolution and developing eugenics, and Gosset using statistics to brew better beer. Probability and statistics are perhaps the worst possible example of pure research that - purely by chance - happens to be useful later. [1] Interestingly, the classical belief that the photoelectric effect proves the quantization of light is wrong. The Schrodinger equation + continuous electromagnetic fields actually exhibit the photoelectric effect. ~~~ ssivark Claiming that quantum mechanics (QM) was motivated by semiconductors is bordering on discussing in bad faith. A glance at [1] will show that people were thinking about issues leading up to QM for several decades. Planck's equation relating energy to frequency of light (in several ways the first "quantum" idea that conceived what we today call Planck's constant) was motivated by understanding the "ultraviolet catastrophe" [2] (which was a purely "theoretical" endeavour as some would call it today). Planck's work preceeded Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect by several years. Even when the photoelectric effect was observed, it was first noticed in zinc (IIRC); it was only in the 1930s that QM was applied to understand the functioning of semiconductors. _You are confusing all the things we use QM for today with all the reasons for which it was first conceived._ Moany of those reasons of course spurred development in QM _after it was conceived_ \-- but none of those motivations would have conceived QM. With regards to your comment on the development of probability: There was always a reason/purpose something was conceived. So claiming that it was "motivated by applications" is tautological. _The relevant question to ask is whether the applications today are different from the original motivations._ If they are, then frankly, it doesn't matter what the original motivations were... the idea would have been difficult to conceive starting with the eventual application in mind. Eg: Without an understanding of probability, linear algebra and differential equations, there would have been no quantum mechanics. Somebody observing the photoelectric effect could not have developed those tools for their "application". I notice your other comment on the thread (OP) talks in analogy with physical training. IMHO, such an analogy is misguided for endeavours which cannot be reasonably well specified so as to be manageable (in that it can be managed, with the goal in mind). Basic research is often not amenable to that because it has tons of unknown unknowns [3]. [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_mechanics) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe) [3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns) ~~~ yummyfajitas The photoelectric effect was first discovered in silver chloride solution. I don't know that much about the energy bands of silver chloride, so I won't comment about whether that was a semiconductor. (I also know very little about liquids, basically all the physics I did happened in semiconductors.) The first solid state demonstration was in selenium, which is a semiconductor. This is what I was thinking of when I said that the photoelectric effect was semiconductor physics. [http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/manufacturing/first- photo...](http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/manufacturing/first-photovoltaic- devices) _The relevant question to ask is whether the applications today are different from the original motivations. If they are, then frankly, it doesn 't matter what the original motivations were... the idea would have been difficult to conceive starting with the eventual application in mind._ You are defining "pure" in a far more expansive way than the article does. Your definition is actually so broad that it doesn't contradict the article at all. The article claims that science, with the goal of building cool military applications (or presumably life tables or brewing beer) will work better than curiosity driven applications. Then it claims the fruits of those labors will be useful elsewhere. Now you seem to be agreeing with this, or at least not disagreeing. Note that the article isn't saying "don't figure out fundamental physics". It's saying "go build a giant wall of ice to keep the mexicans out and a better understanding of pure thermodynamics will be one output of that project." Also note that I'm not arguing _for_ the premise of the article, necessarily. I'm simply arguing that it can't be casually dismissed without even an argument. My analogy is meant to be suggestive, not to prove the point. ~~~ lutusp > The photoelectric effect was first discovered in silver chloride solution. I > don't know that much about the energy bands of silver chloride, so I won't > comment about whether that was a semiconductor. Had the first example of the photoelectric effect originated in a semiconductor, that cannot be used to argue that the research was motivated by the goal of practical application. By that reasoning, the fact that particle physics is about atoms, and that atoms can be used to make weapons, could be used to construct an absurd argument that all research that involves atoms has the ultimate goal of designing weapons. > The article claims that science, with the goal of building cool military > applications (or presumably life tables or brewing beer) will work better > than curiosity driven applications. The phrase "curiosity driven applications" assumes what it should be proving. Not all curiosity into nature has application in mind, indeed that's not now pure research is defined. > You are defining "pure" in a far more expansive way than the article does. Pure research is research meant to discover properties of nature, without any concern for practical application. That's hardly worth discussing as though there's any controversy about the definition. ------ simonh The article calls this a lie: "Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown." 'On a broad front' I think that's probably correct. If you have specific goals you want to achieve, sure you should probably direct research at that goal to have the best chance of achieving it. But if you are more interested in exploring the wild frontiers of science, less directed efforts are the way to go. Of course in reality we want to do both, but the article offers no such grounded perspective. Anyway, who is being lied to and to what goal? Is anyone really fool enough to think that all of US science spending has been purely provided to scientists free of all strings? Has there really been an actual coordinated effort to persuade anyone that this is true? I read Bush's statement as an aspiration, not really a statement of incontrovertible fact. Can aspirations be lies? Is there some terrible conspiracy afoot? This pudding is being very heavily over-egged. The latter part of the article is a cogent and reasonable criticism of some of the problems in modern science. There's a lot of house cleaning that needs to be done. But that cause is not well served by dour, grandiosely pronounced, clickbaity conspiracy mongering. ~~~ helthanatos I would call this article quite full of speculation. Why did it have to be so long without a proper introduction or abstract? ------ yummyfajitas The best way to get a human into good physical shape is to prepare them for a fight. I've never been in better shape than when I was boxing - I was strong, I was fast, my cardio was great. In theory, nowadays I should be in better shape. Rather than focusing my time on bag work, drills, footwork, etc, I could be focusing on fitness. Yet in reality I'm nowhere near my fighting peak. I can do a lot of pullups, but I doubt I could crank out more than 20 burpees right now. The reason for this is that I've lost my focus: if my cardio sucks, the result is no longer _getting punched in the face_. It's an interesting hypothesis, and one that should not be dismissed out of hand, that societies behave in the same way. Think about our modern malaise - we have no grand projects, particularly in the public sector. All we do is funnel money in the general direction of something we like - nondeterministic optimism, in Peter Thiel's language. Consider California high speed rail, supported by both the president and governor of CA. 8 years later lots of money has been spent but no track has been laid [1]. Would 8 years of delay on a vital project be acceptable to a nation preparing for war? I suspect not. [1] There is no technological barrier here. The Qinhuangdao–Shenyang high speed rail - 250 miles long - was built in 4 years. ~~~ lmm > Think about our modern malaise - we have no grand projects, particularly in > the public sector. Interestingly I've heard that in economic return-on-investment terms grand projects are almost always failures. > [1] There is no technological barrier here. The Qinhuangdao–Shenyang high > speed rail - 250 miles long - was built in 4 years. The barriers are other than technological, sure - I don't know about California, but the things delaying the next high-speed rail line in my own country are court cases, appeals, and political disputes over matters like: some houses need to be demolished to build the stations; the line might disturb the ecology of some wetlands, the line will make a naturally beautiful area less so. Along with some analysis-paralysis issues (is this the best use of public funds? The model for the original analysis was wrong! Will the line still be in the right place by the time it's built?) I suspect China, or a hypothetical America-at-war (or even America-at-cold- war), would not worry about the first category, and would take higher risks on the second. We've become a lot more risk-averse as a society, sure. I'm not convinced that this isn't simply a rational response to a safer world, where most citizens, on the whole, enjoy a pretty good life. Risking a few deaths and some blighted regions for the sake of a bit more growth makes more sense the poorer you are. ------ acscott Didn't even see a mention of what science really is. I bet you many "scientists" don't know (pun intended) and couldn't tell you what science is. Knowing an experiment or observation is not repeatable _is_ knowledge that _can be_ useful. What are the causes of non-repeatability? That's even more useful to know. The observation and experimentation processes of science may be reflexive and would be worth investigating. The money spent on "science" has created ecosystems where the novel, accidental discovery might be more likely. The claim that "science" is self-correcting must be supported by evidence. Finally, the media reporting of science does injustice to scientists by making claims not put forth in publications so frequently, that you are wise to disregard any media reporting of the science, and must go to the paper itself.

GoDaddy launches Flare, a community app for sharing and rating business ideas - barlog http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/26/godaddy-flare/ ====== alistproducer2 I suppose as long as you already have your product built before sharing it's probably a good idea. I can't imagine just sharing an idea, having it get traction, and then not immediately having that idea stolen. ~~~ sharemywin I would assume you have access to the list of people following it. So you have a huge head start on someone that develops it but has no following. Beside most people don't blantly steal ideas. They have to their own twists which could completely change the magic. And if it's that great don't disclose it and patent it.

Ask HN: Any tips on finding short term consulting gigs? - phpnode Help! I'm a struggling single-founder, I've been working on my startup(s) and doing freelance web development (PHP/JS/HTML/CSS etc) since my former employer folded around a year ago. I've been able to find a steady stream of clients through friends, family and personal recommendations but I've pretty much exhausted this supply of customers and I'm starting to worry slightly. My main focus is my startup which I should be able to launch within a week or two, but there are of course no guarantees that it will succeed, or provide enough revenue to cover my living expenses, at least in the short term. So really my question is, how should I proceed from here? I have about enough money to cover my bills for the next 30 days, but that’s it and my partner is pregnant &#38; due in October!<p>I’ve considered freelancing sites such as e-lance etc, but these sites take a while to establish reputation, so the route to success seems to be – spend a month or two doing lots of cheap jobs to establish reputation, then start going for the bigger fish. The problem is I’ve left it too late to pursue this route, I’ll run out of money too quickly. Yesterday the problem really hit home, so I spent 6hrs cold calling local businesses, just asking about their current websites or lack thereof, and although I got a few leads and some moderate interest (which I’ll follow up later), I’m not entirely encouraged.<p>I’ve reduced my outgoings as much as possible, but after a series of property maintenance nightmares (roofs leaking, boilers breaking etc) I have to pay a substantial amount in bills each month. I’ve considered getting a job, but senior web dev positions are few and far between in my area and I’d still struggle to cover my bills<p>So HN, what do you think I should do? ====== jacquesm Repeat sales to the same customers are your mainstay as a consultant, how come there are no repeat jobs? ~~~ phpnode Because most of the people I've targeted have been small businesses who need a website, but after the website is built there's not much opportunity to sell more services. I do have a few customers that will give me more work in future, but most have spent their budgets and are waiting for their next financial year. I have some meetings this week that should drum up a bit more work which will help but probably not enough to keep myself afloat. ~~~ jacquesm That sucks. Ok, let me check my 'to do' list and see if there is anything on there that could be farmed out without first digging in to a code base that is a decade old. What is your hourly rate ? Or do you do fixed price jobs? ~~~ phpnode I've sent you an email, thanks.

Show HN: (lambda code) - martyalain http://lambdaway.free.fr/workshop/?view=lambdacode ====== sova Really cool! Reminds me of everything I love about Clojure. and Clojurescript. ~~~ martyalain Thanks :) ------ martyalain (lambda code) is focused on code, {lambda talk} on text. Your opinion is welcome.

Gmail Weird Login Page - gouggoug http://www.gmail.com Am I the only one seeing "nee" at the top of the gmail login page? Did someone at google forget to remove a debug line? ====== gabrielprioli I saw it too, just before the last <style> block. Edit: the string that is showing is "nee".

Your Code is Not Self Documenting - darthdeus http://progfu.com/post/2668280164/your-code-is-not-self-documenting ====== wccrawford Every comment there disagrees with the post. Were you hoping to come here and find people who will agree? I also disagree with it. Good code is as self-documenting as possible. Any gotchas should be explained in comments, but correct naming is way more valuable than comments explaining what a function does. Any code that fails to be self-documenting needs to be refactored immediately. ~~~ erikb To follow the ongoing culture of disagreeing, I disagree with you that bad code needs to be refactored immediately. That has a technical reason: "Don't touch a running system." You know, you can never be sure what you change there, if the code is really that bad. And it also has a management reason: Everything these days is about efficiency. You only have a limited amount of resources. That might be coders in your company, when you are the CEO. That might be free time, when you code for yourself. But all these resources should be spent wisely. So, if refactoring the code takes a lot of resources and the functionality of the software actually stays the same, I would suggest to do that later, when it really needs to be done because you need to change the functionality. And if it is selfwritten code, it might be smart to go on with the next project and improve your coding quality through more experience over time and maybe later come back to refactor. ~~~ lelele > That has a technical reason: "Don't touch a running system." You know, you > can never be sure what you change there, if the code is really that bad. My experience has been that "Don't touch a running system." takes you to "How the heck does this thing work?". And every time even little fixes get hairy and time-consuming. It's kind of when you listen to people justifying their untidiness: they say they do know where to look for things. Yes, they do know, I'm sure, but can they find those things _quickly_ , especially when "the shit hits the fan"? Does their approach work when their lives get more complex? How would they score against people who keeps things sorted and plan ahead? I have been a pretty untidy teenager, using these very same lame excuses, but nowadays I can't afford it. ~~~ erikb Your conclusions are soooo right. Really. It is exactly the same thing as tidyness in your room. Where does this tidyness come from? It doesn't come from often cleaning up the shit you made, hopefully before it hits any fans. For most people it comes from having an order of things in your shelves and teaching yourself to not drop everything you hold in your hand just where you don't need it anymore, but put it back in the place where it belongs. My argument is that - and that is where I can be right or wrong - you write good or bad code because you have the skill to do so. And also that you write good or bad code because you have an order for things and a (somewhat engineeringly/scientifical) process of writing code, that the readability in your code does not come from saying "I make it clean now" but from the sum of all the small steps that produce the least amount of shit as a sideeffect. The thing is, if you have ugly code that is not easy to understand, the author didn't really understand the problem and the solution either. It was more the magician approach, where you put in many things together and suddenly it works approxamitally how the author has planned (probably there are also no good designed structure documents and unit tests in such a case). And then he just said "okay, now it's finished." If you come and "refactor" it, it is actually that YOU will be the one who solves the real problem the first(!) time, because the ugly code obviously doesn't solve any problem well enough (otherwise, where does the bug reports come from that are so hard to solve). Okay, that is that. But from your argument, lelele, I wonder, if my secon point was also unclear. I meant that you should of course handle the mess, but WHEN IT IS ABSOLUTELY NESSESARY. If you don't need to, if you can live with the mess in this moment right now and if the problems (bugs etc.) are not that bad (e.g. don't need to be fixed at the moment, because there are bigger things to do), then don't solve the problem NOW. BUT ALSO when the time comes and you have a bug, that really needs to be fixed you should take the time and energy and really clean up the code first. In my small experience (2 years are not enough to be really sure yet) a good process is the following: 1\. you discover a problem (through bug reports, dying servers, a screaming boss running your way, you-name-it) 2\. you define and evaluate the problem (Is it a problem? Do I(!) need to solve it? Is it worth the time I will spent on it? etc.) 3\. you write unit tests to keep the actual thing that the program does without changes and find the place in the code where the bug occurs. 4\. now that you can not destroy functionality you plan how to change the system that it is more clean. (cleaning up the smallest amount of code possible) 5\. after cleaning up your code your problem either is already solved (happens often in my experience) or gets some fixing now (done by you of course). With this process you reach many goals at once and make sure to not put in resources that are not nessesarily needed. Also you can see that this process is able to handle ugly code, situations where unit tests where forgotton to write and basically many kinds of mistakes that coders do because they are humans (error prone and lazy). By the way, the same process also works for new feature requests. ------ j_baker I grant that all code can't be self documenting. But you don't commit suicide just because you're going to die at some point anyway. Instead, you try to make your life as long and happy as possible. Your highest priority should be to make your code self-documenting as possible, even though that isn't always possible. That said, the author does have a valid point in that public APIs do need documentation. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that _every_ method (private or not) needs documenting. Unnecessary comments and documentation should be treated like any other kind of useless code. They should be removed. ------ Jach Perhaps not, but I don't think inline documentation is often very useful either and breaking code density is a jarring thing. External documentation exists for a reason (even if it's just doxygen-izing your inline docs instead of pointing people at the direct source), and I much prefer reading (and writing) short READMEs, examples, or tutorials than digging through implementation code if I'm interested in using something. And if I'm integrating anything non-trivial I don't think little comments saying "/* * executes the passed query string, not using prepared statements, throws SQLException, returns nothing */ public static void executeSql(String query) throws SQLException {" are useful or worth my time. Write comments when something needs some explanation not clear from the context, save the academic comment-everything documentation for enterprise busywork or academia. ~~~ beoba I think you're mixing up inline documentation with api documentation. For inline stuff where it's explaining a complex/dense lump of code, it's useful to keep it as close to the original code as possible, so that if somebody updates the code, they're more likely to see/update the comments as well. ------ erikb I think people are too harsh with the author. He is clearly in the beginning of his hacker path. I think everybody who disagrees here can remember a time, when he thought the same way. The author here got a basic idea very correct: You want your code to be readable. And he still has to learn, that good code itself can be (and often is) the most readable way to express a problem and its solution. Often there just is no better way to express, what the coder wants to say. For everything we code we have to keep in mind that every line we write must have a meaning. That is true for code as much as for documentation. If the problem is complex and the code is hard to grasp, but it is well written, then probably every line of documentation you write will degrade the readability and also end up beeing a waste of the time for its author and its reader. ~~~ enneff I don't think people are being too harsh. He put his opinions out there in a very proscriptive way. He didn't invite discussion, he merely dictated his opinions. And he is quite wrong. Additionally, his blog is called ProgFu. That gives the impression that he is highly skilled and experienced; an authority to be heeded, like the sensei of a dojo. But if you look at his writings in total you can see that he's pretty green. His factual pieces are really useful, the opinion pieces less so. While I'm thinking about it: I'm dismayed by this trend of bloggers dispensing programming advice like they are Miyamoto Musashi himself (although he would never display such hubris). Exchange of information is what's important. If you have a personal experience, share it, and perhaps discuss the lessons you've learned. But, please, don't write articles merely stating your opinions without backing them up with some evidence or experience. ------ whyme "Almost all programmers type fast, say 400+ characters per minute. So how long does it take to write one two lines of simple text explaining your code? 15 seconds maybe?" OMG - is this true? He can't be talking about code - can he? I'm lone programmer & self taught. If it's true I must really suck because it takes me so much longer it's not funny. LoL - I have to stop and think, for minutes, almost all the time. ~~~ bobds Programmers who type that fast might not have enough time to think. Typing speed is never the bottleneck. ~~~ 5teev True, one of the most accomplished programmers I know merely hunts and pecks on the keyboard. ------ mech4bg I like Google's viewpoint on this... "incorrect documentation is a bug, and should be fixed." Complaining about the code diverging from the comments therefore comments are worthless is silly imo. While documentation should not be over the top and code should be readable, I am sick of seeing completely uncommented functions that are non-obvious. There is a happy medium of having easy to read and well styled code and accompanying documentation that explains any gotchas and difficult sections. Sometimes just a written out purpose for the function can be surprisingly useful. If you've worked in a company with a large shared codebase, you learn to love good comments. ------ rbxbx "Code consisting of ShortMethods can reveal the algorithm more directly than procedural code usually does, while hiding the implementation." <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ReadingRavioli> ------ ShardPhoenix I don't think every function needs a comment, necessarily, but I have seen "self-documenting" used as an excuse for not documenting anything at all. It's easy to declare code understandable and readable when you're the one who wrote it. ~~~ rnemo Agreed. While the author tends to take the viewpoint that attempting to write self documenting code is almost a bad thing, and that's very wrong, I understand his frustration, because too many programmers these days seem to think that documentation in the comments are either superfluous or a sign of bad code, and that's also just flat wrong. It's a shame that the author takes the opposite extreme. Like most things in life, code documentation requires balance, and one should strive to create code that is easy to read and understand, but good code cannot be easy to read and understand in all circumstances, and comments should be used in any situation that confusion could possibly arise. For my own code, aside from commenting on obviously confusing sections, I tend to create functions that have an easily understood purpose when called, but I tend to use 1-2 lines of comments when I declare the function so that I can feel reasonably sure that anyone reading my code wont have too many questions. I've found through feedback that this is a fairly functional method of documentation. ------ anamax How can I make my code explain why it wasn't done some other way, or two other ways? ~~~ erikb That is a very good point. But it is not contradicting the main point of most people here. Of course there is good documentation and important documentation. It is just that most of the times your code does not need a big bloat of text around it. And I would say that your point is a much better example than the one used in the blog post. ------ sliverstorm I'm not going to argue that you should not document your code, but two things come to mind: 1) With the backup example- you have indeed moved complexity elsewhere, but the idea of that kind of setup is you logically separate complexity into a hierarchy so that the proper segment can be rapidly located, and is easy to comprehend because it is isolated, and small chunks of complexity are not all that hard to understand. 2) Every example of well written self-documenting code I've ever seen is pretty much superior to the alternative in every way, with the possible exception of small performance hits. It's generally a good goal to shoot for, whether you document your code or not. ------ Groxx // test 1 + 1 == 2 function testOnePlusOneEqualsTwo(){ return (1 + 1) == 2; } I find unnecessary documentation to be unnecessary.

Catching Gamma Rays with a Raspberry Pi - monsieurv https://blog.ytotech.com/2016/03/04/radiation-watch-raspberry/ ====== gravypod If you like Geiger counters then you should check out the ultramicron[0][1]. It is a small build using a soviet Geiger-miller tube for detection. I really want one, but I have no soldering ability. [0] - ftp://www.xn-- 80aighkbzclf7a.net:12013/%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D1%8B_%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD/%D0%A3%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0-%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD/ [1] -[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKjtOTeAevg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKjtOTeAevg) ~~~ monsieurv Oh very interesting project! The thing is indeed very small for a counter with a Geiger-Müller tube. Yeah seems like it requires surface soldering, plus the doc in russian: not the easiest assembly. Thx for sharing! ~~~ gravypod I wish I could buy one, but the author is an extremely anti-consumer person. I would love to some of these for testing.

Remote-control your Slack bots with JSON - gliechtenstein http://blog.jasonette.com/2016/01/17/build-a-slackbot-with-jasonette ====== gliechtenstein Update: This is not from 2016, but actually a Fresh New post I published this morning (in 2017!) but messed up the timestamp with jekyll, sorry for the confusion! Hi guys, I wrote the post, but the creator is @smcavinney1 on this thread, please ask him any questions :) I personally thought this was really cool because it's a Slack bot that actually does something useful, and am super glad Jasonette enables cool projects like these. p.s. Could someone with the permission update the title so it doesn't say 2016? ------ smcavinney1 Thanks for posting this Ethan. Jasonette made creating this app a breeze for a 'non-dev' like myself. ------ hashkb Using a mobile app to control a chat bot is less elegant than using chat to control a chat bot. I don't get it... isn't it just a mobile app with a chat integration at that point? Or does it not even matter? ~~~ smcavinney1 Thanks for the question about this. For some context we drink a lot of coffee at my office. We have two pots (bold & light roasts). People never know when coffee is ready or brewing without going to the kitchen. We have a #coffee channel so people can post that they are brewing, but then we had issues with people stealing cups before the pot was done (don't do this). So this app gives an interface for people to just click their face and the bot will handle it from there. It says that a pot is brewing, and 12 minutes later will post that the pot is ready. To your point, it is just a mobile app with a slack integration. I built it to test out jasonette, which was a great experience, but I have no delusions of grandeur here. ~~~ kodis > we had issues with people stealing cups before the pot was done (don't do > this). That's some amazingly annoying and inconsiderate behavior. We had the same problem at one place where I worked, so when the coffee pot was low I had to not only make a fresh pot, but then stand watch over it while it was brewing. ~~~ smcavinney1 I think it was more about ignorance about how it affects the flavor of the brew. People are generally good about making a new pot after they kill it. ~~~ bradknowles I'm confused. In this context, what is "stealing a cup", and how does that "affect the flavor of the brew"? ~~~ rovr138 With coffee, what is extracted first tastes different from what you extract at the end. There are different compounds extracted at different times. In espresso, a ristretto shot is a espresso that's been pulled short. Meaning that it has the same volume of coffee but less water. Around half the water. Ristretto shots tend to be less bitter and bolder. It's more concentrated. ------ cocktailpeanuts Finally a bot that actually does something useful, instead of just another assistant bot that everyone's making ------ funkasaurus Thanks Ethan! Would you mind updating the post with more instructions on using heroku or a way to host the json? I was trying to dump the generated json into S3 and point jasonette to the URL, but that doesn't work because the submit action still points to localhost. Any thoughts? ~~~ smcavinney1 Hi, app author here. When I wrote the readme I wasn't expecting anyone to think about it outside of my company. You can host this on Heroku, that's what I'm doing. Just make sure to add the environment files in the settings. Then you can either build the a jasnonette app or use the relevant Jason apps and point the url to <your-heroku-url>/jsonette.json ------ junke Why "in 12 minutes"? ~~~ smcavinney1 That's roughly the amount of time it takes for our coffee pot to brew 12 cups of coffee. So it posts immediately that a pot is brewing to save people a walk to the kitchen, and again when the pot is done. ------ manojlds > Update: As a mistake I timestamped this as 2016, but this post was just > freshly published on January 17th of 2017. Sorry for the confusion! :D Also, does 2016 really need the 2016 qualification? ~~~ gliechtenstein It appears that HN automatically added the (2016) tag by looking at the permalink, which I mistakenly set as 2016 (still need to get used to 2017!), and that was what I was trying to say, because it looked as though the post was written a year ago. Sorry for the confusion!

Fake pictures of faces are getting much harder to detect - dd36 https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/deep-fakes-which-face-is-real/ ====== dd36 I wonder if these aren’t faces the algorithm has seen before? Has anyone reverse image searched the training database for a “made up” face.

London bans cars for a day in the fight against air pollution - known https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/london-bans-cars-for-a-day-in-the-fight-against-air-pollution-npr5jtts5 ====== Jonnax The Great Smog of London in 1952 was a 4 day smog that potentially killed 12,000 people. [1] Today things are much better but living in pretty much any city around the world means that you will exposed to higher pollution. Reading the stats like below [2], it's always shocking to me that all politicians who live in cities aren't demanding change. " Worldwide ambient air pollution accounts for: 29% of all deaths and disease from lung cancer 17% of all deaths and disease from acute lower respiratory infection 24% of all deaths from stroke 25% of all deaths and disease from ischaemic heart disease 43% of all deaths and disease from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" It's good that developments like electric cars, trains etc, mean that power generation can be centralized. Since even a fuel burning plant is more efficient than a car's engine. And there's the ability to use things like wind, tidal, nuclear, geothermal generation. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London) [2] [https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health- impacts/en/](https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/) ------ jarym I agree with trying to reduce the number of cars in a city is a great goal for congestion, safety and pollution. BUT Has anyone seen what it costs to get around on the tube? Or the ASTRONOMICAL costs of train tickets if you live just outside the capital? It costs me £8 to park my electric car in London and perhaps 40-60 minutes to drive there. A train takes 30 minutes but costs almost £30 for a return ticket. How is that reasonable? That ticket for ‘public’ transport is a huge chunk of ones salary; and that’s not even adding the cost of the tube into the equation. ~~~ IAmEveryone Aren’t there far cheaper options for regular commuters? Here in Berlin, a single one-way ticket is €2.60, but a monthly is around €80. That’s less than a euro per ride for the average person that commutes by subway and uses it for some other trip every second day. Trains are, unfortunately, rather expensive, at least compared to flying and to taking a car you already own. I believe fuel and vehicle taxes should increase to the point where they pay for most if not all of road construction costs. Contrary to popular opinion, large parts of those costs are currently financed from general taxation. Because tracks and stations make up the bulk of the cost of train rides, increases in ridership have low marginal costs. Any move to get people to use trains would therefore tend to lower per-trip costs. ~~~ leifg Having lived in Berlin and now living in London I asked the same. The monthly ticket that is very common in Germany either doesn't exist here or is ridiculously expensive. Even if you go by tube on a daily basis you are better off paying for each trip. ~~~ gcoleman That's not true - season tickets are definitely cheaper than pay as you go if you travel every day. e.g. Annual Travelcards give you 12 months travel for the price of ten and a half. [https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy- tickets...](https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets-and- oyster/travelcards-and-group-tickets) ~~~ jsmith99 Annual tickets are barely worth it if you just take the tube, not buses, and don't use it at weekends. Single fare prices were frozen by the mayor, but travelcards were not. ------ zimpenfish Already demonstrated to dramatically drop pollution on e.g. Ride100 days when large sections of London are car free. 2017 Ride100, [https://cyclingindustry.news/air-quality-sees-drastic- improv...](https://cyclingindustry.news/air-quality-sees-drastic-improvement- alongside-ridelondon-route/) 2018 Marathon, [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-marathon- figur...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-marathon-figures-show- massive-89-per-cent-drop-in-air-pollution-a3821566.html) ------ tristanperry There's a self-build TV show in the UK called 'Grand Designs' that had a great episode[0] whereby their children were suffering badly with allergies (even being hospitalised at times). They stayed within London (albeit moving to a slightly better area for pollution) but built their house with filtered air systems and low VOC products in mind - and their children's symptoms improved dramatically. It's concerning how big of a role air pollution seems to be playing, considering it doesn't seem to be a mainstream concern. [0] - [https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home- garden/interiors/des...](https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home- garden/interiors/design-news/grand-designs-healthy-house-built-for-kids-with- lifethreatening-allergies-is-a-wakeup-call-for-all-a124476.html) ~~~ toothandtail Wouldn't it be better for a) their children and b) the environment (extra materials being used in the house) if they just moved out of London? ~~~ IAmEveryone High-density urban living is far better for the environment than rural. People usually live in less space, and with far less outside surfaces, reducing energy usage for heating and cooling. Distance to work, shopping, and other destinations is shorter, and use of public transport is far higher. Far less land is wasted on manicured single-family lawns rarely used. Density also allows sharing of rarely used manufactured goods between a neighbors or via renting (power tools, washing machines, even cars). ~~~ butteroverflow Related podcast: [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/12/epis...](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/12/episode-22-joe- walston-on-conservation-urbanization-and-the-way-we-live-on-earth/) ------ lifeisstillgood I was thinking of running one of these in our garden - just to get an idea of how bad it is [https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pms5003-particulate- matte...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pms5003-particulate-matter- sensor-with-cable#description) ~~~ dia80 I don't think it's that bad in your garden... I ran a foobot at home when we had our son. Air quality in the house was good a mile or two from central london and a few hundred meters from a big road. Looking at the pollution maps the pollution is extremely concentrated along big roads and even a short distance (10s of meters) away it's not so bad. ~~~ arethuza When we lived in the centre of Edinburgh (which probably isn't even that polluted compared to London) I was amazed at how dirty the white paintwork on windows would get in relatively short time periods. Now we live out in a rural area and its very noticeable how cleaner windows and paintwork are - the same also applies to our lungs! ------ buro9 It will be worth taking a snapshot of a Sunday via [https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx](https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx) and comparing to the no car day. It's a shame a week day was not selected, but it would be a bigger shame to have this be a once a year promotional day rather than part of a learning exercise towards reduced pollution in London. Another link of note would be [https://cleanair.london/](https://cleanair.london/) which brings together many of the resources that document the current air quality and either proposes or tracks the policies that may address it. ------ reallydontask It's always interesting/concerning when I blow my nose after a day in London: there is a lot of black residue in the snot. apologies for the disgusting picture ~~~ alex_duf This especially true if you take the tube, and heavily varies depending on the line. Victoria line and Nothern lines are especially bad. If you stand at one hand of the platform, you can see some weird "mist" when looking at the opposite side. That's just a high concentration of PM2.5 and PM10, and that's what causes the black snot. It's been shown the pollution level in the tube is 30 times worst than the worst street in london. [1] I moved out of the centre of london and commute by train partly for that reason. Life's short, let's not make it shorter. [1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/09/london- under...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/09/london-underground- air-pollution-report-concerns-northern-line-particulates) ~~~ Theodores The problem is cleaning. It doesn't happen. Compare how your former communist country tube stations look compared to what there is in London. The whole lot has to be spotlessly clean for it to work, in London they clean the seats on the trains and do the maintenance work there, but the actual tunnels get cleaned once in a blue moon. The whole thing needs to be polished and polish-able. London Underground isn't built like that. A fair amount of the dirt is from the streets above, so tyres that wear to also wear the road surfaces, that sort of cruft gets drawn all the way down into the Underground. As for actual pollution levels then this depends on where you are on the network. TfL don't measure enough to give a heatmap of pollution, updated hourly. Your statistic from the Guardian sounds about right, generally speaking though the particulates are at 10x the EU max levels. In a communist style country you could have an army of people polishing the tube stations and the tunnels as part of some National Service. But, in a Western Democracy where everyone has to pay a four figure sum for rent + travel no matter how they try and mix it, this isn't going to happen. They have tried to create magic sweeper trains to hoover everything up but it hasn't been a success. Really that is what is needed as well as the trains being built to 'hoover as they go', using the air-con to filter out all the cruft. ~~~ _visgean No, the problem is ventilation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling) In eastern europe we have very effective ventilation - for number of reasons, one of them is that it was built much later, the other is that some of the station were built to serve as a nuclear shelter so they had to have very safe ventilation systems... ------ the_mitsuhiko Around the same time as Madrid stops its low emission zone: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/madrid-new- rig...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/madrid-new-rightwing- council-suspends-low-emissions-zone) ~~~ indalo what even is the motivation for stopping something like that? article describes it as very successful. so sad. ~~~ Hamuko Was it actually popular? ~~~ otikik Yep. ------ raverbashing I'm going to be honest, London's pollution can be felt (and seen) in one's airways. And it's a bit "different" than other polluted cities. I don't know why is it so severe. Old cars? Trucks/Buses? Factories? High humidity? ------ tempodox Although it demonstrably reduces pollution levels, I don't see it go much further. Too many of us are obviously willing to pay _any_ price for the ability to sit in our own tin can while producing smog and traffic jams. Even when not in use, cars are a massive waste of space that clogs our cities. Until we find something that's at the same time ridiculously much cheaper, less wasteful and less toxic, we _will_ stay stuck, clogged, jammed and suffocating. ------ pro_zac "Car Free Day on Sunday, 22 September 2019" [https://londoncarfreeday.com/](https://londoncarfreeday.com/) Couldn't find the date on the paywalled site. ~~~ Ray_Atreyu Thanks, I was looking for it for ages ------ vfclists The amount of political posturing and grandstanding which goes in London is simply over the top. There are too many politicians seeking attention for dubious causes. The fact is that pollution in the 70s and 80s was much worse and we are still living here. Traffic in London has greatly reduced over the years. So where are these pollution concerns coming from? The amount eco posturing is just way over the top. ~~~ adrianN Pollution concerns are coming from an improved understanding how air pollution affects people. We also used to put asbestos in everything and eventually stopped doing that even though people weren't dropping like flies.

How Many Friends is Too Many? - markbao http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_many_friends_is_too_many.php ====== neilc _Human beings ought to live in groups of around 150 people, judging from the logarithm of our brain size_ The "logarithm of our brain size" meaning what, exactly? I'm curious as to how Dunbar arrived at this conclusion. ~~~ rms [http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue17/braintease...](http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue17/brainteaser.html)

Ask HN: Best Online Course for Distributed Computing or Systems? - nikentic I have worked through 6.824: Distributed Systems at MIT and it has been truly eye-opening! Learned much about existing systems, building new ones and limitations that exists.<p>Which others exist that are worth finishing in combination with 6.824? ====== kazishariar Is there even any that even exist? --Mind linking me to this one if possible. ~~~ geeio [https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html) Read the paper/notes from the schedule and you’ll learn a ton (took this course as an undergrad)

Cascade – A library for creating modern user interfaces - stevelacy https://github.com/sjohnsonaz/cascade ====== icc97 I think the benefits you're trying to provide are not in the CSS. But the major importance of any modern framework is to look beautiful - Apple's been proving this for decades. I'm sorry to say the styling for [https://cascade.rocks/](https://cascade.rocks/) is really ugly. It's a bit like some forgotten ugly child of Bootstrap and Material Design. It's even worse than jQuery UI. Please either switch to a Bootstrap or MD styling until you can find something better. Failing that, go completely minimalist along the lines of [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/) Edit: spelling ~~~ sjohnsonaz Dude, the primary project isn't the CSS, it's the typescript framework. Plus my project got posted before its website was finished. Calm down and wait. ~~~ icc97 Read my first sentence - so yes I understood that it's not CSS. But you're not just claiming a 'typescript framework', you're claiming 'a library for creating modern user interfaces'. I'm not telling you it's ugly just to annoy you, I'm telling you because I'm really interesting in creating user interfaces and so the first thing I look at is what it looks like. I'd love to use it and being written in TypeScript is great. ------ blueprint What makes a user interface modern? ~~~ sjohnsonaz It uses concepts behind other popular libraries such as React with Mobx, and Knockout, but refines their workflows where possible. I'm in the process of converting previous projects to Cascade, and so far it has been easier to use. ~~~ maxcan A cascade to react comparison might be helpful in understanding what you're doing here. ------ mattbgates It definitely could be used to make a type of "shop" software, for like autobody shops, who seem to prefer that "old fashioned" look, as it has a database-type feel to it, but you are missing responsive design. Wouldn't be too hard to add a few media queries to deal with phones & tablets. ------ sjohnsonaz I'm pushing a few examples and documentation this weekend. To see it in use, take a look at Cascade Components, a library of common components. [https://github.com/sjohnsonaz/cascade- components](https://github.com/sjohnsonaz/cascade-components) ~~~ fit2rule Thanks for posting the -components followup, I had this question on my mind immediately - i.e. wonder, if there are more components. Any chance I could convince you to add a slider (or knob) as a priority component? Sliders and buttons and knobs are nice, modern, user interface components that work well in various places .. ------ richev My initial assumption that this was something to do with the design language formerly known as Metro...but seemingly not.

CentOS 7 for ARM (Raspberry Pi, Etc.) - api http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/isos/armhfp/ ====== api Had to Google a bit to find that the default login is "root" password "centos". Read the /root/README file for info on how to get it to resize the disk image. Other than that it's stock CentOS and works great. No EPEL unfortunately though... yet. There's some talk of it.

Ask HN: Those working remote, do you use your own laptop for work? - samblr ====== skilled From the job listings (remote) that I have seen in recent months, a lot more companies are getting comfortable with hooking up remote employees with company gear.

The Chopped Cheese’s Sharp Rise to Fame - samclemens http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/nyregion/chopped-cheese-sandwich-harlem.html ====== douche Looks delicious, like a low-rent cheesesteak. The sandwich I wish would grow some legs is the ham hoagie. Apparently this is a sandwich that only exists in north-western Maine (I've never been able to find it anywhere else), but it is simple, cheap and delicious. Take a sub roll, and load it up with provolone cheese, sliced ham, and bacon, optionally some mustard and mayo, and toast it until the cheese melts. ~~~ marcusgarvey Sounds similar to a grinder from Philly. ~~~ brightsize Or a grinder in pretty much anywhere in New England. ------ OtterCoder How is a sandwich review in any way 'imperialistic'? Guy has opinions about a sandwich, guy exercises his fourth amendment right to share that opinion. Other people disagree, which is also fine. End of story. How is this even news? ~~~ sithadmin >guy exercises his fourth amendment right to share that opinion. Wrong amendment. But I do find thinking about the implications of the Fourth Amendment for sandwich reviews to be infinitely more amusing than the article at hand, so thanks for that. ~~~ qq66 Opening the bread to inspect the contents: illegal search. Holding it with one hand: illegal seizure. Reviews based on the above: subject to the exclusionary rule. All mentions of the contents must be stricken from the record. ------ slackstation If a simple sandwich gets famous and then goes up in price, it isn't the fault of people outside the neighbourhood, it's the fault of they guy who runs the bodega on the corner. He realizes that he can do business where last week a chopped cheese went for $4, this week, he can sell it for $10. He's making a profit from the demand. People get mad that things get popular but, that's just a small downside for an otherwise hyper-efficient capitalist system works. Also an option is making them at home for next to nothing. Bread, ground beef, provalone cheese, some spices and thinly sliced lettuce? It's not like this would be that hard nor expensive to make. ~~~ justareader please rtfa. what the article describes is nothing like what you are arguing about. There's nothing about the price going up at the original bodega. ------ fred_is_fred Serious question - how is this different from a cheesesteak? ~~~ DrScump The meat is hamburger (ground beef), not steak.

The Story of Metal Gear Solid’s English Translation - danso https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/18/20696081/metal-gear-solid-translation-japanese-english-jeremy-blaustein ====== sunaurus I love Japanese entertainment. I'm not a native speaker of either, but I often use English subtitles with Japanese audio, because my English is better than my Japanese. As a result of having both languages in front of me at the same time, I often notice when translators take liberties and sometimes even rewrite entire personalities of characters, and it has always annoyed me a lot. This article was great for helping me understand the motivations for localizing stories and characters (instead of simply translating them). I certainly don't blame the author (and other translators) for trying to provide the American audience with what they think is the best possible experience. But for anybody who isn't American, the localization might be entirely wasted - there's a good chance that they're just as familiar with Japanese culture and history as they are with American culture and history. What's worse, in cases where the localization is wildly different from the original, the audience probably doesn't have any way of knowing it. It would be fair to tell the audience when the localization is inspired by or based on the original, instead of a direct translation of it. Otherwise, consumers can be misled to thinking they like or dislike a certain writer, while in reality their opinion is based entirely on a translator. Slightly related: in Final Fantasy XIV, a character in the main story was COMPLETELY changed for the English version of the game. Playing in Japanese, I grew quite fond of the character, so when the character eventually died in the story, it had an actual impact for me. A friend of mine plays the same game exclusively in English, and when I discussed the death with him, he told me that this character was completely forgettable for him and he didn't even really remember the circumstances of the death. I'm fairly certain that the lack of impact for him was entirely because of the localization. ~~~ kace91 I wonder if there's any source of information where I can get specific examples of this issue. It would be quite curious to see side by side comparisons on how stories differ, and see if there's any general trend. ~~~ rawTruthHurts It's not a "source of information" but a "specific example": the robotech RPG manuals (or at least some of them 90's editions, not the main one but the companions) had an appendix where they delved into the differencies between the US and Japanese translations. Looks like not just technical terms, but some plot lines diverted fairly from the original ~~~ benj111 Wouldn't that have to be the case as Robotech is a US combination of 2 unrelated Japanese cartoons? ------ laurieg I have had very similar experiences to the author when doing a magazine translation job from Japanese to English. Very regularly the editor would take issue with me writing an English translation that sounded natural but didn't use a word with the exact same meaning and part of speech as the original. Having worked in translation for a little while, bad and awkward translations really do stand out a mile. "How nostalgic!" is such a common way to translate "懐かしい” but I've never heard anyone say that in English. The distance between the languages will always leave the translator with a sizable challenge. It's a real shame to hear the Kojima was not on board with this style of translation. ~~~ mikekchar I did a fair amount of scanlation back in the day (very obscure manga). One of the things I liked about scanlation was being able write hacked up English on the assumption that the reader knew enough about Japanese culture/language to make the leap from awkward English to Japanese concept. But, if I was writing for a larger audience I think it would be incredibly difficult to write idiomatic English and still capture the Japanese sense of the sentence. I'm in awe when I see people who are successful. I'm convinced you have to be an incredibly good writer of English to be able to pull it off (which I am not ;-) ). I admit do having a wave of nostalgia now :-) Few things brought me as much pleasure as scanlation... ~~~ JohnBooty One of the things I liked about scanlation was being able write hacked up English on the assumption that the reader knew enough about Japanese culture/language to make the leap from awkward English to Japanese concept. First of all, thank you to you and the other scanslators of the world. You made a lot of things possible for your readers! Translating manga must be so tough. At least in anime, if you're watching English subtitles, you can _hear the characters speaking in Japanese_ which helps to retain some of the original meaning. I don't speak Japanese, but I can recognize at least certain things like honorifics that convey a lot of meaning... that adds a lot of meaning to the subtitles I'm reading. But with manga, there's no such luxury... you did a really challenging job. ------ spondyl Highly recommend checking out this hour long interview with Jeremy Blaustein, the author of the linked article, who worked on the Silent Hill franchise among other things. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DB5GFiTRig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DB5GFiTRig) He gives a lot of background on how the industry was at the time, not that much earlier than the MGS release. It boils down to basically being a wild west of sorts from what I remember. Similarly, I can also recommend the rest of TheGrateDebate's YouTube channel. It's a group of Silent Hill fans talking about Silent Hill things with high production qualities. I don't even think you have to be much of a SH fan to enjoy their works. On a side note, I was reading Jeremy's twitter feed a few weeks ago and I believe he was likely tapped to write this in response to an MGS story he shared: [https://twitter.com/JeremyBlaustein/status/11431327794014699...](https://twitter.com/JeremyBlaustein/status/1143132779401469952) ------ gatherhunterer There are many parts of this game that are burned into my memory. It was such a deeply voice-acted game with so much emotional content. The gameplay was fun to repeat because there were different ways to approach each challenge. Reading up on the lexicon of the US military explains the use of the word “pineapples” to describe hand grenades when Snake is speaking over comm on the first level. This article gives context to many of the lines that have stuck with me. There is a chapter of Metal Gear Solid 4 that takes place in a modern remake of the first level and one of the later levels of the original. There is even a playable version of the original that comes up in a dream sequence. The dedication that the crew has had for their work from the original and on is remarkable. ------ benrbray Great article. I don't agree with the choices made by the translator (I think any attempt to "satisfy the marketplace" will always corrupt a translation), but I admire the enormous effort spent researching for his translation. Here is another article on translation posted a few days ago to HN that I think contrasts this one nicely: Stephen Snyder, "The Murakami Effect" @ LitHub ([https://lithub.com/the- murakami-effect/](https://lithub.com/the-murakami-effect/)) HN Discussion ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20389112](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20389112)) ~~~ fenomas > any attempt to "satisfy the marketplace" will always corrupt a translation I don't know how you're getting this from the article - everything he says about his efforts boils down to trying to change language that sounds flat and lifeless in translation into something that lives and breathes, and I think he's absolutely right to have made that attempt. (even if he misses the mark sometimes, like with the castlevania "what is a man?" bit...) Living in JP I wind up seeing a lot of movies and TV with one language in the audio and the other in subtitles, and personally, "faithful" translations drive me bonkers with how flat and boring and explanatory they sound. My pet theory is that it ultimately stems from the source languages being so linguistically different. I once read a book where the translator said in his notes (about Voltaire) "But mostly I've just tried to stay out of his way, for I find that he speaks very good English already", and I've often thought how hard it is to imagine a JP>EN translator feeling the same way. ~~~ mrob I think a less accurate translation can sometimes result in a better product, but the translator needs to be very good to pull it off. The most notable example I can think of is Vagrant Story, which was widely praised for its localization. Example from The GIA's review[0]: "Lines as bland in the original Japanese as "It is because you acknowledge things like freedom of belief. There can be only one God. This sort of incident occurs because you let heretics like them out of your control. That, and our parliament is impotent..." become: "All because of this religious freedom! Too much freedom, too many gods. Let those cultist cur-dogs run loose, and they will bite you. Gods! While our Parliament cowers..."" But if a bad writer tries this then you get Working Designs' localization style, where they "improved" the originals with unfunny 4th-wall-breaking jokes and references. [0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20010608201912/http://www.thegia...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010608201912/http://www.thegia.com/psx/vgst/vgst.html) ~~~ benrbray Another controversial translation is the English localization of the "Ghost Stories" anime [1], which the authors were desperate to sell to Western audiences despite flopping in Japan. The show is full of hard-to-translate cultural references, so the translators quite drastically changed the tone of the show. I would say Ghost Stories is a successful example of "satisfying the market" via something like an "official parody" of the original work, but it definitely doesn't remain faithful to the original. I'm glad it exists, and it has creative value, but it definitely fails as a "translation". [1]: [https://dubbing.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_Stories](https://dubbing.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_Stories) (not sure ~~~ darkpuma The result is genuinely hilarious. I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed a _faithful_ translation nearly as much. ------ agent008t Kojima seems to have two distinct sides. One is pure genius, the other is not so great. The former made Policenauts, Snatcher, Metal Gear 2, MGS, MGS3, Peace Walker. The latter fired Jeremy Blaustein, David Hayter, came up with vampires and flying whales for no good reason, wrote endless unnecessary cut- scenes for MGS4 that take themselves too seriously, came up with the script for MGS5. ~~~ tombert I'm convinced that no one really knows what the hell happened at the end of MGS2. The story flew so far off the rails that I stopped playing the games in the series after that. ~~~ agent008t I was the same. Only nearly a decade later did I give MGS3 a go, and was not disappointed - it was more like MGS1 than MGS2 and is one of the best in the series. MGS4 follows right in MGS2 footsteps and I would say better skipped. Peace Walker is surprisingly good, although parts of it towards the end get tedious. MGS5 goes back to weirdness, although a particular sniper's story line has some merit to it. ~~~ tombert I actually think that Ghost Babel (the Japanese name) on the Game Boy Color is a really underrated game. It's worth checking out if you have avoided it because of it being a portable game. It has a fairly elaborate story, a delayed intro scene, and actually pretty decent graphics for the GBC. ------ raehik I love Jeremy, I've followed him for a while on Twitter. He comes across as self-confident and prideful of his work, which is great and perfect for a _good_ translator (which he certainly is). Shame Kojima didn't agree at the time, I imagine he's a very proud person as well. ~~~ avinium I left a comment the first time this was posted, but to reiterate, the MGS translations were excellent (and arguably better than later installments, though MGS3 was pretty high quality too). Jeremy played a huge part in launching an incredibly successful series. I hope he doesn't feel too put out by Kojima's reaction. ~~~ raehik I watched through most of the interesting MGS3 codec scenes in Japanese (after playing it in English years ago). It had an absurdly great script in both languages (perhaps better Japanese VAs). I'm a bit biased towards it though because it's one of the best games ever made IMO. MGS was certainly memorable, moreso than MGS2 or MGS4 (lmao) for me. ------ ListeningPie Even though MGS was my favorite game I never really like MGS5. Any suspension of disbelief was ruined with awkward lines like, "You're a legend in the eyes of those who live on the battlefield." ~~~ agent008t The dialogue in MGS5 was absolutely horrible: 1\. Because of the change of voice actors, I literally could not tell who was speaking at any given time. Everyone sounded the same. 2\. None of it was believable, funny, interesting or relevant. Peace Walker had a very similar concept in terms of storytelling (through tapes) and gameplay (base management), but was infinitely better. I just really did not care about any of the tapes in MGS5. In PW the tapes were funny and interesting and you actually learned something.

When to Buy Your Own ISBNs - janvdberg https://mwl.io/archives/3982 ====== cwmma Fun fact: the 13 digit ISBNs are actually UPCs (aka bar codes) but with the country code set to "Bookland" 1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland) ~~~ amelius Does this scale? What are the country codes for Computerland, Phoneland, Chairland, Deskland? ~~~ mattkrause There is a Musicland (979) but Bookland seems to “invaded” parts of its namespace! These are hacks so that you only need one table rather than separate lists of ISBNs and EANs. Chairs (etc) didn’t have a pre-existing registry so....no need Chairland. ------ neurocline This article expended a lot of text and avoided the actual useful information. \- 1 ISBN costs $125 \- 10 ISBNs cost $250 \- 100 ISBNs cost $575 \- 1000 ISBNs cost $1000 So if you are fairly sure to self-publish more than 8 books in your lifetime, of course you would buy a thousand of them. ~~~ baroffoos Its an absolute scam that you have to pay $125 for a number. I can understand some small fee for keeping a system to track them running but anything more than a few dollars for a block is an outrage. ~~~ ocdtrekkie To be fair: We have more or less pretty much run out of them, so preventing their waste or misuse is worthwhile. (Much like with IPv4 addresses.) Yes, we've now grabbed 979 of the ISBN-13 space, in addition to the more or less full 978 space, but that merely doubles the ISBN space, since many of the other prefixes are used for other products in EAN. Sure, we can always devise new solutions when these numbers run out as well, but there's a lot of order system overhead to such things. ~~~ baroffoos Just add more digits to the number. Make it a uuid and put a qr code on the inside of the back cover for easy data entry. ~~~ ocdtrekkie "Just adding more digits" ignores the whole point of the problem: That ISBNs live _within_ (a subset of) the number space of EAN codes, which are used globally for all sorts of products: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number) And that software systems all over the planet are built to handle specific numbers in specific formats. "Just add more digits" requires a global shift to a new format, which will take many, many years to accomplish. The shift from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 took _years_ , and there are articles about "are you ready for ISBN-13?" out there. Like, this is a Y2K-type issue. Sure, another expansion is inevitable, but if, like the author, your goal is to sell books in a lot of places right now, you need a number in a fairly limited scope of available numbers that work with distribution systems people actively have. It'd be like if you told someone they didn't need an IPv4 address because IPv6 addresses were available. That's all fine and good unless you have customers on IPv4. ~~~ mavhc IPv6 people realised that technology enables exponential growth and made their space 79 billion billion billion times larger, unlike barcodes which only went 1000 times larger. On the other hand people actually use 13 digit barcodes. ------ jshaqaw I misread this as when to buy your own ICBM and was subsequently disappointed by the content ------ lazyant (Just in case) they are free in Canada. ~~~ girzel They are free I think everywhere outside of the US. Except for China, where it's well over $1000 to buy one from a state-owned publisher. ~~~ blue1 free or almost free. In Italy, for example, it's 50€ for a block of ten codes. ------ wodenokoto The article mentions that he can't resell them, which begs the questions: Why and how? What is stopping me and the author from publishing a book _we_ wrote on an ISBN _he_ bought? I'm guessing nothing. Assuming that, where do we draw the line between co-author, editor, publisher and "guy who resold an ISBN"? ------ phab Maybe I'm naive, but the key takeaway from this for me was: > the owner of the ISBN controls where the book can be printed. I didn't realise this - that's the crucial "why" behind the "when". ------ simplecomplex Would it be possible to create a system that’s backwards compatible but costs something reasonable? ~~~ amelius Probably not. I suspect all the library information systems have been hardcoded for a fixed number of digits. It resembles the Y2K problem, or the IPv4 problem. ------ amelius Then don't sell your book as a "book", but as an "object".

The Puzzle of Indian IQ: A Country of Gypsies and Jews - ghosh http://akarlin.com/2012/08/the-puzzle-of-indian-iq-a-country-of-gypsies-and-jews/ ====== webhat At first glance this looks racist, at second glance it looks anti-semitic too. Can you explain the value of this article?

Dart's Macro Language - tosh https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-We05W0xsd5hTWGsTDCY6pibf2EmmTAsm-4EhIFZoOA/ ====== randomfool I disagree that Dart's code transformers are comparable to Macros- their intent is runtime optimization- take valid code which runs fine in the VM and optimize it for dart2js compilation. This feels more like an advanced compilation feature than macros which are typically used to encapsulate a set of complex operations. ~~~ skybrian Code transformers are more general than macros and I focused on one way to use them. I disagree that they're an optimization in this example, since the original code isn't being transformed but rather overridden with a separate implementation. It's more like overriding a method in a subclass; the intent is probably for the implementations to have equivalent behaviors, but the details differ and there can be bugs. Just like when a method is overridden, the reader should be able to see that there are multiple implementations and understand how they work. If you want to understand performance, you need to look at the production implementation. ------ tosh Related: Notes from last week's DEP (Dart Enhancement Proposal) Meeting [https://github.com/dart- lang/dart_enhancement_proposals/blob...](https://github.com/dart- lang/dart_enhancement_proposals/blob/master/Meetings/2015-05-06%20DEP%20Committee%20Meeting.md) ------ malkia This reminds me of Turbo Pascal, where certain runtime functions can take variable arguments, yet the language does not allow defining such. It felt like magic. Abother example is lisp, and yes lisp has the ultimate macro language (scheme, cl, clojure), and yet in Common Lisp there is the notion of "open coded" \- certain builtin names are known to the compuler/interpreter and can do also magical things. That to be said certain implementations of C/C++ also have them. ------ munki Sort of lost interest in Dart since they dropped the idea of integrating the VM into Chrome. ~~~ tosh imho it makes sense to focus more on further improving dart2js to ensure it works really well across all JavaScript virtual machines and to make interop with JavaScript & TypeScript super smooth. The Dart VM (as well as the Observatory) are fantastic. At Blossom ([https://www.blossom.co](https://www.blossom.co)) we currently use the Dart VM for command line tools but we're looking into using it on the server side as well. I guess you were especially interested in the performance improvements that the Dart VM could bring if it was added to Chrome? I expect that we'll also see performance improvements for dart2js as JavaScript runtimes become better compilation targets (e.g. SIMD.js, BigInt, SoundScript, …). The interesting thing here is that the Dart team can focus on other areas like … * the standalone Dart VM * fletch (an experimental mobile optimized runtime) * Observatory * async/await * libraries (e.g. the new `test` package) * analyzer (used for semantic code completion & warnings and powers IntelliJ, Eclipse, Sublime, Atom (soon), DartPad see [https://dartpad.dartlang.org/](https://dartpad.dartlang.org/)) * … and many other things in the meantime. Getting the Dart VM into Chrome and have it play nicely with v8 is not trivial. ~~~ brodo When there is no Dart VM in the browser I honestly don't see any advantage over TypeScript. Two VMs inside each other (with two garbage collectors) will always be slower and use more memory than just one. Additionally, you always need to ship the runtime with all your scripts. You also have to use FFI to interact with Javascript. All the advantages over plain JS you mentioned above are also present in TypeSctipt (or not needed). There is also a nice discussion about TypeScript and Dart here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM) ~~~ wtetzner > Two VMs inside each other (with two garbage collectors) will always be > slower and use more memory than just one. Is that how it works? I just assumed it would compile to JS and just use the JS garbage collector. ~~~ tree_of_item It does compile to JS and use the JS garbage collector. The posting you're replying to is very misinformed. ~~~ tosh As far as I understand you are also less likely to run into unpredictable performance (runtime bailing out) scenarios using Dart + dart2js. ------ ExpiredLink He really means macros similar to the C pre-processor? Dart is a modern dynamic language. Why should it need C-like macros? ~~~ tree_of_item No, they're not C-like, as mentioned they're AST transforms instead of textual substitution. ------ kingmanaz Google, if you're listening, get behind gopherjs. Embrace golang's minimalism. Pare down your WPL rather than tack on ever more features. Learn from your successful projects. ~~~ appleflaxen what is WPL? playlist? ~~~ kingmanaz Web Programming Language. "Dart is an open-source Web programming language..." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_%28programming_language%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_%28programming_language%29)

Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people. - ceejayoz http://twitter.com/needadebitcard ====== zephjc Some people just have to learn the hard way I guess ------ raikia Wow, this is hilarious! Never knew it was so easy to get free money! :-P

Hidden Travels of the Atomic Bomb - rglovejoy http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09bomb.html ====== bootload _"... In the six decades since Oppenheimer’s warning, the nuclear club has grown to only nine members. What accounts for the slow spread? Can anything be done to reduce it further? Is there a chance for an atomic future that is brighter than the one Oppenheimer foresaw? ..."_ One way is to remove, restrict study in certain areas of Physics ~ <http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/nuketech/index.html> ------ scott_s I found this interesting because it shows how hard it is to keep a secret when many people need to know it, and those on the outside are willing to do anything to find out.

Questioning electric vehicles' green cred - yitchelle http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160316-questioning-electric-vehicles-green-cred ====== dalke In short, the questioning finds that electric cars have a lower carbon footprint then gasoline ones. Here are the most relevant quotes which address that: "If you get an electric car running on electricity made from coal, its impact would probably be about the same as a gasoline car. If you run on anything else it gets much better." We don't use only coal for power generation. "Based on the average current mix of renewable and non-renewable electric power sources in the US, the average of well-to-wheels greenhouse-gas emissions for current battery-electric vehicles is 214 g/mi ... In comparison, the average for current gasoline- powered vehicles ranges from 356 g/mi for direct fuel injection to 409 g/mi for traditional fuel injection." ~~~ yitchelle Then the question becomes the location of the power station. If Singapore only has coal power status, the studies from the US is not relevant as the car is primarily driven in Singapore. In a country like Paraguay where electricity is 100% hydroelectric, the gains would be fantastic! [0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Paraguay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Paraguay) ~~~ dalke Singapore's power grid uses primarily natural gas [1], at 0.5 g CO2/Wh [2]. Coal is about 0.9 g CO2/Wh [3]. One of the links in the article is to [http://www.climatecentral.org/news/a-roadmap-to-climate- frie...](http://www.climatecentral.org/news/a-roadmap-to-climate-friendly- cars-2013-16318) , which shows the places in the US where it's better to have a hybrid than an electric vehicle, if your primary concern is CO2 emissions. These include West Virginia, where 95.5% of the electricity comes from coal. [8] I've been looking for a country where there are only coal powered power plants. The developed countries countries which use the most coal as a percentage of electricity generation include Australia and Greece [4], at about 75% [4,5]. China is also at 75% [6], while it's 61% in India [7]. There are, it therefore seems, very few places where an electric car is not significantly better than a (non-hybrid) gasoline vehicle with respect to CO2 emissions. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Singapor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Singapore) ; [2] [http://www.techspot.com/news/64063-singapore-first-tesla- mod...](http://www.techspot.com/news/64063-singapore-first-tesla-model-s- owner-hit-11000.html) ; [3] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11) lists 2.07 pounds CO2/kWh = 2.07/2.2 grams/Wh. ; [4] [http://www.world- nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...](http://www.world- nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries- a-f/appendices/australia-s-electricity.aspx) ; [5] [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Greece_and_coal](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Greece_and_coal) ; [6] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China) ; [7] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India) ; [8] [http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WV](http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WV) ; [9] Enough footnotes? :) ------ mchahn I see electric cars as the first of a pair of technologies that will dramatically improve emissions. When combined with renewable energy like solar, wind, etc. you get the ideal situation. Since both technologies have to be developed, what's wrong with one maturing first, even though not perfect.

Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff - prawn https://www.fastcoexist.com/3063935/sweden-wants-to-fight-our-disposable-culture-with-tax-breaks-for-repairing-old-stuff ====== jernfrost This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are: 1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive. I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier for the competition to make compatible replacement parts so they are cheaper. How many products don't we have where one stupid little plastic thing breaks and it becomes useless. Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to install. ~~~ sliverstorm There's another angle too. For a long time the only tailor in town was basically a bridal tailor. They charged steep prices for simple work on everyday clothing, and wait times were long. Fast forward to today. I had ripped holes in a few pairs of pants, and was wondering if it made sense to have them repaired- I was pretty sure I was going to be charged as much as the pants were worth for a fairly simple repair. Luckily there's a new shop in town, run by a group of older ladies who seem to have grown up tailoring, that charges sane prices. Anyway, the point is repairing can be uneconomical simply because of lack of availability of repair resources. As an example on the other side, Autozone has enabled countless mechanics with their tool library programs and other basic shadetree services like easy oil recycling. (P.S. Maybe I should learn to sew & get an inexpensive sewing machine, but that isn't the point) ~~~ jernfrost Repair services in any western country will be hideously expensive because it can't be automated and has to be paid western wages, while the products themselves are made in an automated fashion with third world wages. For this repair stuff to work, we have to make it easier to do so that people can do it themselves. ~~~ HeyLaughingBoy It does depend on the product. I have a KitchenAid blender and a KitchenAid stand mixer that I've had to repair. In both cases, the part was purchased for under $10 online and repair only took a few minutes. The alternative was buying a new $300 or $100+ product. Sure, I did the repair myself, but a local KitchenAid service center (yes, they exist!) would probably have done the job even faster. It boils down to cost/benefit. Would I have done the same thing with a $30 mixer? Not worth it; simpler to buy a replacement, but in this case, the products are built to last (both broken parts were "sacrificial" and designed to fail before something more expensive failed). ~~~ rplst8 Sacrificial parts are great design IMO, specifically when they protect a much more expensive part. However, it does bother me that the parts are often very custom and only available from the manufacturer. I enjoy listening to a conversation where some blowhard talks about was was obviously a shear pin breaking in some mechanical peice of equipment and then replaces it with a grade 8 bolt. ------ J-dawg This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities of non-recyclable "stuff". It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. The only potential counter-argument I can see with this sort of policy is that the goals of minimising CO2 and minimising waste sometimes seem to be in competition with each other. Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones. ~~~ mseebach The _idea_ is great. The problems will be with the implementation, how it will change incentives, any loopholes introduced, cost of enforcement and unintended consequences. What exactly is a repair? Are parts covered, or only labour? Think ship of Theseus. Is an upgrade a repair, can I put a better compressor, rather than like-for-like in my refrigerator when it's failed? Can I have my TV repaired by replacing all the parts, except the power cord? How broken must something be before it can be repaired? Totally failed, failure imminent, or just worn? (Unintended consequence: people have their things fixed long before it's strictly necessary, leading to greater waste than if they'd just let the thing fail and bought a new one. Another one: appliances are only upgraded to newer, much more energy efficient ones much later than otherwise). And for labour, where is the line drawn? Is the labour cost of diagnosing a problem covered? What if the problem is bigger than expected, and it isn't economical to carry out the repair? What if I have you upgrade the Foo (not a repair), which is trivial, while you've taken the widget apart anyway to fix the Bar (a repair)? What about repairing something, pocketing the tax break, then selling it (perhaps outside of the country)? Once you have considered all of these questions, you either have a lot of loopholes which will make the tax break much more expensive, or have a very long body of legal texts, and some very exited lawyers and auditors which will impose an indirect cost on society broadly. Sure, it's pessimistic, but I'm essentially working backwards from an attempt to impose a tax on dietary fat (for health reasons) in Denmark. Sounds great, right? Hilarity ensued over mixed nuts (the accountants had a field day with that one, and IIRC all kinds of meat being taxed at the same level, and the tax was repealed after only 15 months. ~~~ AJ007 A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Perhaps inevitable once sensors become pervasive and cheap enough. Too some extent this is already done and enforced for disposing of blatantly dangerous things. In some cases you could end up in prison in addition to fines, if caught. The more subtle things that add up to a big problem have been given a lot of leeway. Right now it is profitable for many parties to extract non-renewable resources, assemble them in to something that has a short life cycle, and be sold to consumers who would rather keep buying the same thing over and over again than a single time. There have been big incentives on the government side for hitting GDP numbers, which has led to both low interest rates and an urgency to extract and process non-renewable resources as quickly as possible. Capital utilization numbers certainly doesn't account for any of this and very well exacerbate the problem. I don't want to confuse cause and effect here, but the consumption of low quality products directly relates to the volume which they are produced. The actual costs have just been transferred to the future. In the future there will be both fewer resources to produce those goods and more pollution/ecosystem effects to account for it. At Berkshire Hathaway's shareholder meeting this year Charlie Munger specifically said he thought all petrochemical reserves would be eventually exhausted to make things, not for fuel (there was a specific word he used which I never use and forgot.) Billionaires are thinking about resource exhaustion. Poor, uneducated people are not, unless they are still in hunter- gatherer societies and see problems first hand. We often think of food and bio-products as renewables, but in many cases they are not. National Geographic (August 2016) ran a great article on the exhaustion of the Ogallala aquifer. California gets a lot of attention, but ground water is being drained globally. Longer term, there may be limits with phosphorus as well. Food production is going to become a lot more expensive, global warming or not. I don't know about the returns, but Al Gore's Generation Investment Management philosophically probably has the right approach. The flipside to all of this is that technology can make using the same resources much more efficient. My leading theme for the past 5+ years or so has been exponentially more efficient technology running head on in to global government policies -- of all political leanings -- of creating GDP growth at all costs. The two don't mix, and the results could be very ugly. ~~~ athenot Unfortunately, there is something far easier and cheaper (from the end user's perspective) to duming in a controlled landfill: dumping in random places. It's been a long battle in many places to get people to properly dispose of their trash in a proper way, it's still way too easy to revert to prior behavior. In many places in the US, people have to pay a private company for disposal or haul their trash to a landfill (usually in more rural areas). So it's a very visible cost, making savage dumping more compelling. ~~~ acaciapalm Exactly this. We socialize the cost of garbage disposal in the first world to disincentivize dumping. Worth it, IMO. ------ gambiting The only problem with repairing devices is labour cost, nothing else. I've had a broken subwoofer that I took to a small electronics shop(in UK), and was quoted 60 pounds to even have it looked at. Not repaired - looked at. The subwoofer cost me 80 pounds on ebay. So predictably, it went straight to the bin. Same with washing machines, dryers, etc - I bought a Hotpoint washing machine for 220 pounds, but a standard call out charge for an engineer to come and have a look is at least 100 pounds. Plus any parts + cost of labour billed per hour = it's cheaper to just buy a new washing machine and at least have a warranty on it. Now, I feel like this is exclusive to western countries, because people value their time a lot(as they should!) - but where I'm from(Poland) it would be stupidly cheap to get anything repaired. I had an old LCD TV repaired locally, the guy spent half a day fixing it, and only charged 100 zlotys(20 pounds/30 USD) - that included parts. Not sure how we can change that, unless we get the labour cost down. ~~~ gmac On your subwoofer, you can try listing that kind of thing on Freecycle/Freegle. Commonly someone technically competetent will pick it up to see if they can fix it. ~~~ kaybe Some cities also have repair cafes, where skilled idealistic people hang out with tools and help you try to fix it yourself. ------ Animats There are downsides to repairability. It means more fasteners to come loose, and more connectors to give trouble. It means more bulky devices; you can't cram everything in as tightly if it has to come out later. I restore old Teletype machines, which were designed to be 100% repairable. You can take them apart down to the individual parts and put them back together. Everything is attached with screws and lockwashers. Restoring an 80-year old machine is routine. They are not low-maintenance. Each machine has over 600 lubrication points. There are hundreds of things to be adjusted. You need a sizable tool kit and two suitcases of parts for normal maintenance. And you have to study up on how to do all this. Few people want to bother with that level of detail any more. ~~~ tgsovlerkhgsel Are those museum pieces, or are there some insane industries still using actual Teletypes? ~~~ Animats Museum pieces. It's a hobby. ------ jokoon I fail to understand why Scandinavian politics always manage to make sense. Is that cultural, historical, economical, or does the tough climate force people to think a little bit more about how they manage their society? ~~~ sheraz I see why you and many others living outside of the region would think that. Sweden is very good at only extolling her perceived "virtues" and sweeping the rest under the rug. Waaaay under the rug. There is a real moral and intellectual superiority among many Swedes that I find deeply distasteful. From environment to politics to how to bag your groceries, and yes--even close a door properly, the "Swedish way" is always promoted as the only "right way." ~~~ dijit Out of curiosity where do you live? Perhaps this is a regional thing but down here in Skane people are very humble about being Swedish, almost as if they are ashamed of some sort of history. They certainly wouldn't describe something as "the Swedish way" unless it was something about how the police are ineffective due to bureaucracy or something similar. ~~~ kalleboo It seems a lot more complicated than either your view or the grandparents. If you watch Fredrik Lindströms "Världens Modernaste Land" it explores the question of the conflicting Swedish self-image pretty well (and the history of how it became what it is today), but I wouldn't know how to summarize it in a Hacker News comment. ------ ersii There seems to be plenty here that like the idea of lowering the Value Add Tax on repairs. Let me ask: Why stop at 12.5% VAT for repairs? If you'd go all the way down to 0% - the repairs could potentially be up to 25% cheaper than they are now. ~~~ sliverstorm Perhaps if they make repair _too_ sweet, abuse will skyrocket asymptotically. Or, perhaps it transforms from "incentive" to "subsidy". ------ semi-extrinsic What we really need is financial penalties on companies that make stuff deliberately hard to repair. Set up a department of the Consumer Rights Bureau (or whatever it's called) where people can report devices the've been unable to fix due to deliberate obfuscation/etc., and that forces manufacturers to refund the consumer the entire purchase sum of that device no matter how old it is. Anecdote: my washing machine recently broke the main bearing, and I was going to fix it. Even found a nice teardown/reassembly vid on Youtube of the exact same model (a bit older than mine). After 2 hours of work, I discover Bosch has gone from using screws on the outer drum to plastic welding it shut. So fixing it means replacing the entire assembly, costing 2/3 of a new machine and with a four week delivery time for the part. I learned this is only done to screw consumers over, and that all manufacturers do it now. The drum still has all the mounting tabs for being screwed together, so they're literally just saving $0.30 on screws. ~~~ J-dawg That is utterly infuriating. Stuff like this really shakes my faith in capitalism. To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem. I honestly wonder how they sleep at night. The market clearly can't fix this issue, so regulation must be the only option. ~~~ icebraining _To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem._ Alternatively, they know that very few people did repair the old versions (barely anyone know how to do it themselves, and labour costs in the developed world make it uneconomical to call someone) and they decided to reduce waste (and costs, win-win) by cutting down on the number of screws. I don't know what actually happened, but it's unproductive to assume malice. The reality is that for the most part, markets optimize for what's valued for the consumers, and "easily repairable" is not a feature people value that much. ------ Shivetya Anyone can reuse old fully workable products in their every day life, it really is super easy and in many cases can be cheaper. While I do go occasionally go into thrift or antique stores, I also hit up garage sales, but my main source is ebay. Besides the good feeling from putting something back into service that would other wise be junked there can be some serious nostalgia involved. Examples, I have a Toastmaster 1b16 fully automatic toaster like my grandparents had in the 50s, works perfect regardless how many slices pass through it. Old glass plates (morgantown, crinkle, etc) that we use every day for eating. Milk glass spice dispensers, salt & pepper, and old glass water containers in the fridge for ice tea. You can even buy old tupperware or ceramic and glass storage for the refrigerator. My favorite has to be a the vintage fans, a six bladed brass Emerson (blades look like ship propeller) is flawless in use and over a hundred years old. About the only things I won't use are higher tech electronics, efficiency aside the older items may not even be usable because of software or serviceability ~~~ s3krit I really like this idea. I collect old videogame consoles, so I'm pretty used to paying Ebay for nostalgia. However, I wonder if old electronics are much less efficient and end up using more electricity - thus actually causing more harm to the environment than a newer but more disposable plastic model. ------ hlandau This is a very nice move to see. Other people have discussed washing machines below, but there's even more to say on them. Washing machines used to have long warranty periods. Nowadays they tend to be sold with a 2 year warranty, which I believe in the EU is the required minimum. And these manufacturers (Bosch, for example) even have the gall to claim that their products are high quality and that this warranty period somehow proves this, or is in any way a long period. AFAIK washing machines used to have 10 year warranties, but they cost more along the lines of £800. Now we have £250 washing machines with 2 year warranties. One way of reducing costs is to reduce the number of parts. Sealed tanks, as mentioned below, are one such example. This directly impairs the repairability of the product. I suspect also that models are released at greater frequency, possibly due to a need to take advantage of price fluctuations in wholesale parts markets (if you can make a washing machine using Part A or Part B, and one month A is more expensive than B, and then this inverts, this creates pressure to constantly design new models to minimise pricing). Though this is just a suspicion, it would make sense: I do know that the (monolithic) spare parts are stocked for a particular model for less time, which means that the prices of the spares which are available are very high. Water efficiency regulations also appear to have forced modern washing machines to use inadequate water for rinsing. There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing. Some people have even tracked down old (and for that matter better made) washing machines just to get one which will rinse properly. At other times the actual temperature of the water on the '60 degree' setting has been tested and found to be rather on the low side. (Supposedly all of this efficiency regulation, rather pathetically, only tests the 60 degree programme in the first place, putting a certain degree of competitive pressure on energy efficiency for this setting.) This is particularly insane given that the environmental cost of these quasi- disposable 2-year-warranty washing machines must be much higher than the environmental cost of their resource consumption. I think consumer goods legislation should recognise that different minimum warranty periods are appropriate for different kinds of product. A legally required minimum warranty period of 6 or 8 years for washing machines, for example, would instantly create pressure on manufacturers to increase the longevity and repairability of their machines. ~~~ logfromblammo I am only aware of one brand of washing machine that explicitly claims to be designed to be repairable by the end-user--Staber. I have never actually owned or used one before, so I'm not sure how fit for purpose it may be otherwise. I have successfully repaired other brands of washing machine, dryer, and refrigerator, though. It isn't that difficult, but obtaining the replacement parts is absolutely ridiculous. The first-party site for ordering replacement parts often charges 50-80% of the MSRP of a complete new appliance for just one replacement part. If any country wanted to encourage repair over replacement, tax incentives are probably not the best way to do it. Publish national standards for appliance form factors, such as case dimensions, screw hole placement, subassembly dimensions, connectors, drive belts, elastic ring sizes, etc. Then phase in requirements that all new appliances must conform to the standard by 20xx. If all washing machines conform to standard WM-S, WM-M, WM-L, WM-I, or WM-X, and those standards only have three different sizes of drive motor and one kind of power connector and one control connector, then manufacturing third- party replacement motors becomes more economically possible than the current situation, where a Brand X replacement motor might not even fit correctly in two different Brand X models. The chassis, outer panels, and drum of a washing machine just don't really need to be replaced, unless the paint chips and they rust out. Bearings, seals, motors, belts, control electronics, and knobs, on the other hand, those wear out. Perhaps I have just been spoiled by ATX standards for computer parts, and connector standards for ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIe, ATA, SATA, SCSI, M.2, and USB. All those standards mean that third-party manufacturers don't have to maintain separate silos for Apple, Dell, HP, Compaq, Tandy, Amstrad, etc. The third- party motherboard manufacturers can just conform to Intel + ATX to sell a product, and maybe also micro-ATX and mini-ITX to cater to small-system builders. It is not difficult at all to assemble a working computer where the CPU + chipset, motherboard, case, power supply, system memory, SSD, hard drive, removable disk drive, graphics card, monitor(s), keyboard, mouse, speakers, wi-fi, and Bluetooth are all made by different companies. But if you try to replace a single-phase AC 120V 60Hz 5A 0.5hp motor in an appliance with another of a different brand with exactly the same power rating, it probably won't work. The taxes are not the problem--it's getting the parts. As long as the only reliable source of usable replacement parts is the original manufacturer, of course repairing won't be viable. They would much rather sell you an entirely new product! ~~~ hlandau I think this is a bad idea. Standards are nice, but companies shouldn't be coerced into using them because there can be legitimate reasons to not use a standard. It prevents innovation not envisioned by the standard. I really think the simplest way to make this sort of thing happen is to increase the minimum warranty period. If 8 year warranties become mandatory, companies will need to be able to stock replacement parts for much longer if they don't want to have to replace the machine outright with a newer model when it breaks. They may then find that standardising parts is in their interests, etc. ~~~ logfromblammo Standards can change when necessary, in a way that gives all participants in the market ample warning, so that no one goes bankrupt when the big companies suddenly change direction. When PCI was introduced, motherboard manufacturers gradually increased the number of available PCI slots and reduced the number of ISA slots until the point where most of the market really didn't want that last ISA slot as much as they needed another PCI slot. ISA is still a standard. Nobody uses it because PCI was better. Likewise, AGP appeared, and then went away, because PCIe is better. Wi-fi standards have likewise evolved, from A, to B, to G, to N, to AC. Many devices are backward-compatible. But an ATX motherboard manufactured last week will still fit in the ATX tower case I bought in 1999, with a power supply I bought in 2009. The original manufacturer of that case does not need to stock parts for it, or even still be in business, because if I want another 120mm case fan, 10 different companies can sell me a new one that will fit (and 20 more would be willing to buy a fan from one of the former 10, stencil a logo on it, and resell it to me at a markup). Perhaps it would be better to enforce a mandatory standard for 10 years, to establish it in the market, then make it voluntary again, so that innovation could occur. Once a standard exists, there has to be a really good reason for deviating from it, otherwise the market quickly allows the non-standard thing to fail. If it succeeds, it becomes a new _de facto_ standard, and the official standard is likely to either adopt it outright or make the next version compatible. I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already exist. But after it exists, it is largely self-enforcing. To buck off the standard entirely, you literally have to be the size of Apple. And even then, I know for certain that there is at least one person alive that refuses to buy Apple hardware in part because of their proprietary connector shenanigans in a world where USB is a standard. ~~~ Grishnakh The ATX standard is the reason why no one bothers buying desktop computers any more except extremists and gamers. These computers are _way_ too large and inefficient and ridiculously noisy too, because they aren't properly engineered for sound and ventilation (because they're held back by the 90s-era ATX standard). Everyone's just given up on it altogether and now they use laptops, or worse, tablets. Even corporate desktops abandoned ATX ages ago and went to proprietary SFF cases. ~~~ logfromblammo I am moving from a laptop as my at-home computer to a quiet-build mini-ITX system literally this week, after the last parts arrive from Newegg. I think the ongoing market fragmentation resulting from the incompatible proprietary laptop form factors is pushing the whole industry towards consolidation and mergers, and will result in less consumer choice in the long run. I have been privately railing against this crap ever since Dell started shipping not-ATX-but-looks-like-it-at-first-glance power supplies in late 1990s. And Apple has always almost gratuitously used proprietary connectors and form factors, even when a perfectly usable standard already existed. They can all go to a Hell where nothing can interoperate without at least two adapters, and you never have both. I was driven to the custom build when the headphone jack on my laptop broke. I opened up the case and desoldered the broken one, and the microphone jack, and resoldered the unbroken jack into the headphone jack's place. That worked for a while. Then the laptop keyboard stopped responding to about 5 keys--all of them rather indispensable for typing words. So I replaced the keyboard, and the replacement is just a millimeter too small, so it constantly pops out of its recess whenever it shifts and the plastic clips disengage. Then the headphone-jack-formerly-microphone-jack broke like its predecessor. I already knew the component itself was impossible to find to replace it, so I looked to replace the motherboard. That would cost more than a newer, more capable laptop, if the part had even been in stock. So I'm building a system such that if anything breaks, I can just replace that one part. I can't get decent repairability without building it myself, and I can't build it myself if there aren't any rassafrassin' _standards_! I would have built my own clamshell computer (not even necessarily a "laptop"), but no one mass-produces an empty clamshell case for consumer sales, because there is no laptop-standard form factor. Replacement parts for laptops are always expensive, and frequently out of stock. ~~~ Grishnakh I did something of the opposite: I used to have a big desktop. I got a laptop later so I could do stuff at coffee shops and elsewhere. But I eventually got tired of the size and noise of the desktop (even though it was loaded with big, slow 120mm fans), and of the syncing issues with the laptop. I had wanted to build a quiet miniITX system, but finally gave up on that idea because of everything I've seen with "standard" ATX and ITX cases: they just are not engineered for quietness. The best you can do is go to water cooling, and I find it ridiculous that I'd have to go to those lengths for some quiet. So instead I've just gone the laptop route. I can buy a Dell enterprise-level Latitude laptop on Ebay for $150 easily, that's only a few years old, and it's portable and quiet and reliable. It even comes with a magnesium chassis. And if it breaks, I can buy a new one for $150 and resell the old broken one on Ebay to someone who wants the parts. These laptops are extremely ubiquitous (because they're used by so many businesses), so the parts are readily available if I want to just repair it, plus they're built to be fairly easily serviced (the older E6400 and E6410 had only one screw on the back panel). If you were buying consumer laptops, that was your problem: those things are crap and not made for easy servicing. You complain about "if the part had even been in stock": on my Dells, I can easily buy any part I want on Ebay: a new screen, a new motherboard, a new keyboard, a bare back panel, a speaker grill, anything. Everything is in stock. You don't need to build a laptop yourself to get decent repairability; you just need to get a decent laptop and not a consumer-grade POS. Then, so I can have a nice workstation, I got a docking station that supports dual DVI/DisplapyPort monitors, USB3, etc. These docking stations are standardized for Dell business laptops, so I can plug a huge range of them into it. ------ acd Globalisation vs the environment Globalisation means consuming cheap stuff made in a low cost country that does usually not last that long and transported over long distances. Built to consume in cellphones are integrated batteries and cheap components that by design fail after three years so we buy a new phone. Integrated storage of a limited size that you cannot expand. Making things that does not last is more profitable than making things that last long why is that? How 16 container ships pollute more than all the cars in the world. [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships- create-pollution-cars-world.html) On one hand economists wants us to blindly consume as much stuff as possible since that is good for the economy. The other hand says we pollute the earth and use to much energy which means we need to consume more durable goods which lasts longer. How do we integrate the environment in the economy? ~~~ devdas Taxes. Externalities can be factored into the price. Build the price of recycling into the product, and make the vendor liable. ------ ab5tract Correct me if I am wrong, but under ISDS rules (a la TPP/TTIP), companies could now sue Sweden for potential lost profits as a result of this legislation, right? (Assuming Sweden is signed onto an ISDS treaty, which it probably is not). ~~~ madgar In the US, I can sue you just for making this hacker news comment. Doesn't mean I'll make it past the first hearing. ~~~ ab5tract That lawsuit would be in a civil court, with civil lawyers and actual judges. Not a room full of round-robin corporate laywers. My comment was not about whether it would be successful. My question was whether it provided the means to initiate a lawsuit. ~~~ jcranmer So you'd rather the case be decided by a single lawyer^H^H^H^H^H^H judge than a panel of lawyers. Even in common law jurisdictions, most of these sorts of cases tend to focus on disputes over issues of law (hence tried by a judge), not issues of fact (which are the only issues which proceed to a jury trial). Judges are usually lawyers before becoming judges--that's not terribly surprising, considering that judges are expected to know a lot of legal theory, which is essentially the same training you undergo to become a lawyer. Fearing the provisions of ISDS would undermine the principles of justice means that you would rather trust the judgements of a single, likely overworked, lawyer who is expected to know the entire relevant body of law and case history for his or her jurisdiction over the judgements of a panel of lawyers who are likely to have somewhat specialized in the area of dispute being covered. ~~~ ab5tract You have thrown up a false equivalency and are pursuing it in an odd manner. What I would prefer is that there is absolutely zero mechanisms for a corporation to sue a government over "potential lost profits". This is just not at all the same as discussing a potential lawsuit over defamation / libel / whatever "you" would be suing me over a comment for. And, yes, in that case I would still prefer to go through the normal court system with laws written by my legislature rather than a room full of mega corps and trade representatives. ------ flexie The rationale behind is sound but the trick is to design the rules so that all gains aren't lost in the cost for administering the rules. Differentiated VAT and/or deductions are notoriously expensive and prone for cheating. It is very difficult/expensive to check if a service provided was the repair of an existing item or a new item installed (or something else entirely). ------ hammock So the opposite of Cash for Clunkers.[1] Would a Keynesian then expect these tax breaks to crash the economy? [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System) ------ berntb This has probably more to do with Sweden having so high taxes on labour that repairs becomes impossible without a tax break. An average Swede gets ~ a third of the money the company pays for his wages. (30% tax, 30% in social charges etc.) If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore the other costs here.) So, in sum, because of the taxes etc, a Swede have to work [at least] a full day to buy an hour of work time. (Reservation for the exact numbers. It was a while since I lived in Sweden. People might keep 40% or so now, but I also ignored a lot of extra costs.) ~~~ vidarh According to the OECD Taxing Wages report [1] for 2016, the total tax wedge for Sweden, including employer contributions, is 42.7%. (Note: for those who are confused about it: This is _not_ the percentage tax paid out of contracted wages - the average tax paid on the contracted wages are much lower) > If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as > himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore > the other costs here.) That may be true, but not due mainly to taxes, but because you are also paying for "dead time", marketings costs and others. [1] [http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset- Management/oecd/taxatio...](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset- Management/oecd/taxation/taxing-wages-2016_tax_wages-2016-en#page20) ~~~ charlesdm Don't forget to add their 25% VAT rate if you actually want to spend your money.. so you end up with 42.7% + 25%. That's nuts. ~~~ titzer Wouldn't that be 42.7% + (57.3% * .25) = 57%? ~~~ berntb The difference is that the previous government lowered the taxes for the first 20K SEK earned per month. (This was mostly after my time in Sweden.) My point regarding the impossibility of service work at these levels stands. Quite a few tax exemptions had to be created to get the population to start paying taxes for those kinds of jobs. Edit: For the part of the salary above ca 19K/month, you're correct. In fact, the taxes are progressive, so it is even worse. ------ ap22213 What is it about Nordic countries that allows them to avoid corruption and political decay? As an outsider, it seems that they're always experimenting with new approaches and evolving the government and laws to keep up with the changing needs of the citizenry. In the US, I felt like we were starting to get somewhere back in the 90s, but it's been a downward fall since then. Now, corruption permeates even at the local levels. Many of the people that I talk to blame the lack of time. I don't know - but there's major apathy and cynicism, and it seems to be getting worse. ------ PaulHoule Odd that appliances are on the list because we're likely to see another wave of changes for refrigerants. Back in the bad old days people used refrigerants such as HCFCs that were bad for the ozone layer. Now they use straight HFCs (no chlorine) but those are potent global warming gases. At some point there is going to a push to replace those with fluoroketones. So repairing old air conditioners, refrigerators and such may not be such a great idea. ------ dvtv75 At this time, I am fighting with a Samsung Syncmaster 2333SW Plus. It started fading to white every time blue was displayed, then it would overflow back to a normal image and fade to white. I'm told this is a fault in the t-con (timing controller) board - some people have noted it's just a bad solder connection, so I'm going to have a look before I replace the board. I have a donor screen that I got apart (the 2333HD) in about four hours, but the 2333SW Plus... I've been trying for at least 12 hours to get that thing apart. (I've sanitized this post.) The sides of the casing are free, but the top and bottom edges just won't let go, and I can't afford to break the internal clips. I honestly can't decide between RageGuy and Samir's rage at the printer not printing properly. ------ thght Heaps of old stuff is broken because of planned obsolescence. Is it not a waste trying to repair that rubbish that was originally designed to break soon and hard and expensive to repair? Lowering tax for companies that produce sustainable products seems more efficient to me. ------ jwatte One side effect of building for repairability is that objects will be bigger and clunkier, which will use more materials and cost more (and burn more fuel) to transport. I'm all for repairability, and even better, building things that will last 25 years, not 25 months. But that will come at a different price than perhaps many expect, and in some cases, it actually won't make sense. Money is how we measure and gate access to scarce resources. If it costs more to build repairable items, and then repair them, then it is likely the case that those repairs actually waste more resources! However, insofaras the resource being wasted is human work time, there is of course a trade-off to be made. ------ Pica_soO If a company made a extremely enduring and time-resistant valuable product, wouldn't it make more sense for the company to lease the product out to the customers - and for the state to support this model by making it tax-free after a time? ------ maerF0x0 IMO the only reason we do not have a culture of repairing is because we subsidize the waste processing stream and thus we only see lower upfront costs. If I had to pay an extra $25 disposal fee upfront on a microwave, maybe I'd be incentivized to buy a quality item or maybe repair it in the first place. As well, repairing/reusing is a function of average cost of a worker. If a repair man has a fully loaded cost of $50 an hour, then you're not going to see many repairs happen. If its $5 an hour then you might see more. Expensive labor leads to all kinds of seemingly insane behavior. ------ bgammon Impermanence could be considered a value in certain cultures. "Disposable Culture" vs. "Repairing Old Stuff" isn't a useful dichotomy. Everything has an expiration date, and often that date is carefully considered as part of a product's design. The goal shouldn't be fixing old stuff, but finding out how to increase efficiency either by making product's expiration dates further in the future, or compromising having an imminent expiration date by making the product easy to recycle. ~~~ clock_tower What cultures value impermanence? The only one that comes to my mind is the US -- and we're unsustainable, burning through resources on an unprecedented scale. Take the time to do things properly, and they endure: Caxtons are the gold standard of book collecting in England today, and Albrecht Duerer's house still stands in Nuremberg. (You also spend less money by building, or generally making, to last. Western and Central Europe have a lower GDP than the US but a comparable standard of living...) ------ grizzles To truly fix the situation would probably require: 1) Tracking every single saleable physical asset 2) Paying manufacturer's a small fixed income type subsidy for every extra year their product lasts. 3) Charging manufacturer's a small penalty tax when their product becomes waste. #2 is essential because otherwise manufacturing obsolescence into the product will be more profitable for the company. The economic reward of long lasting product & enduring customer relationship needs to be better than sell one every few years. ------ kwhitefoot Never mind repairing old stuff; just make it easier to pass on stuff. I suspect that Sweden is similar to Norway (where I live) and immense amounts of current electronic gear is thrown away. A lot of it is in usable condition (for some value of usable anyway) but I am not allowed to take it away from a recycling station. ------ barisser Should the state really presume to sway cultural trends? It seems strikingly arrogant and likely to be counterproductive. ------ a-no-n My MagSafe adapter has probably 5 packets of Sugru, both preventative (anti- drop and strain-relief) and repairs, on it and some two-part epoxy to fix some minor nicks in the small cable. The one of the cable winding "wings" just broke, but it still works. I might buy a second in 2018. ------ yig Repairs are uneconomical because they have to compete with the assembly line. Assembly lines are an incredibly productive way to make identical things. Repairs are typically different. Like Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ~~~ dmix You can adjust assembly lines to make your products easier to repair though. For ex: it's far easier to fix my old thinkpad laptop than my newer X1. Part of this is the demand for smaller/thinner products but I also feel it's a lack of effort by the manufacturers these days. They are almost incentivized to make repair difficult and deprioritize longevity in favour of the customer buying new devices each year. Which is about as long as any of my cell phones typically last before I break or lose them (1-1.5yrs), although I'm a bit clumsy and forgetful (a symptom of ADD :P). ------ Gravityloss Basic income + no minimum wage would make it much more attractive to do local repairs instead of manufacturing stuff far away where wages are lower or labor and environmental regulation much more lax. In my country, youth unemployment is around 20%. ------ mhb Reducing a 25% tax on repairs is seen as an insightful and brilliant way to incentivize repairs? Well knock me over with a feather. Where is the previous article about how that level of tax is crazy to begin with? ------ iamgopal I think ideal way is to charge people for dumping the waste, and use that money to properly recycle all the material therein. May not be ideal in terms of energy efficiency, but its highly workable solution. ------ rumcajz Alternative approach: Require people keep everything they buy for 10 years. They'll be quickly fed up with their houses full of old broken gadgets, cardboard boxes and used wrapping foil. ------ macandcheese "Own few but good things" \- love everything about this as it relates to living "modestly minimal" as I call it. Buy a small amount of high quality possessions, and take care of them. ------ titzer Wouldn't a high sales tax promote exactly that? ~~~ eveningcoffee Sales tax also applies to the services. More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country with smaller labor costs. ~~~ charlesdm > More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing > disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country > with smaller labor costs. Sounds like a very clear flaw in their economic and taxation model. ~~~ eveningcoffee This flaw is called free trade. This problem used to be fixed by higher customs. But we generally prefer free trade, so they have to try other initiatives. ------ Dowwie I guess they'd need to explicitly de-classify commonly repaired items from this? ------ sjg007 Funny... I tried to fix an IKEA lamp and finding parts was impossible. ------ Pigo Could a company hypothetically create an extremely solid phone with interchangeable parts when upgrades become available, and it's not done just because they profit more with the current model? Or is this just not feasible? ~~~ Sharlin Yes, but it would be huge and expensive and nobody would want to buy it. Plus modularity and BW compatibility requirements would severely limit the design space available for further evolution (both look and feel and internal hardware aspects). Highly integrated hardware and systems-on-a-chip do have several advantages but are pretty much the antithesis of modularity. ------ CPLX I was happy to see that the author did pause to note the irony of this policy being implemented by the same country that brought the world IKEA. ~~~ ska Besides the category error of conflating corporate and state implementations - complaining about the existence of IKEA is a bit like complaining about the existence of fast food. Clearly there is massive demand for both, so lobbing darts at the most successful producers of same avoids all of the interesting questions. ~~~ CPLX I don't detect any complaining in my post. Just noting the (considerable) irony in Sweden leading the charge against "disposable culture", as did the article's writer. ~~~ ska Perhaps I read more into it than you meant - fair enough. You are still conflating Sweden and IKEA, which is just silly. Also IKEA's m.o. is more cheap and cheerful than disposable, so what irony there is, is a bit weak. ~~~ Gravityloss Have you tried moving Ikea stuff? A lot of it is unlikely to stay in one piece. And I don't mean it can be disassembled and reassembled. Even their chipboard is of lower strength than ordinary, quite an achievement.

Canvas-sketch – A framework for making generative artwork - hunvreus https://github.com/mattdesl/canvas-sketch ====== mattdesl Hello! Cool to see my framework here on HN frontpage. I’ve been using this for some time now for all my production work — including generative art (prints, laser cuts, 3D printed models, plotter art, etc) and client work (interactive Canvas and WebGL productions). I’ve run a couple workshops with it and smoothed out most of the kinks, but it’s still fairly experimental so please open an issue if you run into any problems. :) ~~~ mkl A suggestion: Include a gallery of images produced by canvas-sketch. From the readme and documentation, it's pretty hard to tell what canvas-sketch is capable of. ------ billdybas Matt has a really great course on Frontend Masters [0] where he shows you how to use canvas-sketch and make generative art. [0]: [https://frontendmasters.com/courses/canvas- webgl/](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/canvas-webgl/) ------ andybak A running example would be really nice. I'd be much more likely to try it out if it was one click rather than a bunch of node stuff. ~~~ tyingq There is one demo linked to in this issue: [https://github.com/mattdesl/canvas- sketch/issues/36](https://github.com/mattdesl/canvas-sketch/issues/36) The issue expands on your suggestion as well. ------ beardicus `canvas-sketch` is pretty great... I've been having a lot of fun making generative doodles using just the canvas API, but of course you can also use p5.js and other frameworks if you like. it's just nice to have the easy hot reloading and outputting to png and svg and gifs or movies all set up for you already. ------ wsdfsayy Are there business use cases for canvas other than drawing? Just curious if there are companies actually using canvas to do something... ~~~ ralusek It's used for rendering graphics of any kind that don't lend themselves well to the DOM. I worked on a project where we used the canvas element as a video player, rendering one frame at a time on it. ~~~ SimonDorfman I’d like to hear more about that project. Can you share a URL if it’s public? I’ve imagined making something like that for showing a version of a super-8 film at 18 frames per second. ------ grenoire Does this do much else than exposing the canvas context to you with some extra element options? ~~~ beardicus it handles hot reloading, high resolution raster output, animation and gif output, and has some handy features to help you keep track of code when you're quickly iterating while sketching. ------ pictur why preact? ~~~ mattdesl Just to clarify: preact isn’t currently used in the current library/dist on npm, just in some unused source code (which I need to clean up). At some point I will try to add GUI hence the need for preact. ~~~ pictur understood thanks. I've used preact before, but I think the latest versions are very bad.

WordPress vs. Wix – The Story Behind the Headlines? - velmu https://hostadvice.com/blog/wordpress-vs-wix-story-behind-headlines/ ====== 123qwe123qwe WOW

RFC: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Minimal Images - pella http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2018/02/rfc-ubuntu-1804-lts-minimal-images.html ====== fotcorn I did a short comparision between this and alpine by installing nginx inside the image (I used nginx-light inside ubuntu): CONTAINER ID IMAGE SIZE 493450e7bc12 alpine 1.37MB (virtual 5.52MB) 62b1db90500c ubuntu:bionic 6MB (virtual 87MB) I deleted the cache files from apt after installing (/var/lib/apt/lists*) Looks quite nice, but it seems Ubuntu packages are much bigger than Alpine package, e.g. Postgres is 159 MB in Ubuntu Bionic and only 32 MB in Alpine (including dependencies). Do the Ubuntu packages have more feature than the equivalent Alpine packages? ~~~ petre Alpine is compiled against musl libc, so the binaries are much smaller. Id addition to tgat, it uses Busybox. ~~~ anarazel I can't imagine that to be one of the more significant factors in this case. It's much more likely that the ubuntu version includes a lot more functionality. Just looking at the configure flags: Alpine: --with-ldap --with-libedit-preferred --with-libxml--with-openssl --with-perl --with-python --with-tcl --with-uuid=e2fs Debian: \--with-icu --with-tcl --with-perl --with- python --with-pam --with-openssl --with-libxml --with-libxslt --enable-nls --enable-integer-datetimes --enable-thread-safety --enable-tap-tests --enable- debug --disable-rpath --with-uuid=e2fs --with-gssapi --with-ldap --with- selinux Specifically the differences in enabling ICU (portable collations) and nls (i.e. translations) alone are probably going to be the majority of difference in installed size. ------ segmondy Did most of you read the article? I see folks suggesting what can be removed. They can't do that. "The Ubuntu Minimal Image is the smallest base upon which a user can apt install any package in the Ubuntu archive." ~~~ kstenerud From the article: "Do you see any other opportunities for savings? Can you help us crop the Bionic Beaver images any further? Is there something that we've culled, that you see as problematic? We're interested in your feedback" ~~~ braindongle "Crop the beaver"? Seriously? It also says "Shave the beaver"! Is it me? Is this thinly veiled high school innuendo? ~~~ kuschku Ubuntu uses animal names as codename for releases. After Artful Aardvark now follows Bionic Beaver. ~~~ isostatic Breezy Badger being already used (before they moved to incrementinf letter based system - having done hoary hedgehog and waryy warthog. It wasn't until the first LTS version, dapper drake, that the letters started matching the release number. The second LTS, or 8th release overall - Hardy Heron, in April 2008, was the second "hh" version. Shockingly we still have 6 hardy heron boxes on our network in far flung locations. ------ matt_wulfeck The problem with these 30 MB images: apt update -y apt install -y telnet Now you have a 200 MB image. ~~~ gerdesj I think you miss the point but feel free to provide feedback to the devs: this is a RFC after all. I have used the minimals for years now and they really do give you a pretty decent starter for 10, with a minimum of hassle and a minimum of bloat. Boot the ISO (PXE, obviously) and off you go. Even doing the install by hand, you get a _fully_ patched basic server up and running within 10-20 minutes - the install is all off the current packages. Add Samba and a few copy n pastes and you have AD joined. A few more copy n pastes from your docs and you have an app server. I wrote this lot: [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Intranet](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Intranet) which simply assumes Ubuntu mini at the moment. I do have screenshots and could put together a pretty noddy guide for that bit but I'm not sure its necessary. Actually now I come to think of it, it probably is. Couple that with my Ref. build and you have a domain joined, Kerberized etc app server within about an hour if you do the job by hand and are unfamiliar with the process. I can do it rather quicker. Yes, the installer is a 30MB image - good. An installer's size is no reflection on the installation size. EDIT: I am from the sysadmin side of things and not dev ops ... ~~~ dsr_ Sysadmin/devops is a nearly meaningless distinction. When a developer needs to write installation or configuration code, they cross over. When a sysadmin needs to write code to monitor applications, they cross over. Senior sysadmins need to write more code, senior developers need to know more about systems and networks. Twelve years ago, I hired senior sysadmins. About seven years ago, I hired senior devops. Same people, same skill sets, same approach. ~~~ gerdesj "Sysadmin/devops is a nearly meaningless distinction" It should be as you say but it isn't really. I too hire and fire. To be honest "dev ops" should not really exist but has become a thing. Many who describe themselves as such do not bother with the nuts and bolts. To be fair to them, though, quite a few sysadmins I've known are a bit slack on the networking side, for example. _sigh_ ------ KingEllis I have feedback on the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Cloud Image that I am hoping reaches the right ears. There is something about the way the disk is partitioned that makes the use of virt-resize no longer work (as it does for 16.04). Specifically, I am referring to: [https://cloud- images.ubuntu.com/bionic/20180124/bionic-serve...](https://cloud- images.ubuntu.com/bionic/20180124/bionic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img) The boot partion looks to be sda14 or sda15. But judging from the output of virt-resize, it appears that although these are sda14/15, they appear in front of sda1. (When virt-resize is run on sda1, sda14 becomes sda1, sda15 becomes sda2, and sda1 is now the resized sda3, and grub is confused. $ virt-filesystems --long --parts --blkdevs -h -a bionic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img Name Type MBR Size Parent /dev/sda1 partition - 2.1G /dev/sda /dev/sda14 partition - 4.0M /dev/sda /dev/sda15 partition - 106M /dev/sda /dev/sda device - 2.2G - $ virt-resize --expand /dev/sda1 bionic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img bionic0.qcow2 $ virt-filesystems --long --parts --blkdevs -h -a bionic0.qcow2 Name Type MBR Size Parent /dev/sda1 partition - 4.0M /dev/sda /dev/sda2 partition - 106M /dev/sda /dev/sda3 partition - 25G /dev/sda /dev/sda device - 25G - I am hoping this can be addressed before April, as I would prefer not to maintain my own LTS image (that doesn't have this issue). ~~~ dustinkirkland Thanks! I'll make sure that gets to the right team! ------ Afforess My 2 cents, and possibly quite wrong: Is the ncurses packages really necessary in the minimal ubuntu image? It seems likely that curses based programs should be likely candidates for exclusion in a minimal image, as they are not usually meant for automation. Also, why are there still motd files in /etc/update-motd.d? No sshd but still a motd? Odd. ~~~ Aloha ncurses is required, debian-installer (which is used for all the configuration dialog post install too) require it. ~~~ Daviey You should be able to use readline rather than ncurses.. Or for dpkg, you could also use the noninteractive frontend. ------ theandrewbailey I've been using the MinimalCD images[0] to install Ubuntu for years. (They are the minimum you need to boot, and they download everything else to install Ubuntu.) I'm guessing that these aren't what's being talked about. [0] [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD) ~~~ KayEss I'd been doing the same thing for a long time (loved how fast it was compared to the normal installer, especially in a VM), but the last install I did was with debootstrap straight onto the target disk from another running machine. A bit of a learning curve the first time, but I think I'll try it again next time. ------ aplorbust Not a Linux user but out of curiosity just looked at the "Trusty Tahr" 37MB amd64 minimal image (mini.iso). Most recent amd64 minimal image is 58MB ("Artful Aardvark"). Trusty Tahr bzImage compressed kernel is 5.5MB. The initrd.cpio.gz is 20MB. The uncompressed initrd is _52MB_. Assuming most of the initrd size is modules, can the Linux user reduce the size of the initrd by compiling own kernel and creating own initrd with only the modules she needs? ~~~ subway Or just ditch the kernel and initrd entirely. If you're trying to save a few MB on an Ubuntu image, you're almost certainly working in a container environment where you don't need a kernel inside the fs. If you really do need a kernel, and the few extra MB required by modules is a problem, you should probably be using Buildroot or Yocto for your bootloader/kernel. ~~~ gerdesj I don't think everyone is working within a container when they boot a Ubuntu minimal, unless your containers happen to have a BIOS or similar. These things are a full OS installer ie put it on a USB key, CDROM, PXE boot or whatever. These are a minimal installer and not a minimal installation, although that is a side effect - you don't get much out of the box but you can add everything later. You could, for example, do a minimal install and then do "# apt install libreoffice" and with luck (not too sure) get the whole lot - X etc - to run it. You might have to add a Window Manager and a few other things. ~~~ subway I agree -- there are plenty of reasons to use a minimal Ubuntu install. My point was that if size constraints are so tight that you feel trimming kernel modules out is a reasonable use of effort, then Ubuntu starts to be a more awkward fit. If you constantly have to trim away bits left by the package manager (man pages, examples, extra kernel modules), your time is probably better spent with a distro that allows you to avoid ever laying those into the rootfs to begin with. Also worth noting:these images _are_ full minimal root filesystems. "installer" images refer to the images containing software --the debian/ubuntu installer for bootstrapping a root filesystem onto a mounted volume. The minimal images from thearticle do not contain this installer, and are stanalone root filesystems. ~~~ secabeen Yeah. To be more clear, you can install a "minimal" system of Ubuntu on bare metal by just installing the "required" packages only, although I think the default if you don't select any tasks in the installer is to install "required" \+ "standard", which is a small amount more than just "required". Either way, it doesn't include much. I have to install openssh-server on my "nothing-but-standard" systems, before chef comes in and drags along another 1000 packages. The installs the OP is talking about are images that don't even have a kernel, and don't use the traditional installer. ------ LinuxBender Somewhat off topic: Is there an effort similar to this for CentOS 7? The centos minimal image is still rather large and I have to do some really ugly things to prune it down. Even then I can not get it down anywhere close to 80 MB. That would be amazing. ~~~ anonacct37 It's been my experience that people are less open to hacking CentOS/RedHat. It's pretty much you get what you get and changing anything makes it unsupported which defeats the purpose of using an enterprise distribution. That's not my opinion, it's what seems to be the community's opinion when you bring up things like using non-stock kernels. ~~~ mastax Seems like it would make sense to have a CentOS version of RHEL Atomic Host/Fedora Atomic though? (I know nothing about CentOS) ~~~ emmelaich [https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/Atomic/Download](https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/Atomic/Download) ------ butz Would be nice if desktop Ubuntu images became smaller as well. I have a few 1GB USB drives just waiting for it. ~~~ dustinkirkland Stay tuned :-) That's my next post... ------ verst This could be smaller by removing compilers and build headers. If I'm not mistaken I see GCC is currently part of this. I would prefer to manually install build-essentials when needed (I can then get rid of them after compiling via multistage builds). Alpine Linux specifically makes you manually install compilers and necessary headers via apk add --update build-base EDIT: Make is not being installed by default. But I would like to manually install GCC as needed (for a truly minimal image). EDIT2: I stand corrected. Looks like GCC isn't installed by default (which is exactly what we want for minimal images). Awesome. ~~~ roller The gcc-7-base package (assuming that's what you're looking at) looks like it's just an empty directory to put various gcc things and some basic docs. [https://packages.debian.org/sid/gcc-7-base](https://packages.debian.org/sid/gcc-7-base) [https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/gcc-7-base/filelist](https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/gcc-7-base/filelist) ~~~ verst Thanks! I was looking at [1] and wasn't sure if those were binaries. That's perfect then. Install GCC, compilers, build headers etc via `sudo apt- get install build-essential` when necessary. So this should be the same general approach as on Alpine. [1]: [https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/26506363/](https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/26506363/) ~~~ geofft libgcc_s.so.1 is a collection of utility routines used by all sorts of programs. The entry named "gcc" is a directory (that contains only empty directories?). /usr/share/gcc-7/python/libstdcxx/ is from the libstdc++6 package (looks like gdb pretty-printers for C++ standard library types). ------ peterwwillis I used to build embedded Linux distros for a hobby. The best, least aggravating way to have minimal platforms is to build them from scratch. Not only are they 10-50x smaller, you have more visibility over what's installed, and it's easier to tailor to your use case. ~~~ revelation Something like OpenWRT or buildroot can fit into 8 MiB easy. These people have an actual reason to make small "containers" because flash is a big part of the BoM cost and adds up when you are shipping many thousands. ------ mwj If this is for deployment, why not just use debian slim? ~~~ make3 I suspect, though I could be wrong, that the reason would be that some packages support Ubuntu specifically and not Debian, because of a larger consumer user base. An important example of this is the Nvidia CUDA toolkit, which supports Ubuntu and not Debian. ------ hodl How big is templeos LTS minimal IMG? ~~~ hodl 16mb ------ pikchurn Posting here rather than the blog because I don't have a google account: What about adding sshd to the minimal install? If the purpose of this is minimal installs of containers and cloud servers and such, that seems like quite an omission. ~~~ acomar This is supposed to run inside of a container. Why would you want sshd inside of a container? ~~~ pikchurn I use containers as lightweight VMs in many places. Generally I see this as a way to get a minimal install that other tools can then configure appropriately, with up to date packages fetched from upstream mirrors directly, instead of installed from CD and then upgraded. I currently use packer.io to script the creation of a bunch of server images, and for ubuntu I've missed the "minimal install CD" that other distros have. Instead packer has to download a 800MB CD image, in order to install only a few hundred megabytes of uncompressed packages in a bare-bones install, which is then provisioned using some orchestration tool that at its heart uses ssh to login to the virtual machine. Not having SSH means you need to add in some sort of serial-attach step to manually install sshd, or hook into the install scripts to download sshd as part of the install or whatever. Either way that's additional custom work that is probably common to a great many use cases. ~~~ verst So why not build your own version with a SSH daemon if you really need it? I don't think most people need the SSH daemon in their container image. Your Dockerfile could be something like this: FROM ubuntu:bionic RUN sudo apt-get install openssh-server -y && sudo service ssh restart These are definitely not the complete steps for setting up SSHd but you get the idea. ------ tomc1985 Wonderful, I've always hated how much crap a default Ubuntu install comes with. 10% idle CPU usage just after OS install? Ewww. ~~~ Lev1a How many DECADES old is your hardware that an idling just-set-up Ubuntu uses 10% CPU? ------ revelation What is the obsession with smaller images? If you are running out of disk space before CPU, RAM, IOPS, network, well there is a cheap fix for that. ~~~ geofft Containerization - taking a deployment that previously was made of lots of apps running on one OS on one physical machine (or a relatively generous fraction of one, as a VM), and turning it into lots of apps each running on their OS on top of the same amount of machine. Containerization significantly increases disk usage for each container and probably increases RAM use a little bit, but to first order does not affect CPU or IOPS or network. ~~~ revelation I understand it is about containers. But no disk space of the world is worth your container app crashing because someone wanted to save a few megabytes by ditching glibc or otherwise just pushing more work into each and every individual container. It's Java Enterprise all over, who cares it's always allocating tens of GiB of RAM, you have to get to the point of buying a lot of it before it makes an hour of an engineers time worthwhile.

Inc.com | 30 Under 30: America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs - horatio05 http://www.inc.com/slideshow_INC/slideviewer.cgi?list=30under2007&dir=&config=&refresh=15&scale=0&design=default&total=22 ====== zaidf A guy by the name of Ryan Allis ought to be on that list. ------ jl Congrats Sam Altman!

Show HN: Lens Battle – Make comparing lenses easier (with leaflet.js) - bwang29 https://www.polarr.co/lens/50mm ====== bwang29 OP here: some of the misalignments are caused by distortions and slight camera movement. Those are the hardest to control and require repeated try. The Sigma lens is also overly heavy that pointed the camera down-ward a little. Will try to do better in the next round of lenses. ~~~ zhyan7109 Pretty good start i'd say. Nice to see leaflet.js getting used outside of maps. A couple comments: 1. the choice of the subjects is questionable. Couldn't you have chosen a better scene? Perhaps a landscape/portrait where extra detail can be more easily compared between the photos. Let's be honest, who's ever gonna take a photo with these lenses on a doll. For crying out loud, get some models and I guarantee this will take off! 2. would like to see more lenses to be added, along with different zoom settings ~~~ SlowOnTheUptake I'm no lens expert but I'd imagine that the differences in lighting and motion in landscapes and portraiture between takes might obscure the subtle differences between the lenses themselves. The static subjects probably give a more fair comparison. ~~~ kpaddie Difference lenses have very different MTF (resolution vs how far away to the center of the lens) in theory and because of the different lens internal structure, they also have different fringing, distortion performances as well. The bokeh look different depending on the shape and the number of aperture blades. Sometimes it is not clear whether spending 2x or more is worth it so this is I believe very helpful to help buyers to see what's the actual differences of lenses are without all those fancy ads. ------ Ecco That's very, very nice! Thank you! I noticed that on the most expensive lens, in the "car" scene, the focus seems to be very different than with other lenses. Which makes the comparison difficult. Your DLSR most likely records autofocus points: it might be a good idea to actually display them in the JPEGs, because at such high apertures you really want to look at what's in focus. ~~~ bwang29 OP here, we sort of screw up on that one. Should have done at least two groups of auto focusing and manual focusing. The car scene was done in a a little rush because the sun is moving. Not sure what's going on with the sigma but we made sure the camera beeps when it reports in focus at the medal Jaguar logo. If people like this idea, we will get more lenses in the next series and add Canon and other brands if possible. Right now the original JPEG is around 14MP and very slow to load, so we had to slide them into tiles thus using leaflet.js. ------ tonetheman When you switch photos I might pull all the way back out. It looks like you stay focused in. Meaning whatever I was focused into on the picture I was just on is not important to the new picture. So pull back out. Ha hopefully that made sense. Super cool idea. ------ enhaog Want to see more comparison between lenses for Canon. ~~~ vvanders The Digital Picture does a fantastic job with center, corner and mid-frame crops: [http://www.the-digital- picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-...](http://www.the-digital- picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx) Highly recommended, their reviews are also fantastic. ~~~ bwang29 Great resources. These are almost always qualitatively correct but it's hard to see the lens performances in real settings (out of paper) and to get an overall holistic view of the differences in "looks" . Both approaches have their merits.

Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking - Scramblejams https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installing-apps-on-my-pc-without-asking/ ====== sofaofthedamned For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility that wanted an entire system doing malware analysis. The bare servers were running Linux, but some of the software used Windows so there were Windows VMs there. Usual KVM stuff. Bear in mind this is a closed system and the Windows VMs were ephemeral, i.e. had to be discarded and reset after each malware run where we did static code analysis etc. So we used the Professional (hah) version, with AutoUnattend.xml or whatever it was to automatically reset them. This worked fine until after a certain point with WSUS - we obviously applied security updates - where the VMs wouldn't boot. Turns out that a point in Windows 10's life they decided you needed a better version of Windows to be able to do the equivalent of a preseed or kickstart. 4 months of work disappeared, plus the additional licence cost; need to run a domain etc etc. Luckily I left soon after but trust me - at any future role I will look at every possibility before Windows. I moved a subsequent client (large international appliance manufacturer that you've heard of) to Linux servers precisely because of this sort of shit. Windows is done, it's just a case of when it disappears. This is exactly why Microsoft are pushing Azure and Office - they know the outcome, they're just squeezing the pips until it happens. ~~~ EpicEng >Windows is done Your use case is very niche compared to how MS makes most of its money on Windows licenses. Windows isn't going anywhere until it's no longer pre-loaded on every machine, enterprise customers stop buying it completely, and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience. ~~~ sofaofthedamned How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business? I know for a fact the malware analysis software we used are now planning a Linux version. I've literally persuaded a multinational to not continue using .net and Windows servers because of my argument that it's not sustainable. They alone are tens of thousands of Windows licenses that may go to Red Hat or even Centos or Ubuntu. Windows has already started to go - my son doesn't know how to use it, all he's used is Google Docs or an iPhone / iPad. There is no love for Windows, only halcyon remembrances from the likes of myself who remembered the golden days of MSDN subscriptions. There is literally not a startup on the planet who will decide 'fuck it, we'll use a windows domain and Office instead of o365 or Google Apps. ~~~ EpicEng >How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business? Lock-in, that's how. The customers they care about don't always have practical solutions, and most aren't able to make a call that will benefit everyone in e.g. 5+ years after spending a massive amount of money. Also, what are you replacing the desktops/laptops with? ------ Sir_Cmpwn When you choose Windows, the computer uses you. When you choose Linux, you use the computer. Stop complaining and start switching. It should be apparent by now that Microsoft isn't going to stop their bad behavior. ~~~ Sohcahtoa82 I'd switch to Linux in the blink of an eye if I didn't have to worry about my games working. WINE is great and all, but it's still not 100% compatible. ~~~ Sir_Cmpwn Do you also own a PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii, and a Nintendo Switch? Do you miss the exclusives on them? You'll survive without the handful of games you have to leave behind. ~~~ badsectoracula FWIW there _are_ some games on those systems i'd love to play (Last of Us being an example), but at least i know that they'll eventually be emulated so even if it takes 10, 15 or whatever years i'll play them at some point. But the two major differences between what you are talking about and what others are talking about are that a) we have the hardware, it is totally a software issue and b) we are mainly talking for software we already have paid for, not software we may or may not buy in the future. But hopefully as Linux becomes more popular with gaming (and Microsoft is distracted with UWP and the like), Wine will also see improvements that make gaming better. Already since Valve shown up and rattled things, Wine's gaming compatibility seems to have improved a lot compared to previous years. ~~~ Sir_Cmpwn >we are mainly talking for software we already have paid for, not software we may or may not buy in the future. A solution for this is to set up dual boot or whatever and use it only for the Windows-only games, until you get bored of them. Then kill Windows and you're free. ~~~ craftyguy This is the exact path I took ~15 years ago. Once I realized I didn't care much for the 'exclusively windows' games, I killed my windows partition and haven't looked back since. The exciting twist to this story is that many of those games are now playable on Linux because of Wine! ------ Scramblejams It’s hard to believe that the loss of goodwill is worth whatever revenue Microsoft’s gaining from this, so I have to assume this is them dipping their toe into a strategy that attempts to make them more relevant to users. Maybe a reaction to the Windows app store’s lack of success? Thoughts? ~~~ m_fayer Using their products, you can so easily taste how Microsoft is trying to become an "ecosystem", a "lifestyle brand", a "platform", and so on, and to use their OS as the relentless foot in the door for getting there. To me it's another nail in the coffin of general purpose computing. We've accepted that mobile devices/OSs are not for general purpose computing and expect that they come with a "lifestyle" to hawk, now one of the major general-computing OSs is heading in the same direction. ~~~ jbigelow76 _Using their products, you can so easily taste how Microsoft is trying to become an "ecosystem", a "lifestyle brand", a "platform", and so on, and to use their OS as the relentless foot in the door for getting there._ I think the irony of that statement is from Windows 3.1 and on Windows (25-ish years) was already THE defacto PC platform. I was a pretty big MS fanboy for a long time (and make my living with .NET and their developer tools). But MS's quixotic fetishization of their app store to me looks like dousing the legacy (no pun intended) of their platform with gasoline and lighting it on fire. Edit: format tweak ~~~ thomastjeffery Indented text in HN is monospace and respects newlines (no word wrapping). This makes it unreadable on mobile unless the lines are very short. The generally preferred way to quote on HN is to begin the line with a > and wrap the quote with * if desired. It's an issue that comes up too often that HN needs to fix, but here we are. ~~~ AnimalMuppet The reason HN does indented text that way is for code. People on HN post code snippets as a fairly regular thing, and having code snippets word wrap (or eat white space) is really confusing. The problem isn't that HN does that with leading space. The problem is that people use leading space for quotations, which isn't what it's for. ~~~ thomastjeffery The problem is that there is no markup for quotes, so people try to fill the void with an indent, which gives the most obvious difference to text. ------ duncan_bayne Many (most?) people on Hacker News might be too young to remember the Halloween Documents. They were internal Microsoft documents describing their proposed strategy for dealing with competition from then-new Free Software alternatives: [http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/](http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/) If you want to understand why Microsoft is acting the way they are, read those documents. It's not that I think they are still executing the strategies and tactics spelled out therein. Quite the contrary; Microsoft realises they've lost the OS war to Linux (on one front) and OSX (on the other). The point is how astonishingly user-hostile those memos are. They lay out a strategy for competing with Free Software that has almost nothing to do with their users' needs and wants. Instead, the obvious assumption is that their users will be sacrificed to their (Microsoft's) strategic goals. That's not to say that individual Microsoft teams don't produce excellent, user-centric software (two I can think of in my own experience are Excel and Visual Studio). But the executive leadership, and company culture as a whole, seems to care little about the people who actually use their products. This was clearly true back in the 90s, and is clearly true now. In the 90s it was 'embrace and extend', in the 2010s it's 'track and advertise'. ~~~ BinaryIdiot Those memos are over 20 years old. You can't point to something 20 years old and say "see, they did it before therefore that's what's happening today". I'm not a fan of what they're doing with some of the Windows 10 defaults. But you gotta be crazy to not see the user improvements they've done in so many other areas. They are a very, very different company than they were back then. I'm not saying that excuses anything but you're drawing false equivalences using a 2 decades old set of memos to try and back it. ~~~ Karunamon In the same way, you also can't say "That's 20 years old and not relevant anymore". Appeal to novelty fallacy and all that. Are they _really_ that different of a company? Microsoft is _huge_ , organizational memory is long, and decisions made long ago, whether rational or mere cargo culting, will affect how they run today. I'd argue they're a bit more cunning, but not one whit less underhanded. The EU browser ballot thing was considerably more recent, for instance. The forced W10 upgrades with the trick X dialog. Dark patterns surrounding use of a Microsoft account. Non-disableable telemetry. Hawking Edge in a way that would even make Chrome blush [1]. I think they know that they can't be as overt anymore; a couple of antitrust suits will do that to you. [1]: [https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg) ------ beached_whale I use Windows when I have to now. I used to use Visual Studio as it is really good. But since Windows 8 and more so Windows 10 they have started taking from me. I paid for Windows 10 Pro, but I am subjected to the task of repeatedly removing software, or adverts for software, that I explicitly said remove. This is repeated when major updates go through. Plus the extra data and processing to get a system that isn't using my resources for tasks that I did not ask it too. It is my computer, not theirs. So I dual boot and 99% of the time sit in Kubuntu land and my computer is fast, responsive, and generally only doing what I ask it too. As it should be. Microsoft found a way to take an i7-7500 with 32GB of ram and make it feel slow on a fast OS. Windows 10 can be fast. ~~~ itwy Your last sentence doesn't make any sense. ~~~ beached_whale Windows 10 would be fast if it wasn't busy doing tasks I didn't ask it to. ------ vbezhenar Those articles are funny because for me all previous Windows versions were unusable, but I've found Windows 10 just the best OS. I don't have Facebook preinstalled and even if it was, I couldn't care less about it. There are bazillions of DLLs and other stuff preinstalled, what's the deal with one HTML page that I don't even run. I value other things, real usability improvements (for example virtual desktops are much better than macOS ones) and technical advancements (Linux subsystem, hyper-v, PowerShell). ~~~ Sylos I'm not sure how you would create a worse implementation of virtual desktops than Windows 10 has them: \- No indication of other workspaces existing. \- No indication of what applications are in those other workspaces. \- The keyboard shortcut for walking through desktops requires two hands (and in typical Windows fashion cannot be rebound). I'm not familiar with macOS' implementation, so if you actually think that it's worse, then I would like to know how. Also should be said, though, that you can replace the window manager on macOS, which should allow you to get most of the features of an actually good implementation of virtual desktops. I'm not aware of a way to do that on Windows. ~~~ vbezhenar I guess I'm using it differently, because I don't find those issues so important for me. I'm using desktops as a different computers for different states of mind. One desktop has some relaxing read (hacker news, for example, or reddit), some explorers, notepads with not so important stuff. 1-2 desktops for work projects, usually it's exactly one desktop. One desktop for gaming and related websites, discord, etc. I'm switching between them may be one or two times a day. I can see that if you're using multiple desktops for a single project, something like multiple displays and often switching between them, they might be not that usable. macOS implementation was bad, because I accidentally switched between desktops all the time. It shows all launched apps in the dock from all desktops. If I'm working on my project, I don't want to see that I have Battle.net client launched and 10 unread notifications in Discord guild channel. If I'm clicking on Safari icon, I want to launch new window on current desktop, I don't want to switch to another desktop with some random website. Anyway the main point of virtual desktops is that they are implemented at OS level. Actual interface is not very important, because if API exists, 3-rd party programs can embrace it. For example Windows 7 had virtual desktops implemented on system level (there wasn't UI to manage them), but API was very limited, for example it wasn't possible to move windows between desktops. Also applications usually weren't aware about those desktops and sometimes were outright buggy (for example you couldn't launch second Firefox window on another desktop). ------ TwoNineA I set up my brother in-law's new HP laptop he got from Costco and I had to spend over 2 hours removing crap from it. The amount of crapware installed (and a lot of them are MS apps) is unreal. ~~~ HenryBemis (Unfortunately) HP has been loading their machines with crapware for about a decade now. :( ~~~ TwoNineA Why is MS cramming down my throat some 3D Pain thing, Augmented Reality crap and other apps I don't care about? Edit: Oh and Camera app. On a desktop. Without even a webcam. What is the justification for that? ~~~ Amezarak > Why is MS cramming down my throat some 3D Pain thing, Augmented Reality crap > and other apps I don't care about? How many OSs come without any graphics applications installed? > Edit: Oh and Camera app. On a desktop. Without even a webcam. What is the > justification for that? Because a lot of hardware _does_ have a webcam and thus benefits from having the app, while hardware without it sees nothing but a negligible HHD space impact. ~~~ Sylos Coming without any graphical applications and coming with 3D or AR software is a big difference. 90% of users will be able to make use of a simple image editor. 0.1% of users will be able to make use of 3D and AR. ------ derrikcurran There are so many accounts of Windows 10 being installed, (re)installing apps, adding tiles that were previously removed, etc. without permission... but none of it has ever happened to me and I don't understand why. It's bewildering. Maybe it's because I have Windows 10 Pro instead of Home? The only thing I've seen is that it's pretty aggressive about badgering me to restart for an update (but doesn't restart until I say it can). ~~~ zeta0134 I don't know how much truth there is to this, and I'll check with my personal machines when I get home (I run Linux at work) but when I worked in a retail space, the apps that were pre-loaded varied based on the OEM. Dell got a set, Toshiba got a different set, Lenovo got a different set, etc. Sometimes it varied based on the particular line, like HP would include a different set of games on their laptops that had touchscreen devices, etc. I'm not 100% confident on this and I haven't worked in Retail for a couple of years thankfully, but I suspect strongly that the apps that are installed are pushed not by Microsoft, but by the OEM in their recovery image. I suspect thus that if you buy a standalone version of Windows 10, and clean install the machine with nothing else on the hard drive, that you won't get those apps pre-installed. But buy a computer with Windows 10 preloaded, and the sky's the limit, the OEM pushes what they want, and Microsoft makes it difficult to opt out. I'd love someone else to weigh in on this, because I've been distanced from the situation for a while. But no matter how you slice it, users are getting increasingly frustrated, and I think it's a terrible business strategy for Microsoft. They've ruined any potential trust I might have had for their app store before it had a chance to even take off, and I'm not sure they'll be able to recover. If anything, I've got my eyes on Google, who stand positioned to completely shake up the personal computer space with Chrome OS and its budding Android apps support. It'll be interesting to see how the space unfolds. ------ bondolo I have never used Windows 10 nor made significant use of any Windows version since Windows XP. Nonetheless my parents asked me to look at some issues they were having with their laptops. The trend of increasing clutter that has plagued Windows since XP seems to have accelerated. The user experience appears to have been designed by a hoarder. I spent a significant amount of time asking "Do you know what this is? Do you use it?" to be able to remove some of the many goo-gahs that had been helpfully installed by either Windows or one of their devices. It made me sad that my parents just accepted that this was how computers are because they were unaware that the crap-strewn- everywhere experience was a deliberate choice for the Windows ecosystem. ~~~ thirdsun To be fair, I'm not sure if Windows alone is to blame in this case. If you're not familiar with Windows and try to clean a PC that isn't yours, it's probably hard to tell what was user installed, what was pre-installed by the manufacturers (they love to include bloatware and unnecessary "tools") and what actually came with Windows. It's very easy for unaware users to install all sorts of crap and they never know where it came from or what it does - that's basically every PC of a non- tech-savvy user ever. ------ aphextron To anyone wondering, all of that crap can be removed with PowerShell: [https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-remove-bloatware- window...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-remove-bloatware-windows-10/) ~~~ edsouza I have done that before, but on the first anniversary update, they all come back. I will try it again, and wait for the next anniversary update to see if they come back again. ~~~ slumberlust Spoiler: They will come back. ------ xeromal I'd recommend running Windows Server 2016 or Windows 10 LTSB to avoid the entire mess. I run WS 2016 for my dev machine and I haven't had any issues and I don't have to deal with the damned Windows Store. ~~~ Groxx Any problems with Server / LTSB for gaming? (honest question - that's the sole reason I have windows _anything_ and I'd be _thrilled_ to get rid of all the absolute nonsense they've been throwing at me) ~~~ xeromal I run server 2016 and I can run all my dev tools. VS Code, VS 20x, SSMS, MySQL, PostGres, Xamarin. On top of that, I can run Rome 2 Total War which is not a simple game. It runs great. ------ keithnz It's a tricky problem. I think tech people are fringe. For me, I would want to disable it all. But if people can turn it off then it doesn't let microsoft improve and adapt. In concept, I kind of like the idea the OS could anticipate the things I need. It's how we imagine futuristic computer systems. It's a bit different from the traditional OS where you are the master over everything. I'm not sure many on HN are going to like this thing, but I would think MS gets to see the stats and has better view of how well they are doing. Percentage wise it might be working out pretty good, however, each percentage point they piss off ends up being a lot of people and if the fringe of tech people are in that 1% that can end up in a lot of angry blogs. ~~~ tmorton _boggle_ What? NO. Just no. This doesn't "anticipate the things I need". It doesn't "anticipate" anything. It's not "the things I need", it's whatever MS decides to promote. There's a vaguely similar feature, that would be vaguely defensible - but this isn't it. This is malware, plain and simple. ~~~ titanix2 Totally agree. My computers are my things and should be under my control only. That’s why I’m wary of Win 10 which forces system replacement, install softwares without consent, display advertisements, can preload UWP apps in memory, etc. All this things might be an acceptable comprise on mobile for some people (which include myself) but is a big no go on anything desktop or server class. My harware is not here to be part of someone else botnet. If MS wants my money, let’s make good product without subscription and let me pay for it. I would be glad to pay 20 to 50€ for Visual Studio if it encourages user friendly business practices. ~~~ keithnz your computer is your thing, install whatever OS you like. If you want a non consumer experience and want windows, go with a server product. People are never gonna be happy with change. Not so long ago they took paint (which they insisted on us having whether we wanted it or not) out of the base install of their "botnet / malware" and people lost their shit. Now windows dynamically asks you whether you want a program and people are again losing their shit. In both cases it's microsoft making a call on what apps are on your machine. In both cases you can uninstall them. ------ mixmastamyk I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole a product from a company that that thinks this is acceptable. ------ Animats And that's why my one remaining Windows machine runs Windows 7. ~~~ djaychela Me too. I have a perfectly functional music studio computer that's dual- booting Win7 on both partitions - one for more general use and making YouTube videos, and the other for making music. I've had quite a few 'why aren't you running Win10' comments... I have nothing to gain and a lot to lose - time if nothing else. I hate the Win10 UI, bloatware and changing things without your consent, and Win7 works perfectly for me at the moment. ~~~ tim333 Yeah I 'upgraded' to 10 then 'downgraded' back to 7. I've yet to regret going back. ------ ulkesh Hey Microsoft, also stop rebooting without asking. In fact, just stop automatically doing anything and let me choose to do it myself. Be more like Linux. ~~~ Tijdreiziger This doesn't work for a majority of Windows users, because when given the choice, they will never reboot. ~~~ ulkesh Which is how it should be. Microsoft should design their OS to not require reboots for updates. The only time I ever have to reboot my Linux box is for a kernel update — that’s it. ------ hokkos Windows has a new feature called "Controlled Folder Access", it is a security mecanism that protect from ransomware. It is a great idea, but the implementation is annoying. It block write access to selected directories, so lot of software fail to add a link to the desktop, or add files in the Documents folder. It should have protect agains delete not new file creation. Also the default Defender antivirus is so slow, it make the installation of software package 2 or 3 slower. [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10s-...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10s-controlled- folder-access-anti-ransomware-feature-is-now-live/) ~~~ emodendroket To protect from ransomware you need to at least prevent modification of existing files. ~~~ Sylos Which he did not argue against. He said that creating new files should still be possible. ~~~ emodendroket Well he only mentions delete. Do the Windows permissions actually make a meaningful distinction between create and modify? I think that might have been difficult to do without completely rewriting a lot of stuff. ------ remir I whish ReactOS was mature enough that you could run every win32 programs and games in it perfectly. ------ Timothycquinn Had similar experience with not being able to disable the windows store for my kids accounts. It was simply not possible and I followed all the Microsoft recommended procedures and external suggested ones to no avail. I just gave up and stopped using Windows for my family computer and spun back up an older mac Mini. This kind of lock in is very bad for the ecosystem and is a security nightmare. I don't know if I will ever use consumer grade windows for my personal computers any longer. ------ expertentipp Now we won’t because your computer belongs to us. psssst have you heard about our new programming language TypeScript? Just adopt it, this time it will work out perfectly between us. ------ x3sphere I only run Windows inside a VM now. The main reason I didn't switch to Linux sooner was because of games, but GPU passthrough works well enough now that I can dedicate my main GPU to a VM and get close to native performance (within 3-5%). Currently I have a Vega 64 configured for passthrough on a Threadripper 1950X system and it runs great. It's much more convenient than dual booting. ~~~ Qerub I find this solution interesting. What virtualization software do you use? In what way to do you expose input devices to the VM? ------ nkrisc I've considered upgrading to Windows 10 from time to time but then I read something like this. Is there a way to completely/permanently neuter the Windows App store and functions like the one mentioned here? ~~~ Chardok Unfortunately any workaround we find has been "broken" with the subsequent Windows update, meaning Microsoft is actively working against any fixes for it. I would love to be proven wrong, but the only way I know for sure is upgrading to the Enterprise or education editions. ------ ThoAppelsin This isn't really an issue that goes beyond your first 1 hour on your new Windows 10 computer. You delete them, and then they are gone forever. They _do not_ re-install themselves, they only come with a new user account. They were annoying to me, only when I had installed the Windows 10 for the very first time, 2 years ago. I had several Windows 10 re-installations since then, and it really isn't worth nagging about them for the 30-45 seconds they steal from you as you remove them. Besides, my housemate actually liked and kept some of them on his account. It probably really just does increase the overall customer experience. ~~~ mikhailt Except on two separate machines, a Windows update reinstalled them for me. MS did said it was a bug but it happened a few times after that for me. ~~~ ThoAppelsin I think I also may have had some ads back with a major update (e.g. Creators, Fall Creators), but I don't remember having them back ever with the normal updates. In any case, it really is just a breeze to remove UWP apps, and they leave no trace either, so I cannot rationalize how it can be this so annoying to anyone. ~~~ suby The ad issue is separate to me. They keep adding ads to more and more places in Windows 10, and each location has a different toggle to turn on / off. I turned off all advertising options in Windows 10 when I first installed, only to be greeted by another ad months later which they had added with a newly downloaded update. The toggles aren't even centralized, you have to hunt them down in different menus. I have a hard time believing this wasn't done on purpose. ------ hello_asdf Is there a list of domains that Microsoft is using to download these apps from? I can't find one by Googling. ------ rbobby It's going to be odd if Win10 gets labeled as PUP (potentially unwanted program) by antivirus software. ~~~ gruez which is going to happen... never. unless that said antivirus wants to commit market suicide by pissing off every user. ~~~ mtgx True. But it could make for a pretty funny April Fools' joke (-in disguise). ------ garganzol Never happened to me. I use a free tool called "Spybot Anti-Beacon for Windows 10" [https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/](https://www.safer- networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/) on ALL machines I have. Cannot recommend it enough.

Citron Exposes the Dark Side of Shopify - base http://www.citronresearch.com/citron-exposes-the-dark-side-of-shopify/ ====== netrap Is Shopify really $11B valuation? We're screwed...

Ask HN: Search engine submission? - Sealy I&#x27;d like to know how the HN community submits their sites to search engines and gets them indexed? Besides DMOZ.org are there others which people would recommend? ====== johnmurch Search engines have changed. Although my 2004 response might be something like goto www.google.com/addurl and submit, in 2013 you need to up your game. Focus on getting a link to your site from other high authority sites. Look at guest blogging with a link to your site. Better yet, create some awesome content that gets picked up by HN or some other popular news sites. Sharing is caring :) Good Luck

Ask HN: Are There Any Startups Trying to Bring Us Cheaper Cell Phone Service? - rxl Many of us pay $100 or more &#x2F; month for our cell phone bills (or close to it). Your cell phone bill could be just as high as your monthly car payment. Does that make sense? How much value are we really getting for that price? Are there any alternatives to this ridiculous system? Are there any startups trying to take on this oligopoly?<p>A proposed solution: (1) get a Clear Voyager (comes with unlimited internet access for $50&#x2F;month) (2) connect to it using a mobile device (3) surf the web and make calls w&#x2F; Google Voice<p>Do you have any other solutions in mind? ====== cjfarivar Yeah, too expensive phones are a pet peeve of mine. See: [http://ars.to/17BuE6s](http://ars.to/17BuE6s) QUOTE: But what I’ve always wanted here in the US is what I had when we were living in Germany from 2010 to 2012: a cheap, prepaid, debit-style mobile offering, where the receiver doesn’t pay for incoming texts or calls. In nearly every other country in the world, this seems to be the norm. For two years, we were happy customers of Blau.de (an E-Plus MVNO). The company offered a prepaid 1GB of data for just €10 ($12.60) and €0.09 ($0.11) per minute to any German phone number and €0.09 per text to any German mobile phone. In Germany, we spent something like €40 ($52) per month on average. That's roughly half of what we currently spend and about one-third of what most similar iPhone users pay stateside. Last month, I reported from Belgium on what may be my favorite mobile provider anywhere in the world: Mobile Vikings ([http://ars.to/12Bmo1G](http://ars.to/12Bmo1G)). With any luck, they’ll launch soon in the United States. I'd take the company's basic offering in a heartbeat: €15 ($20) per month for 2GB of mobile data, $0.32/min for voice, and 1,000 text messages. Another favorite of mine is 3 in the United Kingdom. This company offers a 30-day deal for just 15 British pounds ($23), which includes 300 domestic minutes, 3,000 text messages, and unlimited data. (Remember, incoming is free in Europe.) More than the Verizons and AT&Ts we're used to, Roam Mobility and Ready SIM are closer relatives to these appealing European offers. ------ Torkild In all seriousness, I registered false datum with Assurance Wireless, sponsored by Virgin, and am now using a free cellphone (or "Obama phone" as some voices in the media call it). Per month I receive 250 free minutes and 250 free texts. The only precursor was to "prove" that I am currently enrolled in any of a number of welfare programs (such as the "SNAP" food stamp benefits program). I understand what I am doing is illegal, but earlier this year I realized I did not feel comfortable anymore paying so much for something that seemed to be benefiting others far more than me. ------ cjfarivar For the time being, my wife and I use Straight Talk ($45 mo = unlimited talk/text + around 1-1.5GB of data [it's unclear]) It's an AT&T MVNO, and no 4G, but it works for us, and is the cheapest option I could find. (We both have unlocked iPhones.)

Ask HN: What are the "big five" dedicated server hosts to look at first? - GigabyteCoin I am after a basic entry level dedicated server and don't want to go with a fly-by-night operation.<p>What are the first 5 dedicated server companies I should take a look at before anyone else? ====== dangrossman I made up a chart of who hosts 300 YC-funded startups: [http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/09/24/who-hosts-the-y- combi...](http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/09/24/who-hosts-the-y-combinator- startups/) Rackspace and SoftLayer are the only dedicated providers with significant numbers. I host Improvely and W3Counter at SoftLayer. ~~~ GigabyteCoin That is even better than random HNer's advice/votes. Thank you for making the list. ------ JoachimSchipper You'll get better answers if you ask a more specific question. E.g. Hetzner is an established company that will give you lots of server for your buck (and you may be interested in <http://www.serverbidding.com/>); but if you're trying to run a game server for your buddies in the US, the fact that's in Germany means that you won't have the best ping possible. Similarly, OVH's budget brand KimSufi is unlikely to go under any time soon, but your questions won't exactly be a priority for support. RackSpace is the opposite - they try to offer excellent support, but they definitely aren't the cheapest. Finally, AWS and Linode have their own advantages; unless you're sure you want to stick with dedicated, at least consider those - if only because you can claim "cloud" experience. ;-) ~~~ GigabyteCoin >Similarly, OVH's budget brand KimSufi is unlikely to go under any time soon, but your questions won't exactly be a priority for support. What kinds of questions won't be a priority specifically? "What is linux?" or "Can you please reboot my server?" types of questions? ~~~ JoachimSchipper From sniffing around a bit a year or so back, while considering them, they're pretty fast with "please reboot", but you'll have to get "real" OVH if you want support that will help you with more complicated questions. Reading HN, it seems that this is still the case. OTOH, as you suggest, there are lots of questions a capable sysadmin can find the answer to without help. ------ Pyramids I'm surprised Internap hasn't been mentioned, they're quite large, have a great network and support. Other worthy mentions include Rackspace, SoftLayer, Leaseweb, Peer1 and SecuredServers (aka PhoenixNAP) all of which are large companies by hosting provider standards. Also, in Canada there are iWeb and Netelligent who have great networks. Based on personal experience with all of the above, Internap, Rackspace and Netelligent have given us the best value and overall experience. ------ ohashi Our data here might help you: <http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare/#tab3> We show any company offering them, so they may not specialize in them. I don't want to bias your own process for evaluating though by injecting my thoughts. I hope the data helps and if you have any questions, I would be happy to try to answer them. ------ tokenadult What is Wikipedia hosted on these days? The last time I looked at Wikimedia Foundation's tax exempt organization documents, a big part of the foundation's expenses were paying for web hosting. ------ t0 You can build your own server for several hundred dollars and ship it to a colocation datacenter. When you do the math, paying $100/month for a $300 server doesn't make sense after 3 months. ~~~ ethomson You're not paying $100/month for the machine. You're paying $100/month for management, and paying $300 for a server is a waste of $300. I admit, it's been a while since I've done any systems administration myself, but I wouldn't even trust my personal blog to a $300 machine. I'm not even sure I'd trust a $300 rackmount chassis. When I start to think about colocating my own server - and thus being the one responsible for its maintenance - I immediately think of redundant _everything_. That means RAID. That means dual, redundant, hot swappable power supplies. That might mean two machines. Because even if I live in the metro area that I'm colocating in, me driving in to get physical access to the machine means downtime. And that assumes that I have exactly what I need to restore that machine on-hand. (I probably don't.) And these are things that I'd rather pay somebody else to deal with. ------ ScottWhigham I think that I'd start with Rackspace, Amazon, Softlayer, and "other". ------ beat Pick the one that feels gut-right, and look for reasons to shoot it down. Giving yourself a menu of choices leads to analysis paralysis. Better yet, back it up a level... why do you need a dedicated server, rather than cloud hosting? Dedicated servers go strongly against industry trends. ~~~ austengary Why do you think that is? Hosts push cloud as it furthers their bottom line. Cloud is popular because it is cheap. For consumers and providers. If you know exactly the resources you'll need and have infrastructure in place to scale then sure, VPS/cloud hosting might be good if you're looking to cut costs. In the end though, you'll always be sharing and limited. If you're approve dynamic allocation then you'll just be paying for it at a premium. ~~~ beat Not saying that cloud over dedicated host is the answer. Saying that it is an important question (and the answer should be application-specific). When you find your business decisions going against the herd, you should really ask yourself WHY you're going against the herd, because our herd is pretty smart. That doesn't mean you should never go against, just that you should make sure you're thinking it through. ~~~ austengary I did receive that from the upper portion of your response. I was just eloboarting further for the OP as your first did insulate that de facto equals to correctness. Yes precisely but one with such a question has already deomstated anayalsis to a level of a threshold where such alternatives would not hwve been considered if not for the existence of prior sufficient evidence for valid uncertainty of accepted standard. ------ austengary Rackspace, Softlayer, Savvis, Hetzner, ServerBeach. ------ PaulHoule If you look at five of them you are overthinking it. You only need to pick one. ~~~ GigabyteCoin I am not looking at 5 but I wish that I were. What is your dedicated server host of choice? Or did you just come here to detract from the conversation?

The seeds of the next housing crisis have been planted - lisper http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-next-housing-crisis-is-pending-2016-05-04 ====== chubs Some good thoughts on this topic I read recently: * Quantative Easing (eg printing money) floods the economy with money, it has go somewhere. * Since the real economy (manufacturing / information) isn't growing, the money flows into assets (eg real estate or stock bubbles) * When there's zero interest, it exacerbates the problem, because if you've got capital, it's impossible to find anywhere to invest it to get a return. Hence you're incentivised to put it into assets. * Basically you're not seeing assets (houses/stock) going _up_ in value, you're seeing money go _down_ in value. It's basically out-of- control inflation, it's just that the inflation isn't spread evenly yet. Disclaimer: These aren't my ideas, i'm merely parroting. But i thought they were clever and worth sharing. ~~~ ftwinnovations These ideas are more than just clever, they are exactly what is happening due to money printing and zero to near-zero interest rates. You restated the facts well. As to those who claim QE ended, and other nonsensical ignorant claims, that is irrelevant. The money went to reliquify the broke banks' balance sheets, and so of course did not immediately leave their digital vaults. That takes time, and we are slowly (technically not at all slowely) watching the destruction of the dollar's purchasing power via mass inflation, beginning with the assets closest to the money printing spigot: real estate, stocks, fine art, and other elite assets. ~~~ rmrm and yet the dollar is not substantially weakened vs other currencies, it is quite strong. This isn't a dollar specific phenomenon at all. It seems a more appropriate statement would be destruction of all currencies purchasing power. Which leads me to wonder - what is the impact of that exactly? Should the dollar be allowed to strengthen greatly (relatively to basket of all other currencies), is that what people are proposing? Can we guess at what the dollar based economy might do in that instance? ~~~ toephu2 "is quite strong"...yes currently, but the decline has already begun against major currencies, e.g. JPY: [http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=JPY&view=1Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=JPY&view=1Y) Also checkout the dollar index: [http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy](http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy) ~~~ rmrm My point is that other currencies are not static. All the world economies are jockeying to have relatively weak currencies, in order to attempt to spur inflation and ease their debt loads. It's all relative. The US is not in some particularly bad spot, certainly Japan and Europe finance ministers would trade places with ours any day of the week. We have a remarkably strong economy (and everything else, really) in comparison (which is all that matters). ------ kin The anecdotal example of Brooklyn is a bad example IMO. Everyone knows how gentrified Brooklyn has become. As a result, real estate prices for those areas are going way up. For those in SF, the same is happening to Oakland. Also, having just got a mortgage, I can anecdotally counter that despite Quicken's claims with Rocket, getting a mortgage, at least a "good" mortgage loan is still incredibly difficult. Thanks to 2008, 2016 loans require a shit ton of disclosures. So, if there's a bad loan lying around, you best bet it's going to be hard to disguise it. As for the < 20% down? That's not a sign of a bad economy per se. I'd factor that more to a generation of poor savers. NPR recently had a whole segment on how little the current generation of millennials saves. Home prices increasing is due to the fact that it's a seller's market. But, rent prices are increasing as well. IMO you could look at it from a different perspective. Recent homeowners are buying because it's currently cheap to borrow and the long-term result is that they actually save money because rent is increasing at such a dramatic pace. All said, I do agree w/ the headline, just not with the author's anecdotal proof. ~~~ placeybordeaux I agree. Talking about there being a housing bubble like the one that popped in 2008 would need a whole hell of a lot more than mentioning how some of the most expensive places in the world are expensive. ------ joshuaheard "Since government agencies back about 80% to 85% of new loans..." That's the problem right there: government is underwriting the risk. Get rid of GSE's like Fannie Mae setting standards and underwriting risk, and you will return to a more normal market fluctuation. ------ draw_down I think this story shows why it's so important to remember how credit-rating agencies and investment banks added so much fuel to the fire of the last crisis. Otherwise you will think the whole problem was silly people taking out mortgages they couldn't afford and say "this is just like 2007". Anyway, I could buy the idea that once again some portion of homebuyers can't really afford what they're buying, but there won't be the crazy systemic effects that happened last time, unless once again bad mortgages are being sold as good ones, buried in financial derivatives. Personally I think the situation is worse than a bubble- I think this is just how things are now, if you want to live in a city. The demand really is there to sustain these crazy valuations, and young people and those of us who don't own are just screwed. ~~~ roofer I agree. I think it's not really a bubble. It might go down a little, but not -30% like it did in 2008-2009. Which means we are all going to pay lots of $$$ to live in desirable areas. QE benefited people who bought in 2009-2012 ------ narrator 1\. Give a whole bunch of loans out. Profit! 2\. Loans pay for houses to be built. Profit! 3\. Credit crunch. 4\. Take back homes in foreclosure. 5\. Fed prints money to buy the defaulted mortgages. Profit! 6\. Lend new bailout money to private equity buddies to buy the foreclosed houses. Profit! 7\. Rent houses to previous homeowners. Profit! All this is necessary because banking is the foundation of our economy, the most important sector of our economy and the source of all jobs and growth in our economy. There is no sacrifice too great that our country must endure to save the banks in step 3 as the whole economy revolves around the glorious "doing God's work"[1] cycle detailed above. [1] [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/goldman-chief-says- he...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/goldman-chief-says-he-is-just- doing-gods-work/) ~~~ cylinder A nation's banking system reflects its core values, its culture, its fundamental values Not the other way around ------ cubano And why wouldn't this happen again? All the people and corporations whom profited dearly from the 2007 scam got off completely scot-free and were made then whole on the backs of the US taxpayers (actually, their grand or great-grandkids, because the money used to pay the bills was borrowed and added to the $20tril debt) They fully expect to be bailed out again, so again I ask...with big money to be had and almost zero risk to the players, why would anyone think its not happening again? ------ gozur88 The very first point is key. Unless you work at a realty company, when guys at the office are trying to get rich flipping houses we've reached the peak. ~~~ sosborn Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful ~~~ toomuchtodo Buy When There's Blood In The Streets ------ flashman “Mortgage-default rates are currently very low, but that shouldn’t be any source of comfort because they are always low when the economy is doing well and home prices are going up,” said Oliner. “That can turn around quickly if there is a recession.” A chart of 2006-2016 mortgage default rates is instructive: [http://au.spindices.com/indices/specialty/sp-experian- first-...](http://au.spindices.com/indices/specialty/sp-experian-first- mortgage-default-index) (set the time period to ten years) The first mortgage default rate doubled from August 2006 to September 2007. It then doubled again by November 2008, peaking at 5.67% just three years after it was at 0.79%... which is roughly the level we're at today. These things can turn around quite quickly. ------ jerryhuang100 the article lacks the major fuel of the current housing bubble in US/CA: the Chinese buyers. there is an estimated $500B capital outflow from China in 2015. guess a large part of that is in SF/BC/NYC/London real estate. ~~~ alva In London there are tens of thousands of new build properties which have been built through Chinese investment. Currently unaffordable to most (£1m plus for a 1 bed) and so rather unpopular with Londoners. Many developments are 50%+ sold in China before they are advertised in the UK. however I am beginning to think the Gov may having been playing a clever long game. Massive outflows from China the last couple of years. Encourage funds into the UK, mostly London, property market. Build huge number of new homes with Chinese money. Once (hopefully) the market crashes, glut of thousands of relatively affordable properties become available. I am not sure whether this was purposeful, however I have stopped complaining about foreign funded real estate investment here as it will be extremely fruitful if the bubble pops. Unfortunately for those in the states mentioned, it seems the money isn't going into building new properties, but inflating a low and severely restricted stock. ------ louprado While not mentioned in this article, perhaps real estate agents are also insisting that buyers bid over the asking price thereby inflating prices. Last week I was told by my first buyer agent he would not write my offer despite being 3% ABOVE the asking price for property that listed that day. I then called the listing agent for the same property who insisted she wouldn't write my offer unless I offered 25% above the listing price. We eventually negotiated to 10% above as my first offer. There are only 10 offers on the property so it isn't as if they were flooded with buyers. Is anyone else finding your own buyer agent or even the listing agent refusing to write an offer if it isn't well over the asking price ? Note I am in the SF Bay Area. ~~~ bagels If there are 10 offers on the first day of listing, you're wasting everyone's time including your own, by not offering above asking, as the offer simply would not be competitive against the other 9. ------ guelo The American Enterprise Institute does too much lobbying for me to trust them as straight shooters. Looking at case-schiller [1] it looks a little worrying, but looking at construction starts [2] the market doesn't seem that overheated yet. [1] [http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index- inflatio...](http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index-inflation- adjusted/) [2] [http://www.census.gov/briefrm/esbr/www/esbr020.html](http://www.census.gov/briefrm/esbr/www/esbr020.html) ------ hristov The very top of the market is already plummeting. I am talking about the nosebleed part of the market of 10+ million dollar apartments in new york, london and miami. These are already falling in prices as most hedge funders had a very bad 2015 and decided to liquidate some of their housing investments. This effect should start working itself down the price ladder soonish. In new york developers are already splitting up mind bogglingly expensive apartments to form higher numbers of merely crazy expensive apartments. So I would not be investing in housing that I do not need right about now. ~~~ shostack At the upper end you see a lot more real estate purchases for investment purposes. At the lower end you see people wanting to buy their first home. That lower end demand is not going to disappear--do you have any data to suggest that this will in fact work its way all the way down to that lower end for people who are not "investing" in housing but instead buying a place to live? ------ eli_gottlieb Planted? In most major cities they've been growing since basically the last housing crisis. Land in First World cities has become the new gold, and it has caused an unsustainable bubble for those of us who actually need somewhere to live. ~~~ CyberDildonics You have plenty of places to live, you just don't want to live there. ~~~ hueving It's always interesting to me how many people think they have a right to live in a specific location. It's a strange mental model that I haven't fully grasped. ~~~ 1_2__3 It's more interesting to me how many people think money should, and inevitably will, trump all other interests. Maybe if you're a 20-something programmer uprooting your entire life to live somewhere else after decades in a location because financial pressures outside your control make your home and everywhere near it impossible to afford that's not such a big deal. But for fuck's sake, think about this for a second. Most people _do_ have things rooting them to a particular location. Maybe it's a social circle. Maybe it's support network. Maybe it's their career, or their children's schooling, or their health and the local climate. At the end of the day we as a populace get to decide public policy. Taking people being priced out of their homes as fait accompli because them's the market breaks is heartless enough, but then saying disdainful things about just how painful and difficult it is is worse. ~~~ hueving Here is the thing, there is only so much room for people. You are either saying "fuck you" to the young people of the community that want to get a house in the place they have roots, or you say "fuck you" to the people that can't afford to live there. I don't see how it's particularly fair for a person to feel entitled to an area they did not purchase property in over another that just didn't happen to be there as long. ------ taurath There's a lot of pressure to buy now, which makes me think its probably not a good time to do so. Its really difficult to make any long term decisions when it might be at the top of the market. ~~~ forgetsusername But rates are extremely low. There is never a "right" time; there are only particular circumstances. ~~~ ThrustVectoring Rates being low is a bad thing for buying a house. If interest rates were higher, it'd be harder to qualify for a loan at a particular value, so the house you're interested in would be cheaper. Plus, you make money refinancing at a lower rate, and there's no room for rates to fall when they're this low.

Ask HN: $40k on physical hardware? or use the cloud? - flannell Our company is at a technical cross roads. Upgrade current hardware to latest IBM Xseries running VMWare and a nice SAN disk array ($40k) <i>OR</i> start looking at Amazon EC2 ala cloud hosting? This will be a production system so no down time!<p>Can cloud hosting be reliable? Thanks! ====== aristus I'd like to help but you need to explain a bit more about what your system does. I've helped build and manage racks and cloud installs. Some general stuff: Downtime happens. It often happens when you move hardware around (say, you need another SAN or replace you switches. Cloud servers are very ver flexible; you can set up a parallel system and _test_ it for a week. You can't do that with your own hardware without spending serious cash. The first time I rearranged my entire server set up, while sitting in a cafe, was pretty damned cool. It also happens when hardware fails. With owned systems you have to drive to the colo in the middle of the night. I suggest you build a minimal parallel system in a cloud and try it out. Try several providers. ~~~ flannell The Software is a web based PHP5 App running both Mysql and Oracle on top of SLES9. It collects performance information (KPIs) and sends out formatted reports (PDF/XLS) to clients & customers. It's been running on IBM Xseries 336 servers since 2005 (eek!) and really needs an upgrade. Our technical provider came up with the spec but am interested to see if cloud hosting has moved on; I understand it was a bit shakey to start with. ~~~ aristus Zynga runs largely on EC2, something like 10,000 nodes. I don't know how to define "shaky", but that company bets hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue on EC2. ~~~ flannell I didn't know that. I guess it scales extremely well. ------ bcater FWIW, I worked at an online advertising company that ran a whole division on EC2 machines - at the peak, nearly 100 instances. This was never a problem for us because we were judicious in our use of the machines (minify your content!) and we were disciplined in our deployments and management. If you go that route, just be sure the learn and follow best practices - you'll save yourself quite a lot of time. ------ ecommando Do both. You would be nuts to depend on a single cloud provider, as the model for clouds allows for adjusting "the dial" on performance to increase revenues. Spend $30K on physical equipment and network, and $10K on cloud deployment. Then, over the course of a year or two, as you expand and learn how the cloud "really works", you can adjust as needed. ------ jacquesm It very much depends on the nature of the usage, storage and bandwidth are the big killers for some cloud applications. For me (live video) the cloud doesn't even get close to being competitive with leased hardware. 1GBit flat rate with 20T of storage goes for about 1200 euros / months, including a quad (or even eight) core machine. ------ hga Well ... isn't the question more "Will $40K of IBM and VMWare kit in our hands be (significantly) more reliable than Amazon's services?" For your purposes, including scheduled downtime. Also factor into the cost of the time it will take your people to learn how to make your systems on EC2 reliable enough. ~~~ flannell I think that's an interesting point. However, I do have to consider running sensitive performance data running on equipment we don't control or host. So, is it wise to run customers data on kit we don't own or host?

Lisp hacker writes an outstandingly popular book - jk http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=2128 It's a novel! ====== omouse He has programmed in Lisp, Java, Perl and a few other languages. I don't see the connection though. ------ rglullis Spam. ------ Hexstream I really don't get it... ------ jk First novel by a former lisp hacker gets top reviews. May become a classic book. You first heard it here.

Want to make money with Android? Have questions? - kreci http://www.kreci.net/android/make-money-android/ ====== throwaway222 I need to warn the HN crowd. KreCi previously wrote an eBook on improving PageRank. There were a few good reviews and everything sounded great. He sold the site and the eBook on Flippa and make a few hundred bucks. Link to his blog post: <http://www.kreci.net/blogging/pagerank-4-in-two- weeks/> Link to the ebook site (now owned by a Flippa purchaser): <http://improve- pagerank.com/> I ended up purchasing his book a week or so ago. It was quite terrible. The "secret" was e-mailing bloggers for back links. The book was probably about 10 pages, 9 pages were about how to set up a blog, buying a domain (with affiliate links), and then there was one page about e-mailing bloggers for backlinks, and a few example e-mails he sent. I can't say I expected much, but I'm afraid someone else might waste their money on this sort of thing. All this being said, I think KreCi's site is pretty interesting and there was some valuable/useful information there. I just feel a bit ripped off from the book purchase. I take it as a lesson learned, but hopefully no one else needs to learn the lesson here too. ~~~ kreci I am sorry that you were not able to use the knowledge in the ebook. Before you bought (at least in my original intro) there was a number of the pages given in the description (it was a report not ebook). As you said most reviews were positive. I sold it on flippa as I do not know how to promote it (it was sold via one of forums mostly - not my blog). Now I regret I have sold it as I believe if I would be working on it more it would be much better now and still would be selling. Anyway it is not secret and all history may be read on my blog. I will not make this mistake again and will not sell right to my ebook again. ------ pbreynolds I'm a HN n00b so I don't understand why this is getting promoted up so quickly. Do people not actually visit the links? No offense kreci, but there's no actual info on that page yet. Seems like pure self promotion to me. ~~~ chopsueyar He has been developing free Android apps for awhile now and has been posting his financial results to HN for some time now. He lives in Poland and is unable to sell paid apps, so he can only rely on advertising for revenue. ~~~ pbreynolds Thanks chopsueyar, I knew there had to be a valid reason! ------ aquarin A side note: You web site have more text in advertising then in posts. ~~~ kreci Thanks for being honest. I will try to optimize it. You are right - especially last post is short and it is not looking good at all. ------ kreci Questions welcome =) ~~~ acconrad Where do you think the biggest opportunities lie for passive income in Android apps? I already feel like the market is saturated and I can't come up with any ideas. How do you come up with ideas and how long does it take for you to get them into reality? Do you outsource any of your work?

Ask HN: What application would you create around "digital printing"? - rokhayakebe If you had access to the NYT printing facility what application would you create around it? ====== mechanical_fish See how many editors it really takes to turn bloggers' open content into a viable weekly magazine, nonprofit or otherwise. In other words, reinvent the NYT or Newsweek, but start with zero employees and move up rather than starting with hundreds and struggling to figure out who to cut. There are lots of smart bloggers writing things. There are, for at least the next thirty years, lots of relatively rich, politically connected people who grew up with print, prefer print, and instinctively trust print. I've always had a feeling that one should be able to make _something_ out of that situation, and the NYT printers have the numbers I would need to do the math and see if it seems feasible.

Lucid Dreaming - jimsojim https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lucid_Dreaming ====== roddux This is a pretty comprehensive write-up! A helpful community (with more guides, discussion and anecdotes) can be found on [http://dreamviews.com](http://dreamviews.com). I also recommend anybody learning to lucid dream to read the books by Stephen LaBerge.

Google introducing Gmail Blue - peterkchen http://gmail.com/blue/ ====== andymoe It's a nice dig at Apple but part of me wishes they really would put that much effort into their design. Gmail is pretty un-spectacular at this point.

The Rise Of Functional Programming: F#/Scala/Haskell and the failing of Lisp - lackbeard http://blogs.msdn.com/brandonwerner/archive/2008/09/16/the-rise-of-functional-programming-f-scala-haskell-and-the-failing-of-lisp.aspx ====== greyman Can someone please explain in basic terms, what exactly are the advantages of functional programming, over other mainstream approaches like OOP? AFAIK, some FP support was added to the newest version of C#, but I couldn't immediately tell how exactly can I make use of it. ~~~ Hexstream Just look at some simple uses of closures and you'll see they open a world of possibilities. (and there's so much more to it than this!) They also let you make compilers easily but I won't get into that here. CL-USER> (sort (list 1 8 3 2 5) #'<) ; sort just needs a function of 2 arguments that tells if the first parameter is strictly less than the second => (1 2 3 5 8) CL-USER> (sort (list 1 8 3 2 5) #'>) => (8 5 3 2 1) CL-USER> (sort (list "hello" "HELLO" "hey" "bye") #'string<) => ("HELLO" "bye" "hello" "hey") CL-USER> (mapcar #'1+ '(1 7 3 9)) ;mapcar applies a function to each element of the lists passed as arguments and returns a new list with the results => (2 8 4 10) CL-USER> (cons 1 2) => (1 . 2) CL-USER> (mapcar #'cons '(A B C) '(1 2 3)) => ((A . 1) (B . 2) (C . 3)) CL-USER> (defun make-adder (how-much-to-add) (lambda (initial-value) (+ initial-value how-much-to-add))) => MAKE-ADDER CL-USER> (mapcar (make-adder 10) '(1 7 3 9)) => (11 17 13 19) CL-USER> (defvar *my-favorite-adder* (make-adder 42)) => *MY-FAVORITE-ADDER* CL-USER> (mapcar *my-favorite-adder* '(1 7 3 9)) => (43 49 45 51) CL-USER> (defun make-modifier (operator operand) ; a bit more general than make-adder (lambda (initial-value) (funcall operator initial-value operand))) => MAKE-MODIFIER CL-USER> (mapcar (make-modifier #'expt 3) '(1 7 3 9)) => (1 343 27 729) CL-USER> (find-if #'numberp '(a "hi" nil 8 "test" 100)) => 8 CL-USER> (find-if #'numberp '(a "hi" nil 8 "test" 100) :from-end t) => 100 CL-USER> (apply #'+ (remove-if-not #'numberp '(a "hi" nil 8 "test" 100))) => 108 That's _not even_ (by a long shot) the tip of the iceberg. ~~~ yters It's simple to compile because lisp is essentially a parse tree, which eliminates the parsing stage in compilation. ~~~ Hexstream I was referring to the ability to traverse a tree structure (made of conses or objects) and generate a tree of closures from that. Instead of interpreting the tree structure, you make a first pass where you do a lot of dispatching in advance (at runtime you'll just do what you must do instead of first figuring out what to do and then do it), generating a tree of closures. Then you call your "top-level" closure for a nice optimized run. You can optimize your source tree before compiling this way, for some crazy speed. All this without having to read advanced books about low-level compilers, parsing, machine architecture and optimization! ~~~ yters V. interesting, thanks:) ------ jimbokun I'm intrigued by the idea of Lisps built on top of other run-times. Clojure is the example here that all the cool kids are talking about. But I just notice Nu in the list of functional languages the article mentions, which is a Lisp built on top of Objective C. The creator of Nu points out he wanted a Lisp to extend C, and that Objective C provided a dynamic run time to build on while still allowing the incorporation of straight C code. I suspect there is a good .Net Lisp out there somewhere, I just don't know what it is. Building a Lisp on top of these languages gives you macros, code as data, culture of functional programming, etc. while still making all of the underlying libraries available. ~~~ michaelneale That is probably the future of lisp - I mean we can see it already. Clojure is one example (in use in some startups) and arc is another (being built on MzScheme - although thats probably more for practical reasons). ------ lallysingh A response by Dan Weinreb: [http://danweinreb.org/blog/the-failure-of-lisp-a- reply-to-br...](http://danweinreb.org/blog/the-failure-of-lisp-a-reply-to- brandon-werner) ------ felideon _It was the most thorny and un-inspiring community I've ever participated in, despite my extreme interest in the language. It's jaw dropping that a language with such promise has sat out the resurgence, and speaks to what an un- friendly and un-inviting community can do a technology platform._ As a Lisp newb who frequents #lisp every now and then, I’ve noticed quite the opposite. People in the channel are very open to newcomers and as friendly as hackers can get. Uninspiring? Why? Lack of smug as Cal Hendersen says?

Pythagorean Cup: Practical Joke Chalice Overflows with Ancient Greek Humor - misnamed http://99percentinvisible.org/article/pythagorean-cup-practical-joke-chalice-overflows-ancient-greek-humor/ ====== amenghra Cliff Stoll has a page about this. He calls it a Cup of Tantalus and it's part of his Klein Bottle collection. Makes for a fun gift for geeks. [http://www.kleinbottle.com/Tantalus.html](http://www.kleinbottle.com/Tantalus.html) ------ fsloth In respect of the greeks, this is one cheap souvenir that can actually provide timeless merriment. I have a few made of burnt clay that are souvenirs from decades ago and still there are new people who can delightfully be educated on the principles of these wonderfull devices. ~~~ StavrosK Wouldn't it actually be very annoying to have to mop and/or clean things every time? ~~~ fsloth Some houses are equipped with sinks, bathubs, etc :) ~~~ StavrosK Ah yes, the old "Here's your completely ordinary cup of wine. Please drink it over the sink for no particular reason" gag. Gets them every time! :) ------ hashkb With respect to "drinking normally" when the cup is filled below the siphoning point: if you drink by tipping the cup towards the drain pipe, wouldn't that engage the siphon? ~~~ DiThi The drain pipe is as close to the center as possible. When you tilt a cylinder half full of water, the point at the center remains at the same height. Considering the cups are slightly wider at the top than the bottom, it can hold more liquid when tilted, so the height at the center would be a bit lower. ------ bhaumik Here's a neat 4 min video demonstrating how the cup works & how to "beat" it with mercury: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISfIT3B4y6E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISfIT3B4y6E) ------ danaliv Neat. It's like a tiny toilet. ~~~ analog31 Self flushing urinals used to work this way. The tank above the urinal was filled at a constant rate, and would discharge when the level ran over the top of the siphon. ------ rebootthesystem I remember this cup. I also remember thinking Those both greedy and smart could have simply plugged the hole with their finger and all is good. Pythagoras should have given his students smaller normal cups because, if we go Machiavellian for a moment, people are unscrupulous and will plug the hole, therefore a smaller cup will be more effective. And limited servings. ~~~ robryk You can make this harder by providing multiple small holes all over the bottom of the cup. ------ custos This is how toilets work. ------ mrfusion Anywhere to buy one cheaply? ~~~ IgorPartola 3D print one? ~~~ robryk 3D printing stuff that's foodsafe is nontrivial. You not only need a material that is not directly harmful (in temperatures it will be used in), but also most 3d printed surfaces will not be smooth. This makes them very hard to properly clean (especially the parts of such a cup that wouldn't be reachable), which causes biological problems (bacteria and mold growing there). Whatever material such a cup was made out of, I'd've wanted to be able to dismantle it for cleaning, which lessens the advantage of 3d printing over more traditional fabrication techniques. ------ chrisbrandow Also like Soxhlet extractors. That is the coolest chemistry glassware. ------ kahrkunne I'd encourage anyone to read up on Pythagoras. He was a really weird guy who held some inane beliefs and superstitions. Also a cult leader. ~~~ empath75 I don't think we can know what he really believed or if he existed at all. He's a semi-mythical figure and there are no contemporary accounts of him.

Show HN: Single Page Websites using Webbify - anilshanbhag http://webbify.in ====== wavewash As a privacy concern I didn't want to give up my facebook information so I backed out of trying it. The point where I became hesitant and backed out was when it showed my picture and said you wanted my public profile, friend list and email address. Why would this site need my friends list? ~~~ mgkimsal Facebook is horrible at this. You can't _not_ ask for it. In fact, you _don 't_ ask for it. Access is automatically granted, whether you want it or not. I suspect that this might change when there's some massive security breach that causes a big publicly visible compromise (millions of friend lists get abused/compromised by some rogue bot targeting loads of apps using Facebook as just a single sign-on provider), and it'll get changed. I've had a couple of MVP apps I've demoed to people, wanting to use FB as a SSO, and get quite a bit of "DAMN YOU - YOU'RE NOT GETTING MY FRIEND LIST! YOU DON'T NEED IT!" You're right, I don't. Tell Facebook. I don't want it. ~~~ anilshanbhag Well said, we just ask for basic info. It just gives it for free though we don't want it. ------ gjulianm Well, I tried it even though it requires FB login. I didn't give the app write permissions, I don't know why would you want that. Once in... well, it's nice. It's easy to use and templates are good but there's no special thing. There're a lot of sites that allow you to create simple webpages. Why should I use this instead of Strikingly? (to say just one) What do you offer that is special? Oh, and by the way, I think you should work on another favicon. I had Draft ([https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/)) opened in another tab and it's the same icon. ~~~ anilshanbhag @Strikingly: Well I didn't know of it. Will do a quick check. What we noticed was that the actual text content in site is small and there is no point in having multiple webpages (one for home, contact, etc. ). Instead in Webbify, you just have themes which offer you single page flow or tabbed designs which are actually just a single page. So anytime a person visits your site and clicks on a different tab - there is no page load, the content is already there. Interesting, well the pencil was the most relevant favicon. Will keep this in mind. ~~~ ameen You need to pivot. Websites such as these are basically a relic from the past. (unless you need to have one. eg: Web Developer, Designer, etc). It's not like there are a dearth of tools to make them either (there are tons more than Strikingly). ~~~ anilshanbhag If you don't mind can you elaborate on 'you need to pivot' ? ~~~ wavewash I'm not sure if I agree with the sentiment that you need to pivot. There is a huge need to create a website by individuals and companies. Not everyone wants a social media page. [http://www.weebly.com/](http://www.weebly.com/) and [http://www.wix.com/](http://www.wix.com/) Very successful sites and in the same space as you. [http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/24/as-wix-heads-toward-ipo- wee...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/24/as-wix-heads-toward-ipo-weebly-looks- to-expand-with-big-new-sf-headquarters-plans-to-add-500-employees/) Your site design was very clean and I was initially interested. The only deterrent for me was the FB login. ------ colinbartlett Don't have a Facebook account, don't want a Facebook account. ~~~ aquark If you cancel out of the Facebook sign up there looks to be a totally unthemed normal sign up page at [http://webbify.in/accounts/signup/](http://webbify.in/accounts/signup/) ... looks interesting but possibly not ready for prime time! ------ wrongc0ntinent Facebook login is a nonstarter for many. ~~~ seferphier I think it is a non-starter for many ppl in HN since many of us are sensitive to privacy. I wonder if it holds true outside this community. ------ yanivs The title is misleading - instead of showing examples of websites using Webbify you're requiring us to login with Facebook without understanding why and what exactly will we get out of it. You should show some live examples and add a non facebook way to login (even better, require login only after the user has set his first website and just before he needs to save it) ~~~ anilshanbhag True that, [http://webbify.in/template_hidden/simplepage/](http://webbify.in/template_hidden/simplepage/) \- a demo to see our editing interface ------ joshmn Are you sure you have the correct licensing for those themes? I notice a few, but won't list them all here for the sake of spam. [http://themeforest.net/item/curriculum-responsive-resume- one...](http://themeforest.net/item/curriculum-responsive-resume-onepage- portfolio/5555810) [http://i.imgur.com/OLYxdF7.png](http://i.imgur.com/OLYxdF7.png) My source at Envato would argue otherwise. Edit: after signing up, here's another: [http://themeforest.net/item/humanum-responsive-vcard- templat...](http://themeforest.net/item/humanum-responsive-vcard- template/5230208) Too lazy to dig for the others. I'm sure someone else can. ------ vlod For those that don't want to use fb to login, go to: [http://webbify.in/accounts/login/](http://webbify.in/accounts/login/) and use email:bugmenot@mailinator.com password:bugmenot ~~~ nzk1 Woot thanks :) Check out our page - [http://bugmenot.webbify.in/](http://bugmenot.webbify.in/) ------ anilshanbhag Webbify was built with simplicity in mind. You just have a single page (tabs are not physical pages) and you edit-on-page. This is a alpha stage preview. Do let me know if you have any feedback on the app. ~~~ jstalin How about a demo of some kind that doesn't require a login, especially a facebook login. ~~~ anilshanbhag One of the themes : [http://webbify.in/template/simplepage/](http://webbify.in/template/simplepage/) The editable version : [http://webbify.in/template_hidden/simplepage/](http://webbify.in/template_hidden/simplepage/) ------ moonknight Love the simplicity and the widget play. Managing widget proportions and feel need just a little more work. It already looks quite cool. I am sure many will be waiting for the next release. Hope to see cooler stuff there! (please let me change my theme :D ) ------ glenra Seems like the YouTube Video widget doesn't work - dragging it to the page doesn't do anything. And I can add "social media" buttons but it's not clear how one edits what they link to or which ones show up. ~~~ nzk1 It works fine for me. You need to drag it on the green lines. The problem is now getting rid of that video :/ can't drag it to trash. ~~~ glenra Aha. That's a really narrow hit target. Yeah, it seems like if you place a video and decide you don't want it there after all or want it somewhere else, all you can do is delete the whole tab containing the video and start over. A work in progress, I suppose. :-) ------ jqueryin You need a demo or some samples you've built. I have no idea what to expect. The graphic with a New Relic themed site is confusing to me. Is that an example of your site? You need a page of features, tools, screenshots, etc. ------ blakeperdue I'm guessing New Relic's website was not built using your tool. Posting a screenshot of their website on your marketing site implies that your tool was used to build it. A bit misleading in my opinion. ~~~ nzk1 Yep my thoughts exactly. I would suggest making a demo page on webbify, and putting screenshots of different devices of that page (and even a link to it). ~~~ ashwing_2005 True that. Will do. ------ prakster Hey Anil, An "Undo" function would be nice. While editing, I clicked on an "x" in the Home button by mistake, which removed the entire button, and now I have no idea how to restore that button. ------ linux_devil Why should I give my social login? ~~~ anilshanbhag Social login is preferred by many (these many are people who don't read Hacker News) mainly because it eliminates the need to remember another password and do away with email verification. ~~~ minimaxir That rationale is valid if it's an _option_ , not a requirement. ------ raymond4 this looks good ------ icecreampain Not logging in via facebook shows an unthemed "Social Network Login Failure" page. If you want to make a facebook app, why not just make a facebook app instead of a facebook app disguised as a normal page? ~~~ ashwing_2005 Its not a facebook app. We're just using facebook authentication to start off

Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never - shawndumas http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/review-blackberry-10-is-better-much-better-late-than-never/ ====== manishsharan I am not falling for BB again ! In my last iteration of smartphone purchase, I bought a latest-at-the-time Iphone 3GS for my wife and the latest-at-the-time Blackberry Bold. Since then I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone than I could on my BB. My BB never did much beyond email and BBM ( I love BBM ) In this iteration, I recently placed an order for Nexus 4 and a Iphone 5. maybe if they are still around in 3~4 years from now, sure I could consider going back to BB. ~~~ kunai Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience. ~~~ untog It's still relevant. Increasingly, mobile OSes are less about where they are now than where they will be. Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones. Vanilla Android has been just as great, but individual Android manufacturers less so. MS has been terrible. BB has a history of being terrible. So, Blackberry's past is relevant. No, they might not repeat it, but absent of any other evidence, we can only judge them by past conduct. _just as productive while providing a rich media experience._ I don't even know what that _means_ ~~~ zmonkeyz Then I can only judge Apple by OS 7. ~~~ eropple Mac System 7 was released in 1997. The earliest BlackBerry Bold (assuming that's the one under discussion, which I'm not clear of) was released in December 2009. One of these things is not like the other. ------ Osiris I welcome any competition into the mobile OS market, especially if it brings a refreshing new take on design and user experience. My devices all run Android and while it's usable, I'm not a huge fan of many aspects of the OS. While I don't plan on getting a BB10 device, I am interested to see if or how its innovations cause other OS vendors to adjust their own user experience. ~~~ dmix I'm fine with the Android OS, still not a fan of the hardware. Although its gotten better, Android phones are still nowhere near the physical build quality of the iPhone 4 (including the S3 which I'm currently using). ~~~ pavanky When I held the iphone 5 it felt like I could damage it if I held it with a tight grip[ (I am a big man). My One X doesn't feel that way. Perhaps what physical build quality means is subjective? ------ easternmonk Blackberry has done a good job. It may not be iPhone/Android killer but it is definitely at par with the best in the league. Had BB come up with this 2 years back it would have been great. But I am willing to give them a chance. I hope the voice and screen sharing works good. ------ kunai Lovely. This is really the first true smartphone OS since webOS that I'm actually excited for. The gestures are a little worrisome, however, with a 4-inch display. I have small hands, and it seems the gestures would require use of two hands... Another thing I noticed -- it seems like the UI's colors and typefaces were ripped straight from Android's Holo interface. No big deal, just something I noticed. ------ KeyBoardG I was put off just in the new BBM, where some options were hidden under the left swipe menu, other the right swipe menu and yet more under the top swipe menu. Not to mention options hidden under the button bar at the bottom. I don't want to spend my time looking all over in apps for an action. They need to set strict guidelines on where things go. ~~~ purephase I sat down with a handset a few months ago with a QA guy at BlackBerry and had basically the same feedback for them. Apparently, it is something they're working on. I haven't seen the OS since launch so I don't know if this was addressed, at all. They're hardly alone in this regard. iOS/Android suffers from the same problem. ------ rcb Does anyone know if BB has the ability to push OS updates direct to customer handsets? Years ago such updates required carrier "approval"/intervention, which meant updates occurred infrequently (usually after significant delay), if ever. Edit: US carriers, specifically AT&T. ~~~ shawn-butler Nope. [0] However, on unlocked phones you can load whatever image will work. [0] [http://us.blackberry.com/support/apps-and- software/desktop-a...](http://us.blackberry.com/support/apps-and- software/desktop-and-device-download-sites.html) ~~~ Pwnguinz Not sure about BB10, but with previous BB's, you could always load whatever image will work. The "Network Carrier" branded version was unnecessary even if you had a branded BB. Somewhat like Android. You can also load tweaked custom OS's, or "hybrid OS's" as they're known in the BB community. ~~~ shawn-butler Don't really think that's true. I mean it was in some sense but for example if you loaded a seperate spectrum compatible, carrier "image" it might be fine until the next reboot at which time the carrier service books would get reloaded. So for example, you may have installed the bb maps and on the next reboot away they would disappear to be replaced with a link to purchase "AT&T Navigator", etc. The "AT&T Mall" would reappear, etc. Service book configuration was something fairly unique to BB and allowed carriers to configure the user experience to a pretty significant extent. Doesn't really apply to BB10 afaik so it's just reminiscing about the bad old days, irregardless. ------ tlack Anyone got the inside info on why they are waiting so long to release these in America? Should have been available unlocked at launch if they really wanted to regain the hearts and minds of the fickle American consumer. ~~~ arbitrage Is an unlocked phone really that important to the majority of American consumers? They've showed quite readily in the past that they really don't care that much. ~~~ Dirlewanger No. Majority would give you a blank stare if you mentioned a mobile phone being locked/unlocked. ~~~ illuminate I think T-Mobile may help to change that. ------ sgt It's also QNX based, so should be pretty rock solid, being a microkernel based RTOS with a small memory footprint. Also (interestingly), its network stack is based on NetBSD code. ------ zmmmmm It's great to see a fully gesture based phone. I've always thought this would be the most natural way to interact with a touch based device, and it's always the gesture based apps and interactions that I enjoy using most on my phone. My only hesitation is whether gestures interfere with normal use of the phone. Will it confuse interactions in the game I am playing with the swipe to go back to the home screen, for example? If it does, it's going to be hugely problematic. But if it's done well it will be the most enjoyable and natural interface out there, I think. ~~~ icki I'd have to agree with you that gesture interactions tend to feel more natural then typical button pressing (e.g. pinch-to-zoom), but can be a little awkward for first time users. A customer who stops by a mobile phone kiosk while walking through their local mall might not know how to handle a BB10 device without assistance from a sales associate. However, gestures often become second-nature, and users rarely find themselves asking "how do I do this again?" Swipe-upwards to unlock/return to homescreen requires initial contact with the screen's bezel, which should mitigate the number of times this gesture is unnecessarily actuated. ~~~ zmmmmm > Swipe-upwards to unlock/return to homescreen requires initial contact with > the screen's bezel Hopefully that works well. However when playing games it's pretty easy to hit the bezel when you're aiming for something on the edge of the screen. I always used to have this problem (and still do) on Android phones with their capacitive / on screen buttons. ~~~ fi0660 It works surprisingly well in Nokia N9. I think games are also allowed to disable the gestures while the game is in non-paused state. ------ tcdowney I just found out about their 10k Developer Commitment last Friday and a few close friends and I are scrambling to get a Blackberry native app finished in time for the upcoming submissions deadline. Never having done this before all I can say is that it's been fun! :) BlackBerry 10 is much nicer than I had anticipated and, although I won't be moving away from Android, I am excited for BlackBerry to make a serious effort at returning to the market. :) ------ bambax I'm not sure about gestures (can they be done with one hand?) but the unified inbox ("hub") sounds like a fantastic idea. I don't understand why I can't see all messages from all my email accounts in one window, together with voice messages and texts (Tweets may be a little overwhelming, but they can be filtered out). This really sounds great -- although it's probably not hard to replicate on another platform. ~~~ compilercreator I got my Z10 yesterday and I can confirm that the phone (and all the gestures) are completely usable with just one hand. The phone size was selected pretty intelligently. I don't think the UI design would have worked with a bigger phone. ~~~ purephase If you don't mind me asking, what platform were you on before? I'm considering ditching my iPhone for the Z10 as I'm so tired of Apple. I really miss the unified inbox in BlackBerry world and the hub sounds promising. App selection is not that important to me. ~~~ compilercreator I was using galaxy s2x. A variant of s2 with a 4.5 inch screen. That was hard to use single handed. This is my first blackberry so no idea how it compares with previous blackberry handsets. ------ adjin I thought it has a lot of interesting ideas. Although much of them can be emulated by any other platform, if BB proves to continue innovation especially in the business/corporate sector it could gather quite a following. ------ rayiner I'm psyched about the Q10. Just release it and take my money! ~~~ MBCook I'm surprised they're not promoting it more, it seems like an obvious win for they keyboard loving crowd. Too bad it may be delayed until mid year. [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/blackberry-q10-may- be...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/blackberry-q10-may-be-delayed/) ------ muyuu My old Blackberry Curve 3G, which I use alongside an Android phone, still gives me a battery life of 3 days solid under normal usage. Will they match that? ------ malkia Any word on PlayBook getting the BB10? ~~~ scrabble They've always said that all PlayBooks will receive BB10. Who knows when though. ------ janlukacs i think people should give it a chance, too much negativity due to fanboyism. ~~~ fusiongyro Is it fanboyism, or could it instead be: \- I need a phone that works \- I only need one phone \- I don't want a phone from a defunct manufacturer \- App availability is more significant than platform quality The first one means I don't want to debug your beta product. The second one prevents me from experimentally getting a bunch of different phones and seeing which one I like better. The third gives me pause when dealing with Blackberry, who have been having huge corporate troubles for years. The fourth is a reminder that if I were to switch there are lots of apps I'd be giving up with no replacement (SmartGo Books comes to mind). The idea that Apple has everyone brainwashed is really quite absurd. Overpriced? Maybe. Overhyped? Probably. Bad? No. ------ speeder Go blackberry!!!! Become another market for me to sell my stuff \o/ ------ helloamar I trusted blackberry from the bold 9000, with that trust I got a playbook thinking they will add more apps but after waiting for more than a year I got the iPad4, Now I have a bold 9900, time to change my phone in a couple of months ,now the bb10 arrives I'm waiting for the apps that keeps my business running if it didn't show up I'm going to get the iPhone