The difference between me and my parents (and maybe you) - <AUTHOR> http://conj.tumblr.com/post/435093736/popcorn-disaster

<comment><USER2> Y'know, the more I think about this article, the more I think it's a complete load.

My dad hopped on a steamer ship and found his way to England from India with one bag and 14 pounds in his pocket. He found a job, made a living, bought a car -- all without instant communication to some helicopter parents. A few years later he found his way back to find a wife.

A few years later, they wound their way to Canada, with the only difference being that they got to fly.

 _That_ is risk-taking, experimenting and hacking your way through a new culture. Screwing up at making kettle corn? Please.

ps. In case you think that this is one of those stories of a previous generation, in 1999 a cousin of mine arrived at the Toronto airport, in January, without even a coat to survive the drive home. He's employed and living in a nice place; no handouts, just damn hard work.

<comment><USER3> I feel as if you've missed the point of the article.

Yes, the kettle corn example doesn't compare in scale, but he's simply trying to show the difference in philosophy. No one's saying that screwing up kettle corn is the pinnacle of innovation and experimentation. I don't see how father's story discredits the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can sympathize with the author's lack of understanding of people's fear of breaking things, especially of those that are tech-related. Take computers for instance. It seems that to the average Joe, they're magical black boxes; they put in passwords, discs, and mouse clicks, and out come YouTube videos and tax returns. To this person, if they don't click on the right series of "OK" buttons, they can put the computer in a permanent state of hopelessness from which it can never recover. It's like they're in some finite state machine with no idea what states the state transitions take them to. To someone in the know, they can be sure that any state in the FSM they go to was intended to be visited in that manner, and they can surely get back to the state they came from by simply exploring. But to Average Joe, the next state could lead him off a cliff or set his pants on fire. This "fear" of exploring could simply be the manifestation of a deep-seated misunderstanding of the concept of software in general. It's really no different than the kettle corn, despite its apparent complexity; it just looks prettier and makes different noises.

<comment><USER5> I can really see this in myself. I have a deal with my father: I fix his computers and he fixes my car. He's scared that he could break his computer, and lose his data. I'm scared that I'll fuck up something on my car, and need to have it fixed by a proper mechanic, costing me time and money.

I think most people are scared of breaking something, if they're sensible. I know a couple of people who aren't scared to 'try' anything and the result has been a semi-burned down apartment (I can do my own wiring!) and a new set of dining furniture (I can sand it down myself!).

I think that the fear that people tend to have is from ignorance though. I'm trying to learn about being my own atuo-mechanic; I'm teaching my father more about the computer. What people maybe don't realise is just how hard it is to break a computer permanently. This is one of the biggest factors in people being poor with computers; I think that another is that there is often no clear indication of partial success, which is pretty discouraging for an adult who is starting to learn.

<comment><USER6> There is a sense in which there's justified fear of "trying things" on a computer. While it's fairly hard to permanently break one, it's fairly easy to lose the document you've been writing for the past hour. I remember this being a major issue for my mom back in the early 1980s.

<comment><USER7> It's not all that difficult to screw things up enough to require a reformat, either, or at least to make a reformat the easiest solution. I think of myself as pretty tech-savvy, and I've had to reinstall Windows before because I somehow borked my registry.

<comment><USER8> Your example disproves your point. Most people don't even know what a registry is. In general, people don't realize what you can do with a computer aside from the basics, which is what keeps them (relatively) safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perceptions of computer maintenance.

                      Your perception
                       |
                       V
     Making toast[</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----]Brain Surgery
                                                ^
                        Your fathers perception |

Working with computers is more like making toast than doing brain surgery, but many people think the opposite and popular culture tends to reinforce this notion. Many people are understandably afraid. The key to helping people learn to use their own computers is to reverse this perception and give them the courage to try. Once they realize that its possible, they will quickly warm to the idea.

Edit: I chose brain surgery and toast because of their qualitative difference, not quantitative. Its easy to learn to make toast and the cost of error is cheap and easy to undo, its very hard to learn to operate on brains and the cost of mistakes are mortal. Most people can learn to make toast, most people can't learn to do brain surgery. Most people erroneously believe that they just can't learn to use their computers and so don't try.

<comment><USER10> I think you underestimate both the complexity and possible downsides of dealing with computers. Computers can be learned, but it takes hundreds or thousands of hours to master them. Making toast requires putting pre-sliced pieces of bread in a toaster and pressing one button. If you screw up your 50 page MS word document and it gets corrupted and lost, you're shit out of luck, out potentially weeks of typing. If you burn some toast, it costs a few cents to fix, and maybe 2 extra minutes.

<comment><USER9> So learn to save before the 50 page doc is on the line. Try a 3 line this is a test and master it. Don't wait to learn to make toast until you're about to serve poached egg to Donald Trump either.

<comment><USER11> I'm finding that I sigh a lot reading HN lately.

It's seems completely obvious that you are talking about the fact that you can burn toast without anyone dying.

<comment><USER9> I find that metaphors on HN have to have really sharp edges or you have to spend a few follow ups on clarification. I'm not yet particularly good at it but this is a very good place to practice. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author gets frustratingly close to insight, but ultimately retreats to "blame the user". Only now, instead of the usual accusations of stupidity and/or laziness, they're irresponsible for being afraid to take what _they perceive_ as risks.

Why not ask _why_ they're afraid? Why do they see risks that you do not? To what degree are these fears rational? What can be done to assuage these fears so that they can actually _learn_ something positive from the experience?[1] Oh no, too many questions! Quick, blame the user!

Most of the time it seems that the fear of breaking the computer expands into something like: "If I meddle with this thing I don't understand, I might break it.[2] If I break it, I won't know how to fix it. If I don't know how to fix it, I will have to ask or pay for help. If I have to ask or pay for help, I will feel stupid, lose money, and won't understand the thing any better." (Note that none of this is specific to computers.)

Implicit here is the perception both a high probability of failure _and_ the perception that failure will be costly. This is the kind of risk that people respond to with fear instead of curiosity. When it appears cheap to make mistakes, people are much more willing to risk making them.

In light of this, comparing this sense of fear that a computer user may experience to the "risk" of trying to make your own kettle corn is absurd. There was no perception that failure was going to be costly. Even if there was a high probability of doing so, making a mess of your kitchen costs almost nothing, is easily reversible, and involves no hidden mechanisms. You just clean it up.

[1]: Emphasis on learn because much effort has been expended on interfaces that are usable without being learnable. That is, even if you successfully navigate them, you gain no new understanding. The low point historically was probably when Windows XP shipped with a _animated talking cartoon dog_ to help find your files.

[2]: "Broken" can be something technically trivial, but if the user doesn't know how to fix it, it doesn't matter how trivial it is--it's still broken for them. The idea that you can't break software only holds true if you believe that reinitializing/reformatting/reinstalling is just part of normal operation and not a "nuke the site from orbit" solution to real problems.

</comment><comment><USER2> Really? No one's broken hardware with bad software?

Kids these days.

Back in the early 80s there was a series of POKEs that would fry the old PETs. If I remember, it'd blow out the CRT flyback transformer.

<comment><USER13> THANK YOU. I think this feeling of invincibility the kids have these days is a by-product of the cocoon we are now bringing up children in. I bet none of the youngguns reading this have lost a grade school friend and a cousin under the wheels of a school bus. They'd know that sometimes, when one takes risks, there are consequences.

Sometimes I prefer taking care of somebody's computer, precisely because they might break something. Nowadays you can still burn an LCD if you neglect the screensaver and powersave (10'000 hours backlighting MTBF can really fly), or burn a nice annoying image in your display. You can mess up your Windows installation pretty bad if you play in the wrong places. And don't get me started on giving root access to grandpa. I don't see much value for some people in learning to rebuild an OS installation from scratch. Like with kids there are times to encourage experimentation, and there are times to be cautious.

There's a whole school of thinking that value safety first. About 15 years ago there was a bold data entry clerk that wasn't afraid of fixing problems by himself. Faced with 2 waypoints called "R", he decided to encode one point as "ROZO" and the other as "R". As a consequence an aircraft turned into a mountain en route to Cali, Colombia.

Toyota, presumably because of sloppy programming in a cheap microcontroller, is learning that when you take somebody's code without looking, you get all his problems too.

It's fun to take risks sometimes, go into uncharted territory, put yourself in a situation to be exposed to new unfamiliar things.

But please, don't make it a point of being careless.

<comment><USER14> I don't know why you are downvoted, but this is from experience: people who don't know what they're doing can do pretty much anything they _don't_ want with a pc without realising it. Case in point: My grandma vs. Windows. Windows is a sore, sore loser. And try as I might, all I can do to really fix it is install it again (temporary) or install linux (not going there yet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm odd, but I _am_ actually rather afraid of breaking software, at least at the system-level. I'm not at all afraid of _writing_ software, or breaking _apps_ , but I really don't like my entire OS being borked, and I try to avoid poking at it for fear that it will become so.

This is mostly from experience of things actually breaking in hard to fix ways if you poke them the wrong way. Back when I used Windows mainly, I probably reinstalled 4 or 5 times because of something somehow being screwed up and there being no apparent way to fix it that was easier than just reformatting.

Linux tends to give you more diagnostic information (you can google for error messages), and I've never had to outright reformat/reinstall, but it can still be a real hassle if you screw up your system. Early in my Linux-using days (circa 2002), my Debian installation somehow managed to get apt into an inconsistent state that required a lot of manual fixing to repair. And I'm still somewhat afraid of upgrading anything in the kernel/modules/X.org/videodrivers bundle, because I've more than once ended up with hours of debugging after an upgrade resulted in stuff not working together (this was worse before Debian improved its process for handling binary video drivers within the apt framework).

<comment><USER15> It's not as bad as it used to be. I borked my X just last night when I switched graphics cards and fixed it in 10 minutes of googling on my phone. I used to do hours of booting into windows (back in the days when I still dual- booted), searching for stuff, writing it down, rebooting into linux, trying said stuff, rinse and repeat. Either there's a lot more good advice out there or my googling skills got better.

<comment><USER16> Fixing X is the reason I keep lynx (actually links2) installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://xkcd.com/627/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Add the ability to do research - most of my computer troubleshooting is just search engine use. His kettle corn could've been made right the first time if he'd googled around a bit before embarking on the project.

Edit, after thinking about it. I glass-bedded one of my rifles recently. This is a procedure involving epoxy and a disassembled rifle. If you do it very wrong, you will wind up with the barrel stuck permanently to the stock; I suppose you could mess up the inner workings, but that would take more than willful ignorance. But the internet provides all the information necessary to do it right the first time.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've heard one argument that posits one of the causes for this rift is the prohibitive costs of legacy computer hardware/software. The old 286 in my father's office growing up probably ran him $4,000 - $5,000. If you can imagine paying a much larger chunk of your income for a home PC that was not designed with modularity or expandability in mind you can begin to see why the boomer generation is so careful around electronics.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this article is on the right track, but rather than it being a generation thing it is what a person is made of. I see two types of people - those that want to do things themselves vs those that would rather pay for someone to do it. The trend is more people of the later and it is scary if you think about it. As the quality of workmanship goes down, those skills don't get passed on (like framing a house, or working on a car) and then in the end you are stuff with inferior work. A good example would be changing the oil in your car - most of the time it is cheaper and of course faster to have it done, yet by losing that skill (maybe desire is the better word) you are now relying on some old kid who doesn't care one bit about your car. It isn't just the "handyman" though, it can apply to everything from cooking to writing software.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm like this, basically frustrating to someone who is standing next to me when I'm trying to fix a problem or just being the one at the keyboard at work or something. Have a tenancy to dive in and click through skimming dialogs, most of the time it works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER22> Brilliantly put. This is exactly the mindset of an engineer/hacker.

(Incidentally; talking about the market - I'm very jealous. Im still on the look out for a traditional style, fresh produce market that I could feasibly live very near too)

</comment><comment><USER23> Strangely I've started off computer usage by having a fear of breaking hardware and no fear of breaking software.

I assume this is because I've always though I can "undo" software changes, but hardware was expensive and you couldn't "undo" much there. This might also explain why I've never made my own PC from scratch.

Of course, now with OSX on the laptop and virtual servers in the cloud I've almost abstracted away hardware :-)

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I remember being afraid of breaking computer parts putting them together or taking them apart. Then, after I accidentally dropped the screwdriver, pointy end down, on a few important looking circuits on the motherboard and it kept working, I realized that things weren't that fragile.

<comment><USER25> I'm often a bit afraid of running some games for a long time when I hear the video card fan going ten-to-the-dozen and feel the computer case warming up. I'm frightened some part I can't afford to replace, like the graphics card, might wear out and overheat. It's not particularly rational, I suppose...

<comment><USER16> You can install software to check on the temperature of your CPU and video card to ease your paranoia :) Most of these programs can even start beeping loudly if you are getting close to overheating the hardware.

That said, high-power modern video cards work at ridiculous temperatures, around 95C. That's almost enough to boil water, and yet is considered acceptable. Any modern CPU will shut off if overheated.

Anyway, you will probably have to replace your video card due to obsolescence rather than thermal damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it comes from the 1960's depiction of computers, when if you hit the wrong key the keyboard would shoot sparks out and throw the operator across the room.</comment>


Ubuntu, Ruby, RVM, Rails, and You - <AUTHOR> http://ryanbigg.com/2010/12/ubuntu-ruby-rvm-rails-and-you/ <comment><USER2> > Under no circumstance should you install Ruby, Rubygems or any Ruby-related > packages from apt-get

I really wish the RoR book I was reading had told me that before I spent multiple hours trying to properly setup Rails.

<comment><USER3> I'm very skeptical about this sort of advice, especially when it is motivated by _We do Ruby, we know what's best. Trust us._

<comment><USER4> It really is very good advice, and installing Ruby/RubyGems through the package manager is almost never a good idea ( _especially_ on Debian-based distros) for several reasons.

Ruby is a language that moves very, very quickly. On "cutting-edge" distros like Fedora and Arch it's not nearly as much of an issue, but not having to wait to get new language versions is very convenient.

More importantly, though, is that the version of RubyGems distributed through Debian's (and Debian descendents like Ubuntu's) package repositories is crippled. Gem normally includes a very important command called 'gem update --system' that lets you upgrade gem itself. The opinion of the Debian package maintainers is that all upgrades should be handled through the package manager. This makes sense from a system administration perspective, but it's a huge pain when you're trying to do Ruby development, because important gems like Rails often require a fairly new version of RubyGems. (And Ruby libraries get updated much more frequently than the language itself.)

For the above reasons, doing Ruby stuff on Debian/Ubuntu without using RVM is a huge pain. Even if you manage to get everything working, an update to gem or something else may break it a week later.

While RVM isn't _as_ essential on other distros (like Fedora, which I did Ruby dev on for a long time before learning about RVM), it's still massively convenient. You can ensure that you have a consistent development environment across computers and operating systems (which I find is especially useful when deploying to a server, since I use different Linux distros for everyday use than I do for hosting things), you can easily switch between Ruby versions (I have one project still on 1.8.7, and I do the rest of my stuff on 1.9.x-- switching between them is as simple as typing _rvm $VERSION_ ), and it deals with all of the icky bits of managing multiple versions of gems (to go with your multiple versions of Ruby) for you.

RVM is awesome, and makes lots of the headaches that surround Ruby development go away. Use it.

<comment><USER5> I feel very strongly about this. I've done good business coming in and mopping up messes after people that attempt to deploy applications this way.

I'll follow up after I'm done with Christmas celebrations, but to think that a random hodgepodge of flavor-of-the-week deploy scripts slapped together by a webdev and scraped from github are somehow better or more maintainable than the collaborative output of some of the world's smartest and most committed developers is flatly-ridiculous.

Follow <http://planet.debian.org> for a week and tell me these people don't know what they're doing.

<comment><USER4> RVM is hardly a 'random hodgepodge of flavor-of-the-week deploy scripts'. RVM is widely used throughout the Ruby community and for good reason.

I'm really not interested in getting into some back-and-forth flamewar about this. (There's been plenty enough of that on the Debian mailing lists and elsewhere already.) I trust that the people maintaining Debian _are_ very smart and do, in general, know what they're doing. But I _don't_ trust that the people maintaining Debian know how to deploy Ruby/Rails better than the people in the Ruby/Rails community.

<comment><USER6> I can see the value of RVM for developers, running the same code against various gemsets and versions of Ruby, I used it this way, but not for deployment, why not simply compile everything necessary by hand, install the necessary gems, say ruby 1.9.2 with rails 3.0.3 and some other gems, and them use the result to chroot personalized deploys (or containerize them) instead of installing various versions of ruby with one shell script?

EDIT: Well, since you cannot answer in this thread feel free to answer in my first comment in this thread above if you wish.

EDIT2: I found this article about the matter, I found it to be good, I agree with him in the large picture: <http://rcrowley.org/articles/dependencies.html>

<comment><USER4> I'm not really sure I understand your question. RVM is a tool that can do all of that for me, and it's used and vetted by a large community. I don't know why I _wouldn't_ use RVM.

RVM automates the compilation step. I'm not sure why I'd want to do that by hand instead.

Gem installation is done on a per-app basis using bundler[0] or RVM's gemsets, so the gems for each application are kept separate anyway.

Running different applications on different versions of Ruby at once is also easy with project-level _rvmrc_ files.

And if for whatever reason you want different RVM installs for different users that's easy too: RVM only installs for a single user by default.

Now, granted, I don't do anything like run a shared hosting service, and there may be cases where RVM lacks the flexibility to do what's required, but I've never run into them.

[0] <http://rubygems.org/gems/bundler>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a good start for setting up rails on your development box, but when it comes to deploying it to a clean server, just following these instructions will give you a headache fast.

This tutorial, and some others on this guys blog helped me do just that. <http://kris.me.uk/2010/08/30/rails3-hosting-all-in-one.html>

<comment><USER8> Edit: After recursively chowning the .gem folder in my home directory to my user it worked.

I spent a good amount of time trying to get this to work a few days ago, but had issues with rvm. Thought this post might help, but in a fresh 10.10 install if rvm is used when trying gem install rails I get the following

: While executing gem ... (Errno::EACCES) Permission denied

It shouldn't be denied though since it's in the home directory. The only way I could get an up to date ruby and rails installed was by removing rvm (rvm implode) and manually installing 1.9.2 and then following the update- alternatives instructions located here: [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10274200#post102742...](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10274200#post10274200)

Is anybody else successfully accomplishing it the way this blog suggests? The internet is relatively sparse with up to date instructions for installing rails without problems on Ubuntu, it makes me miss the rolling release model of arch where everything just worked instantly.

<comment><USER7> Did you install rvm locally, or system wide? I have never had a real problem installing rails with rvm on 10.10, I just had to apt-get the required libs for ruby, and then everything else worked fine (with a normal rvm install).

I would try rvmsudo gem install rails, who knows...

Also remember, when you run the rvm install script or any of the following rvm commands, dont sudo it for a normal installation.

<comment><USER8> I installed it locally, but for some reason the .gem folder was root user and not my local user so it would not allow me to run gem install rails unless I used sudo. To fix this I had to chown the .gem folder to my user and then everything worked as it should. I just found it strange that I was the only one that seemed to have this issue since it looks like it should happen to everyone who follows the steps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really good advice about not installing Ruby using apt-get. I forgot and did this a few weeks ago and dropped back to building from source.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's surprising that with all that talk about how bad packaged ruby is, not many seem to be pushing for automation to fix this. CPAN situation is very similar to gems (apart from the speed of changes in the interpreters). Some perl modules are missing, some outdated, but `dh-make-perl --cpan Module::You::Want` brings you all you need almost every single time. There seems to be an old dh-make-ruby (dead ~2006), dh-make-gem seems to be in the works (early 0.3.0 version available).

Even upstream doesn't seem to be interested that much. On the download page, there's:

For example, on Debian or Ubuntu apt-get provides an easy and elegant solution: % sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-full

It definitely is confusing / silly to the outside observer... There's rvm - how hard is it to automate package building reusing it's elements? If it's not - why isn't it done? If it is - why all the packages hate, instead of pressuring upstream to improve the situation?

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually, this is one of the long lasting issues with RoR: most people want to try it on a recent version, but Linux distros try to package __stable __releases instead. You shouldn't blame the distros for not having the absolute bleeding edge version.

If really need the absolute latest version of Rails go on, have a separate install compiled from source, but there's no need to be rude with the packagers. I'm trying to learn Rails 3 and I found that JRuby works really fine with Rails 3, and using Warbler gives me nices WAR files to deploy on Tomcat, and I don't mess my default Ruby install.

<comment><USER12> Additionally, apt also packages "ruby-1.9.1" which actually installs Ruby 1.9.2. More evidence that apt is fundamentally broken when it comes to Ruby package management.

<comment><USER10> No. Apt works and does not enforce what versions you use and what you call them. Debian policies are another thing. But I wouldn't call stuff fundamentally broken that quickly. Once you actually get into packaging - versioning and dependencies stop being that simple thing really. Especially if you want more than one person to use your package in a stable environment.

Also "In the name of this package, `1.9.1' indicates the Ruby library compatibility version. This package currently provides the `1.9.2' branch of Ruby, which is compatible with the `1.9.1' branch." (<http://packages.debian.org/sid/ruby1.9.1>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I also found the following tutorial invaluable for setting up rails on 10.04 (via RailsTutorial.org)

[http://toranbillups.com/blog/archive/2010/09/01/How-to- insta...](http://toranbillups.com/blog/archive/2010/09/01/How-to-install- Rails-3.0-and-Ruby-1.9.2-on-Ubuntu)

</comment><comment><USER14> Absolutely agree. Whenever you google for installing ruby on Ubuntu you get the package version. Also Linode's guides use the packages. RVM offers a nearly effortless solution to manage your rubies - and more importantly manage gemsets which is an awesome feature.

Although I had to install more dependencies to get everything to work. I don't remember exactly what problems I had without some of the dependencies, but I had compiled them here: [http://rohitarondekar.com/articles/installing- rails3-beta3-o...](http://rohitarondekar.com/articles/installing- rails3-beta3-on-ubuntu-using-rvm)

</comment><comment><USER15> I just did this setup a few days ago, only problem is rvm did not work with root, still uses default ruby, however i suspect i need to configure the PATH

In addition I used Passenger as well</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source Monitoring Service - <AUTHOR> We all monitor our servers but just wondering if anybody have setup any Open Source Monitoring Service with notification. I know newrelic is awesome but wondering if there are any open source solutions available which we can install on our servers <comment><USER2> Over the last several years, I've tried out pretty much all of them. For smaller environments, the cost of most of the commercial (hosted) monitoring systems is just too damn high. I've currently got a pretty extensive Opsview deployment keeping an eye on everything for me but I'm about to begin setting up Zabbix to replace it.

None of them will do everything you want, so I'm going with one that will meet 90% of my needs OOTB and will allow me to take care of the other 10% myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you looked at Nagios? [https://www.nagios.org/projects/nagios- core/](https://www.nagios.org/projects/nagios-core/)</comment>


The art and science of naming prescription drugs (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/25/health/art-of-drug-naming/index.html <comment><USER2> Lustral got 'appropriated' for the name of a British trance music production duo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi3vOcrTQ44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi3vOcrTQ44)

A mate did the lighting on a Lustral conference, they were giving out 'square smiley' mugs (maybe a round smiley had all the 'wrong' connotations.) :D

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6f/c4/74/6fc474f206a45e7df576...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6f/c4/74/6fc474f206a45e7df5760932c0c380b7.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> Some other interesting names:

Uroxatral Hyzaar Astepro Exforge Evoxac Voltaren Maxzide

Source: [https://www.rxassist.org/pap-info/generic-drug-list- print](https://www.rxassist.org/pap-info/generic-drug-list-print)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever top Boniva. It helped your bones.</comment>


Can you discuss blockchain projects here? - <AUTHOR> Need to understand this community because sometimes you simply ignore messages.<p>Can you discuss blockchain projects here? <comment><USER2> The signal to noise ratio is really low around blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can always try to start the topic here...

[https://hackerforums.co](https://hackerforums.co)</comment>


Working from home – things no one talks about - <AUTHOR> https://www.timo-zimmermann.de/2020/03/working-from-home-things-no-one-talks-about/ <comment><USER4> There are so many of these work from home how-to articles because they're trendy, but almost never useful.

I worked from home for ten years, then back to the office for three, now back at home. I can tell you that what works for one person does not work for everyone.

For example, I am most productive in the morning, and wake up motivated and ready to work. For that reason, I don't take a shower until lunch, then use the afternoons to sort of wind-down with less productive things like meetings, reports, and such.

My father worked from home in the 80's. He was the opposite. He was better in the afternoon. Because of that, he had to force himself to take the mornings seriously. He did that by getting up every morning at 6am, doing the full getting-ready-for-the-office thing, and even went down to the corner store for coffee every day as a sort of "commute."

He would end up at 8am sitting in his home office in the laundry room in a full suit and tie ready for for the day, while I'm still in my sweatpants until after noon.

(Equipment-wise, from working home in the 80's was very different than it is today. Think a big desk with three rotary telephones, filing cabinets, a VFD calculator, and a Telex machine.)

<comment><USER5> What I find strange is all of the people who don't like working from home trying to talk _everyone_ out of it, including the people who do want to work from home. Look at all of the comments on HN with people claiming that it doesn't work generally, rather than just for them specifically. I don't understand the mentality — "it doesn't work for me, therefore I'm going to actively work to make sure you have to come into the office too."

<comment><USER6> They're afraid that this will become the norm and their office chit-chat times will be over for good.

Or worse: they don't _like_ being at their own home, so the thought of staying there is terrifying.

That's at least what I've gathered from those I talked with.

I mean, if someone is saying that a 40min commute in high traffic still doesn't tip the balance in favour of remote work, then they apparently either really like being in the office, or really dislike staying home. Parents come to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who have 4+ children work remotely, so this doesn't add up.

<comment><USER7> > Parents come to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who > have 4+ children work remotely, so this doesn't add up.

It's multifaceted. It might be fine if you own a large enough home that you can have a dedicated working space, with a door.

Even without kids, I find it extremely difficult to work from home without a dedicated space. If I try to work from the living room, I end up doing living room things (like playing video games).

For some people, though, the idea of engineering your environment to change your behavior is either impractical or unheard of, which is what I think gives these people the general impression that "working effectively from home is impossible."

<comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL This is again very personal.

I love my kid crawling on me while I work, she sits on my lap and watches around or hug me a bit.

I work in the living room, my wife is there, my kid too. The desk is equipped for work, to be clear (good chair, screens etc.), I occasionally play games on it in the evenings (not often, to be fair) and I work in my "home clothes". Been doing this for over 10 years now.

I have my rules: if I don't work enough or I see I lose focus often, I'll work more hours. If I work too much, I'll work less the next day.

The other day I was even shocked realizing how much time people spend chatting at work, my day seemed more intense at home than their at the office.

To everyone its own. My style has been working great and a hug or cuddle from wife/kid is a great boost to my productivity!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You know, last week when we were starting to WFH I thought of it as a blessing in disguise since I always liked staying indoors and often take a day or two to WFH per week to focus on docs etc.

However, once everyone is WFH the experience turned out to be less than ideal to say the least. I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours and have been more stressed out than usual.

I think it really had nothing to do with my habits and preparedness. I already had everything set up (multiple displays, standing desk etc which I've had for a long time) and had almost no productivity drop on my side. However, now all my colleagues are pinging me, the video meetings take longer to finish since people are talking over each other and now I'm asked to write much more documentation and communications for rather trivial matters instead of just talking to someone face to face for a couple of minutes. People (management) also have less respect for normal work hours.

In the end I think if your company doesn't have the preparedness and more importantly the systems ready for remote work, you won't be ready for full remote work either.

I just hope people will begin to adjust to the new normal better as time goes on.

<comment><USER9> _> I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours and have been more stressed out than usual._

Here's how I deal with this:

The work computer lives in my office, which I close up and leave at the end of the work day. None of my other devices have access to work email, and none of them receive any form of work related notification ever.

If you ping me about something after I've signed off for the evening, you'll get a response in the morning after I've had my coffee.

Everybody else is free to work around the clock if they like. If they need me, they can catch me while I'm at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I read my wife the headline and we both thought of the same thing - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk) \- which this article skips over completely. Disappointing.

<comment><USER11> thanks for the good laugh

<comment><USER12> And now that both halves of the two income household are working from home, well...

I'm investing in Durex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty decent list, as someone who's full-time remote let me add one more:

At the end of the day send your manager a quick email of what you did and things that happened. You shouldn't spend more than 5 minutes and there's never an expectation of a reply but it's a great way to fill them in and augment the in-person conversations that happen in the office.

<comment><USER14> As someone who is a remote manager of remote colleagues, I would ask any employee giving me a daily update to stop. It is one more distraction and I prefer to evaluate people for their long-term productivity rather than daily. I may be an outlier though.

<comment><USER15> For many years, I used to have a little html file I called "log.html" (just plain html) and at the end of every day before I left, I'd add a section at the top, dated, separated with a horizontal rule <hr>, with notes about what I did that day, and also little things I learned. When it came time to make my weekly status report, I'd refer back to it. I could also search through it and find various bits of information I'd written down. And if other people wondered what I'd been up to, they could look at it too.

<comment><USER16> Yes. I do this. In Gdocs though, name is productivity, where I add the day in format [dd/mm/yyyy] followed by bullets points on things I thought and did during the day. It also helps me to wrap my mind around in the following weeks, like, what was I thinking? then I go back to the log, and remember the trail of thought leading to my decisions. It is quite worth a while doing this I reckon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My main problem with it isn't so much productivity (if anything I'm possibly a little more productive). It's more the isolation (not helped by the fact that my country is now closing everything down). The only person I've talked to in person since Wednesday was a supermarket cashier. Assuming this goes on for a few months I have serious doubts about my ability to stay sane.

<comment><USER6> In my case the first crisis came after three months.

It gets better after that.

<comment><USER17> I'd definitely hope not to be doing this for three months!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TFA is loaded with good advice.

However, there's one thing missing: Track your time, say in 10-15 minute blocks, with short notes about what you're doing. That can be integrated with your calendar.

I consulted for many years, simultaneously for multiple clients with multiple projects, so that was essential for billing. But I can imagine that it'd also be useful if you're dealing with managers with little experience of working remotely.

The idea of videoconferencing from home creeps me some. It's a privacy issue. And I do love working in bathrobes. It's comfortable, and makes for less laundry.

<comment><USER19> I am willing to bet a decent amount of work from home folks don't wear pants.

<comment><USER20> I work from home full time now. Have been for about a year. Before I started working from home, jeans, chinos, etc. for 10+ hours a day wasn't bothersome. But now? They bug me. I do have different kind of sweatpants to wear during work hours. That does help demarcate the work day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No devices will help you do your job when you have a few kids and the spouse is also supposed to work from home..

<comment><USER22> this. When management is no-kids, it's going to be a problem

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Working from home for 6 years now.

What worked for me:

Sleep till noon

Checking mail/chats

2-4h creative work (design, coding, writing) interleaved with mail/chats if the flow won't hit

Checking Mail/chat

<30h work weeks

only <4 meetings a month

See that you have to find time for work and not for life.

</comment><comment><USER24> I really dislike video chat for full-time remote work. Video chat is still too lo-fi to approach the utility of in-person meetings and has the same downsides (grooming, dress, other appearance-based stereotypes). What's wrong with voice?!

<comment><USER25> > What's wrong with voice?!

What's wrong with text?

<comment><USER26> Text is one way. You cannot have a fluid conversation via text. Voice and voice+video are faster, plus they carry more information, prevent misunderstandings etc.

<comment><USER27> More MIS information? Text forces you to think before you type.

Perhaps you don't like having a record? :)

<comment><USER26> Yes, good luck explaining things to people who can't understand basic instructions via text. You might use it for "records" to protect yourself, but getting things done is easier. When I ask someone 'do you understand', in text it might sound very aggressive and sometimes offensive. Via phone or video, it is much more relaxed. If you are concerned about recording, just use screen capture and save it somewhere for a while. Even text cannot be used as a clear evidence, the other person simply says 'I didn't understand that sentence that way'.

<comment><USER27> Why are you thinking of liability? I'm thinking of not having to take notes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > But please do not share your enthusiasm for the cat that looks like Garfield > with everyone on the call.

This heavily depends on the company culture, tone of the meeting, participants, etc.

Basic savoir vivre still applies, interrupting someone to loudly admire a pet (or whatever) would simply be rude.

But if the discussion stalls and if it's not a meeting about personnel reduction, I see no harm in saying that Mr Fluffy Paws looks especially nice today.

</comment><comment><USER29> >Make sure you have a fixed schedule. Get up. Get ready. Do your job. Sign off.

This is the most important one. I sign on at 8:30, I sign off at 5:30, and I turn off my laptop and phone until 8:15 the next morning to give time to hook everything back up. No exceptions.I take a 1 hour lunch where I might continue a slack conversation but also do some yoga / Ring Fit.

<comment><USER30> > This is the most important one.

Like what everyone already said here; it depends on the person. For me that does not work.

I start work at home when I wake up, which can be 3 am or 1 pm and I work until I do not feel like it anymore, which can be 1 hour or 20 hours. Been doing that for 25+ years (not sure what the average is but I would say around 7 hours), works fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was making the typical hour trek from San Francisco to Mountain View for four years, every day. Decided to move away and started working remotely 100%.

Not having the eight hours back in my week was life changing. Habits, health, relationships have all improved.

It feels like there are always going to be roles, teams and companies that must work together face to face, if we can culturally shift away from going into an office, it could really improve quality of life for lots of people.

For many others it may hurt them as work is a big social outlet. That'll have to be taken into consideration.

I think we'll see a big shift culturally over the next year as much more of the public potentially gets used to what it's like working from home, companies may find it really helps(or hurts) their bottom line.

This could end up hurting as productivity will be terrible if everyone's distracted with news on covid and employers associate that loss due to being remote.

Ultimately, post-crisis, expectations around how people work will significantly change.

<comment><USER5> Do you miss SF though?

<comment><USER31> Food, talent, energy - <USER2>

Traffic, expensive everything, too much focus on work - <USER3>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think working from home is amazing but it does take some adjustment. Good internet, exercise and Slack/Mattermost "visibility" (Participating in non- work related channels) is really important to have a good experience. Just another opinion.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's something I haven't seen mentioned and long term it makes a huge difference:

If so far you used public transportation to get to work or just walked and otherwise didn't do any exercise - start. 30 minutes of mild yoga is enough.

Remote work often comes with a double whammy of less exercise and increased snacking - both will make you put on weight.

I've put on 15kg over the four years I've worked remotely and now after two months of office work already lost 4kg, because there's this hill(20m height) I have to descend every day to get to work.

You keeping your balance in the bus every day really adds up over time.

</comment><comment><USER33> The catchy title part 'no one talks about' is a bit overstated I think, as I could use it in my piece from 2018 as well for example: [https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote- work/](https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/) \- imho I've managed to capture there some details that are often overlooked in recent trendy articles too (and also not mentioned in this thread's blog post as well) ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> Perhaps an office should become a part of all future houses, just like kitchens and bedrooms, to help with focus, privacy and discipline/scheduling etc.

In the long run, working-from-home will only be a win, in so many aspects of society: reducing daily traffic and the associated stress, reclaiming the space taken up by office towers and parking lots, all of which will improve overall public health and increase leisure time, which would boost local economies and even travel industries and so on.

</comment><comment><USER35> Working from home is a chance to experience unbridled flow, as a home worker since 96' I would say just do 3 or 4 hours a day for the first 2 weeks and resolve all those personal and home things that are on your mind, clear the runway for some real productivity :) For now the only other tip applies only if you get irritated by distractions learn to be more gracious, I found it was the irritation I brought to the party that broke the flow, not the interruption itself.

</comment><comment><USER36> As someone who is on my feet all day everyday working with metal, probably inhaling bad fumes, no healthcare no benefits: that font is absolutely gouging my eyes out homie

</comment><comment><USER37> On the subject of conference cameras I can fully recommend the Logitech BCC 950 ([https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam- bcc950](https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam-bcc950)). It's ideal for work from home and you won't usually need to use headphones with it. On the downside it's pretty expensive.

</comment><comment><USER38> > _If you are uncertain how to properly make sure you get a healthy lunch and > dinner check "Fitness YouTube"._

Why would you not know that if you're working at home, if you knew it while working at work?

Or, if you didn't know when working at work, why would you start caring when switching to working from home?

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't really see the need to use headphones. Almost nobody in my team does, and we were already working from home ~50% of the time before the current situation.

Despite all the bad things I want to say about the Macbook Pro provided by my employer, its speakers and mic do a pretty good job during videochat.

<comment><USER40> The problem is the microphone is too good. I just bought my entire team headsets because I'm sick of the background noise from other rooms or in one case his next door neighbour coming over the macbook microphone. Also it stops people shouting which my experience is most people do when on speakerphone, despite the fact that they have never needed to.

It would be fine if your team is used to this and understands mute buttons and whatnot. Not fine when its an employee who doesn't mute and types at 100wpm on the same macbook.

<comment><USER39> We understand mute buttons. :)

And there shouldn't be a lot of typing involved unless I'm in a 1:1 pair debugging/troubleshooting session, and even then it's not exactly reaching 100 wpm.

I can't say I've been bothered much by background noise, that's actually more often an issue in the office. In the following weeks there will probably be more of it due to kids being home, but we have no choice here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The folks I eat lunch with are doing a daily zoom meeting at our lunchtime, to help with the isolation.

</comment><comment><USER42> Good camera suggestions there. Nothing else there should be a surprise. Although honestly, a webcam on a laptop should be fine too, or tablet. But headphones are a really good idea for conferences.

</comment><comment><USER43> The flip side is that when you are stuck in a busy noisy office, the only place you want to be, is at home to concentrate and do your work. Stuck at home too long, and need the office. Balance.

</comment><comment><USER44> Don't pretend that WFH makes it OK to have your dog barking in the background all meeting. Yes, we had a ton of WFH newbies this past week, and this in particular is driving me nuts.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how many people need to start popping vitamin D when switching to the shut-in lifestyle—especially if living father north. And how many of them will know that they do.

</comment><comment><USER46> And I'd buy things sooner than later.

I doubt stores have appropriate stocks for the change over.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've been working from home for a decade. I've worked at many companies and been part of the hiring process for remote developers.

Most people just don't have the discipline to work remotely. I think productivity will be reduced overall and it might prevent remote working in the future.

<comment><USER48> I really believe that working remotely or from home is a skill that needs to be developed over time in most cases. There may be some people who are just naturally better at it, but the first time I had a remote job we went from five days in the office to five days at home abruptly and I was horrible at it and inefficient at my job.

With my current job we started doing 1-2 days of working from home a week over the last year or so. Doing it part time has given me a chance to develop the skills and space needed to be successful and now that we are being pushed into it full time I feel a lot more prepared for it.

I do agree, though, that for most people who aren't used to it or haven't had a chance to develop the skills needed it's going to be a rough transition and productivity is likely to decline, at least temporarily. Some of that may be due to working remotely, but I'm sure at least a part of it is just due to the general circumstances and anxiety surrounding it.

<comment><USER49> But like didn't you go to high school or college? Did you never have to study at home? How does one get into the modern office workforce without ever learning how to be productive when left to their own devices? I don't get it

For me working from an office or working from home is literally the same thing. I'm on computer with headphones on and talking through slack.

<comment><USER48> > _But like didn't you go to high school or college?_

I was home schooled for K-12 but I did go to college and I was actually pretty effective at working on my own. But I think the nature of the work you're assigned in college is different from that of the workplace, at least in most situations. For example, college won't necessarily teach you how to communicate effectively with a remote team, how to stick to a schedule even at home, how to set up a space so you can take calls, etc.

I also think I sort of unlearned the skills needed after being forced to come into the office between X and Y time of the day for several years after college, so when I was suddenly left to my own devices again it was a difficult shift. Had I jumped straight from college to a fully remote job I may have done a bit better.

Now that I've relearned those skills I much prefer a mix of working from home and being in the office, that way I get a good balance of focused time at home and social time at the office.

<comment><USER50> > For example, college won't necessarily teach you how to [..] stick to a > schedule even at home

If anything, I'd say it's especially good at teaching the opposite if you dormed on-campus - how to fit work in between randomly-timed socializing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> My number one tip for employees is a simple one: above all else, _be responsive_. If your company has an instant messenger app, your response time should be in _seconds_ , not minutes. If you're going on a small errand or putting together a snack in the kitchen, it is to your benefit as much as everyone else's to update your status. A simple 'be right back' goes a long ways. When managers can't get ahold of people working from home is when they start to ask questions, run VPN reports, and reign things in.

In reading the comments below, this seems to be wildly unpopular. I can understand where they're coming from. Being available may be very appreciated by others, but it really hurts when you're deeply involved in something. I manage this by marking myself as busy when I know I'm about to dive deep into something, but you can't always see it coming, and I can understand the resistance to this approach.

<comment><USER52> This destroys deep work. If you are paid for deep work you have to balance responsiveness with getting your work done. Don't be unavailable, use status messages wisely, and set up an SLA that makes sense for deep work. "Seconds" is not reasonable IMO. Depends on your role, I suppose.

<comment><USER11> > This destroys deep work

yes, but not everybody has to do deep work all the time.

for example, part of my job is to be available to colleagues for consultation. it might be something to which i can quickly respond "ticket or gtfo" or "busy right now, could you ask me again in 10-15 minutes?". But it could also require me immediate action (some production environment is failing).

As a company culture it is important to empower people to tell "not now", to educate people to only tell "not now" if you actually can't right now, and to train yourself to write "not now" without losing focus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I figured it was only a matter of time before all the WFH "advice" articles would start. This guys's been doing it for 2 weeks and he's already an expert dispensing advice. I've been WFH for 8 years, so reading this is a bunch of LOL.

Regarding headphones, this is not an issue once you move into a dedicated office space in your house. One thing I use to hate is taking headphones on/off every time there's a call. Regarding set hours, that's totally a preference. I work late at night sometimes because I feel like it. WFH means flexibility and not commuting means sometimes I get a jolt of inspiration to work off hours. I don't mind because the trade-off is I get to take time off during the day to attend school events for my kids.

Remote work is a lifestyle change for sure. More loneliness, more discipline, less water-cooler gossip. It requires the right mindset and personality that some of you don't have, and I'm sure you're itching to get back to the office.

<comment><USER54> 2 weeks? He writes he hasn't worked in an office for 20 years.

And yeah, not everyone might have a dedicated to office area in there apartment, and this still would not prevent any typing noise.</comment></comment>


Iran Fights Strong Virus Attacking Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/world/middleeast/26iran.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Stuxnet is a worm that targets net-isolated computers running Siemens control systems propagated by USB drives. All things old are new again, this time with sneakernet viruses.</comment>


Show HN: Datoji – FREE HTTP JSON storage service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidesantangelo/datoji <comment><USER2> It looks like an interesting and useful project but the API is strange and the documentation confusing at best (compared to other JSON stores I've used).

* Why "packs" and "items" when there are so many more common terms? "Containers" and "Objects" or "Tables" and "Records" or "Collections" and "Documents". At the very least you could've explained the correspondence to familiar terms.

* Your documentation makes no distinction between "system" fields/attributes and "application" fields/attributes. Users of the API want to see and use THEIR data, not your APIs data. It would be clearer if system attributes had a prefix, maybe just an underscore or "dj_".

* The above is made worse because your objects contain so many system attributes and unnecessary nested structures.

* Your documentation for "clear" and "delete" is the same? What's the difference?

* You never describe "relationships", whether they are created for or by the user, or what they are good for. Likewise, what's the "type" attribute for if everything is the same type?

* Why, oh why, do you need a data collection inside an attribute collection? If you include metadata (like timestamps) why not just include them as attributes, maybe distinguished by names like _created_at or dj_created_at?

* You mention query/ordering syntax but then don't show clear examples of it</comment>


DNSCrypt Encrypts Your DNS Traffic Because There's Always Someone Out To Get You - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/dnscrypt-encrypts-your-dns-traffic-because-theres-always-someone-out-to-get-you/

<comment><USER2> No source, no actual mention of how it works besides curve25519, and only available for 'Mac'.

I don't have a lot of confidence that this is secure or useful, but it sounds like it is already useless because it fails over to normal DNS and the attacker this is targeted at can just as easily block the traffic and force you to downgrade.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't failover to normal DNS. That's available (off by default) for those folks who place continuity above security.

Life's full of tradeoffs.

Source is on GH -- <http://github.com/opendns/dnscrypt-proxy></comment></comment>


Making a million bucks/year in revenue - <AUTHOR> http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.818857.14

<comment><USER2> In his third response (when he gives "a few ideas") "speedy" basically describes Dropbox:

      Don't you wish you never had to worry about your
      computer crashing or hard disk dying?
      An idiot proof backup, and one where I don't have
      to set _anything_ would be nice.

I bet Dropbox is making a million bucks.

<comment><USER3> Dropbox is not a backup.

Backblaze is.

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate? I use dropbox as a quick and instant document backup. It works great.

<comment><USER5> The important bit is "one where I don't have to set _anything_"—you _do_ have to put the files you want synchronized _into_ your Dropbox folder. (This is the part I've found hard to explain to people that just save things to wherever the Save dialog opens.)

This could actually be worked around; once Dropbox enables per-folder sync, they could also provide a daemon (as an option) that automatically finds and sets up sync for any folder you seem to be making personal use of. Kind of like how Picasa works with pictures, but with everything on your computer that's yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little nugget of wisdom:

 _What if you made an app that could take database connection specs, and an Amazon S3 account and then automatically backs up the database for you (wish I had this app).[...] What if you didn't even ask the user if the database was MySQL or MS SQL or Oracle in the connect settings? The app could quickly spin through all possibilities and figure it out for the user. Make the app (and programmer) do the heavy lifting, and let the user (thousands of different users) benefit. That's the secret. My app does lots of brute force searches/checks to relieve the user of having to do that. The competition doesn't._

</comment><comment><USER7> It's an interesting thought experiment. An interesting variant, though, might be to divide all his numbers by 10: what can you do to make $100k/year? Now that's not "rich" kind of money, but it is "making a good living independently" kind of money. And the numbers actually don't look daunting at all: bill at $52/hour, make 8 to 9 sales per month of something at $1000/pop, or make 111 sales per month of something at $75/pop.

<comment><USER8> _bill at $52/hour_

If you have year-round, full-time contract work with no downtime due to acquiring new clients or negotiating new jobs with existing ones, then you probably don't have enough clients to be truly independent.

<comment><USER7> Well, yes, but you can change the numbers to account for that. Say, bill at $100/hr? Or take the route of selling software. My main point was that the bar is much lower than the targets he gives, if your goal is "make a good living" rather than "become rich".

<comment><USER8> I like your general point.

I'm sure there are unforeseen expenses in all of those scenarios that would require some padding to insure against, but the contracting scenario is the one I'm most experienced with, and the assumptions behind your numbers have bitten me in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know this has been covered here before, but here's a real-world example of succeeding at this: <http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2010/01/03/a-look-back- at-2009/>

This guy is my hero.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just make something people want or, better still, make something you want. Is there much advantage starting out defining how rich you want to be? Just keep going for a few years and then, if you're lucky, you can look back and go "Oh, I've got enough now, I think".

<comment><USER8> _Is there much advantage starting out defining how rich you want to be?_

Yes.

Quantifying your goal helps you answer questions like "How can I get there from here?", "How long will it take?", "Will I ever make it there at my current trajectory?", and "Do I still need to work anymore?"

And it will also tell you, "How much do I have to charge, and to how many customers?", which will help you avoid low-margin, hard-sale markets, and get you thinking about recurring revenue.

<comment><USER11> Does how much you charge really depend on how much you want to make?

<comment><USER12> It does in helping you realizing if the market you're targeting is big enough to achieve your goal.

If your goal is to make a million dollars a year with a certain product or service, the number of units of that service or product that you can provide (e.g. you have time to take on only so many projects a year, you're hand- building furniture and can make so many a week, etc.) or the expected number of sales you can make tells you how much you would need to charge to reach your goal. price = $1,000,000/# units

But it really depends on what end of the stick you're looking at. The OP's objective is to reach a certain revenue. You can look from the other side and say "I'll be selling my product at that price, which means I'll make price*units per year."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Better yet, what can you sell for $5 to 200k people? Aim low, aim wide, and hunt with a gatling.

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily better yet. In fact you've completely missed the point. Recall the post about the company making $1000 per day on their iPhone app. They sell it for $25 and have staked out a niche. Meanwhile hundreds of other apps try to aim low and wide and for the most part make nothing because they charge too little and can't make up for it in volume. The point of the post is it's easier to sell something to 1000 people than 200,000.

<comment><USER15> Do you happen to remember the name of this app? Thanks.

<comment><USER16> <http://iteleportmobile.com> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1365776>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why worry about a million a year in revenue (or did we mean profit here) - what you really want is probably the lifestyle you think you will get when that happens.... perceptually, what's the difference between a million a year and 10 million a year in revenue? What really matters is what you, as the owner, take home, and the life you live while doing so....

<comment><USER18> Great point. A lot of people spend all their time trying to earn more money, but they don't remember that money is worthless if you don't have the time or the need to use it. Time is the most valuable currency we have in our lives, it's the only currency we can't earn more of. We can only choose to spend it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 90-95% profit margin isn't exactly realistic. Not that people and some companies don't hit that mark but it is rare. A much more realistic range is probably 30-35% if you are in the tech world and much lower if you are in the world of physical products.

<comment><USER20> Yeah I agree. If the margins are that high, then you'll have a ton of competitors come in, which will end up lowering it in the end. It may be possible in the beginning, before the competition forms.

<comment><USER21> Pro audio equipment has pretty high margins. The barrier to entry is fairly high (lots of R&D involved), so there aren't a ton of compmetitors, and the competitors like making good margins so the prices never get too low (improving technology and cheaper materials also helps with that). If a competitor tried to own the market by selling equipment at consumer margins, they'd probably starve on the low volume they'd get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've taken the approach of selling a service for $250,000/year to a small number of people. The sales cycles are longer, but the customers are very loyal if you provide good service, and it's much easier to support 5-10 clients than 200k clients.

</comment><comment><USER23> When starting a business, if the idea is even reasonably good in a decent sized market and you stick to it, getting to $1M per year in revenue is not the hard part. In fact, after two companies of my own, it was almost too easy to get that far in each one. The hard part is making a decent amount of money at that revenue level because realistically you are going to have at least a few employees in the company to get there. ie: $1M isn't what it used to be.

In my experience, getting to $10M dollars should be the real goal and that proves to be quite a bit more challenging because this takes some real scale and the skills from 0 to $1M are quite a bit different that say the skills from $5M to $10M range....the job of CEO is completely different between the two and most people don't prove to be good at both types of the "jobs".....so the company hits a ceiling and never quite gets there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Can you elaborate how exactly job changes from 0 to $1 M as compared to $5 M or $10 M range?

<comment><USER24> I would guess that the job changes from managing people to managing managers.

<comment><USER23> Yes, that is definitely part of it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AVR support merged into Rust nightly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/commit/e91bf6c881dc8fa50dc18fc2f518a6c22424ddb5 <comment><USER2> Note that there is still plenty of work to be done in LLVM, Rust, and the ecosystem.

For example, function pointers accessed in global variables have the incorrect relocation applied. This notably affects the ability to use futures executors.

However, a lot of things do work, and we are always looking for more people to contribute!

Check out [https://book.avr-rust.com/](https://book.avr-rust.com/) for more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perfect timing, I just started learning how to get Rust running on Arduino Nano yesterday.

The Arduino tooling left a bit to be desired, and we don't want to re-write when we move from prototype to production.

I'm sure I'll make mistakes which means I'll have to re-write a ton, but at least this is starting to get me part-way to a good working environnment.

</comment><comment><USER4> What does this mean for someone who is quite familiar with AVR but new to Rust? How much of what I can normally achieve in my AVR projects can now be done under Rust?

<comment><AUTHOR> In theory, Rust can completely replace C for AVR development. Based on what shepmaster said, certain Rust features may not work yet. I'm also a Rust newbie. This article is a great intro to Rust for microcontrollers (but it's for ARM Cortex): [https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/zero-to-main- rust-1](https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/zero-to-main-rust-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool. I had seen some ATmega microcontrollers but not it's AVR naming.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_microcontrollers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_microcontrollers)</comment>


Lessons from Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=9302662 <comment><USER2> I bought a 512 Mac for $3K in the 80's. And I'll buy an iPhone. The lesson from Apple for me... create what you want to use yourself. I bet Bill rather use a Mac ....what about you?

<comment><USER3> I'll never understand the appeal of apple. Compare:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1000>

1985, Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz, $1595

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II>

1987, Motorola 68020, 16 MHz, $5500 (!!!)

To anyone who has ever used both, the superiority of the Amiga was absolutely unmistakable. But what are you going to do when apparently-sane journalists write things like this:

_...and now the iPhone, which goes on sale in America this month, Apple has prospered by keeping just ahead of the times_

Umm..? Ahead of the times? With a cellphone? I mean, they're about a decade too late to be consider "with the times" much less "ahead of the times". Oh, well.

<comment><USER4> The Amiga was ahead of its time. Amiga people tended to migrate toward Linux, trading superiority of hardware for superiority of philosophy. I personally don't miss the proprietary days.

Consider the Mac is popular now when it's using the same hardware as PCs (Intel, NVidia/ATI) and runs on UNIX. Essentially Apple is based around a highly polished FreeBSD distro!

With some more resources, Ubuntu could do the same thing, selling tightly integrated machines where everything "just works".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do you look for job postings? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for sites to post some 'developer wanted' ads - what do you look at? <comment><USER2> 1) MadeInNY, <http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc>, has a great list of companies who are hiring in NYC.

2) Smashing Magazine, <http://jobs.smashingmagazine.com/>, has a good job board for front-end developer and web design jobs.

3) Python job board, <http://www.python.org/community/jobs/>

4) Startuply, <http://www.startuply.com/>

5) Angel.co, <https://angel.co/jobs>

6) Dice

7) Stackoverflow

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the UK, and I check TotalJobs and CWJobs daily (Mostly out of curiosity) - I don't actually go to the websites, they email me, persistently, every single day. It was annoying at first but I've made it part of my morning routine to take a look at the cooler jobs they send through, it means I will be in a good place when I finally decide to change companies - I will already have a bucket of potential jobs to sift through without the headache of having to search.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget <http://hackerjobs.co.uk> for UK roles

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I maintain a small ad-free directory of job boards[1], and you can also browse Reddit ForHire[2].

[1] <http://careers.sh> [2] <http://reddit.com/r/forhire>

</comment><comment><USER6> By asking the question here, surely you realize we look here. Just post them here. <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whoishiring>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - kind of :) so how do you get to post to that account so the ad goes out on April 1st?

<comment><USER4> You don't. On the 1st of every month, that account posts a Who's Hiring thread. You comment in that thread with the details of your vacancy and how to apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What type of developer do you need? What skills do they need that you want?

If you want a .net programmer, find a .net/windows job board or visit the forums on msdn. Same applies to other languages, fields.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found two kick ass web dev positions on Craigslist. Believe it or not..

</comment><comment><USER9> Stackoverflow HN PHPClasses

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the tips - some new to me places to post..</comment>


Baseline JIT and inline caches - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pyston.org/2016/06/30/baseline-jit-and-inline-caches/ <comment><USER2> Interesting idea that I just came across that is somewhat relevant: The author of LuaJIT 2.0 says an interpreter written in assembly is just as fast as a baseline JIT and way easier to write.

He also has measurements to back this up: [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57761](http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/3851#comment-57761) (this is just one place he talks about it, there's others in that thread and elsewhere)

<comment><USER3> > Interesting idea that I just came across that is somewhat relevant: The > author of LuaJIT 2.0 says an interpreter written in assembly is just as fast > as a baseline JIT and way easier to write.

I believe this is essentially the long-term goal of V8 with Ignition: an interpreter written in what is essentially a macro-assembler (which mostly just relies on the code-gen from the JIT, as I understand it, so you get as much portability as the JIT has for free) and TurboFan as the only JIT tier (unless they have some plan for multiple tiers varying only in what optimizations are enabled within TurboFan, similar to Chakra?). Of course, this is still very different insofar as TurboFan still ultimately works at the function level, whereas LuaJIT 2.0 uses traces.

An interesting counterpoint is JavaScriptCore, which has both an interpreter written in a portable assembly _and_ a baseline JIT. Presumably they believe they get enough of the gain from it to justify it?

What surprises me with Pyston is the fact that they're heralding one of the big gains of the baseline JIT as being inline caching, "[transforming] the bjit from only being able to remove the interpretation overhead to a JIT which actually is able to improve the performance by a much larger factor". Surely the better fix then is to use inline caches in the interpreter, given that'll give most of the speedup?

<comment><USER4> Not sure if a portable jit-constructed interpreter can reach the performance of the hand-written assembly interpreter of LuaJIT. My assumption is that what makes LuaJIT fast is careful consideration of architecture specific details.

Maybe you've seen this already: [http://nominolo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/implementing-fast- int...](http://nominolo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/implementing-fast- interpreters.html) (notice the part about portability)

<comment><USER3> > Not sure if a portable jit-constructed interpreter can reach the performance > of the hand-written assembly interpreter of LuaJIT. My assumption is that > what makes LuaJIT fast is careful consideration of architecture specific > details.

> Maybe you've seen this already: > [http://nominolo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/implementing-fast- > int...](http://nominolo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/implementing-fast- > interpreters.html) (notice the part about portability)

My assumption would be that architecture specific details contribute relatively little towards the performance of LuaJIT outside of register constrained architectures (x86-32, most obviously). Mike's comment on Reddit years ago about the performance of LuaJIT's interpreter seems to be consistent with that: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/badl2/luajit_2...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/badl2/luajit_2_beta_3_is_out_support_both_x32_x64/c0lrus0?st=iq43mp4g&sh=6b15e555). We're now reaching a point where x86-32 performance isn't such a consideration any more (simply because it's an increasingly rare architecture), so you can just bound your number of virtual registers to the lower-bound of the architectures you care more about (so therefore you maintain 1:1 mapping on all those you care much about).

As that post says in its bit about portability (LLInt is JavaScriptCore's interpreter, mentioned in my post above, for those unaware), most of these portable assembly implementations have means to drop down and hand-write architecture specific code for the cases where it makes much difference, and in general you can do smart enough instruction selection it won't make much difference.

Some of the big gains come from having control over stack layout (as you don't need to separately maintain an interpreter stack separate to the thread's), which accounted for a lot of the overhead in JavaScriptCore's old interpreter, and which LLInt deliberately uses the same stack layout as the JITs do, hence allowing on-stack replacement (OSR) between the interpreter and JIT. This is something that Ignition is aiming to do, and it's something that LuaJIT does.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for replying, I agree with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> eval-everything A while ago, I posted a link to this talk at Stanford by Eliot Miranda and Clement Bara on Pharo's (and Squeak's) new VM, Spur, and its Sista optimizer: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Cvia- HZ-w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Cvia-HZ-w)

In short, it leverages the inherent type information of a PIC to speculatively inline jitted methods directly at their call sites.

Unfortunately, HN's spam filter eats threads started by new accounts, so I don't think anyone saw it. Maybe a regular user with good karma can re-post it?

<comment><USER5> > In short, it leverages the inherent type information of a PIC to > speculatively inline jitted methods directly at their call sites.

I'm not sure if you were suggesting that this was unique or novel, but the technique has been around since 1991 and most JITs for languages like Java, Smalltalk, Python, Ruby, etc already do this.

In many cases in those language, if we couldn't do this there wouldn't be any inlining at all and performance would be terrible.

<comment><USER6> I mean it inlines the the method itself at the callsite, eliding the overhead of a method invocation altogether, whereas a normal (P)IC simply elides the overhead of a class+selector method lookup.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I get that - but this inlining of the method itself within an IC, removing the method call overhead, has been done in every non-trivial dynamic language VM since the early 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Curious that they don't mention actual performance numbers in this blog post…

<comment><USER7> They never do</comment></comment>


Amazon is killing my sex life (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/05/30/amazon_is_killing_my_sex_life_partner/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

<comment><USER2> > "The type of person who is attracted to these jobs and thus to the Seattle > area seems to be... strangely entitled...." Arlene said that she was once > contacted by a Microsoft programmer on OKCupid who required that she read > Neuromancer before "he would consider taking me out on a date. He was not > joking."

The idea that a guy should feel grateful for the opportunity to take a girl who looks down on him out to dinner is pretty far up there if we're chalking up examples of self-entitlement. Makes me suspect the real reason for her reaction was surprise at not being in the traditional position of judging and rejecting the guy first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of these "brogrammer" "frats guy" types that are loathed on HN tend to be a very particular type of person. They were uncool in high school, joined a low tier frat in college and then tied their entire self esteem to their club membership. They remain socially inept after college and therefore cling to their juvenille antics because that's all they know. [0]

In general, the people in the top tier fraternities tend to have extraordinary social skills and meld seemlessly with society after college. You probably wouldn't be able to spot one. As of now, these individuals are very much _not_ in software engineering.

Unfortunately, the top 3 or 5 large fraternities on campus take all the kids with social skills, and the bids trickle down from there. What you're left with is 15 or so fraternities that function as a factory for douchebags with weird personalities. These are the "loser frat guy creeps" that members other fraternities make fun of. Most outsiders are unaware of the social hierarchy within the Greek system and understandy lump everyone together.

If someone is still acting like a "bro" or "frat guy" after college then that's a red flag that they were the social inept guy in their fraternity or in a low tier fraternity.

[0] Source: a few semesters in a Greek Life.

<comment><USER4> As someone not familiar with US universities and fraternities (outside of popular college movies), I have to ask:

Is it mandatory for students to join these fraternities? And if so, why?

I know very little about the subject, as I was never interested in this, but I think here in Austria we have these kinds of fraternities as well, but they are very rare and don't seem particularly interesting. Or maybe that's just me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It used to be that about every 15 years somebody would write an article about the awfulness of men in Washington, DC. I am not prepared to say that I was ever much of a bargain, but reading the articles never really told me why I should care. If I were 25 again and working for Amazon, I suspect I'd have the same reaction.</comment>


Letting your 4 Year Old GM an RPG - <AUTHOR> http://kidsdungeonadventure.com/letting-your-4-year-old-gm-an-rpg/

<comment><USER2> Before reading this, it occurred to me that this could be deliciously random. When kids don't understand something, they make up things to fill the gaps... And man, some of that stuff is pure gold. Adults have a hard time thinking like that any more.

<comment><AUTHOR> With an adult, I can kind of see where they're headed. Kids don't think that far ahead, so you don't know what will happen.</comment></comment>


Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question - <AUTHOR> http://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s-controversial-groundwater-withdrawal-sparks-question-of-who-owns/article_bed9179c-1baa-11e7-983e-03d6b33a01e7.html <comment><USER2> Water has an exceptionally high heat capacity, I get it. But using drinking water to cool our servers (in the interest of seeing the very best ads) seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make.

If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.

<comment><USER3> Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.

Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline.

If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would.

If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever.

If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.

If you make it about Google and cooling servers (and not about the price of water) then you might win a battle but you'll still lose the war because Google is only one of many entities that will eventually deplete water resources if they are not priced properly.

<comment><USER4>
      Water is a resource with a price, just like
      land or gasoline.

I don't know about South Carolina, but as I understand it in the west of America this isn't the case, as the heaviest water users are subsidised by taxpayers.

For example, in California alfalfa growers pay $70 for an acre-foot of water, while urban users in Los Angeles pay $1,000 per acre-foot. The growers use 34.1 million acre-feet a year, while urban use totals 8.9 million acre-feet a year.

Needless to say, growers get very rich from this and make big political contributions; if they had to pay market rate they'd all be out of business pretty quickly. The political contributions work; voters widely support this baffling state of affairs.

<comment><USER5> California is a big state. Los Angeles is in a desert portion of the state. I have not researched where alfalfa is primarily grown but that is important information. You can see alfalfa test plots on this map are not in desert portions of the state. You can also see how much of the state is not a desert. [http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif](http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif)

Buying in bulk is different than buying just enough to drink. A bottle of water for $5 at a movie for example.

Maybe the price of water in LA primarily covers infrastructure, not water. Their water does come from hundreds of miles away.

<comment><USER6> Nope. The water is largely coming through the same gross infrastructure. That map is not an accurate guide to regions of the state where arable water is directly available.

Water issues in the west are complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is not just South Carolina. My home state of Michigan probably has more fresh water than just about any other state but it still has become a political issue and not just in Flint.

Giant Nestle is pumping tens of millions of gallons in a rural Northern Michigan county in exchange for a $200 yearly permit. Even though the promised jobs never materialized they want to pump even more water threatening the aquifer. The community and the state say no but Nestle is not backing down.

[http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/19/ne...](http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/19/nestle- groundwater-michigan-great-lakes/100663218/)

<comment><USER8> The total ground water withdrawal in Michigan [mainly for agricultural use] is 98,000 Million gallons [1]. Why is Nestle extracting 100 Million a problem?

[1] -[http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdard/2015_MAEAP_Water_Use...](http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdard/2015_MAEAP_Water_Use_Reporting_Annual_Report_517569_7.pdf)

<comment><USER9> You're comparing the usage of an entire state to the demands placed on a single aquifer.

<comment><USER8> I agree. However that is not a price issue. Further the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality site specific review said it was okay.

I am genuinely confused why people think this is an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there any "municipal heating" systems in the U.S.?

It's popular in NL, the idea is basically hot (~70 degrees celcius) water being pumped from industrial areas (where it was used for cooling), to residential areas for cheap heating.

<comment><USER11> Yes, in New York City.

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

<comment><USER10> Wow, so that's why I've seen steam so often as an element of the NY landscape! Very cool, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why would anyone need to use potable water as a coolant, and why is potable water completely ruined and transformed into grey water by its use as a coolant?

<comment><USER13> It needs treatment so it doesn't destroy the pipes

<comment><USER14> But it doesn't continuously need new water right? If I read the article correctly, it's not just once to fill the cooling system. That's what I don't get, seems hugely expensive and wasteful.

<comment><USER13> It does to cool it, they put the heat into the ground. Nuclear plants similarly usually use ocean water. Imagine using your tap water for water cooling then it exits into the drain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google is continually touted as the industry leader in efficient DC design, yet they do wasteful operations like this. I just don't get it.

On the other hand, Yahoo is constantly shat on (sometimes validly), yet they solved this years ago. Their Lockport, NY data center does not need air conditioning because of its design and the cool local weather. It uses 50 percent less electricity and 99 percent less water compared with traditional data centers.

<comment><USER16> We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling, very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea water.

Look here: [https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal...](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal/) . PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08.

(Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

<comment><USER15> Respectfully, please correct me if I'm wrong, but PUE doesn't take into account water usage. So driving an extremely low PUE while wasting millions of gallons of water per day to do so and then touting that as a win, feels rather disingenuous to me.

I love how you use things like seawater in Finland and non-potable water elsewhere, but don't claim this DC in SC is even remotely environmentally friendly when to save on electricity and keep your PUE low, you are using _millions_ of gallons of drinking water per day.

<comment><USER16> I was replying to the parent on Google not being industry leading efficient and especially comparing to the Yahoo Lockport DC.

But you're right, regarding to water usage we don't publish numbers (nor does anyone else afaik, I haven't found any WUE number for e.g. Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook...) so it's difficult to compare this to others.

I am however confident that a lot of things have been considered and this was the best option, we have imho a good track record trying to do the best for the environment, a lot of attention is being paid to this internally. E.g. everything running on green electricity, which is not the cheapest.

<comment><USER15> I won't dispute you've had a good track record in the past, but past performance doesn't predict future results, as evidenced here. I understand and appreciate why you're doing it, but I can't simply accept you trying to sweep this DC under the rug. If what the original story said is true, the SC DC is an environmental albatross and you all should hang your head in shame, especially based on past wins in this area. I can not share your confidence that using millions of gallons of drinking water per day for cooling _" was the best option"_ (unless of course you meant to add the words "to our opex" after it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the biggest question here is how can a public municipality sign an NDA written by a private corporation?

<comment><USER18> Yeah, the proper response here is:

      NO U

Especially when the entity requesting the valuable resource (water they don't yet have permission to use), is the one prompting for the NDA.

Sorry, private corporation. Take your NDA elsewhere, and go swat at your lowly job applicants with it, as they grovel for permission to waste their youth away in your flourescent dungeons and air conditioned nightmares.

<comment><USER19> Seriously, people should be protesting out front of the DNR for signing an NDA with Google over a request for public resources.

Imagine if I went to go build a house and demanded the county & city sign NDAs covering all permits and plans for my building. They'd be having none of it, esp. since I'm not a massive company like Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The price of tap water has risen faster than gold or real estate . . ." What an odd pair of benchmarks. We don't expect the prices of either of those items to rise particularly fast. What was the actual rate of increase in the price of tap water? According to the Case-Schiller index, national housing prices have roughly doubled in the last twenty years (I don't know if the index accounts for inflation). That doesn't seem like an extraordinary rate of increase for the price of tap water.

<comment><USER21> Prima facie we don't expect them to rise fast, but they are probably the two best-known things which have risen reasonably fast (at least in the popular consciousness) in the past twenty-odd years.

</comment></comment><comment> shawn-butler How exactly is the amount of a public resource consumed by a private company a "trade secret"?

What utter nonsense. Someone in SC should file a FOIA request on principle.

[http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t30c004.php](http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t30c004.php)

<comment><USER22> see section 30-4-40(A)1

"Trade secrets, which are defined as unpatented, secret, commercially valuable plans, appliances, formulas, or processes, which are used for the making, preparing, compounding, treating, or processing of articles or materials which are trade commodities obtained from a person and which are generally recognized as confidential and work products, in whole or in part collected or produced for sale or resale, and paid subscriber information. Trade secrets also include, for those public bodies who market services or products in competition with others, feasibility, planning, and marketing studies, marine terminal service and nontariff agreements, and evaluations and other materials which contain references to potential customers, competitive information, or evaluation."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pardon my naivety but I am curious why in use cases like this the same water can't be reused? My car uses the same coolant over and over. While that is an apples to oranges comparison couldn't the water be allowed to naturally cool after use in a covered retention pond and then be recycled into the cooling system? Is the water from the aquifer particularly cold to begin with?

</comment><comment><USER24> What happens to the water after it has been used to cool these servers? It's not as if it's used up, right?

</comment><comment><USER25> Going to go ahead and recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's _The Water Knife_. And _The Windup Girl_ is even better, but not on topic.

<comment><USER26> The concept that water is so scarce that it's even rare for drinking never gelled for me.

But I still enjoyed the book.

<comment><USER25> I don't see it as a matter of absolute scarcity. In the book, drinking water for the poor is scarce, but the upper middle class has access to fountains and gardens, etc. If you think of it as a matter of control, it makes more sense. If you're on the inside of the arcology, everything you need is provided for. If you're on the outside, you're on your own. Resources are kept artificially scarce for any number of reasons, but mostly to support the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Water is great for cooling, but who the hell dumps it afterwards?! I don't think they quite understood what "water cooling" is..

<comment><USER2> They dump it because it's not cool anymore and nobody is wanting to buy hot water from them at a cost that makes it worth their while.

If they had the capability to cool the water fast enough then they'd use a closed loop cooling system and wouldn't need to pump fresh, cool groundwater.

<comment><USER27> Well, duh. If I had to pay nothing for water, I would also just run the tap through a radiator all day and save on the AC electricity.

But then I also have a conscience and realize what a gigantic waste that is, so I don't.

<comment> d-sc This is basically how we cool our house in Montana during the summers. Cold water is pumped up one well and hot water is returned down another well. It uses much less electricity than a conventional AC system.

<comment><USER14> Wow. I've thought about this, using tap water to cool the house, but it's so wasteful it was never more than a playful thought. But then the Netherlands' summers are reasonably survivable even if they make me feel shit all day and all night.

<comment> d-sc At the end of the day, net zero water is 'used' it is all returned to the ground.

Its actually a strong net water savings: the production of electricity in Montana uses around 16 gallons of water per kilowatt hour.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>