Airbus thinks it has found a way to alleviate jet lag - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/04/thatll-be-day?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/thatllbethedayairbusthinksithasfoundawaytoalleviatejetlag <comment><USER2> After 1.5 million lifetime miles, much of it intercontinental, it boils down to 2 rules for me:

\- Flying East to Europe: Get out in the sun after landing and don't fall asleep until at least 8:00 PM local time.

\- Flying West to Asia: Stay on US time. Go to sleep at 6:00 PM local time, get up at 2:00 AM. Obviously, avoid evening appointments. If that isn't possible, at least schedule them after you've been in country a couple of days.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious: what's the idea behind waking up at 2:00 AM? Are you the sort of person who can't easily sleep more than 8 hours?

<comment><USER2> Yes, I don't have a choice. My body wakes me up at 2:00 because it is past my normal wake up time in my home time zone. I've tried going back to sleep, but wind up just lying in bed awake.

<comment><USER4> That happened to me on my last trip to Europe. Both my wife and I woke up every night at 2:10am for the first few days. The precision of it was crazy. However, we would take a few ambient and be right back asleep and feeling great the next day. Amazing what twelve hours of sleep can do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This "16.7M colours" stat that reporters wave around always gets me. It's just 24-bit color, doesn't mean it's "high tech". I can make you 16.7M colours with a $3 microcontroller and LEDs from the hardware store.

What they should discuss instead is the color gamut of the LEDs and how much of the visible light spectrum they can accurately reproduce.

<comment><USER6> They aren't writing the article for technologists and color-gamut-philes. If anything, they're writing it for people who fly long-haul and consequently suffer from jet lag when they have _actual business_ to conduct.

Talking about the number of colors the LEDs can produce is far more likely to convey to that audience how this is supposed to work than delving into the kind of details you'd probably have to read the spec sheet on the individual diodes to find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Boeings 787s and "new cabin" 778 retrofits have this feature. It was touted by AA and United a while back. When i actually flew in one, flight attendants made zero use of it and just went from 100% bright to to regular "lights off, good night" as soon as meal service was done.

<comment><USER8> Yeah United the same on my 787 journeys. Truly the worst staff in the world consistently.

However, 787 does have pressurization and humidity features as well and these made a huge reduction in my jet lag over the 777 and A380

<comment><USER9> I thought A380 and 787 had equivalent cabin pressure of 6000 ft with similar humidity features.

That said, I unfortunately did not notice any reduction in tiredness or jet lag in either plane compared to older aircraft. But I did enjoy the lower noise levels and higher stability of the A380, which make for a more pleasant journey overall. I feel less worn off when I land, which means I'll take less to recover from the flight itself, which I find more damaging then the time zone differences.

<comment><USER8> agree. The a380 is tremendous, especially when combined with Qantas service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps I'm saying this because I only experienced jet lag on holidays but I love it. I flew several times from Europe to Asia. I couldn't get much sleep on the plane and was very tired so managed to sleep easily and the next days were a bit hazy but fun.

On the way back it's the best part. I always end up going to bed early and waking up early. I love it. I normally can't sleep that easily or wake up so fresh early in the morning. I feel very productive working in the early hours of the morning (only on jet lag). Maybe I'm odd, but I wish I could stretch my jet lag even further, rather than get rid of it.

<comment><USER11> > I only experienced jet lag on holidays but I love it

I feel the same on slight sleep deprivation: if you usually get a good night's sleep and one day wake up after 3/4 hours, after the groggy phase you'd feel in a positive, relaxed mood, probably not top notch mentally but it's very similar to having drunk a small amount of alcohol. I really enjoy it.

It doesn't work if you are already sleep deprived.

<comment><USER12> Actually sleep deprivation has been proven to be equivalent to being intoxicated. I can't find the resource unfortunately.

<comment><USER13> A quick search provided the source: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1739867/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1739867/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My first work flight to Europe (about 30 years ago) I was upgraded to first class upon getting on the plane. First class at that time was in the nose of the 747. Business class was on the 2nd level. I walked into the nose and found that I was the only one there. Because the nose is basically a triangle, one of the results is that one seat is isolated all by itself. I choose that seat and thought "cool, I'll be like Captain Kirk on the bridge". Being young (~21) and inexperienced, jet lag was not on my mind - I was looking forward to my time as Captain Kirk.

A few other passengers can onto the "bridge" and the a stewardess came in and asked me if I'd like a drink. I had about two drinks before passing out. I slept all the way to Europe and was somewhat miffed at myself. But upon arrival I found that I did not experience any jet lag. Over a year I did the same trip a couple more times, was not so fortunate to be placed on the bridge, get free drinks, and be comfortable. On those trips I did experience jet lag.

<comment><USER15> I do UK to Australia every other year. I started in my early twenties and am now mid thirties. I've found jetlag has gotten worse as I've got older. I hardly felt it when I was 21! I'd say it takes about three days to be sleeping ok again now. My parents always take at least a week to recover.

Except this time. I had a six month old baby and jetlag felt completely the same as just being at home. :)

<comment><USER16> Definitely agree on the age thing... I've just turned 60 and it takes me days to get fully recovered from flying LN-NY, much longer than it used to. Melatonin and adjusting sleep times helps a bit, but not as much as I'd wish.

Not being able to sleep on planes doesn't help either. On the overnight flight back to LN, I'm the one with the reading light on all night...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We always found getting blind drunk worked best. Get plastered then go to sleep at about midnight, wake up at 10am local time with a stinking hangover but body clock in sync.

<comment><USER7> 2-3 non-sugary drinks plus a melatonin (which i never take regularly) work wonders. Bring good earplugs - the soft, squishy kind. And of course, try to get that business upgrade - i found the latter to work the most :)

<comment><USER18> Melatonin (to me) are a bad sleep aid. It definitely helps you sleep, but it's a weird sleep

<comment><USER19> You don't need much and a lot of the OTC pills are way too much and cause that odd sleep. Iirc Some pills are 50mg of the stuff and you only need ~1mg to get useful effects. Any more and you risk bad dreams and other weird effects.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I've been to a sleep specialist and they told me the same thing. Anything over 1mg is far too much. And you really have to look to find the 1mg bottles.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I found a bottle with 3mg pills that i just cut down to ~1mg or less size. seems to work fine when I really need to get to sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm currently using a combination of Jetlag Rooster ([http://www.jetlagrooster.com/](http://www.jetlagrooster.com/)), fasting, drinking lots of water and eating the first meal after arrival with their time (if you arrive at 9am, you'd eat breakfast there) - this has worked very good for both me and multiple people I've recommended it to.

I usually fast between 12-24 hours, depending on the traveling time, drink lots and it has worked for going both to the East and coming back from it. I wrote about it in more detail here: [http://bitehype.com/how-to-successfully- avoid-and-hack-a-jet...](http://bitehype.com/how-to-successfully-avoid-and- hack-a-jet-lag/)

<comment><USER22> I.be seen studies, and found it works well for me, that the ideal is to only eat once a day, at diner time of your destination. I don't always manage to do it during travel but do it for 2 or 3 days once I've arrived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The fix for jet lag is to fly in business class or better.

EDIT Not sure why the down votes. Being able to properly sleep while on a plane is absolutely the best way to beat jet leg.

<comment><USER24> Yeah.

The problem with travel hacking (it's not really economically feasible to fly business between Europe and US for most of us) is that you get so used to it that every single transatlantic work trip becomes a big complicated optimization game. Flying economy simple stops being an option.

This time the other day I lucked out via what seemed to be a Star Alliance- wide mistake fare between Scandinavia and Seattle and a few more US cities ($700 for r/t business class!). That plus a cheap connecting flight to the Bay area fixed it for this time.

<comment><USER25> How do you find these fares and connections? Seems like a non-trivial amount of work to look at every possible route combination between two cities. I do Lisbon-SF twice a month and would gladly upgrade to business at 2x cost of economy.

<comment><USER24> Flyertalk, businessclass.{se,no,dk,co.uk}, insideflyer.de, onemileatatime.boardingarea.com etc etc.

Plus personal crawler projects and contacts with similar-minded people.

Warning: if you don't find this fun it's probably not worth the time. Expect to spend a lot of time chasing these deals.

It does seem to get harder over time, judging from my ~5 years in the game. Just a few years ago there were gaping holes in the system, allowing anyone to buy 100k miles from US Airways for $1200 and then spend them on quite on e.g. a 90k mile (or was it 110k?) First class roundtrips Europe/NA-Asia with e.g. ANA, Asiana iirc.

<comment><USER25> Thanks. It does sound easier to do as a hobby (with flexible routes and schedules) than as a business traveller.

<comment><USER24> By the way, for your situation - I am not very familiar with good routes out of Portugal/Spain - but Norwegian's normal paid premium fares out of Oslo/Stockholm/London to Oakland have been a decent fallback for me for when I can't find a decent "hacked trip". It may work for you via a connection to/from e.g. London.

Pro:

\- Decent almost business class for $1400 USD roundtrip

\- You can buy single trips for 50% of the roundtrip cost

Con:

\- Their irregular ops handling is disastrous. They use a small fleet of 787s for transatlantic flights, with zero spare capacity, so when a plane breaks somehow you basically have to wait for them to repair it. For that reason I avoid them on trips into the US (for planned meetings there) but sometimes use them on the way back.

<comment><USER25> Thanks! My regular route is Lisbon -> Amsterdam -> San Francisco with KLM. It's 5 am flight with a 50 minute connection in AMS, but Schiphol is a wonderful airport, the dutch very helpful, and I quite like the old airplanes they use on this route. I can usually find a ticket for $700, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> With Virtual Reality in mind I feel that I should mention that people have noticed that VR can mess with peoples day and night cycle perception.

When I listen to audio books I often use my D2 Oculus rift VR headseat and explore like a tourist cool looking custom minecraft maps with the MineCrift mod, I have experiences some confusion after being in a day time VR world and taking off the VR headseat and seeing that it is night time in real life, and the opposite with night time VR scenes at day time IRL. The ability of high quality VR to mess with the visual senses of people is really powerfull and not restricted to entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER27> one of the things that make you feel tired after long flights is noise pollution. we don't realize it because it's something we expect during flights but our mind and body is essentially sitting through hours of loud humming that takes a toll on us.

The solution for me is good noise canceling headphones. If you fly often, invest in a good pair and it will do wonders for you. It has for me.

<comment><USER28> Agreed on noise fatigue. Good -30dB earplugs (worn under headphones if nec), even while sleeping, make me land much better rested (and are ~$0).

Doesn't help with jetlag itself (I.e. the mismatch btw astronomic and biological time), but still a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't the new Boeing have this feature as well? I remember hearing about it when I toured the factory. (Which if an excellent tour you should check out if you're in Seattle area.)

<comment><USER30> Yes, the Dreamliners have this. It's certainly a comfortable plane but I'm not sure how much difference the lights make on jet lag.

<comment><USER31> I flew on one from Oakland to Stockholm (return) last week. It worked great. The windows are kind amazing - they tint themselves according to conditions. The big disadvantage on the way over northern Greenland was that I couldn't see properly out the window, when there were beautiful clear skies. I always love seeing the vast open expanses and glacial valleys on Greenland.

<comment><USER24> I was so disappointed by those electronically dimmable windows in the 787.

When it's automatically controlled by the central system/crew it's fine, but when you want to manipulate them yourself the ~30 second delay from button press to actual change is quite annoying, and you wish for the old style mechanical sliders instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Airbus, as of last month, reports having received 777 orders for the > aircraft

Wait is that a typo or a dig at Boeing?

<comment><USER33> Wikipedia has 777 on order, so I guess it's not a typo. Two others sources give 764 [1] and 780 [2] orders, respectively.

Given that Air France recently converted outstanding orders for the A380 to three A350, that would make 777 as of last month consistent with 780 as of today.

This 780 figure is also including two orders for a total of 16 A350-800, which will never be built. So it is consistent with the 764 figure that do not include these A350-800.

Conclusion: not a typo.

[1] [https://sites.google.com/site/a350xwbproduction/orders](https://sites.google.com/site/a350xwbproduction/orders)

[2] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tSkBafqSz- xEdM1VLbQy...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tSkBafqSz- xEdM1VLbQyQN1KF4CKf7nGE-Du645YsPo/pub?gid=7#)

Edit: added the AF recent order, and the A350-800 adjustment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Since this came up in a course recently, apparently jet lag is (at least partially) caused by:

1\. Your circadian rhythm [1] being out of sync. In a nutshell, a reasonable amount of internal biology is synchronized to the time of day to improve efficiency. If your activity isn't in sync with what your 'internal clock' is expecting, you experience jet lag.

2\. A limited ability for the clock to adjust to a new timezone. The direction of adjustment is encoded by a phase response curve [2] and is affected by exposure to light -- practically nothing else can shift it.

11thEarlOfMar has the right idea -- if you can avoid light exposure entirely, your clock won't shift and you won't be jetlagged. Otherwise, large doses of light at the right times of day are (apparently) the best cure.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#Humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#Humans)

[2]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_response_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_response_curve)

<comment><USER28> Timing of eating is also an input to circadian rhythm (at least in rats)--I'll try to find the cite.

<comment><USER34> Here's [1] what appears to be a good one (or, at least, it has some citations to other papers which might be better) -- the first section after the abstract is an intro to circadian rhythms, including references to food zeitgebers in rats, rabbits and adorable hamsters. IIRC there doesn't appear to be a strong effect in humans, but I'm slacking off as is and won't be digging up a reference for that XD

[1]: [http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/274/6/R1751.short](http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/274/6/R1751.short)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is airbus's attempt to come up with hype to fight the real advantages of the 787, 350 and CRFP - most notably greater pressure and higher humidity. I'm in a much better state coming off a 787 in economy plus then a 380 in business (assuming that I don't sleep on both). Boeing introduced the lights on their sky interior a few years ago, and it didn't really make a difference.

<comment><USER36> Interesting, didnt know why I felt like shit on a 380 after a 12h flight. Had a terrible headache and a sore throat. Is sitting at the first floor even worse? It was also very cold but not sure if related. Boeing felt a bit different (better) over the same distance but I thought it was just me

<comment><USER37> Do you drink a lot of caffeine at home? I was always getting headaches on a long flights before realizing that it was a caffeine withdrawal.

<comment><USER36> I do but my headaches then was due to the cabin pressure + air conditioning I believe. I was drinking coffee on the plane too so..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If this works, then why does jet lag often persist for days after arriving at your destination? The light is obviously in sync with local time there, but it still takes a few days for your body to adjust.

<comment><USER39> TLDR; It doesn't fix jetlag but it might get you started on the right path one "day" cycle sooner.

There isn't "one simple trick" and not have jet lag. Everyone will have jetlag after going through a large time change. Your body can only accomodate so quickly depending on the magnitude of the change. IME people recover 0.5-2 hours of time change a day. So if you go through a change, it will take anywhere from 3-12 days to fully recover. You don't even realize it until you've been somewhere for a while and one day you wake up and realize you are fully rested for the first time in a week (even though the other days felt basically fine).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> We already know how to beat jet lag, fasting, then eating at the new time you want breakfast to be: [http://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach- fasting-to...](http://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-to- beat-jet-lag/)

</comment><comment><USER41> To combat jet lag, try drinking a ton of water. I'm talking liters of water, I usually will consume a minimum of 3 liters of water while flying, in addition to water I drink before and after the flight. I also take at least 200mg of CoQ10/Ubiquinol each hour of the flight, in addition to extra before and after the flight. It seems to help a lot.

<comment><USER42> I hope you're on an aisle seat!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This might work on short flights, but short flights generally don't give us serious jet lag.

On long flights (e.g. London to San Francisco), I don't think any amount of fancy lighting will be able to compensate for the fact that your day has suddenly become 32 hours long and you've been awake for 24 of them.

Do you suddenly feel refreshed if you see another sunrise (whether real or simulated) after having been awake for 24 hours straight? Not me... at least not since my early 20s.

<comment><USER44> Jet lag isn't about feeling tired after being awake for 24 hours straight, and defeating it wouldn't mean that you arrive at your destination wide awake despite having had no sleep for a full day. Jet lag is the _persistent_ desync between your body's internal clock and the sun's actual position, which lasts for several days after a rapid trip across many time zones. It's not about getting to your destination feeling refreshed, but waking up the next morning without feeling like it's time for bed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This reads like an advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hmm - having mucked about with a variety of lighting it's only seems mildly effective for reducing jet lag. The article says they are fitting fancy coloured leds that they hope will help, not as far as I can see that they've actually tried it and found it effective. I find melatonin and ambien reduce the jet lag effects about 50% but that's a fair bit more hard core than some LEDs.

</comment><comment><USER47> I take a small (0.2-0.4mg) dose of melatonin about 5 hours before the time I want to 'get sleepy' when travelling or returning. After a day or two of doing this, as well as getting plenty of daytime sunshine, I'm usually adjusted well enough not to notice any jet lag.

</comment><comment><USER48> And even if they haven't the placebo effect is a real effect, so it'll be great marketing either way.

</comment><comment><USER49> >Throw in an air management system that renews the air every two minutes while helping regulate cabin temperature, and sitting onboard an A350 may be less harsh on your body than hanging out at home.

Even taking into account the extra radiation exposure?

</comment><comment><USER50> seems like this would work out well except for every flight i've been on there has been at least one person unwilling to close their damn window shade.</comment>


US viewers not allowed to see Olympics ceremonies live - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2012/07/23/london-olympics-nbc-opening-ceremonies-still-quite-delayed/

<comment><USER2> > "They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online > because they require context," said Mr. Zenkel.

Because the LCD on my iMac has a different context than the one in my living room? Or is it because you can't sell enough ads against it?

Stupid or liar…</comment>


How Software is Made - <AUTHOR> http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2494#comic

<comment><USER2> I laughed. I may even put this one up on my desk.

In reality, the corporate world is a lot worse (more complex).

I'd actually like to see an xkcd huge size poster on the types of job titles and responsibilities you see at a corporation, and the vendors and regulators, oh my.</comment>


The Era of Very Low Inflation and Interest Rates May Be Near an End - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/upshot/the-era-of-very-low-inflation-and-interest-rates-may-be-near-an-end.html <comment><USER2> Hopefully wages rise with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Arguably for the back-half of income earners this has not happened for decades.

If we experience the same consumer price increases as was experienced through 1980-1990, rents and goods will go up an average of 5.4% each year over a 10-year period.

If it gets as bad as the 1970-1980 CPI then rents, goods and services will rise almost 7.1% a year and will practically double after a 10-year period.

Here are the historical CPI numbers from 1913 to 2017 —(1970 to 1980 was not pretty.)

[https://www.minneapolisfed.org/community/financial-and- econo...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/community/financial-and-economic- education/cpi-calculator-information/consumer-price-index-and-inflation- rates-1913)

<comment><USER3> In the US, the combination of globalization, automation and lack of support for private sector unions means workers outside of the creative class have very little bargaining power. I'm sure workers will get raises, but I don't see much hope for them getting much above the inflation rate. The only political solution that seems to be getting any traction at all is raising the minimum wage. Some states are doing that, but I don't see the Federal minimum wage getting raised any time soon.

<comment><USER4> That just puts the crush on the sectors that Offer low wage jobs, increasing their costs and the prices they must charge their customers. The people who do get those jobs earn more, but there will be fewer of them, making the poverty trap even deeper.

I'm beginning to think a low Basic Income might help, maybe as little as a hundred bucks a month. The problem with current BI tests is they are Big Bang experiments - big basic incomes for a tiny number of people. However a relatively low BI combined with moderate minimum wages could effectively act as a subsidy on low paying jobs. It would have to be funded by a tax increase, but a relatively modest one. This should make more low paying jobs viable to offer, make them more economically attractive to workers in terms of total earnings, and make the businesses that employ people on low wages more price competitive, increasing low wage employment. All without the massive distortions to the economy a high BI could cause.

This approach to BI wouldn't free everybody up to become artists and explorers, but that was always a fantasy anyway. Somebody has to do the productive work somewhere, the trick is to make that work progressively more secure and rewarding.

<comment><USER5> If we stop running a military empire we probably have enough peace dividend to provide a $45,000 a year BI that would truly make a difference. To do it we have to end standing armies and let all of the non-violent offenders out of prison. We would have to make deals with all the other countries to put an end to standing armies as a thing and use the UN to cooperatively resolve conflicts. The amount wasted on the military and war is staggering.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately this is just wishful thinking. This is not going to happen anytime soon; maybe not in our lifetime. This does not mean we should not work towards it

<comment><USER7> Europe went from World War II to Schengen agreement in 40 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am not buying that inflation is low. Property taxes and housing cost (especially rent) has doubled in last 10 years in New York. I think so has the medical costs. Just because gas prices are low dose not mean inflation is low

<comment><USER9> Housing is not included in the CPI I believe. [https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/4777/why- arent...](https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/4777/why-arent-house- prices-included-in-cpi)

<comment><USER8> CPI does not include rent but thats what more than half of average couples combined income is spent on. (Couple with full time $15 per hour jobs living in $2000 per month apartment)

<comment><USER10> > CPI does not include rent

CPI includes both rent costs for actual rentals and imputed rent for owner occupied housing. [0]

> but thats what more than half of average couples combined income is spent > on.

More like a quarter. [1]

[0] [https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent- an...](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.pdf)

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > So as long as the moves don't go too far, increases in inflation and > interest rates would be a sign the global economy is returning to a more > prosperous equilibrium like the one that prevailed before 2008.

Pre-2008 was quite far from a prosperous equilibrium, otherwise it wouldn't have caused the crisis.

<comment><USER11> It is pretty shocking for someone to consider the years leading up to 2008 as being in equilibrium, economically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "And if threats of a trade war with China or other countries turn into reality, this will tend to increase inflation, driving up prices both directly through new tariffs on imported goods and indirectly by encouraging less efficient production."

...I'm confused as to why either of those effects are supposed to be _good_ things.

<comment><USER13> Those aren't the 'good things' that trade wars are supposed to bring. Some people believe trade wars bolster local economies, by giving local manufacturers a price advantage for their goods.. thereby increasing demand for local products and "increasing jobs". I don't think it has ever worked out that way, despite all the rhetoric.

<comment><USER4> Quite. Since those locally produced goods are more expensive (otherwise they'd have been locally produced already), everybody buying them now has less money to spend on anything else, reducing consumption and hitting the rest of the economy. Then you're trapped, because if you try to unwind the damage, those jobs you did create go away again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In a world where inflation is going to go up, what should one invest in?

People will often say gold. Which I guess is a proxy for any fixed supply asset. But weve seen price inflation in many things other than gold, such as houses and land, art, stock prices. Most things of lasting value ie not consumables. Does a precious metal have some other special qualities that make it behave poorly relative to other limited valuable assests, and then well?

What say you HN? Whats the play to protect ones assets? Or does one just need to avoid cash and bonds?

<comment><USER15> ... if I mention that very obvious deflationary fixed supply asset I will get downvoted into oblivion on Hacker News.

<comment><USER16> I think its inflationary actually (beyond the current speculation).

Consider that the miners will always produce a selling pressure on cryptocurrency (because equipment+electricity+labor costs), it stands to reason that cryptocurrencies will always have more sellers than buyers (again no new speculatary buyers for store of value, just pure currency as it was intended initially). This constant selling pressure will add inflation (increasing supply, decreasing price) to Bitcoin. Actually, once a stable price is reached for a long enough time, this constant inflation should make it a viable currency, and unsuitable as a store of value.

<comment><USER17> Unless the majority of miners agree, there will never be mined more than 21 million btc, and we already know that a none trivial fraction of those coins sit in wallets that no one controls, and thus are completely out of the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Still having trouble figuring out of being a landlord of a second home is good or bad in this environment. You owe a fixed-rate mortgage, and you're charging rent.

<comment><USER19> Rents will increase, your mortgage will not if you're locked in. The resale value of your house will be pushed down by reduced affordability, but pushed up by higher rents and cost of goods. Ultimately owning a hard asset in an inflationary period is a good idea.

<comment><USER20> The value of most residential property is tied to demand, and demand is tied to interest rates and ability to borrow. If most people can't borrow 300k+, most houses are going to see a drop in value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The shift looks to be driven mostly by a rise in investors' expectations for > future inflation. In the United States, prices of inflation-protected bonds > imply that investors currently expect consumer prices to rise 2.09 percent > annually over the next five years, up from 1.65 percent expected in > September.

This claim that the shift is due to inflation expectations is inconsistent with the data. Most of the rate increases has been due to real interest rate increases, unless I am missing something which I don't think I am.

source: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIE](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIE), [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS5](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS5)

<comment><USER22> It has been both, about half and half.

<comment><USER21> Right, so I don't understand the confidence with which the reporter is mentioning only one and implicitly attributing the rise exclusively to it. Even if you use 50% of the effect as being due to one or the other as the threshold, it's actually been more due to real interest rate increases (only 55-60% so you're right it's like half and half), so the piece is just really baffling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ugh. Higher interest rates and inflation will work against those on the lower end of the poverty scale. (Yes, wages will go up. But not enough to match increases in the price of goods.) Those who need to borrow will fall even farther behind.

Low inflation and rates isn't ideal, but it's probably the best scenario when there is a big difference between high and low economic ends.

</comment><comment><USER24> Housing market should cool off bit. When people buy houses, they look almost exclusively at the monthly payment which includes interest, taxes and insurance.

The FED will raise rates slowly to avoid crashing the economy

</comment><comment><USER25> They've been saying that about Japan for decades.

Still waiting.

<comment><USER26> I think some people have predicted that Japan's rates might rise in the long run. Has anyone serious made predictions of a _near_ end to Japan's current period?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not familiar with a world where interest rates and inflation aren't low. What should I expect?

<comment><USER28> It's almost guaranteed we are not leaving a world of low interest rates (vs historical norms of the past 30 or 50 years).

Most of the global economy is loaded up on debt: Japan, China, the US, large parts of Europe. These days it's the exception when a country has a modest debt context, whether at the government level, corporate level, or household level.

Countries that we normally think of as very well off, such as Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands are among the most indebted people on earth in terms of household debt to income. They can't afford much higher interest rates at all, it would collapse their housing markets and shatter their household finances.

Australia is in the same boat, two years ago nearly 1/2 of all new Australian mortgages were interest only mortgages; over the last 10 years, the average has been about 35% of all new Australian mortgages have been interest only (in a nation where their housing market is 4x the size of the economy; by comparison, the US housing market is 1.5x the size of its economy). As of a year ago, in total around 39% of _all_ outstanding Australian residential loan balances were interest only. [1] For those that recall the US real-estate bubble, that's a terrifying figure; the US interest-only share of the market during the crazy years of the real-estate bubble was single digits (5-8%). Australia is currently taking action to try to counter this, which is rocking their market presently. [2]

The solid gains Canada made in their household wealth figures over the last decade? Almost entirely from their real estate bubble, which has produced a housing market that as a % of GDP is 2/3 larger than that of the US (the Canadian housing market is 2.5x the size of their economy, up from about 1.6x in 2007). They also can't afford significantly higher interest rates.

New Zealand is similar to Australia, their housing market is 4x the size of their economy. The UK's housing market is 3x the size of their economy, or twice the ratio of the US. These countries are all fragile when it comes to higher interest rates on mortgages.

Even the Swiss are in terrible shape, their household debt as a percentage of GDP is 50% higher than the US ratio.

In the US, its households are in reasonably good shape on debt; US household debt to income figures are the best they've been in decades, essentially the lowest the US has on modern record. Its corporations have loaded up on debt over the last ten years, and of course the Federal Government has taken on immense debt over the same span of time. The US Government simply can't afford 4-5% interest rates on its soon to be $30 trillion in public debt; which is another way of saying: in the US we are never returning to normal interest rates, not under any circumstances. The Fed will go into perpetual QE mode, as Japan has, to guarantee that.

Germany is a particular stand-out among high income nations when it comes to having low government debt, no real estate bubble, and no serious household debt to income ratio problem.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/2Z0mzou.png](https://i.imgur.com/2Z0mzou.png)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-15/tougher-l...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-15/tougher- lending-standards-put-australia-property-on-shaky-ground)

<comment><USER29> > Countries that we normally think of as very well off, such as Denmark, > Sweden and the Netherlands are among the most indebted people on earth in > terms of household debt to income. They can't afford much higher interest > rates at all,

That's a little mixed up. The effect of inflation is to __reduce __the effective size of debt, not increase it. So if you owe someone $500US(which has a barter value of ~100 lattes), and a burst of inflation hits the dollar such that the price of a latte doubles, then you only need to pay back 50 lattes to the lender. You win!

Obviously it's the holder of the debt that ends up on the hook for this. Which is why interest rates of lots of debt get indexed in some way to adjust with inflation (or things like the prime rate, which itself tends to track inflation). So the net effect is complicated. But on the whole it's the lenders of money who stand to lose the most when inflation rises. Those who have borrowed come out ahead, on average.

So the net effect of inflation (assuming no second order effect like a global crash, yada yada yada) is to effect a wealth transfer from the _lenders_ of money (e.g. banks and institutional investors) to the _borrowers_ of money (consumers and governments).

There are some very smart people who think this isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.

<comment><USER30> > Those who have borrowed come out ahead, on average.

I once stayed in a hotel room where the shower had the heat I wanted _on average_ , it was horrible.

But when it comes to real estate, as long as you can afford the increase in interest you'll probably be fine. My concern, here in Sweden at least, is that given the current real estate prices here, I can't see how people with average incomes can afford a more normal interest rate like 4-5%.

<comment><USER31> In America, most people get fixed-rate 30 year mortgages, so if you buy now, even if interest rates rise subsequently, your monthly payment doesn't change for the next 30 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not convinced. Was talking to my 20 year old kid and was thinking he has never seen anything but crazy low interest rates for his entire life.

But I just do NOT believe things are going to change. Guess we will see.

</comment><comment><USER33> So will this cool the market and cause housing prices to become less incredibly insane, or will it just make things more expensive.

I'm gonna guess the latter because god forbid something good happens to my generation.

</comment><comment><USER34> So our savings will be inflated away at an only a slightly slower pace now? How kind of the Federal Reserve!

<comment><USER35> Can you please not create accounts to use HN for political flamewar? This is the sort of thing we're trying to avoid here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER34> I'm sorry, what? Everyone commenting on this article is discussing inflation.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but snarky blasts of the Fed and invocations of "taxation without representation" cross out of thoughtful discussion and into ideological battle, which is an entropic state we're trying to avoid on this site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "if threats of a trade war with China or other countries turn into reality, this will tend to increase inflation, driving up prices both directly through new tariffs on imported goods and indirectly by encouraging less efficient production."

I wouldn't call this "inflation" in the sense economists mean it. This could cause a one-time rise in prices, but it would not necessarily mean permanent change in the rate prices go up each year.

Maybe some of yall would like this federal reserve simulator I made last year: [http://lewis500.github.io/macro/](http://lewis500.github.io/macro/) It is one of my least popular explorable explanation but also one of my favorites.</comment>


Ai Wei Wei's Beijing Studio Destroyed by Chinese Authorities - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/08/04/635654200/ai-wei-weis-beijing-studio-destroyed-by-chinese-authorities <comment><USER2> I think there's a healthy symbiosis between light "state harassment" of Ai and Ai's notoriety as a dissident.

Ai has been told by the security service that his existence is very important to the state. I think this is because his existence / story demonstrates two things: the state does express its disagreement and can detain / punish, the state allows provides an environment open to criticism and does allow people to express themselves.

Ai is high profile and so the allowance of continued activity of a high profile dissident by a state which is in many cases criticized as getting rid of critics is an important counter narrative that the state wants, I believe.

But I think it's more than that also. Ai is very Chinese and represents something very Chinese: a native cultural ideal, a person who is globally recognized as excelling in his field. His work is not just critical of his homeland, it comments on control in many places.

So I think Ai's case, on the whole, functions more as positive rather than negative propaganda for China.

One further and more controversial point I'll make is that Ai is in the same business as Chinese PR, shaping / playing with perceptions. I think Ai has realized for a long time that art coupled with subtly sensational criticism of his homeland gets him more traction in the global art scene, than just art. This is another aspect to the symbiosis. Ai's criticism of China, permitted by China, also gives China a larger profile in the cultural world through Ai. I admire the cleverness of these instances where the Chinese use Western cultural biases against us cleverly for their own benefit. Meaning that often in the West people are looking to fill in a narrative about the Chinese state being bad, and Ai, by supplying that demand in a satisfying way for us, enhances his career, and actually, I believe, subtly promotes / enhances China's image, using the very narrative demand the West has against the West's intention with it. In other words, the West, by elevating Ai, also elevates China, probably against their intent to do so, and precisely because, I believe, China knows how the play the demand for narrative bias to its advantage.

But even if people in Western civil society organizations understand this, what choice do they have? They want to promote a certain set of values, so they have to use Ai as a persona. So Ai's existence is probably a win-win for all, rather than just the seeming clear win for the anti-China camp that his dissident status on the surface suggests.

There's probably instances of the West using this kind of "appetite for bias" to its own advantage as well but I have not reflected as much about it.

<comment><USER3> so true. there are people prosecuted there in much worse ways, but in the international press we only hear about Ai or the HK folks with the subversive bookstore that every already forgot by now.

the folks doing real activism continue to disappear in silence. often drowned in the religious charlatans noise that I will not even name here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Misleading, IMO:

> The AFP reports that the rental contract on Ai's studio expired last fall, > and that Ai had "been expecting to leave the studio soon."

Sure, maybe they wouldn't have abruptly torn it down if he was still in their favour, but they're also not obligated to let him have that workspace for free.

<comment><USER5> I've had rental contracts expire in NYC and you just pay month to month after that. I'd be pretty upset if my landlord showed up one day and just bulldozed the apartment with me still in it.

Maybe he was planning it as a political act, a performance piece of sorts. Regardless, I still don't think having an expired lease should be met with a destroyed workspace.

<comment><USER6> Have you considered the rights of the landlord? From the video, it looks like a single large "studio"(aka multi-thousand meter-squared building for one person), and not a multi-tenant dwelling like one might expect in SF, NYC, or BJ/京.

Imagine the landlord wants to sell the property to a large property developer, one who may want to place 100+ units on your previously single unit rental. Is it fair that Ai can just stay there...perpetually - holding up 99 extra units on the market because he can't be bothered to move out?

<comment><USER7> Just a side note: the property doesn't belong to the landlord, just a 70 years grant to use the land, which can be revoked (with compensation)

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, the concept of land ownership is a pretty fluid concept in all countries. USA for example, has the concept of Eminent domain ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain#United_States)):

> In federal law, Congress may take private property directly (without > recourse to the courts) by passing an Act transferring title of the subject > property directly to the government. In such cases, the property owner > seeking compensation must sue the United States for compensation in the U.S. > Court of Federal Claims. The legislature may also delegate the power to > private entities like public utilities or railroads, and even to > individuals.[8] The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently deferred to the > right of states to make their own determinations of "public use".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ai always gets attention from inside the country and he has been there for a long time. Waves of such people left or disappeared in public's view. He's still there. Someone can stay and do a lot of opposing things and get and be able to keep constant public attentions is like a miracle. Why he? Why not others like him? He's like collecting those badges every time the government did something to him. And he's doing good and better. If you know China and know what people act like him could have faced, he is such an odd spot. I know westerners like him, giving him a lot of high quality badges. He has a quite rooted network to keep him safe and do a lot of fancy things delivered to public and shows this off. All sides seem to need him.

Sorry for the rant. As a Chinese, I just hate those people with very special privilege to show off in the name of some symbol impressing outsiders and has nothing to do with all those truly matter.

<comment><USER10> From the fine article, he doesn't live in China any more... after they beat him and locked him away for a year and took away his passport. That's ignoring the forced confession, and several million in fines. Yeah, I'm sure he got out because he's rich and famous... and what he did was embarrass an official?

I like China and its people, but this argument doesn't make much sense. It's the last part (not the middle) that makes it impossible to fix corruption.

<comment><USER9> 'ignoring the forced confession'

That's extremely hard for someone to get away with. He can simply ignore it? I do not follow Ai's news after I did a little research many years ago. He's famous on HN. So I wanted to find out what this guy did and what his works were like at that time.

IIRC, he is a son of a ruling party's famous poetist which indicates he has some strong connections.

Last time I read some news of him was live stream his own life in Beijing's studio or something like that. Of course, with his experience, acceptance/approval level in western world and his art skills (he has some real art work. For me, his work is facing outsider customers, expressing the customer's view of China in a bit above average customers' way.), he is among the best options for some field.

I don't understand what you mean by mentioning 'last part (not the middle)'.

<comment><USER10> Years ago, I'd seen some his art in China and liked it, and I vaguely know he's an activist, but I don't follow it so I didn't know he had left the country until I read the article. I don't think anyone would know what had happened if he wasn't internationally famous.

What I meant (by 'the last part') is that if we excuse the government for politically motivated force to punish non-violent dissent for any reason, then we are agreeing with the worst form of corruption. Bribes (and excusing them) are bad enough, but excusing threats, violence, and property destruction by the state is worse. How to create a better (more fair) place to live for the poor and weak with this kind of threat, when even the wealthy, connected, and famous can't speak up?

When I see this sort of acceptance from my colleagues from Africa, India, South America it saddens me just as much as it does in China.

<comment><USER9> You can not image how sad I was/am as someone comes out of that system and I love my nation from the bottom of my heart. I want to see my nation has a bit more awareness of fairness you mentioned. The part of Ai I criticize is mostly how he got away from those kind off trouble safely while collecting so many credits internationally. Sounds strange to outsiders, I know. I just have deeper understanding of what the consequence for many of his activities should've if that was someone else. Outsiders don't have knowledge of this. So as expected, I got many downvotes on this one. Some reporters lost their lives and were betrayed by their wives since they were the first to report some food/medicine quality issues affecting a lot of people (in some cases, the majority victims were very young kids) over the past 2 decades. They did what actually mattered in a massive scale but were not known to average outsiders. People like them are not very marketable in the outsider funding market (This is just a simple and blunt way of describing some fancy and socially high- profiled things. This can get many downvotes as well.). We know too many people like them. And Ai became an icon for outsiders in such a way. Hopefully, my rant can give you more information to know what I feel. There is nothing people can do. There is no party can/need collect the opposing force and combine them into something bigger. Cooperating is the way to go or you are forced to get funding from outsiders to fulfill their own agendas. And they do not know what Chinese think of. So once they live on outsiders' funding system. What they delivered associate little to what average Chinese can echo. Soon they are not relevant any more. It's a different system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub So I guess this is what gentrification looks like in China. Wow.</comment>


The Consequences of Machine Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/the-consequences-of-machine-intelligence/264066/

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially ...

"I do not find this to be a promising future. First, if machines can do almost all of our work, then it is not clear that even 15 weekly hours of work will be required. Second, I do not find the prospect of leisure-filled life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human well-being. Third, our economic system would have to undergo a radical restructuring to enable billions of people to live lives of leisure."

\</comment><comment>----

I, for one, welcome the consequences of machine intelligence.</comment>


Ask HN: where to search for open source software? - <AUTHOR>

especially web projects.
My list: sourceforge, code.google.com, github<p>anything else? <comment><USER2> It has been a _long_ time since I have used it, but I see that <http://freshmeat.net> is still around.

</comment><comment><USER3> gitorious.org is another good one.</comment>


An Innovator Leaving Japan - <AUTHOR> http://synaptify.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/An-Innovator-leaving-Japan.pdf

<comment><USER2> "It's not strange that people's perception of Japan is so out of whack with reality, it's mainly because this country is still very closed."

I think it has more to do with the inaccuracy in reporting that the author mentions more than anything. There's a large selection bias in reporting on foreign countries; Japan is an exotic land of technology, so reports tend to focus on exotic technologies (LED eyelashes? Come on.)

With other places, like, say, Iraq or Pakistan, you tend to get war-centric reports rather than things about up-and-coming companies or various charitable events.

This particular paper seems to be very linked with this article posted earlier: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/asia/28generation.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/asia/28generation.html)</comment>


America fares badly in a comparison of health measures in rich countries - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/01/daily-chart-7 <comment><USER2> America's population is also larger than the combined populations of those (all European) countries, and the is significantly larger geographically, making the provision of health care much more difficult.

The outcome changes when you only compare similar regions of America to their European counterparts.

<comment><USER3> If you are arguing that geographical distance leads to inefficient supply lines, this seems dubious. Australia, third from the top, has the lowest population density of most countries listed, having a land area almost as great as the USA, but with one fifteenth of the population, and with by no means the same level of transport infrastructure.

Given that the US is aiming to inoculate near 90% of the population for the current influenza problem, your deductions about distribution may need to be examined more closely.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which is better. A server farm somewhere hot or somewhere cold? - <AUTHOR>

Two recent articles caught my eye today. Both about new server farms being built/upgraded.
One is somewhere hot (North Carolina, Apple) [1]
The other is somewhere cold (Sweden, Facebook) [2]
Hot, (assuming more solar energy available) benefits are increased power from a solar plant but the farm requires more cooling. Cold, requires less cooling therefore less energy.
It's interesting [to me at least] because it raises the question of efficiency. i.e. do you build something that requires loads of power - but who cares 'cos we got tonnes of renewable energy... or do you try an require a lot less energy even though hydroelectric is not damaging to the environment the more you produce.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/apple-building-171-acre-solar-panel-farm-to-power-nc-data-center.ars
[2] http://www.techiespider.com/2011/10/27/facebook-build-server-farm-northern-sweden-arctic-circle/ <comment><USER2> Maiden, North Carolina is temperate, not warm.

December 2010 data for Ashville, NC:

       Average Daily High = 38.4F
       Average Daily Low = 22.8F
       High = 50F
       Low = 11F
       1087 degree days of heating
       10.8" of snow, 7" maximum depth.

Source: <http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=gsp>

Data for Greenville Spartenburg for December 2010 is similar but with less snowfall locally.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your data centre uses less energy than your renewable energy source, then you can push the excess out onto the grid. Similarly, if you use more than you can produce, you have to pull the deficit from the grid. Either way, the less energy you use, the more energy has to be generated elsewhere. So energy efficiency still matters.

Against that, there are transmission losses. If your data centre in a cold dark place is powered by a solar array in a hot sunny place, you need less energy to spend on cooling, but you have less energy to spend because more energy will be lost in transmission. I don't know how they balance out.

(And if you have enough clients in the hot place who want low latency, it makes sense to put the data centre in the hot place even if it's less energy efficient.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd venture a guess that the solar energy provided wouldn't even cover a quarter of the energy cost required to cool a data center.

I'd go on to say that the energy coefficient between 35 Deg N and 55 Deg N probably isn't enough to offset the equation significantly.

As such I think that removing heat more efficiently via naturally cold climates would have a greater impact on bottom line. Check out wikileaks cave- based data centers in old Swedish nuclear bunkers. [http://bitshare.tumblr.com/post/2383169988/the-wikileaks- ser...](http://bitshare.tumblr.com/post/2383169988/the-wikileaks-server-cave) (Sweden's bandwidth to the rest of the world also blows ours away.)

</comment><comment><USER5> An ambiguous question that does not consider the requirements.

eg Latency vs cost.

Being based Antarctica can be very cheap and fast. But there's poor connections.

It's like a PHP vs C++ argument. While C++ is secure, efficient and takes longer to implement while PHP is cheaper, faster to implement for MVP.

tl;dr: Doing science with servers in bulk? Better in cold. Doing business? Better more closer to customers that tend to be in warm places.

</comment><comment><USER6> Either way, if you are using renewables, you are going to be using a baseload renewable power source (geothermal/hydro) that isn't going to care about temperature.

What you want is access to cheap electricity and cheap cooling. Whatever minimises TCO is where you want to be.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know that electricity in northern Sweden is relatively (very) cheap due to the effective water power plants in the area. They work all year and I can imagine that they are cheap compared to solar panels. So: cheap electricity + neutral cooling = happy zuck.

</comment><comment><USER8> A kind-of third option is what I believe Google have done, near a hydroelectric plant (that used to be used for smelting?), and near a city with a major internet exchange.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why couldn't you place it in a cold windy place? Solar is not the only renewable energy.</comment>


Move Mirror: You move and 80,000 images move with you - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/technology/ai/move-mirror-you-move-and-80000-images-move-you/ <comment><USER2> I hope AI research doesn't stop producing such great projects like this one.</comment>


"Hot news" detection using Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://hameddaily.blogspot.com/2015/06/hot-news-detection-using-wikipedia_29.html

<comment><USER2> Cool. Thx, especially for the link to the data dump. Nice stuff!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of those brilliantly useful yet simple hacks that seems inevitable in retrospect, great job!

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks like fun, thanks!</comment>


Shakespeare: Actor, Playwright, Social Climber - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/theater/shakespeare-coat-of-arms.html <comment><USER2> These documents sound legit, but methinks Alan Nelson doth protest too much.

All Oxfordians (people who believe "Shakespeare" was a beard/pen name for Edward de Vere) agree that Shakespeare was an actor, ie, "player." It's also well-known that acting was a low-status occupation in Elizabethan society, explaining why people mocked Shakespeare's coat of arms.

Writing, especially writing erudite verse in the Tudor court style, was not a low-status occupation in Elizabethan society. Anonymity/pseudonymity was not universal, but common.

So an Oxfordian would ask: why is Shakespeare, as a social climber, awarded arms for a low-status profession that's considered basically artisanal in caste, leading to general mockery, when in fact he practices the high-status profession of courtly playwright/poet?

Social climbers were not at all unheard of in the Elizabethan world. What is unheard of is a social climber who is not a social lion, whose resume is well- attested, whose presence and personality is constantly documented -- like, say, Ben Jonson.

Doctors say: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses. Maybe Shakespeare wasn't a social climber at all, but remained a country bumpkin his whole life, as he moved from stagehand to actor to what we'd now call a producer? Maybe the plays and sonnets read like late Tudor court poetry because they are late Tudor court poetry? Maybe, like much Tudor court poetry, it was written pseudonymously, not for publication?

The one coincidence that Oxfordians have to explain is how Vere wound up publishing under the name of this real individual, Shakespeare. Who (like Vere himself, of course) was involved in the theater world. Pseudonyms are typical in Tudor court poetry, but "beards" aren't.

My guess, an idea I've never seen anyone else broach for obvious reasons, is that Will Shakespeare's first occupation when he came to London was... male prostitute. Again, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses. Maybe Vere just thought this week's boy had a pretty name.

Here's some Tudor court poetry, by the way:

[http://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/what-is-desire-by- edw...](http://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/what-is-desire-by-edward-de- vere/)

Note the second stanza, which sounds exactly like Shakespeare to my ear. No one else from the period sounds like this. An Oxfordian would call this Shakespearean juvenilia.

<comment><USER3> You are aware that de Vere died in 1604, and Shakespeare published 13 plays between then and his death in 1616? Among those 13 are some of his best works, like King Lear and Macbeth, so it's not like he was running out of 'A' material in those years either.

>Maybe the plays and sonnets read like late Tudor court poetry because they are late Tudor court poetry?

I imagine you as some sort of cartoonish stereotype of a British noble, twirling your moustache as you say: "Because surely, a mere commoner could never have written such great works!"

The fact is that Shakespeare worked at the Globe Theater as a playwright when these plays were produced, and received much critical acclaim for his writing. No one disputed that during his lifetime. Furthermore, his father was an alderman, the rough equivalent of a town councilman in Stratford, so although Shakespeare was not a noble, he did come from an educated family.

Of course, hundreds of years later, people can make up all sorts of stories to explain why someone would pour hours of work into writing poetry in iambic pentameter, see them praised, give credit to a random bum, and continue to do this for decades (even from beyond the grave, apparently). There is, however, not a shred of evidence to back any of this. The fact that the writer of those plays was clearly very talented is not evidence against them being written by William Shakespeare. The fact that "to [your] ear" they sound like something de Vere wrote is not evidence of anything either.

Shakespeare conspiracies are literally Ancient Aliens level history. "There are some details we don't know about history, so therefore aliens!" is replaced with: "there are some details of Shakespeare's life we don't know, so therefore it must have been some sort of crazy conspiracy!"

<comment><USER2> The dating of the Shakespeare plays is incredibly arbitrary and unknowable. Are you aware how thin an evidentiary foundation our knowledge of these issues rests on?

By "no one questioned" you mean "no one even referred to." Except for the preface of the First Folio.

A 16th-century alderman in Stratford is not an "educated" status. Most experts of any persuasion agree that Shakespeare's father was probably illiterate. He signed his name with a mark:

[http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you- didn...](http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you-didnt-know- about-william-shakespeare)

The classical education received by a top-tier nobleman of the time was far superior (at least in terms of Greek and Latin) to anything available today. The number of Englishmen who received this quality of education was incredibly small.

A better analogy might be, say, NFL quarterbacks. If I see someone who can win the Super Bowl at quarterback, and I'm not sure about his identity, I can be pretty sure he's spent most of his life training as a QB, was a high-school star and probably a college star, etc. That's going to be a pretty small set. If I have a data point that tells me that someone with a biography like mine was named Super Bowl MVP, my Bayesian trust in that data point is going to be pretty low.</comment></comment></comment>


Cognitive biases and principles that affect UX - <AUTHOR> https://psychology.design/ <comment><USER2> Ironic the site has such a bad UX. Emoji make it hard to read; all the information is pointlessly in collapsing boxes, it has screwy animations and scrolling, crazy hover effects, bad zoom (it's blurry), silly checkmarks instead of bullet points...

<comment><USER3> It is indeed ironic. I was initially interested in the content, but I closed the site in less than a minute after getting frustrated by the emojis, blurry text and annoying sidebar and header animations when scrolling.

I remember another site with similar content and also pretty annoying UX: [https://lawsofux.com](https://lawsofux.com)

I'd take a long markdown document with a table of contents over this any day.

I'm still interested in reading about these UX principles though. Is there another alternative, easier to read resource?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey falafel, a popular alternative is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) . Hope that helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really nice, and the collection of practical examples is what makes the content here shine.

Presentationally, the emoji are maybe a little overrepresented, but some of the pairings are amusingly clever. Apparently some here don't appreciate the use of progressive disclosure for the navigation, but for content of this length, it's an appropriate alternative to navigating to a new page.

The one thing I'd suggest is limiting the expand/collapse interaction to one open at a time. There isn't really any advantage to having multiple open at once as there isn't a use case for comparing between open boxes, and keeping everything else collapsed makes exploring the index simpler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Morten! Great feedback.

You actually understood exactly what we tried to achieve with that progressive disclosure and management of cognitive load ;). It's the #1 positive feedback we get from the people who use this page.

We did quite a bit of user research with different cohorts of people before we released this list. We originally considered auto-closing the other panels when you open a new one (!), but beta testers mentioned that it was convenient to compare two elements or to Ctrl-F through some stuff that saw a few tiles back.

So I guess we had the same thought process, but our beta tester descoped that need for us. So we launched that MVP without it.

I'll definitely keep an eye on the feedback (and comment section) if more people raise that concern.

We intend to update that page regularly.

Cheers!

PS: One of the UX hacks that I added though is scrolling back to the top of your active tile when you close it to avoid losing your anchor. With that said, even that was a bit limit for my JS skills (I'm far from a dev, merely a curious person).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm having a hard time filtering the information with all those pictures, animations, pop ups, curvy lines and huge text.

<comment><USER6> Same here. I'm surprised how jarring the emjoi's are to my focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's ironic that this is the same site which created [https://growth.design/case-studies/trello-user- onboarding/](https://growth.design/case-studies/trello-user-onboarding/)

Which is probably the least user-friendly thing I've come across in a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Pete, sorry to hear you had trouble viewing our comic book case studies :/. Was it the slide format that threw you off?

<comment><USER7> Pretty much. I suspect I may be a minority, but I'd rather just have a really good case study in text format, with images where appropriate, rather than having to keep clicking through with cute visuals.

It feels to me a bit like it's cheapening the content by putting it into that context. It's like watching an anime version of Pride and Prejudice; I'm sure there's an audience for it, but I'm not it, and it feels cheap.

EDIT

Having thought about this a little more, it also feels like the analysis is more shallow than I think it actually is, due to the presentation context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure thing! Totally respect your opinion Pete. I really believe in radical candor.

To give a bit of context, most people signup for our content specifically for the case study format (including, surprisingly, Fortune 500 execs). Tech scale-up product leaders tend to use it as a resource for internal education. (They tend to use the keyboard navigation though, not their mouse, the clicking is indeed tedious!)

With that said, we also know that many people prefer long form text—which is totally fine. The good news is that there's no shortage of Medium posts for that!

Thanks for your feedback again Pete. Cheers.

<comment><USER8> I'm not awared it supports keyboard navigation.

Edit: there is hint to use keyboard on the trello case study, but the hint isn't visible (if any) on the tinder case study.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's odd. Are you referring to /case-studies/tinder-monetization/ ? It is visible on my side (incognito mode)… I'll look into it. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What do you think are the the ethical concerns around using these design principles to almost manipulate visitors of a website into buying stuff?

<comment><AUTHOR> 100% Abdullah. Behavioral psychology should be used for good.

We've been in touch with Nir Eyal for a bit now. He wrote "Hooked", but quickly realized that the ethical side of behavioral psychology was misunderstood completely and started to focus his efforts there.

We asked him for a quote because we believe this is extremely important (just Ctrl-F "Eyal" on the page you should find it).

We also really like his "regret test" regarding the ethical side of behavioral design. It comes down to answering: "If users knew everything the product designer knows, would they still execute the intended behavior? Are they likely to regret doing this?"

Side note: As for us, we don't believe in "growth for the sake of growth". We define "growth by design" as a process at the intersection of Growth (a scientific method to improve) and Design (a human-centered process used to solve problems). It involves crafting meaningful experiences at scale so that an organization can exceed its business goals while delighting their customers. We talk about this and our vision on our /about page if you're interested!

On that note, you make me realize we should probably add something regarding this in the conclusion. Great idea, cheers Abdullah!

<comment><USER10> > _He wrote "Hooked", but quickly realized that the ethical side of behavioral > psychology was misunderstood_

That's a charitable interpretation. He wrote a book about how to make products addictive (subtitle: How To Make Habit-Forming Products), then when the inevitable backlash came he got on that bandwagon and wrote a book to teach people how to be Indistractable (in a world filled with products designed to be habit-forming).

<comment><USER11> Thank you for your service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the nicest and most unique designs I've seen recently, well done.

I'm just reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and several of those principles are talked about in the book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's really appreciated.

Yeah, Kahneman is a legend in that area indeed. Huge influence in the behavioral sphere. Another nice read (althought much lighter) that is covering many biases as well is "You are not so smart" and "Super Thinking" (already linked in the article).

<comment><USER13> See also "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're gonna ask a quiz question, it helps if the topic to which that question pertains has more to it than "coming soon".

</comment><comment><USER15> I was using wikipedia most of the time, but now this is next level.

<comment><USER16> ScholarPedia has lots of materials regarding these topics. Suggest you pay a visit

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks James! And thanks for sharing 31337. Never heard of ScholarPedia, just took a look. I know what James was referring to (a list of biases), but I couldn't find that on ScholarPedia. I also tried a dozen queries with individual cognitive biases and couldn't find most. Is there a sub-category that I missed?

<comment><USER16> Scholarpedia works differently than Wikipedia for searches. You need to figure the categories for each since they are mostly academic writings. For individual cognitive biases, You can have a look at Behavioral Operations by Stephanie Eckerd and Elliot Bendoly

" In particular, cognitive psychology addresses (among other things) an individual's decision-making biases and use of heuristics as an attempt to overcome bounded rationality. "

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, got it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This feels like I'm being led to an eventual sales pitch. I don't think it is on deeper investigation, but it sure rubs me as the entry to a funnel.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have any product to sell :/. We've been creating case studies for 15 months for people in 120 countries. All for free. The community has been asking us to build more even though we're strapped for time. The only way we could make that happen is if we start a premium subscription for those interested (but keep a foundation of free content of course).

*edit: typo and clarification

<comment><USER11> Premium subscriptions are your product. If that's not something you're comfortable being honest about, I question the depth of your domain expertise in the areas for which your seeking "donations" to support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love your case studies, thanks for sharing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very kind, thanks Drew! :) Since we're only two indie hackers, honestly it was an insane amount of work to map the product examples and design the page.

It's a good thing we found the work of Buster Benson a few days before we published. That allows us to split the biases in the four categories that he found. (Buster deserves a MAJOR kudos for that. His research summary was brilliant.)</comment></comment>


Follow up to "Functional Programming Doesn't Work" - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html <comment><USER2> I really don't get it, what does this guy mean by 100% pure functional programming?

Because we all know already that a program needs to print values or "do" something to be useful, so in that way no program is ever 100% pure - is that what he's talking about?

Or is he talking about 100% pure functional languages which allow functional ways of writing IO code, like Haskell?

In Haskell can't you still program nearly 100% imperatively, just by wrapping stuff in the IO mondad?

        mysquare  x = x * x
        mysquarer x = do
                        putStrLn "Hey look, it squared"
                        return (mysquare x)

        main = do
                 putStrLn "Starting program..."
                 x' <- mysquarer 9
                 putStrLn (show x')

Can't he just write his program like that?

Or is he just arguing that we should write programs in functional languages but just with an imperative style (no points-free and simple use of IO)?

<comment><USER3> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that most Haskell code doesn't generate values, but "thunks" that evaluate to values if needed.

When you write

      x = 4 + 5

you aren't setting x to 9, but creating a thunk that evaluates 4 + 5 at runtime. An Integer is a thunk that returns an integer and has no other effects. An IO Integer is one that does some I/O before returning that integer.

As I understand it, the only function that has the power to "do" anything (computation or IO) undernormal circumstances is main, which always has type IO ().

<comment><USER4> This is true, but not really relevant to the original article or the comment you are replying to.

When you sequence computations with >>=, like the grandparent does, you generally evaluate the left side of the operation before running the computation. That is the point of monads; sequencing computations and controlling the order of evaluation. Sine the rhs depends on the lhs, the sequence is "evaluate lhs completely", "evaluate rhs completely", and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like I'm missing the punchline here somewhere. Functional programming "doesn't work" at 98% but if you turn some imaginary slider to 85% then everything is awesome? I honestly don't get this.

Can anyone shed some light on the WTF-ness of this article? (Other than the author disliking purely functional development and "98% functional" development, whatever that means).

<comment><USER6> What's so hard to understand? I think he means that if you try to use functional programming as a religion and try to shoehorn everything into the functional paradigm (I hate that word) that you are making life hard on yourself.

But by using the right mix of functional and imperative you get the best of both worlds.

I don't necessarily agree with that but I have no problem understanding it.

The more I learn about 'functional' programming the more I'm beginning to see that it is not so much a simple technique as it is a wholly different approach to solving the problems, which often leads to tremendous insights that in turn lead to huge optimization possibilities.

Witness the 'hashlife' link that I posted last week, I never even thought such an optimization was even possible.

<comment><USER5> The author explained that purely functional development is hard to do in his first posting. I don't understand the point of his follow-up; all he says is there's some magical barrier in which functional programming is suddenly okay, and that magical barrier is somewhere between 98% and 85% on the mystical "functional programming is hard, let's go shopping" scale.

<comment><USER7> I don't know why you're taking his post so literally.

Forget about the 98 and 85 numbers.

The point of the follow-up was to merely say that functional programming works as long as you don't try to rigorously and dogmatically apply it to everything. There's a sweet spot where most of your code is functional but you also allow certain inconsistencies in, in order to make the whole system palatable.

This was actually what he was trying to say in his first post, but he didn't really get it across clearly, hence, the follow-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _It does work, but you have to ease up on hardliner positions in order to get the benefits._

That's one of the best last lines in a blog post I've seen in awhile. Absolutely true about a whole lot of things!

</comment><comment><USER9> The reactions to Hague's previous article reminded me of allergic responses - that is, in a programming community that has become utterly soaked with "more FP = better" commentary, any statement to the contrary must be shrugged off as irrelevant or incorrect. And so we see people falling over themselves to say that something _must_ be wrong with Hague or his arguments.

He was clear enough in the first article that he was advocating compromise over purity, specifically addressing pure FP's faults as a tool for software development. The real problem is not with him, but that with FP we've hit that point where the hype has induced people to start bellowing various forms of "USE FP EVERYWHERE, FP>IMPERATIVE" meme from the rooftops. See the memes around TDD, design patterns, etc.

In conclusion, this is a prime indicator that the "interesting new stuff" in programming practice has gone elsewhere. Functional style is quickly entering the mainstream, it has its zealots, and it's well on its way to become just another tool. So the question is now, what's next?

<comment><USER10> _The barbarians are at the gates. Hordes of Java programmers are being exposed to generics and delegates; hundreds of packages have been uploaded to Hackage; the Haskell IRC channel has nearly hit 500 users; and it's only a matter of time before Microsoft seals that multi-billion dollar bid for Hayoo.

The time has come to retreat and climb higher into our ivory tower: we need to design a language that is so devious, so confusing, and so bizarre, it will take donkey's years for mainstream languages to catch up. Agda, Coq, and Epigram are some approximation of what functional programming might become, but why stop there? I want strict data, lazy codata, quotient types, and a wackier underlying type theory._

<http://www.haskell.org/sitewiki/images/0/0a/TMR-Issue10.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't claim to be very experienced in functional programming, but doesn't his whole argument simplify to "State is hard in a pure functional setting" ?

I was under the impression that this was a simple and fairly well understood problem. Either use a functional abstraction for state, a reduce with state or perhaps a monad if the state needs to be carried through many types of operations, or manage it in an impure way, using STM with a global state perhaps.

I don't see how this is any knock against the functional programming paradigm. I always understood the rule of thumb to be "use purity as much as possible, and be impure only when it's explicitly needed." Modifying a global state seems to be a pretty obvious case for using an impure function.

Am I misunderstanding this?

<comment><USER7> >I don't see how this is any knock against the functional programming paradigm. I always understood the rule of thumb to be "use purity as much as possible, and be impure only when it's explicitly needed." Modifying a global state seems to be a pretty obvious case for using an impure function.

This is pretty much exactly what he's saying.

His response was targeted at people who think functional programs should wholly avoid state and side-effects. (I don't actually know of too many people who believe this, but apparently he does)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have experience with Lisp, Java, Scheme and Clojure. I am surprised at how vehemently people are pushing back on James (the author). I tried coding in Clojure and found myself working very hard at things that would have been straight forward in Lisp. Could it have been done in Clojure - answer is "yes!". But i didnt want to get sidetracked thinking about how to make programming language work for me rather than actually work on the task.

<comment><USER13> Thing is, Clojure is not at all a 'pure' functional programming language, it has all kinds of facilities to mutate state (and very well thought ones in my opinion). If you had to categorize it, it would be more like the 80% functional language James is talking about.

If you are struggling in Clojure, i know this is a common argument but i think it's true, it's probably because you didn't code enough in it for this style of programming to become natural.

Moreover,and on a side note, i'd very much like an example of what was very hard in clojure and was straight forward in Lisp ,whatever lisp that is, i assume CL. It would be interresting to me to know what kind of code does seem hard to produce at first in clojure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Agreeing with @pwnstigator I think the important thing is to separate the pure functional code from the impure code with side effects. And be very explicit that this code is impure and does change state so when you use it you must take this into account. If this is done properly you generally find that the impure code need only be a small portion of the whoe program.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe put another way: Some algorithms are more simply represented using an imperative aproche than a functional, and sometimes the benefits of easily understandible code outway the benefits of having no side effects.

<comment><USER4> Is effectful code ever easy to understand?

(The answer is yes, because it often follows expectations. This is why dynamically-typed languages work. Although there is no explicit structure, you can generally see what type the author wants something to be by understanding what the code is trying to do. With imperative programming, the same is true. The "+" function probably doesn't depend on your fooBarBaz global variable, so you can pretend it doesn't. But there is no guarantee -- and programming based on guarantees is safer than programming based on hoping the author is doing what you think he's doing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What not work is to believe that one programming paradigm is the best solution for all the problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Functions should only have side effects if and only if that's what the function is designed to do: e.g. perform IO, write to disk, et cetera. Then, "side effect" is a misnomer, because the alteration to state is intended.

The hatred for "side effects" comes largely from a prehistoric tendency of programmers to write highly optimized in-place operations that destroyed the original data. An example would be a matrix multiplication that destroys one of the original matrices, or Common Lisp's NCONC (a faster APPEND that destroys some of the lists passed as arguments).

The general guiding principle of good code is that visible state changes occur only when requested. (For optimization, private state changes can be used, such as caching/memoization, but these are behind a layer of abstraction and don't violate the referential transparency of the API.)

<comment><USER17> >Functions should only have side effects if and only if that's what the function is designed to do: e.g. perform IO, write to disk, et cetera. Then, "side effect" is a misnomer, because the alteration to state is intended.

In medicine, they have a saying, "There are no side effects, only effects." I first heard that from a psychiatrist, discussing how he initially selects antidepressants for his patients based on side effects, such as weight loss or gain. Viagra was originally a heart medication.

What the discussion really comes down to is, what is the intent of the programmer? If the reason for a function call is a return value, but there's also a state change, then a problem will almost always arise because you want one but not the other. That's why change of state and global variables are usually maligned, because it couples disparate behavior, sometimes in unintentional or obfuscated fashion.

Further reading: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-query_separation>

Eiffel is apparently designed such that anything with a return value causes no change of state, and vice-versa. It's an interesting idea because it means that a change state, like you said, is never a side-effect, but always the intention of the caller.

Like pretty much almost everything, anywhere, ever, it's probably better as a general programming practice rather than a language-enforced restriction. And that's basically what the author was saying about purity--it's better as a guideline than a commandment.

<comment><USER3> I generally agree with the principle of command-query separation. One point where I would differ is that, when the command's effects aren't entirely known to the caller, it's often useful to return this information.

For example, a function that creates a user account with a unique numerical user ID, that isn't known until the account is created, can return the user's ID, e.g.

      (create-user-account "Bob") => 9001

      (defn create-acct-and-immediately-do-something [username]
         (let [user-id (create-user-account username)]
            (do-something-with-acct user-id)))</comment></comment></comment>


On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise (1996) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf <comment><USER2> Not mentioned in that story, but relevant.

Modern cruise ships for the most part are equipped with medical facilities and staff of high standard, certainly higher than most destinations they set out for. It's mainly because that's regulation.

If a passanger falls seriously ill however, those facilities are merely the temporary means to keep you alive until the cruise ship arrives at the nearest port where it leaves you in the capable hands of local healthcare.

As it turns out, most of the time it means they kick you out of the ship to die. Because local healthcare of the garden variety is for the most part not capable of keeping a patient alive, unlike the shipborne medical facilities.

If you have the particular misfortune to be befallen of some sickness that looks anything like it could infect fellow passengers, no matter if serious or not, you might also be entirely on your own. Because things like quarantine facilities are not regulation. Because decontaminating a room is expensive, you'll likely spend the duration to the next port in a bare cell that's easy to disinfect afterwards. Should you die in there, they'll make it look like they cared for you, and if not, well they acted by the book.

The reason this macabre theatre happens is because of this. Should a passanger die on your ship, it's a huge headache for the cruise operator involving inspections, tons of paperwork, possibly a being forced to stay in port, missing a schedule and so forth. But if you can shuffle a passenger off to die somewhere else, it's no longer your problem.

There is just one thing worse for the cruise operator than having somebody die on his ship. It would be for multiple people to die, or many to fall sick, for which the hassle would be exponentially worse than a single dead passanger.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps not all that different from American health care in general?

While someone is footing the bill, they'll work hard to keep you alive -- and also make sure it involves expensive work like tests and x-ray imaging for maximum billing.

If you have the misfortune of suffering something that is not covered or is not profitable for some reason, they'll figure out a way to kick you out to die elsewhere.

The interests of the corporations that run cruise ships and American hospitals are fundamentally the same.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like an outline for a problem that should be happen across all service industries that are run privately/paid by insurance companies, not just healthcare. Do we hear more about it in (American) healthcare simply because it's something the most people interact with or is it noticeably worse there? For the record, I am not American and don't know what it is like to interact personally with US healthcare.

<comment><USER5> The healthcare issue in the US crosses stark idealogical divisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He sure presages his fate in Infinite Jest. A tragic figure for sure and without peer as a writer/philosopher. I'm 70 and widely read and over those years no author has impacted me like he has (despite his propensity toward shaggy dogs.)

He clearly told us in advance that depression such as his was not to be suffered and when all was said and done he left me sympathetic with that point of view.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the lethal discomfort of being a junior crew member on a luxury cruise: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/9860808/Five- dead-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/9860808/Five-dead-as- lifeboat-plunges-into-sea-off-British-cruise-ship-in-Canary-Islands.html)

This happens again and again, year after year: lifeboat drills actually kill people. Usually low-ranking, low-paid crew members, usually when the lifeboat is being hoisted back up after the deployment drill. The systems are not adequately designed to support this use case, best practices (few or no people on board for drills) are not enforced, and people are dying--perhaps more people than are actually saved by lifeboats.

Many more such incidents are catalogued here: [http://maritimeaccident.org/categories/lifeboat- accidents/](http://maritimeaccident.org/categories/lifeboat-accidents/)

</comment><comment><USER8> A classic essay. Consider The Lobster is another great one as well: [http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...](http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?printable=true)

</comment><comment><USER9> My father almost died on a cruise. He has serious Diabetes/Heart issues, and from eating too much, his heart went into Bradycardia (slow erratic rhythm). They kept him alive on the ship quite well, left him in Cozumel in one of Carnivals "recommended Hospitals". The nurses don't speak English, they did not use gloves and did not have food during the weekend. You don't really want to get sick on a cruise.

</comment><comment><USER10> why is this [scribd] ?

The url looks like

[http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazin...](http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf)

does it mean this was somehow produced by scribd ?

<comment><USER11> PDF links automatically get a scribd link generated - it is a separate link to view the PDF using scribd.

Is there a browser remaining which does not competently handle PDFs without a plugin?

<comment><USER12> I've got FF25 on WinXP where I am now.

Couple of weeks ago I had a .pdf file that didn't open in pdf.js so I set FF as the handler for .pdf files.

This link downloaded rather than opening pdf.js. Then it proceeded to open new tabs at about one every 2s (it's a very slow laptop) ... not sure what was going on there but I'd describe it as being "not competently handled" despite it being probably specific to my [nearly?] unique settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am currently re-reading (well, I skipped a lot of it she. I first read it) Infinite Jest. It is even sadder and more screwed up now that dfw is gone.</comment>


Minimum Salary for Exempt Software Programmers in California - <AUTHOR> http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=515.5. <comment><AUTHOR> Note that the minimum is updated annually. Most recent amount is $88,231.36.

Does not apply to trainees or entry level programmers.

[https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.pdf](https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.pdf)</comment>


Google trying to force me to join Google Plus - <AUTHOR>

Once a week, when I log into Gmail, I get a splash screen with some of my information pre-loaded on it, encouraging me to fill the rest out and sign up for Google Plus.
I'm assuming that one of these days I'll click the "Yes" button by mistake, and after that there will be no going back. That is, if I want to delete my Google Plus account, I'll also have to delete Gmail.
Remember, Google got into trouble with Google Buzz for doing something related.
How does one stop Google from shoving Google Plus down our throats? Is a class action lawsuit possible here? I'd like to help with organizing a group to discuss this and get a mailing list going, depending on the interest level of course. <comment><USER2> I was able to delete my google+ profile without deleting the associated gmail address, but I think they have some small text thing to never show the google+ set up thing again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google has gotten to be really annoying with this. That's why I have reverted to using Google only for search (I no longer have a Google account at all).

If you don't like their actions, then do what I did, and leave them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nobody is forcing you to use gMail.

Use something else - maybe a paid service where you then might (as a paying customer) have some influence over the offering.</comment>