Charting time series as calendar heat maps in R - <AUTHOR> http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/11/charting-time-series-as-calendar-heat-maps-in-r.html <comment><USER2> This is a wonderful visualization.

Product Sales on the Shopify platform ( ~ 5000 e-commerce stores) for the past two years:

[http://img.skitch.com/20091103-rmsiithcy81qbfs6u3ee195n1s.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20091103-rmsiithcy81qbfs6u3ee195n1s.png)

Really interesting to see how great Christmas period is. You can clearly see that it starts in the second week of november in earnest. Also interesting to see that the weekends are usually pretty slow but in the christmas time they totally blend in.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is really cool. Anyone wanna port it to matplotlib in python, or should i?

<comment><USER4> Just an FYI:

<http://rpy.sourceforge.net/>

"RPy is a very simple, yet robust, Python interface to the R Programming Language. It can manage all kinds of R objects and can execute arbitrary R functions (including the graphic functions). All errors from the R language are converted to Python exceptions. Any module installed for the R system can be used from within Python."

I haven't used rpy, and perhaps you want a pure-python port for other reasons (e.g. performance, overhead), but rpy might give you what you want - immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Neat. Here's my iPhone app sales revenue charted using this: [http://blog.planetaryscale.com/2009/11/04/iphone-app- sales-h...](http://blog.planetaryscale.com/2009/11/04/iphone-app-sales- heatmap/)</comment>


Equifax Breach Response Turns Dumpster Fire - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/equifax-breach-response-turns-dumpster-fire/ <comment><USER2> Whoever said knowledge is power had it wrong. More like knowledge is terrifying. equifaxsecurity2017.com is running Wordpress, which I'm sure is vulnerable in some sort of way.

The check form is literally a marketing tactic to sign up for some 3rd party monitoring service. I used last name Smith and a random series of 6 digits for a social security number and was greeted with:

        Thank You
        Your enrollment date for TrustedID Premier is:
        09/14/2017
        Please be sure to mark your calendar as you will not
        receive additional reminders. On or after your enrollment
        date, please return to faq.trustedidpremier.com and click
        the link to continue through the enrollment process.

Equifax security and negligence is borderline criminal.

<comment><USER3> Not saying it isn't a dumpster fire, but many high profile websites run on WordPress. It is an excellent CMS. Anything is vulnerable in some sort of way.</comment></comment>


Finding the right Node.JS Web Socket implementation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/b63bfca0539

<comment><USER2> You are missing SockJS one of most prominent library which I personally feel far better and actively developed.

[https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node)</comment>


U.S. Customs at JFK Seizes Counterfeit Apple Airpod Earbuds - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-jfk-seizes-counterfeit-apple-airpod-earbuds <comment><USER2> Previos submission with more comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24466280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24466280)

<comment><USER3> Comments moved thither. Thanks to both of you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 86 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24466280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24466280)</comment>


A Day with Project Ara, Google's Modular Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/day-with-project-ara <comment><USER2> Project Ara is a cool concept but very vaporware-y. I don't think it will ever come to market as a general release consumer product.

I have three distinct reasons for this belief:

\- Current gen' cellphones are extremely dense internally. There is no empty space, a Project Ara phone needs room for connectors, housing, and similar. Where does this space come from? The battery?

\- Either the components will be tightly coupled in which case you'll lose the primarily benefit (interchangeable components) or loosely coupled in which case you'll lose performance (as data is transitioned in and out of generic interfaces).

\- The connectors can never be "good enough." With the phone heating and cooling (environmentally or from internal sources) and the phone getting knocked around/bent/etc you'll see components disconnect from one another and the thing crash, a lot.

The Project Ara project might generate some cool concepts which they can go forward with, a lot of cool ideas come from other failed ideas. But as a whole concept where you can slide in and out components and it somehow doesn't increase the size, weight, or decrease reliability or battery life just seems like a pipe dream (baring any massive improvement in battery technology).

I genuinely hope they succeed and I'd buy a Project Ara phone if they can engineer something remotely palatable, however the engineering challenges on this one just seem too high to overcome.

PS - I didn't even touch on the software issues and some of the chick-egg problems relating to this (e.g. are they going to have a pre-Android OS run who's only job is to reconfigure Android for the hardware changes?).

PPS - This negativity has nothing to do with the recent demo crashes. That happens during development, it is normal. I am more concerned about the technological challenges they face and if they're over-come-able at all.

<comment><USER3> > you'll see components disconnect from one another and the thing crash, a lot

Isn't the whole point of project Ara that you can disconnect components and the phone doesn't crash?

> you'll lose performance as data is transitioned in and out of generic > interfaces

I was thinking about this - I doubt they'll have a single interface that is generic enough to attach CPU and memory as well as other peripherals - I'm guessing each connector will bundle separate connectors for the CPU and RAM, so that whichever slot the CPU and RAM modules go into, they'll still be on "their" bus. Then you'll have the generic bus, which will be like a USB or PCI bus on a computer - you can attach anything else to it and it's all treated the same. The performance loss would come from the bus itself being inferior, not having to shoehorn disparate devices into using it.

> There is no empty space, a Project Ara phone needs room for connectors, > housing, and similar. Where does this space come from?

No doubt, these will be larger phones.

> I genuinely hope they succeed and I'd buy a Project Ara phone if they can > engineer something [awesome]

Me too :)

<comment><USER4> > Isn't the whole point of project Ara that you can disconnect components and > the phone doesn't crash?

If the CPU is disconnected from the device it will not continue to function. Failing gracefully is the best you can do and even that is incredibly hard. Are you going to give the CPU its own battery so it can keep its cache when removed?

<comment><USER3> In the initial materials I read about Ara, they indicated there would be a very minimal, secondary CPU, memory and battery in the frame itself. So, when you want to hot-swap the CPU, it falls back on/suspends to that tiny system temporarily.

<comment><USER5> Why is it important to hot-swap the CPU? Who is this phone for? This is either a mobile high-availability server or engineer wanking.

<comment><USER6> Engineer wanking.

I believe this is like an eternal prototype, not meant for mainstream.

Make a fat, ugly device with low battery life and experiment with different concepts.

I assumption is they'll take learnings from Project Ara and apply it to a new, 'production' phone that has like a detachable camera or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People keep saying this won't work and that modular HW was really only good for games, but there's lots of examples of modularity already in consumer space:

1) Many mobile phones are already modular to an extent. Replaceable batteries, replaceable SD cards, replaceable SIM cards. Then there's an entire ecosystem of add-on cases for phones. Sony is shipping add-on camera lens even.

Ara is just proposing to make some additional things "add-on", like swapping the camera module. If they only made battery and camera the swappable modules alone, it would be a big win, and plenty of people would choose different camera modules.

2) Look at the prosumer camera market, both DSLR and new mirror-less models. A significant population of people desire interchangeable lens. A phone with interchangeable camera module could have all kinds of possibilities.

At a certain point, phones will be so powerful and capable that losing 15% of size/weight efficiency to achieve flexibility, especially as devices become commoditized will be a tradeoff worth making.

<comment><USER8> _> Many mobile phones are already modular to an extent. Replaceable batteries, replaceable SD cards, replaceable SIM cards._

I'm not sure those are great examples of modularity on the march; replaceable batteries and replaceable SD cards, at least, are both much less common on smartphones today than they were (say) five years ago. The trend for the last couple of years has been towards non-user-serviceable batteries and omitting external storage slots altogether.

(I wish it wasn't, since I _want_ my phone to have those features, but that's the way the market has been going.)

<comment><USER9> > The trend for the last couple of years has been towards non-user-serviceable > batteries and omitting external storage slots altogether.

I wonder why that is. It's the only thing I don't like about my Moto G.

<comment><USER10> The idea I have heard most is that is happening because Google is pushing it for people to use their "cloud" services. You don't need a lot of space for music, use my cloud music streaming service. Don't store your documents in your device, use Google docs. Out of memory in Drive? You should upgrade your plan. And so on.

As a person that likes to carry an awful lot of music allways, it sucks a lot and really limits your choices when buying a new phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is cool technology, but I wonder if it's solving any problems for the consumer?

If I cracked my phone's screen, it would be great getting to replace it without having to pay for an entirely new phone. I suppose it might be nice to upgrade the camera, if a nicer camera becomes available. I'm not sure what else. The author claims a precedent for modular technology, and mentions computers, cars, and airplanes. But if anything, computers and cars now seem more integrated and more difficult for owners to modify. I've never tried swapping out parts on a plane.

Also, I wonder how Android might support this. It's difficult enough maintaining compatibility among the set of Android phones; increasing the number of possible hardware configurations by orders of magnitude by will probably require some major changes at the OS level.

Anyway, I'm sounding negative. But I do think this is cool. Like DARPA programs, it could have a positive long-term impact in both intended and unexpected ways.

<comment><USER12> > I suppose it might be nice to upgrade the camera,

Yes, exactly. Every aspect can be upgraded, at the best time to upgrade that part. I've upgraded entire devices in the past simply to make one component better (switching to higher network speeds, getting a better screen, getting a larger screen, getting a faster processor). Instead of buying 4 entire devices, I could have accomplished the same upgrade path for half the cost. This would not only save me money, but would cause less harm to the environment.

I would love to be able to switch screens on my phone depending on what I am doing. For example, slot in an eink screen when reading on a flight, and enjoy that sweet long lasting battery.

You could switch carriers and keep your phone, just by slotting in a new module.

You could buy a hugely expensive, awesome camera module, and not only be able to keep it even when you want to upgrade to a faster phone or a larger phone, you can share it with your ara using friends.

>> Also, I wonder how Android might support this.

Yes, apparently they've already made a lot of progress in this area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is everyone so negative on here? This is totally kickass, and could create a physical marketplace along the same lines of what we currently know as an "app store".

What's so "this is impossible" about this idea? We live in the 21st century, and we're trying to do things like send people to Mars and cure cancer. We've got cars that run exclusively on electricity, and potentially a propellent- less way of producing thrust -- why is "a modular mobile device" (it doesn't even have to accept phone calls, does it) beyond the realm of possibility?

Just seems _super_ negative, for absolutely no reason.

<comment><USER14> Because it's easy to see the shortcomings of something, and hard to see the potential, especially the potential for sea-change products.

If it was easy to create or see the potential of universe denting products, then everyone would do it. But it's hard.

This is so common, not just amoung the HN crowd, that the proverbial phrase "missing the forest for the trees" exists to describe it.

Of course, we could just also say "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

<comment><USER15> I don't think Project Ara be a major breakthrough of any kind, yet I'm still very excited about it. This (hacking for hacking's sake) is exactly what I imagined HN would get excited about, but instead I only hear some obvious arguments and negativity. Let's rename this site to Serious Business News, shall we?.

<comment><USER12> >> Let's rename this site to Serious Business News, shall we?.

Yes. Hackers may be practical and honest about limits, but they focus more on potentials, possibilities. Hackers get excited about projects like Ara. Hackers ask: what can be done with this? Rather than say foolish things like "this is a solution seeking a problem".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a solution desperately searching for a problem. Exactly what Steve Jobs warned against in developing technology.

I personally can't care less about modularity in a phone. Would rather have a 1mm thinner phone over any sort of modularity. Almost all modules can be added wirelessly, unless they are latency-sensitive or very high bandwidth.

Additionally, due to economies of scale, it may make sense to integrate a module that's extremely useful to only a half of the population in every device manufactured and that may still be a net win economically.

<comment><USER17> Just like there are iMacs and custom built desktop PCs, more choice is good for everyone

<comment><USER16> Good for everyone, ...except Google shareholders maybe? (Maybe not though; it might earn more for them in marketing value, as Satya Nadella pointed out.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ara is doomed to failure. Normal phones are designed with one concept in mind, an overall integrated product. In the case of Ara there are loads of inefficiencies and wasted spaces. A normal phone has one big battery cell and a case that protect it. For Ara if you want to add two battery units they are smaller in total than one big one because of the doubling up of matter needed for structural integrity. There are enough manufacturers in the industry to cater for individual preferences but thinking that one adaptable phone design is the best way to cater for everyone is misguided. People generally don't even upgrade the CPU in their desktop machine, the thought that they are going to do so in their smartphone is idiotic.

<comment><USER12> You do realize that upgrading the cpu on an ara phone is easier than swapping an sd card. Compare this to upgrading the cpu on a computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think we already have modular phones in the larger sense. We can attach thousands of peripherals via Bluetooth, the charger, headphone jack or wifi and add one of zillions of third party cases. Our personal data sits in the cloud and/or on our huge PC drives and works seamlessly with many slabs. Apps are portable, many even across ecosystems.

</comment><comment><USER20> Honestly I can see way more exciting things to do with this other than use it as a phone.

Something like a tricorder from Star Trek but with the ability to change and upgrade its components to give it new functions.

I think they are selling it in the wrong direction when they call it a phone. It could ultimately be the next natural progression for hackable hardware i.e. Arduino -> RaspberryPi -> The new google thing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Modular phones (and computers) is a powerful concept that worked really well with hobbyists (and gamers) so far. It seems to be a healthy duopoly with all- in-one computing devices we're seeing lately.

<comment><USER18> We're moving away from this paradigm though, the traditional ATX desktop is a dying breed and the mindshare has already moved to Intel Next Unit of Computing, RPi, System on a Chip design. For general computing (not hobbiests) we already have enough compute power. See the MacPro and the Mac Mini, most of the parts are not upgradable. I really don't think smartphones will be an exception.

<comment><USER22> None of those things are used by gamers.

<comment><USER23> You'd be surprised, most "gamers" I know can't tell you what a graphics card is. There are a lot more "gamers" than those on HN and reddit.

I know three guys at my work, all software developers, who play SC2 daily on their mac minis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am really excited about the possibilities here. If they can pull this off (big if) you'd basically end up something like the App Store or Google Play, but it's hardware modules. _Drools_

</comment><comment><USER25> As the iPhone gets smaller, its more and more apparent that it ALREADY IS a modular part of a larger computing ecosystem.

The Ara project is fundamentally flawed because we don't need to replace parts inside a phone, the phone is a CPU. We need to add parts ON to it. So make the iphone smaller, add a second screen (watch) add some sensors (bluetooth heart rate monitor) and add a few other items which are replaceable and far more useful not hard integrated into the phone anyways.

If you want a better camera, just buy one and 'add' it to your phone via bluetooth. Then you can get a camera that is physically and technologically designed to be the best it can be as an appliance.

All the things I want to add to my phone or replace, I dont need to be on the BUS of the phone itself -- I just need it to be able to communicate.

<comment><USER26> What does this have to do with the Iphone? You do realize there are _other_ phones out there besides the Iphone, right?

<comment><USER12> It's interesting that a lot of the naysayers also seem be iphone lovers. I wonder if there is a degree of 'NIH" going on. Or, more accurately, 'not invented by my beloved company'.

<comment><USER25> Look at my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you are interested in working on Project Ara and future projects that incorporate modular Android and hardware networking, check out

[http://static.leaflabs.com/flyers/ara/LeafLabs_Hiring.pdf](http://static.leaflabs.com/flyers/ara/LeafLabs_Hiring.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting concepts, but what I really would like to see is a wearable "thing" with computing power, radios, and a way to use voice fro calls and commands, pairable to different screens. So I could have a 4.5-6" screen as a phone when out, an 8-9" as a tablet at home, an 11" and 23" screen for portable and desktop work. All driven from the same computing unit.

The "thing" could be a watch, maybe with an integrated Moto Hint-like earbud for calls. Or a pager-like device to carry on your belt or pocket, etc. Each screen would have its own battery, so the "thing" would need less power.

<comment><USER29> If the ara project is really, "a device running over an internal network, rather than just everything being connected to a CPU," then it would be a great platform for that vision. Presumably, an easy extension would be another device with its own power supply hooking into the network.

<comment><USER30> Couldn't the power supply be induction?

<comment><USER29> Sure, but it's hard to induce significant current in devices more than a few cm away. Considering we can't wirelessly power phones in a room, getting the phone to wirelessly power a wearable seems unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I like that it is serviceable so that you do not have to throw away your cell phone because the battery is dead.

Fact a lot of old electronic devices including phones gets illegally exported to African countries and China. There they are not recycled in an environmental friendly way.

Here is the documentary e-wastelandfilm, it will make you think twice before ordering the next great smartphone that soon will be obsolete by a better one. [http://www.e-wastelandfilm.com/](http://www.e-wastelandfilm.com/)

Thanks to the Google team for creating Project Ara!

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm skeptical if many people really want this. Modularity makes much more sense for televisions, but there's still people buying smart TVs, i.e. non- modular TVs.

</comment><comment><USER33> >Project Ara is like old-fashioned 1980s-era Southern California punk rock music; it is whatever you make it to be.

What a narrowcast reference. It made me smile, though.

</comment><comment><USER34> So if project Ara isn't finished by early next year they'll axe the whole thing? Why aren't all projects managed this way?

<comment><USER27> I invite you to work on a project that is managed this way. The answer to your question will become clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As the Wired article references, the hope is that this will kickstart a consumer-driven frenzy akin to the PC industry's trajectories.

It's a long time in coming, notwithstanding that regulations and FCC compliance seem to be the biggest regulatory obstacles preventing this idea from becoming reality earlier on during the evolution of mobile devices.

<comment><USER36> A way of thinking about project ara and many other developments in tech is "Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements". Reading this article (old) really opened my eyes in that regard and I have been noticing the pattern in many places ever since: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html)

<comment><USER37> IMO Our "phones" will soon be a service we login to rather than specific to any one device? If your physical phone breaks you just buy a new one for $50 and log into your cloud based phone. There are already services like that but I suspect it will tip soon for everyone. Aka Google is trying to commoditize the phones AND the carriers.

<comment><USER38> The recent update that moved Google Voice into Hangouts [1] has made that a reality for me. My phone took a swim a week ago and so I've been using a Nexus 7 as a temporary phone.

The only thing missing is that I had to set up my launcher, install all the apps again, configure my IMAP email client, and configure some third-party apps that didn't sync notification sounds.

[1]: In case you're not familiar, it added the ability to make and receive VoIP calls.

<comment><USER37> Sorry about your phone. Yeah I'm aware, the signs of this trend are all around. Interesting how hangouts has become a unified communication hub. Close to hitting mainstream IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am curious but skeptical. Curious as in, what kind of bus architecture are they running? PCIe with aggressive power management is my guess.

Modularity is cool but the infrastructure always adds to the cost. The more I think about it, Ara makes no sense in the phone market. This initiative is more about the tricorder market, if you will.

</comment><comment><USER40> If you think about Project Ara as a TriCorder, rather than a Phone, it's a much more interesting concept, I think.

</comment><comment><USER41> The concept of a phone running on an internal network is really amazing. I can't believe they got it going fast enough to be watching Colbert on this thing (like the article says).

Fairly useless article though. The whole thing just kind of rambles until the one sentence at the end where they describe the working demo.

</comment><comment><USER42> Fits well with the new Material design. I feel that some of the latest software design trends drift apart from the hardware design trends, where you once had Holo + a black phone or the metallic feel of the OSX interface + a metal macbook

</comment><comment><USER43> If this project works it could prove a godsend to users with disabilities, even though it can't by definition ever be state of the art (as observed elsewhere in this post modern phones have zero wasted space, and housing/integration will necessarily require more space per feature).

A functioning Ara ecosystem would allow the economical creation of devices with smaller production runs. One version may have a much bigger amplifier/speaker unit for hard of hearing users. Another may have a huge screen for those with impaired eyesight. Yet another could be optimized for those with extremely limited motor function à la Stephen Hawking.

It will also be a godsend to me, because even though I have giant farmer hands, I detest phones bigger than an iPhone 4S.

<comment><USER12> >> even though it can't by definition ever be state of the art

Is 'state of the art' a synonym for 'slim' ?

When I think 'state of the art' I think "most advanced hardware".

In theory, if Ara is successful, it will be much easier, more cost effective, and less ecologically harmful to keep your Ara phone constantly at the bleeding edge of 'state of the art' than it would be to constantly upgrade to the latest phones.

Consider also that no single phone on the market combines all the best hardware in one place, one could argue that ONLY with Ara could you have a fully state of the art phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> correct me if i'm wrong, but one thing i didn't see in the article was the relationship between this project and a start-up from a while back...i think it was called something like phonebloks from a year or two ago?

the article led me to think this DARPA guy just brought the idea to phones from the satellite world, but especially given the timelines, i can't help but wonder if there's more to the story than that.

<comment><USER12> From what I've heard, project ara was started by motorolla _before_ phoneblocks announce their idea. Motorolla was working in secrecy, and this work transferred to google when google bought motorolla.

When the phoneblocks people became very high profile, the project ara people decided to reach out to them and let the phoneblocks people that project Ara was already trying to bring a similar vision to reality.

Phoneblocks had no engineering ability, only a great vision and an appealing (though impractical) design. So Phoneblocks threw their support behind project Ara.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> To be fair here, Google struggle with the idea of removable storage in existing devices, so expecting them to make a reasonable leap into reconfigurable ones is a pipe dream.

More seriously, this is indicative of a lot of the old pc crowd not having grasped what a SOC actually is (the clue is in the name) or that package on package memory has been a thing for years. Our non PC devices are far more integrated than people seem to realize, and this is why they have the cost, space and battery usage benefits that they do.

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice clip, but as a tech journo the amount and type of corrections put on (late at night) says "Google plant" all over it.

</comment><comment><USER47> this will take the fun out of buying a new phone. upgrade the dirty old one you have that's full of hair and pocket fluff.

modularity works great on a desktop PC, but I'm skeptical that it will appeal to many people in the mobile space.

ping me in 2 yrs if i'm wrong and i'll eat my words!

</comment><comment><USER48> In software design, modular works well so I'd say this is something to watch.

</comment><comment><USER49> how about you take a FUCKING VIDEO. Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER50> off topic: wired is lame and the site hijacks you. can go back. open in a new tab if on mobile</comment>


Tensions surround release of new Rosetta comet data - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/europe/2014/11/tensions-surround-release-new-rosetta-comet-data

<comment><AUTHOR> So frustrating that we've actually landed on a comet, and the only picture we get to see is a surreptitious over-the-shoulder shot from a phone: [https://twitter.com/serpientes72/status/532588729945587713/p...](https://twitter.com/serpientes72/status/532588729945587713/photo/1)</comment>


Ask HN: React Native Performance Monitoring - <AUTHOR> How do people go about monitoring the performance / errors on iOS/android apps? We are building in react-native, for websites we use NewRelic but looking at the cost of their mobile platform I am wondering what alternatives there are out there.<p>Do you roll your own reporting? or use a service? <comment><USER2> We use Bugsnag for crashes, and Fabric for general usage analytics and adoption rates. Fabric also includes Crashlytics but Bugsnag has a better direct React Native integration. This includes source map support, version grouping, and issue assignment.</comment>


Why Some Amazon Workers Aren't Happy About Their Raise - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/technology/amazon-workers-pay-raise.html <comment><USER2> I have no doubt that a certain portion of workers benefitted from the new policy while some portion of workers did not. It is too early for anyone to judge the policy without the numbers being published from Amazon. My issue with the article is that it presents a single story of a person who was hurt by the policy and extrapolate that to be the overall tone at Amazon. This article relies on sensational and emotional aspects of one story, rather than facts and statistics.

<comment><USER3> > This article relies on sensational and emotional aspects of one story, > rather than facts and statistics.

...just like every single campaign for minimum wage.

<comment><USER4> Campaigns use what's effective, that doesn't mean you can't find facts and statistics if you actually go looking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No such thing as a free lunch. Shocker. Why not push for $25/hour and watch Amazon drop health insurance?

<comment><USER6> > _No such thing as a free lunch. Shocker_

No, but there's such a thing as making trillions of the backs of hard working peasants. No shocker either.

<comment><USER7> If a $15/hr wage is apparently a pay decrease for these "peasants" then they were previously making a very livable wage. So what exactly is Amazon doing that every local cafe or retail store isn't?

<comment><USER8> It was livable because they'd get 2 shares of amazon stock, worth about a 10% boost to their earnings per year and in non holiday seasons, they could make an additional 8% on performance, with that doubling in the holiday seasons. So instead of making an additional 18% to 26%, the bump to long term workers is as stated in the article from $14 to $15, where the previous performance program in the off season was $1.28, before the extra 10% from the stock grant. So amazon just saved ~20% on this holiday's logistics costs.

<comment><USER9> If you give performance bonuses and people work too hard to meet them people complain about work conditions, and if you just pay everyone more instead, people complain that you took away the performance bonuses.

<comment><USER6> And they are right in both cases.

How about having regular wages for regular work AND performance bonuses to reward great performance (what they're meant to be)?

As opposed to low wages for regular work, thus making performance "bonuses" a necessity (and thus using them to force people to overworking) OR having regular wages and not compensating those working more.

If I pay you $8/hour, and have "performance bonus" of $16 for those who work their asses off, people will be forced to work 2-3 hours more per day to get those just to get by.

If I then start paying you $10/hour and drop the bonuses, those working regular hours would be ok, but others who are still made to work overtime would still like to be compensated extra for what they do. They might still make the same as before, but now their colleagues who go off a 8 hours or have lower performance get the same too. So what's to compensate for their extra effort?

That's what performance bonuses are about, to compensate for extra effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really thought this was going to be a case of someone who spent years getting raises up to $15 an hour was having a fit because now everyone makes as much.

OK, so the complaint is a little more legitimate than that. But whenever you overhaul a system, some people gain, some people lose. Could amazon afford to raise wages and keep legacy programs around? Probably. Do they have to? No. And if Amazon is crippled by an exodus of workers then we'll learn something. And the way I hear it, unemployment is really low, seems like a workers job market to me.

<comment><USER3> If it's a worker's market then minimum wage is both pointless and meaningless to begin with.

The people who pulled this PR stunt off probably are laughing at the fact that they get to pander to liberals whining about minimum wage while cutting overall labor costs at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh come on this looks like it was written by corporate shareholder activists from the mid-1990s.

When did the New York Times become so conservative?

<comment><USER12> Writing a completely factual story that might appeal to a conservative mindset is not the same as a conservative bias. Now, putting aside your emotion for a moment, which part of the story did you feel was reported in a lopsided manner?</comment></comment>


The story of a few mega corporations and billions of self-employed people - <AUTHOR> https://levels.io/a-future-of-two-extremes/

<comment><USER2> Yep the writing is on the wall indeed.

BusinessInsider had a nice article on the kinds of jobs we may see in the near future:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/bizarre-jobs-well-see- by-2030...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bizarre-jobs-well-see- by-2030-2014-5)

A year ago, I was considering to have my son learn to code + design.. to proudly become a unicorn just like his dad..

but now im thinking that all those C-Level 3.0 digital workers of the future, will desperately be suffering from "Digital Fatigue" and soul/social imbalances. So (IRL) services that will focus on psyche course-correction will become a fun and meaningful industry for him to be in ( if he so chooses )

Maybe toward the end of my life i will help him recreate Fantasy Island ( sans the live-cams ) ;-)

</comment><comment><USER2> Enter : [http://blog.tray.io/what-were-working-on/](http://blog.tray.io/what- were-working-on/)</comment>


Design of the LLVM disassembler - <AUTHOR> http://blog.llvm.org/2010/01/x86-disassembler.html

<comment><USER2> Without looking into the code, it's not clear that the article explains the mechanism very well, or even enough to say something interesting. What's a ContextDecision? What's an OpcodeDecision? And ModRMDecision? Are they enums, bitflags, indexes, objects?

The most obvious way to write a disassembler (to my mind) specifically for such an idiosyncratic architecture as x86 is a 256-way lookup table mapping the first byte to hand-crafted instruction decoder functions, carefully placed to take advantage of commonalities among certain classes of opcodes. Add some flags into the table and you can extract more commonality. Addressing modes from Mod R/M and SIB can be factored out into separate routines. It adds up to a bunch of grunt work, but ought to be very fast.</comment>


U.S. Families Slice Debt to Lowest In 6 Years - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704823004576192602754071800.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us <comment><USER2> This headline is too positive by implying that Americans are choosing to save. Rather, they are hitting the wall. The gains here are overwhelmingly from defaulting on mortgages. Also the credit card companies have withdrawn $1 trillion in credit lines, so people can't pay cards with other cards any longer.

<comment><USER3> Americans are choosing to pay off their debt. They have paid off $90B so far. You are correct that $118B of the $208B drop is caused by lenders writing off bad debt. Of course, the elephant in the room is that total debt went up by $1.6 trillion - corporate debt increased 5.4%, govt debt increased 20%.

By the way, did anyone notice how crazy the financials of some of the people being interviewed are? The saleswoman had debt payments of $6500/month. Assuming she previously spent 50% of her take home pay on debt service, she was taking home about $13k/month. Yet somehow, she accumulated $500k in debt, and blew through her entire retirement savings in about 1.5 years.

I have no idea how it is even possible to be that irresponsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm so happy to hear that Mr. Shah and his wife were able to purchase a 350k house after pushing their debts off on taxpayers and dollar holders.

<comment><USER5> I don't see anything particularly wrong with people choosing to exit a mortgage in a way that's legal under their mortgage contract. If it's a no- recourse mortgage, then a debtor is perfectly within their rights to walk away from the property and consider the debt settled by the return of the property to the lender. That might cause the lender losses, but the lender is supposed to be pricing the possibility of such losses into the contract in the first place.

<comment><USER3> It is wrong because it is a violation of the agreement the borrower and lender both signed.

A mortgage is a promissory note, it conveys obligations on the borrower and the lender. There are penalties for violation, but that doesn't mean the borrower has the right to violate the contract. That just means they have the ability to do so.

(Also in many states, they do not even have the ability to. The lender can sue them for the difference between the foreclosure sale price and the remaining mortgage obligations.)

On the flip side, suppose house prices went up. Suppose also the bank could foreclose on the home, even if the borrower was fully paid up, perhaps paying a $10000 fine for wrongful foreclosure. Would there be something wrong with this?

<comment><USER5> But if your mortgage contract says that you're free of any further legal obligation if you return the property (whether because you actually wrote that into the contract, or because your jurisdiction adds such terms to all contracts), then exiting the contract in that manner is just exercising the termination clause. You are of course correct that if there aren't any such terms, then you can't exit in that manner.

If mortgages included a clause (either negotiated or because state law required it on all mortgages) saying that the lender may foreclose after paying $100k and giving notice, then sure, the lender would be within their rights to exercise that option as well.

I suppose you can argue for a category of "contractual obligations" separate from legally enforceable obligations, but that doesn't make much sense to me. I take a fairly instrumental view of contracts that they're definitionally equivalent to "legally enforceable agreement".

<comment><USER3> That's my point - mortgages don't include a clause allowing the buyer to exit the contract.

A call option has specific language in the contract: "Option holder has the right (but not the obligation) to purchase $SECURITY at $STRIKE_PRICE on or before $DATE. To exercise this option, holder must..."

A mortgage has very different language: "Borrower is obligated to make payments of at least $XXX on or before the 1'st day of each month..."

If you want to take your instrumental view of contracts, then there is similarly nothing wrong with anything you can legally get away with. It's basically a "might makes right" viewpoint. So if "nothing wrong with X" means "you can get away with X", you are correct.

I mistakenly interpreted the phrase "nothing wrong with" as having moral content.

<comment><USER5> Contracts incorporate all relevant contract law in the jurisdiction, though, since you can't enter a contract contrary to a jurisdiction's law.

Say you sign an employment agreement in California that purports to include a "non-employment" condition, which CA doesn't permit. I suppose you could say that it was "agreed to but not enforceable", but it makes more sense imo to say that non-compete agreements simply aren't possible in California (because an unenforceable contract is not a contract in any meaningful sense).

Or, if you deal with mortgages in a state whose mortgage law says that all mortgages can be exited with no further legal obligation by returning the property to the lender, then all mortgages in that jurisdiction have such a termination clause written into them, whether the contract purports to include it or not. For clarity, it probably should be restated in the document as well, but even if the document omits it, it's legally there.

The phrase "nothing wrong with" did have moral content. The morally required activity when dealing with contracts is exactly equivalent to the legally required activity. That's the whole _point_ of contracts, to impose legal obligations on the parties. I could see an argument if someone was misled, and didn't realize what legal obligations were being imposed. But I don't think that was the case here; lenders in no-recourse states presumably were aware that they were agreeing to a mortgage where the borrower had that option.

<comment><USER3> The activity legally required by a mortgage is to pay the debt. The existence of a penalty doesn't change this - it simply makes the calculation of whether or not it is profitable to violate the agreement a lot simpler.

By your logic it is morally right to deliberately violate the terms of any contract as long as you accept whatever penalties the courts dish out. Instrumentally speaking, all contracts have an embedded option to break them and accept the legal judgement against you.

Personally I don't buy into this moral schema. But that's just a question of values, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _"shouldered a smaller debt burden in 2010 than at any point in the previous > six years, putting them in position to start spending more"_

This probably isn't the writer's intent, but it just sounds like "hey guys! We got our debt down a bit! LETS GO SHOPPING"</comment>


Top Obama Adviser Sought Names of Trump Associates in Intel - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-03/top-obama-adviser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel <comment><USER2> This situation is (obviously) very political. It also illustrates well how "broad" intelligence gathering can be used as a political weapon. We all have our beliefs on the current and previous administrations, but I think it's vital to view these events from a minority viewpoint. If this tactic was used against you or your preferred political party, would it be acceptable?

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it should come as no surprise when the Trump team does some unmasking of their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 9th paragraph ->

       This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.

<comment><USER2> You're somewhat cherry-picking the quote. The point of that paragraph was to draw attention to the vague requirements present for unmasking:

> But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials > discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does > highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. > surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names > of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign > intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This > suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.</comment></comment>


The Shallowness of Google Translate - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/?utm_source=twb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> Great article. Seems a logic continuation of his 1997 book "Le ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language" (a book primarily about the challenges involved in translation), which I enjoyed when it came out.

</comment><comment><USER3> > my longstanding belief that it's important to combat exaggerated claims > about artificial intelligence.

I think Google translate is pretty amazing, but yeah, there's no need to declare game over. We are only beginning.

Overestimating progress goes back to the early days of computers. Seeing impressive results, people think the computer must possess something close to human intelligence on some level, because a human would have to be pretty smart to perform that well.

But no, with computers with have idiot savants.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, with all the people making ridiculously overstated claims about what deep learning can do I'm pretty sure we've got another AI winter coming.

And it's a shame. I really want to see more genuine progress in AI research; I really want to understand _what consciousness is_. But this boom/bust cycle that happens every time there's a tiny bit of real progress is a painfully inefficient way of getting there.

<comment><USER5> If there is a winter, I think it's going to be very different than in the past. What people used to call a "winter" was a drying-out of the funding for AI research. However, in the past, this research was funded primarily by public money, and specifically by defense budgets. And it was cut when scientists failed to produce the army of super robots the generals thought they were promised. In the present however, there is a lot of money put into AI research by the industry - Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, as well as many other, smaller companies.

The amount of investment in AI by those companies is simply unprecedented and so is the number of people who -drawn by this river of dosh, like moths to a flame- are pursuing AI as a career (even if that only means the statistical machine learning side of AI that those companies invest into).

What this means is that the current branch of AI has become "too big to fail". And that has nothing to do with how successful it is. As long as it can be monetised and the industry leads can show some return to their investment, "AI" will keep growing.

A winter, if it comes, will be a winter of knowledge- not of funds. We will end up with so much unusable, meaningless, laughably bad "research" that any significant contribution to knowledge will simply be buried under a ton of rubbish, never to be found out.

So the money will keep flowing in. But what will come out the other end will be utter nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Automatic image captioning research has some very impressive results in the recent years. Also there are other ideas in this domain that can handle language quite well (e.g. visual question answering). Interpreting classes in images as symbols, it appears as if symbolic and statistical approaches can in principle be combined. Wondering whether this can somehow be transferred to learning language for automatic translation.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Shallowness of Douglas Hofstadter.

> I am not in the least eager to see human translators replaced by inanimate > machines. Indeed, the idea frightens and revolts me. To my mind, translation > is an incredibly subtle art that draws constantly on one's many years of > experience in life, and on one's creative imagination. If, some "fine" day, > human translators were to become relics of the past, my respect for the > human mind would be profoundly shaken, and the shock would leave me reeling > with terrible confusion and immense, permanent sadness.

If (or more likely, "When") computers translate better than human, respect for the human mind should _increase_. It's quite a tough problem to solve, way harder than manual translation which thousands of people have been doing for centuries.

<comment><USER7> I believe Hofstadter is more worried about people prematurely adopting this technology en masse simply because, by it's inherently impressive nature and mysterious inner-workings, it generates its own terrific PR which clouds the perception of its actual efficacy at a deeply cognitive task.

Kevin Kelly in his book What Technology Wants speaks to the same willingness for human societies to so eagerly jump into new, unproven or potentially dangerous technologies without ever stopping to consider the effects of the adoption and log-term usage on their societies. A whole chapter is about how the Amish culture is not necessarily anti-technology so much as they are slow, disciplined adopters of technology. They hold their people's culture above all other values including productivity or connectivity and so to them it's a clear decision to at first be skeptical of new technologies and to deliberate the adoption of these technologies until the elders of the community can come to a consensus. Even then they usually allow small "pilots" or testing of the technology with a select few individuals at first. Kelly doesn't suggest we adopt the Amish culture, simply that there is something to be learned here.

I think A.I would need to become a fully robust form of consciousness capable of generating its own novel ideas spontaneously and to form a sort of gestalt from a mix of information, logic, patterns but also "feelings" (or whatever term would be used for "feelings" in a conscious AI) in order to produce the same type of translation a human can. Granted, even without consciousness it will likely come extremely close over time with more training and improvements to the algorithms but as Hofstadter explains it takes more than a sort of algorithmic proficiency:

"..To me, the word "translation" exudes a mysterious and evocative aura. It denotes a profoundly human art form that graciously carries clear ideas in Language A into clear ideas in Language B, and the bridging act not only should maintain clarity, but also should give a sense for the flavor, quirks, and idiosyncrasies of the writing style of the original author. Whenever I translate, I first read the original text carefully and internalize the ideas as clearly as I can, letting them slosh back and forth in my mind. It's not that the words of the original are sloshing back and forth; it's the ideas that are triggering all sorts of related ideas, creating a rich halo of related scenarios in my mind. Needless to say, most of this halo is unconscious. Only when the halo has been evoked sufficiently in my mind do I start to try to express it—to "press it out"—in the second language. I try to say in Language B what strikes me as a natural B-ish way to talk about the kinds of situations that constitute the halo of meaning in question."

I predict we will prematurely adopt machine-learning powered translation at the cost of loosing depth, clarity and the richness of the human expression of ideas but for the majority of us the impact may be minimal especially if great human literatures are still translated by humans.

<comment><USER4> I think it's just as much that Hofstadter doesn't want people making overstated claims giving a bad name for AI research (again!) when people finally realize how limited the current approaches are.

<comment><USER7> I agree it's probably just as much a warning to prevent overstated claims in general as it's harmful for numerous reasons.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's Schmidt hails the 'real mobile revolution' in Asia - <AUTHOR> http://asiancorrespondent.com/60334/googles-schmidt-hails-the-real-mobile-revolution-in-asia/

<comment><USER2> Easy payments through cell phones combined with ubiquitous, cheap phones combined with cell-phone interfaces to buy/sell/access everything (stocks, insurance, micropayment): this is a powerful change in the way people work and do everything.

But I think the step after the phone is going to be even more interesting. Its about the point now where any device can be hooked up to 3G and have a touchscreen interface (basically having a touchscreen phone embedded in the device, with software tailored to the interactions the device can make with other devices, or suppliers, or support, etc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mobile phone is the second technology that has reached the grassroots in Asia, the first being the radio.

Given the wide adoption of mobile phones, people are trying to solve every day problems sans computers.

</comment><comment><USER4> With the proliferation of Internet and Cell phones people can make informed decisions and directly vote on Bills/Laws in Indian Parliament.</comment>


Ask HN: What happens to your domain if the registrar goes out of business? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> This has happened before. RegisterFly went under. Another registrar (I think it was godaddy) took over their customers under the auspices of icann.

</comment><comment><USER4> That registration has value - its an asset that makes recurring revenue - <USER2> they'd likely transfer (sell) it to another registrar. You'd get an email with a link to a new backend to login to etc. This has happened to me numerous times over the years (they usually call it an acquisition, but I suspect many of them were effectively going out of business). It is a slight pain to learn a new system, but you never lose the domain or anything.

Worst case scenario Verisign or ICANN would step in. The registrar doesn't own the domain, you do. They are just the custodian. Similar to how a stock broker doesn't own the stock you hold with them and even if they go out of business, you still own the stock.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+happens+if+your+registrar+goes+out...](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+happens+if+your+registrar+goes+out+of+business)</comment>


U.S. Birthrates Fall to Record Low - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-birthrates-fall-to-record-low-11589947260 <comment><USER2> Curious how many people share this opinion, but I think this is extremely good news. I would love to see birth rates drop below replenishment across the globe. We simply don't need billions of humans. We have done, and continue to do major damage to our environment and historically a tiny minority has benefited from the labor of the majority. The people who benefit most from an increasing population are those who exploit people to increase their quality of life in clean sanctuaries while distancing themselves from the effort and waste required to maintain those lifestyles.

<comment><USER3> In this case, it's a good thing, because the birthrates declined most for women 24 and younger. Creating another person is one of the most carbon- intensive actions anyone can do, you're literally spawning a lifetime of energy use. Best to do that when you're SURE they will have all the resources they need to be a productive and helpful member of society...not when you're 16 and can't care for them properly.

I do think there is value to having a balanced aged pyramid, however. We don't want a China or Japan situation, where there are far too many old people, which would crush the younger members of society under the burden of caring. The one way to counteract that would be immigration, which has been a hot- button issue and is not a given or perfect remedy for population pyramids.

<comment><USER4> You could also be spawning the person who solves the problem of climate change.

<comment><USER5> I heard this argument many times. Has anyone ever actually done that? IMHO it's just a generational procrastination.

<comment><USER6> Well consider Jean-Joseph Pasteur and Jeanne-Etiennette Roqui for example.

<comment><USER7> Rebuttal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery)

<comment><USER6> Sure, but all those simultaneous discoverers have parents too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anecdotal: Many folks in my social circles are just less willing to accept the real responsibility of raising a child. We're all late-20-somethings/early 30-somethings and I have the conversation _all_ the time with people who want to wait until things like careers are established, until they have a chance to seriously travel a bit, and most commonly they just want to enjoy a relationship without the stress of kids. Kids are an insanely huge responsibility, and to parent right _all_ of your life priorities change completely.

Also, with religious stresses being almost non-existent in the groups I run in I feel like people aren't jumping into legally-binding marriages which causes the baby thing to be pushed down the road until they find someone they want to forge a lifelong relationship with. I think it's a super good thing when people take their time to find the right relationship for them!

All-in-all I've noticed a _big_ generational gap in thinking on this one because all I hear from tons of older relatives is "sooo when you guys getting married?" ...or even pushing for children before the fact. It feels unnatural and downright weird to field those questions and it's neigh impossible to explain "we're just taking our time to enjoy this thing and not rushing into huge commitments with marriage or kids..."

We're just taking our time trying to do the right thing for us really... I just wish people would stop calling us selfish for that.

<comment><USER9> It's terrifying to me that selfishness and self-centeredness has apparently taken over that generation of young people. Our society and culture are doomed if this doesn't change.

<comment><USER10> Isn't the act of having children just as selfish--or more selfish? I don't know of any parents (I have four children) who had kids to advance the human race. Most of the reasons for having kids--that I have heard--are related to the personal satisfaction of raising children, having a family, and not being alone when old. Not having kids is _less_ selfish than having kids, as the non-parent is not adding any additional stress to society or the environment.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely - and I'll make the argument that by rushing into something that I'm not ready for financially/emotionally that I would be doing the kid and world a huge disservice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is pretty amazing that we are witnessing hard natural selection in action. Think of it like a disease that kills 50% of population. Those that have immunity get to pass their genes, rest die out. Sort of like pressure from smallpox.

I am really curious how this will get resolved. Just collapse of current society with the values we have, some selection of properties like "need" to have kids imprinted even harder then it is now?

Humans 100 years from now will be quite different to us it seems.

I am also quite amazed at all the kids hate. In addition to all other awesome things they allow you to relive your childhood, chance to have an incredibly close friend, you can teach them what you know, do some incredible things together. Etc. Kids are not expensive unless you make them so. They can help you with stuff too you know..(that is if you raise them to be decent people and not just spend days staring at the iPad so they don't bother you)

<comment><USER12> The most expensive part of a kid is stretching yourself to your limits to get them into the most expensive neighborhoods (I.e. best schools) possible.

And the unfortunate thing is the data shows that this is the best move for people to make, as the peers you are surrounded are the biggest determinant of your future success (see opportunity atlas). Which is why people stretch themselves to the max with 30 year mortgages. It's inevitable in a society with ever widening wealth/income gaps.

<comment><USER13> If you are putting off having a child on account of money you are doing life wrong. Plenty of large families have non-software incomes and do just fine. They may not be able to eat out but it's a sacrifice worth making.

<comment><USER12> I think most people would agree that having children while homeless is a bad idea. Where that line is is a personal choice. I wouldn't want kids unless I could reasonably guarantee they'd be in a decent school district with some chance to move up the socioeconomic ladder. But thats just my opinion.

<comment><USER14> Pretty big group of people who fit between software engineer and living in a tent in SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A look at the charts tells a different story IMO.

> Birthrates fell or held steady for women of all ages except those in their > early 40s. Teenagers saw the sharpest drop, with a 5% decline in their > birthrate. Since peaking in 1991, the teen birthrate has fallen 73%.

Seems to me like people are waiting longer these days. We may be in a lull at the moment, but I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic conditions.

<comment><USER16> If you push out the whole distribution of child births, some of those would-be child births will not happen. Female fertility falls rapidly after 35[1]. It's not something you can simply delay across the population and expect to get the same total reproduction rate. People will have fewer kids than they otherwise would have.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quant...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quantification_of_effect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We had 8 years of happy marriage before having a kid, which resulted in decades of a different kind of happy marriage. I'm glad we waited and glad we became parents.

What's not frequently discussed is how many people are unhappy having become parents. It worked out great for us but one thing I learnt was how many other parents regret that choice. There's an understandable taboo on discussing it (you have the responsibility, and you don't want the kids, who had no choice in the matter, to feel unwanted) but a result of the taboo is that people feel pressured into shifting their life in a way they regret.

One reason why I think it worked for us is _because_ we waited.

</comment><comment><USER18> The US more or less hates kids and parents. You want more kids? Our society needs to reduce health care and childcare costs while socially making the "village" more of a socially accepted setup. I have 3 generations in my house with other family nearby. I can't imagine doing it any other way. The current job environment is you should be moving to where the jobs are. Why do people need to move to sit on a computer all day is beyond me.

<comment><USER16> Respectfully, I think reducing childcare costs is in direct tension with returning to an expectation that grandparents share some of the child rearing responsibilities.

Hopefully an expansion of remote work can improve this situation.

<comment><USER18> Childcare costs could be somewhat indirectly related to grandparents having to retire later or not at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Ponzi scheme that is the economy is not going to work unless there are lots of new entrants. We either need a) lots of births or b) lots of immigration.

I don't know about other people, but the idea of trying to have a child is unfathomable to me because I am very, very far away from being (economically) in a place where I feel comfortable breeding. As someone who doesn't fit the mold society wants me to be (i.e., a real contrarian but not in the hip cool SV way), there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being human is really about: procreation.

PS[edit]: Idiocracy is a great film and everyone should watch it.

<comment><USER20> Why does the economy require new entrants?

<comment><USER19> Where do you think the growth comes from? More people at the bottom push up everyone at the top.

<comment><USER21> Not "everyone". Imagine the economy like a tank of water, and each person a single molecule of H20, and proximity to the top of the tank represents relative wealth. So all the water molecules are constantly shifting a bit, but mostly stay in place unless something shakes up the tank.

If you sprinkle water on the top, those molecules stay mostly at the top: rich parents' kids mostly stay rich. If you feed water in through a pump at the bottom, most of those molecules will stay at the bottom: poor parents' kids usually stay poor.

In general, the closer you are to the top or bottom, the more likely you are to stay there. Adding from the bottom pushes the people at the top even higher, yes; but those in between the bottom and top mostly just shift around as the middle gets wider.

<comment><USER19> It's more like a pyramid, where the people at the top of the pyramid go farther up the more people you add to the bottom. The size of the whole pyramid increases over time, and some people might move up or down a few levels, but the majority of people will spend their whole lives near the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I decided against kids a couple of years ago and I'm so glad I did. I just couldn't see myself raising kids the way I wanted to and being able to keep my career and quality of life. And I see so many new parents just being ground down by it all, and that was before the pandemic.

Without independent wealth, I just don't see how people do it without making some incredible sacrifices.

<comment><USER3> They DO make incredible sacrifices: losing sleep, losing free time, everything gets messy and slobbery, kids are very expensive, they can get into trouble and worry you...on and on.

Then again, parents see the trade-offs. They'll have someone to take care of them later, to pay some of that forward to society, plus parents are often the kind of people who love babies/kids and take joy and pleasure in the process.

It totally makes the best sense to let every person decide if these trade-offs are worth it...but I do think we should support parents financially, as having a balanced age pyramid is an important thing for a society.

<comment><USER22> > but I do think we should support parents financially,

I completely agree, but the cynic in me just doesn't see a scenario where this is politically feasible in the US.

<comment><USER23> Just to be clear, America absolutely does support parents financially to an enormous degree. Hint: it's not the middle class we're supporting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know this is a sci-fi scenario, but: don't overpopulation problems evaporate once space travel and colonization really kick off? In fact, at that point, it would seem that more people = better, at least if 'explore the universe' is something you think civilization should do.

This scenario seems doable/likely within a few hundred years. Less if space travel becomes more than a niche thing.

<comment><USER25> Space travel and colonization is so far off from a realistic option that you might as well be talking about Captain Marvel swooping in and saving the planet. The physics simply don't allow it to happen (short of some truly major breakthrough like warp drive/time travel). And we don't have hundreds or thousands of years to wait for things like that — the current trends point to a few decades at best to solve these problems.

Also, colonization creates more people. The current ones stay where they are, while only a few adventurers move to the new place, and then have kids there. Most people are not going to give up a lifetime's worth of building a life somewhere, at least not in the numbers needed to impact total population.

<comment><USER24> I don't know, that seems a bit pessimistic. Right now, space travel is a tiny fraction of global economic activity. What if that increased 10x, 100x, or 1,000x?

Submarines and self-contained vessels might be a good metaphor/approach, as compared to a full-blown colony. It doesn't seem implausible that we could have millions of self-contained spaceships, each carrying hundreds of people, within ~200 years, assuming that serious percentages of GDP are put toward it.

<comment><USER26> We could, but hundreds of millions is a small fraction of our population and 200 years is too long if it's an important part of the solution.

Also, cislunar space is much easier than colonising the planets, which is in turn orders of magnitude easier than colonising other star systems — even if you can find enough people to do it, which is hard because why would Joe or Jane Average want to go to a deep space colony where ping-time is measured in years at best, or dozens of geological epochs at worst?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd also emphasize the financial stresses of raising a child. Young people have huge financial burdens from college, live in extremely expensive cities, and the idea of adding a child into that life seems ridiculous.

Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.

<comment><USER6> > Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.

Just pointing out there is no real evidence this is the case.

Many people use vastly less resources than the average American, and even at high standards of living this remains true.

We are able to feed all the people in the world easily, with current (or less) environmental impact (just look at the waste we produce).

It's choices, not carrying capacity that leads to environmental issues.

<comment><USER28> You can't really live like a sub saharan person if you're in the US. Just sitting in an air conditioned office for a week probably makes you use more energy than the average guy in Sudan use in a year.

<comment><USER6> And yet the company deciding to keep aircon at 21C instead if 25Cis made up of people and shareholders all who can change that decision.

Plenty of green buildings are carbon neutral or negative.

<comment><USER28> I've seen coworkers manually cranking the heat up to 25C in the middle of winter, people just don't give a shit.

I live in berlin, you literally don't need heating if your building has any kind of insulation, you can just wear a sweater and be ok. But no, they even heat the damn stair cases no one uses because we have elevators.

<comment><USER6> I think you are making my point for me?

It's literally people's choices causing this. Not some inherent carrying capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I suspect 9 months from the lockdown months will see a surge in births....

<comment><USER30> Not for any couples that already have a kid.

<comment><USER31> This is snark that will be upvoted but not borne out by statistics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm 39 and have three kids aged 4, 2 and 1 month old.

I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length overview of the emotional pros and cons of having children: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/on- parenthood/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/)

I like to think about it as kids are +1,000,000 points and -900,000 points at the same time. The average is probably a slight positive but the highs are extremely high and the lows are also pretty low. This TED talk goes into this in more detail and is also great about giving honest views of being a parent: [https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_talk_parenting_taboos)

To make a development analogy: think of a time when you spent a huge effort trying to solve a bug in a code base you really care about. Finding that bug was incredibly frustrating and made you question why you even got into programming. Then, you find the answer and you watch your program work again and be better than it was before. This rollercoaster of emotions with a net positive outcome parallels very closely with having children.

</comment><comment><USER33> I thought the reasons would be obvious. The cost of living has inflated very rapidly in the last 8 years whereas disposable income has gone down because of high rent, debt payments and stagnant real incomes.

What are they proposing? Millenials stay in school longer than ever, take on massive debts early on, pay ever increasing rent, train themselves up to a skilled worker for a livable wage, get a massive mortgage and THEN go sacrifice more by having a kid (whose education costs will be off the roof)?

What a cruel joke!

</comment><comment><USER34> I really want to have kids, but I don't feel financially capable of it. I have a very good, stable job with a high developer salary and costs of raising a child are just way, way, way too high to consider it.

I would at minimum need to be certain I have enough money to

\- own a nice, safe home we cannot easily be evicted / removed from (eg due to landlord preferences), within a short commute from my workplace and any school / child care locations we need.

\- have a personal savings rate that will allow me to fully pay for some child care options, school, and eventually college, and give my child some lump sum for an emergency fund when they move out on their own.

\- have remaining savings rate to still achieve some of my personal goals that I'm unwilling to sacrifice over child care, like traveling / vacationing, continued education, and supporting my elderly parents when needed.

I cannot see a way to do this without earning probably upwards of $500k/year, so having children is just financially untenable for me.

If home prices near major tech centers went down, or my salary went up, then I'd love to. But as labor share of wealth stagnates and urban real estate is increasingly priced out for average families, it's just impossible.

</comment><comment><USER35> No one I know wants to have a child.

The primary reason? It's super expensive. And people my age entered the workforce right before the Great Recession, which hammered their wages and they lost years of salary growth, followed by not even a decade later, a pandemic, which will do worse.

While raising a child continues to get more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://archive.md/Mkn7f](https://archive.md/Mkn7f)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'll try to put this in a nonjudgemental way, and after a few revisions I'm still not happy with the tone of this comment. Sorry about that.

I find it really tough to harmonize the ideas that: 1) If you can't sell your labor to provide for yourself, you deserve to die. 2) You should have kids, and not only cost yourself $100,000 at least, and increase competition for resources.

The cynic in me thinks people want to see others fail so they can feel better about themselves, and more people competing for labor and capital decreasing the demand for labor will increase the number of people who society will deem unworthy of existence. By the odds, any random kid isn't going to change the world, they're just going to be another mouth to feed, and more than likely going to make things somewhat worse for everyone else. This is a blood-soaked all-against-all kill-and-die world, and what is a kid other than another knife pointed at you?

As far as I can tell, this seems about as rational as being proud to put out your own eyes with a red-hot grapefruit spoon.

As far as the "Kids give your life meaning" idea goes, giving one's parents meaning is a lot to put on a baby who can't even lift their own head, or anyone else for that matter. We're told all our lives that we're on our own, that anyone who needs anything from anyone else is weak and doesn't deserve existence (which is both morally wrong and incorrect). At the same time, it's supposedly okay to force a child to emotionally support you? That doesn't make any sense.

I can at least comprehend the racist argument, that it's one's responsibility to have kids to outcompete outsiders. I disagree with it for _numerous_ reasons, but I can at least fit that idea in my head. Maybe that's a reason having kids squicks me out so much, is the only comprehensible argument to me I find repulsive and I've only heard it out of repulsive people.

Is the desire to have kids _completely_ ruled by biological/hormonal factors, or a fear of ostracism for not "doing one's duty"? A lot of people I know and respect are good parents and don't regret having kids, but can't articulate why they did, so I'm not under the impression that parents are all cruel, broken assholes (though in my hometown there were _numerous_ examples of this).

What is it about parenthood that isn't a curse on yourself and everyone else?

<comment><USER38> People don't exist without parents. The parts which are not a curse are just the joys (and struggles) of existence.

The part which is not a curse is _you_.

In a perfect world the ideal people to answer this question would be your parents, but I don't want to presume. We get the families we get, it's just part of the deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Society acts like having kids is a luxury good, and not a vital resource.

You can certainly argue that we need to have fewer kids, but to expect parents to fully bear the responsibility of raising them alone drives down the potential of the next generation.

</comment><comment><USER40> Meanwhile, "site developers" are in a mad rush to tear down miles and miles of virgin forest and construct new cookie cutter houses they expect to sell for $300,000 each, in my city. This, in the midst of the worst unemployment crisis we've seen since the dust bowl.

<comment><USER41> There's some reasons for this... existing housing stock is old so requires renovation or maybe not available. People want also want bigger houses and maybe a little more land. So because you have the land people will use it. In places with land use restrictions or simply places that are out of room you see infilling and renovations. Schools play a big role and a lot of families want to move into neighborhoods with families in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Just look at the number of pets being adopted by Millennials.

</comment><comment><USER43> Deciding to not have a kid seems like a functional downvote on the surrounding community and circumstances after the per capita growth levels off.

</comment><comment><USER44> About the discussions for/against having children: quit justifying your choice. Most of the time the reason you think made you choose is not the real one and any argument can be countered easily, it only opens your choice to discussion even more.

Especially justifying not having children with the state of economy, politics or social issues does not stand up to scrutiny if you look back in history.

On the other hand simply and unemotionally stating "I don't want children (right now)" is as unbeatable as they come.

<comment><USER45> this is probably the most confusing comment I've seen in this thread

the reasons people have for or for not having kids aren't real reasons because...history? or they're "easily countered"? some examples would be nice to provide context to these statements

<comment><USER44> The reasons people _give_ for/against having kids are just stories they tell themselves. We want to seem rational and we feel the need to have a rational reason for our choices.

"Economy is bad right now" and everything like this: historically the conditions to have children have been a lot worse. History meaning more than 50 years.

Above is only one example of how you can open your choice to being countered when this decision is just a personal thing that should not be up for debate imho.

I explained poorly, the intention was just to help mostly young people have a more solid stand especially against peer/family pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> [http://archive.md/Mkn7f](http://archive.md/Mkn7f)

</comment><comment><USER47> Let's give it about a half a year, then look again.

All this coronavirus togetherness has potential to move the needle.

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://archive.md/Mkn7f](https://archive.md/Mkn7f)

</comment><comment><USER49> Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced:

> dot-com boom / bust (junior high)

> 9/11 (high school)

> War on Terror (college)

> student loans (probably for the rest of my life)

> the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic / > career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I > graduated college)

> the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment / > anti-establishment, etc

> Trump as president

> Covid-19

> narcissistic boomer parents

> narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership > whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed

> and a lot more that stresses me out

From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level while cost of living is increasing.

And you wonder why we are putting have having children?

It's because we _do not_ know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.

</comment><comment><USER50> Less people = less problems

</comment><comment><USER51> Raising to record high in about 7 months.

</comment><comment><USER52> Anyone have a non-paywall link?

<comment><USER53> I've been able to read WSJ links with the Bypass Paywall plugin, Firefox, and UBlock Origin.

* [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> We already know how to solve this: via tax incentivization to breed. Everyone even remotely familiar with history knows about the baby boom and knows that came about because of financial incentives from the GI Bill. Seems like the government would rather have the cheap unorganized labor of immigrants rather than do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wait until January 2021.

But on a serious note, even though my SO and I are doing very well economically (both engineers), it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a child with how expendable engineers are these days.

<comment><USER56> >with how expendable engineers are these days

I have never heard anyone say that. What kind of engineers are you? There should be demand everywhere.

<comment><USER55> I mean expendable in the sense that as an employee you can just be thrown away if the market dips. Sure, you can maybe find more work, but you probably would have to uproot (not everyone lives in SV) and that's not easy with kids. My parents did that and it sucked; 8 different schools from elementary to high school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Kids aren't worth the headache (queue the parents telling me how their kid is the greatest thing that ever happened to them).

I'd rather allocate the saved 500K-1million dollars it costs to raise a kid and use it for myself.

<comment><USER58> I thought much the same for the longest time... until we had one by accident.

Rearing a child grounds you in a way you cannot imagine at this moment. Looking back, I realize not having a kid was just me trying to avoid making any hard choices in life.

Now, when I interact with colleagues who don't have kids, I see a certain shallowness of perspective that, in retrospect, I myself was guilty of. None of them ever really grew up.

<comment><USER59> that's not condescending at all

<comment><USER58> I'm sorry if it sounds condescending. It really is the truth. When it comes to a child, it's only after experiencing both sides that one can truly decide which is better.

<comment><USER60> It doesn't sound condescending, it is condescending. It can't be that hard for you to see that there are other ways of broadening one's perspective than having a kid.

<comment><USER58> Having traveled the world by now, experiencing different cultures, cuisines and work environments, there's really no analog to the experience of rearing a child. It broadens your perspective in a different manner, unlike the other ones. You are probably tired of having everyone with kids say the same thing to you again and again, in different ways. I get it. But you have to admit, there must be some fire to all that smoke.

I do agree with the other posters though: If kids are not of interest, it is better, on average, not to have one. The world is full of unwanted children. Just recognize that there is a consequence attached to not having this experience. As in other things, there's no free lunch.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Weekly developer news podcast - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailydrip.com/blog/weekly-drip-042-1-elixir-survey-why-security-is-difficult-browser-wars-story-time-quantum-computing-in-2018 <comment><AUTHOR> we do a weekly developer newsletter. this week we recorded us talking about it, podcast style (but with a video). I'd love some feedback because I have no idea if it's any good.

<comment><USER2> Hey with my crap browser I can't play the video (or even really have a clue where it would be on the link you gave); if the audio were linked separately I would have downloaded it and given a listen. Keep building!</comment></comment>


Attention and Augmented Recurrent Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://distill.pub/2016/augmented-rnns/ <comment><USER2> an oldie but a goodie.

see also the lectures for oxford deep learning for nlp [https://github.com/oxford-cs- deepnlp-2017/lectures](https://github.com/oxford-cs-deepnlp-2017/lectures)

<comment><USER3> Doing NLP with neural networks for some time, specifically categorizing information and authorship attribution.

What I've seem so far is that neural networks, in this area, are being used as classifiers, and sometimes old classifiers (SVM, for example) also have a good performance.

How you do extract information (bag-of-words? TF-IDF? Doc2Vec? FastText?) is the thing that is making difference, in my tests... And some researches indicate that extracting information using semantics give stronger results.

<comment><USER2> The more useful part about neural net in NLP is that you can train complexe end to end models that end up performing better at their task than anything else composite.

An example of this is neural translation with the Attention is all you need paper ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762)), which is the top of the line in translation.

An other example of this is Microsoft's R-NET ([https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/mrc/](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/mrc/)), which are the top of the line at question answering ([https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD- explorer/](https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/)) ([https://research.fb.com/downloads/babi/](https://research.fb.com/downloads/babi/))

An other cool example of complex end-to-end network are Stanford's Dynamic Coattention Networks ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01604](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01604))

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I'll read them !</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Functional programming for modern Fortran - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wavebitscientific/functional-fortran <comment> nv-vn Any information about the performance implications of this library? This looks quite nice to use, but I imagine it has some performance cost versus more traditional ways of writing Fortran code, which could (sadly) mean this won't ever get much use in real-world code. Nonetheless, it's awesome that a language that's been around for 60 some-odd years is still evolving and making use of modern programming techniques. It's something to think about for people making languages now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words. I cannot comment on the performance hit yet but this is something I plan to examine soon. Based on experience I can guess that the performance decrease from using recursion could be about an order of magnitude or more for large arrays. Fortran really shines performance-wise when applied to heavy computations on very large multi-dimensional arrays - <USER2> don't think functional techniques should be applied in such cases. However, I think that Fortran programmers can benefit by applying functional techniques on parts of code that do a lot of complex logic but are not computationally heavy. Pareto principle is especially valid in HPC Fortran codes - <USER3> compute time is spent in a small % of code base. Those should be left alone.

<comment><USER4> I really like your project. I do question its usefulness however. If you get _any_ performance hit from using these, you beat the point of using Fortran (over say Python) in the first place :) Don't you think?

<comment><USER5> There is certainly an advantage to being able to use a single language in your project instead of two separate languages.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and having worked with Fortran code for years, we used the routines to calculate... and Python to analyze the data. A colleague even scrapped old Fortran routines in favor of Python + Numpy, as he could be more productive without a noticeable slowdown in his work, as the data analysis part was the bottleneck. So I reiterate my point: I like the project, I like the idea, but we need more information regarding the performance of the routines. Otherwise, using e.g. Python full-stack could be much less of a hassle.

<comment><USER6> NumPy is FORTRAN under the covers, e.g. BLAS IIRC.

<comment><USER7> BLAS are generally implemented in assembly these days, although they do have Fortran interfaces.

<comment><USER8> The important kernels (particularly GEMM) are written in assembler, but you can see OpenBLAS, for instance, importing netlib LAPACK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The creater of FORTRAN John Backus became a big promoter of functional programming in his later years

</comment><comment> photon-torpedo Nice work. But as far as I can see this only works for the intrinsic Fortran datatypes, i.e. the various kinds of integers and reals. Any chance for extending this to user-defined types? Looking at the code, all functionality has been repetitively implemented for each datatype -- I hope this has not been done manually, but with a code generator? If so, could the generator be extended to process user-defined datatypes?

It's really unfortunate that modern Fortran has no facilities for generic programming. That's why I'm personally moving more and more to Julia...

<comment><USER7> Fortran eventually gets every useful feature, but 5-10 years after it's clear that it's useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking at this makes me wonder if there is IDE support for handling the way that Fortran does generic functions? So much boilerplate and repetition required...

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, Fortran standard does not provide good support for generic programming so some level of repetition is necessary :/. I don't see this as a major issue though - boilerplate coding happens once. In any case, pick any language that supports generic programming, and if you dig deep enough, you will run into boilerplate, in one form or another. :)

<comment><USER10> To clarify I'm familiar with how Fortran handles generic programming and my frustration with it extends well beyond having to write interface blocks (although these are annoying too). I regard having several versions of functions handling e.g. different length floats as pretty tedious repetition - that in my experience can quickly turn into a maintenance nightmare. Maybe this is outside the scope of what an IDE could help with though. Could some kind of function templating be possible in future versions of Fortran?</comment></comment></comment>


Asia Gains a Tech Edge by Backing Start-Ups - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/technology/personaltech/06valley.html

<comment><USER2> Anybody here know how DeviceVM makes computers boot up fast?</comment>


Ruby 2.6.0 with JIT now 6x faster than Ruby 2.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/k0kubun/7a1145f8391fbc3c076052d6f40d9e8e <comment><USER2> Don't get too excited. This is a micro-benchmark and not representative of what most real world apps will see.

A benchmark of something the scope of a typical rails app is likely to be much much less. Earlier descriptions of MJIT mention benchmark tests that were only ~11% improvement until the benchmark was "tuned" for the JIT. [1]

If you're modifying the the benchmark specifically for the JIT, it's not really a valid benchmark IMHO.

[1] [https://medium.com/@k0kubun/the-method-jit-compiler-for- ruby...](https://medium.com/@k0kubun/the-method-jit-compiler-for- ruby-2-6-388ee0989c13)

<comment><USER3> Are there any good real world benchmarks for Ruby?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a fantastic result. The main issue with Ruby has always been the tradeoff of speed for an expressive and powerful language. In my experience the ecosystem around Rails is amazingly productive vs other languages and getting this much of a speed increase makes choosing it even more viable than it was already. Excited to see where Ruby and Rails go from here.

</comment><comment><USER5> I never thought we'd get to the 3x of the 3x3 project for ruby 3, but looks like things are well beyond that already - which is great!

This should effectively kill the "ruby is slow" misnomer. One may find other languages better suited for certain particular uses, but this speed increase great expands the applicability of Ruby in the greater problem space.

Just because Ruby & Ruby on Rails have ceded popularity to javascript, does not mean that either have stopped improving. We usually abandon frameworks and languages because they have not kept up with the times or we outgrow them, but as time passes a ruby/rails stack becomes an even more effective approach to software development. With ActiveStorage and talk of push notification support built-in, and now this 6x(!) speed increase on 2.6 (and we're not even at ruby 3 yet!) makes for an effective one-man-band framework that normally require a whole team to deliver on. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER6> For someone who doesn't use Ruby what changes contribute to this? Is it just the JIT implementation or are there other factors? Is this reflected in real- world usage or only under certain loads, which this benchmark favors?

<comment><USER7> From the benchmark it looks like the JIT causes the lion's share of the improvement, since trunk (which will presumably become 2.6.0 going by the title) without JIT is 5.7x slower than with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good job! Ruby has always been a wonderful language from the get-go, and its influence on developers and software development are everywhere. The only thing anyone could really complain about was the performance (and the GIL, maybe variable scope, garbage collection and what have the Romans ever done for us, etc) so it's time for the New Wave of cheaply-prototyped unicorns, minotaurs and sphinxes...

</comment><comment><USER9> Does the increased speed come at the cost of significantly higher memory usage? MRI's memory usage is already top-heavy.</comment>