How Herpes Became a Sexual Boogeyman - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/genital-herpes-stigma-history-explained.html <comment><USER2> There is a Phase 2 clinical trial of an HSV-2 vaccine in progress in Australia.

[https://www.tri.edu.au/vaccine-herpes-simplex- virus](https://www.tri.edu.au/vaccine-herpes-simplex-virus)</comment>


Twitter's Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/twitter

<comment><USER2> "Twitter deserves recognition for its principled upholding of the spirit of the First Amendment. It's a shame that PayPal, Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America and the U.S. government all failed — and continue to to fail — at their own versions of that test."

Yeah really. OVH (Wikileaks' French ISP, whose managing director said "this is a matter for the courts") and Twitter (presumably thanks to @amac) come out of this looking like companies I can rely on. The others ... not so much.</comment>


iPhone alarms cancel each other when they go off at the same time - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/9pt5xq/psa_if_two_alarms_go_off_at_the_same_time/ <comment><USER2> iPhone alarm is a joke 1\. While you are on a call it will ring like hell in your ear 2\. While you have an active screen (email, games, etc) the alarm will popup like a notification and if you slide up (the same thing you do with a notification it will snooze) 3\. No volume alarm control 4\. For edit you have to tap edit (in older version you could just tap the alarm)

I could go on and on...</comment>


Beware of Easy Invoice on OSX. Scary stuff. - <AUTHOR> I've used Easy Books on OSX for the last two years to send quotes, invoices and track payments as a contractor. It's simple and it works flawlessly.
Today, like any other Friday, I open the app to send a sales invoice. To my horror the app displays a modal dialog saying "Firstly, don't worry - your data is still stored on this Mac." - then it insists I register a free trial account for their online backup service. No register, no access to accounting data.
The is absolutely the worst thing I've ever seen. I understand their need to monetise, but locking me out of my data until I've given them something they want is simply wrong.
How would you feel? For me, I feel absolutely stupid for using free, proprietary software for my accounts. I've never seen anything like this in my years in software.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a good open source accounting package that handles quotes, sales invoices and payment tracking? <comment><USER2> I use Freshbooks. It might not do all you need, but it handles most of it. It's not open source, but they are trustworthy, and reputable. It's a paid subscription service.</comment>


Show HN: Set tasks right on the interface with Frontosaur - <AUTHOR> https://frontosaur.com <comment><USER2> That's a really cool idea! 100 integrations come immediately to mind. I think "without leaving the page" is a great hook, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'd love to talk about the integrations, as it is our next step to work on. Please feel free to text me, if you want email@example.com :)</comment></comment>


Analytics product for API developers - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/apinalytics/apinalytics

<comment><USER2> I use [http://keen.io/](http://keen.io/) for this (actually almost all of my analytics needs are done with Keen). Amazing product.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is almost no useful information in this repo.</comment>


Ask HN: In what order do browser addons process a webpage? - <AUTHOR> Say I have uMatrix, Ghostery and Privacy Badger, all operating on a site. What determines the order by which they alter a page? <comment><USER2> From the nsIContentPolicy Firefox documentation[1]:

Note: The order of content policies in the above case depends on the precedence of installation.

\---

I recall reading somewhere that chromium used the reverse order, but I'm not certain this is still the case.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM/Reference/Interface/nsIContentPolicy)

</comment><comment><USER3> You might have better luck with this on SO but there's no guaranteed order (nor would it make much sense for there to be one)

</comment><comment><USER4> You could make some very basic extensions, put in some console.logs and find out, but I think it would have to be the order they're installed or random so you can't exploit extensions up or downstream.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is no specific order. I believe that it is randomized.</comment>


The Titanic Was on Fire for Days Before the Iceberg Hit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dialogue-and-discourse/the-titanic-was-on-fire-for-days-before-the-iceberg-hit-94fa26471dfa <comment><USER2> Ah yes, another "TITANIC MYSTERY FINALLY SOLVED" article. And right on schedule too!

If you Google "Titanic coal fire", the results page will be full of articles positing this exact theory. This is neither new, nor correct. Anyone who has studied this event at any length will know it was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Trying to assign ultimate responsibility to a coal fire using a 106-year-old photo showing a black smudge is laughable and shows a fundamental lack of understanding.

The fire in question wasn't some blazing inferno that many undoubtedly imagine, but rather it was more of a smoldering affair. This fire was in one of many rooms that was built for the express purpose of containing this coal. A fuel source that is known to self-ignite. To say that the fire effected the ship is like saying burning a casserole in your oven will burn down your house. Possible? Technically. Likely? Absolutely not.

Something this article failed to mention was that the fire was put out the day before the Titanic sank. Coal fires were common on large steel ships like the Titanic. The engineers and stokers were prepared for, and ultimately handled the fire. It was part of their job, not some apocalyptic emergency.

As I said above, the Titanic was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Unfortunately, it was a necessary death to give us the marine safety regulations we have today. If any number of things had been just slightly different on the Titanic, it would be a footnote in history and we would be talking about a different ship that would have inexplicably had everything go wrong, including but not limited to an irrelevant coal fire.

<comment><USER3> They hit an iceberg going pretty fast and no one knows why they were going so fast.

I think you're glossing over the idea that the burning coals were thrown into the furnace which in turn revved up the engine which caused the Titanic to speed through the Atlantic and right into an iceberg.

<comment><USER2> The Titanic was going fast because they were trying to get to New York ahead of schedule for the favorable publicity.

To say that the Titanic was careening out of control through the Atlantic Ocean that by all rights should have been devoid of icebergs because some lowly stokers were shoveling coal into a furnace faster than they should have is both simplistic and flat out wrong.

<comment><USER3> "The Titanic was going fast because they were trying to get to New York ahead of schedule for the favorable publicity."

Yeah but the article is saying that's not the real reason it was speeding. It was the coals in the furnace.

<comment><USER4> That's like blaming your fuel injectors for a speeding ticket...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This theory comes from a TV documentary broadcast in 2017 that's been pretty thoroughly debunked:

[http://wormstedt.com/Titanic/TITANIC-FIRE-AND-ICE- Article.pd...](http://wormstedt.com/Titanic/TITANIC-FIRE-AND-ICE-Article.pdf)

<comment><USER6> From the article's conclusion:

 _Hypothesis:_ The fire played one final, deadly role in the disaster: the fire-damaged bulkhead gave way, causing the ship to sink, and the enormous loss of life.

 _Actually:_ Since the ship was doomed from the moment of the collision, whether or not the bulkhead collapsed was more or less immaterial to the timing of the disaster. Lives were not lost because it allegedly collapsed early.

<comment><USER7> How long it stayed afloat was a critical matter. The RMS Carpathia arrived two hours after the Titanic sank.

<comment><USER5> "Andrews knew about three-quarters of an hour before that rush of water in Boiler Room No. 5 that the ship was doomed. Once the forward compartments had filled, the ship's bow would have been so low in the water that the flooding of the next compartment aft, Boiler Room No. 5, would have been a certainty. Whether or not the bulkhead held was of no major consequence in the eventual sinking, or how quickly the ship sank."

The article goes on to show that it's far from clear that the bulkhead did in fact fail, and that it's unlikely that the fire would have been intense enough to damage it significantly.

<comment><USER7> This article is a criticism of a particular documentary (which admittedly seems to have a number of false and dubious claims), and in some places seems more determined to debunk the claims made in that documentary than to consider whether a bunker fire could nevertheless have played any role.

If the documentary claims the ship was only doomed by the failure of the bulkhead in question, then it is in error, but timing of the essence here: if the ship stayed afloat for one more hour, it probably would have made little difference, but an extra two hours probably would have.

The metallurgical discussion of the effect of fire on the bulkhead looks well- grounded to me (though I know little about the matter), but it might be somewhat moot if, as this article seems to acknowledge, the bulkhead may have been deformed beforehand, as a consequence of a bunker fire at some point. I am curious as to whether the strain on the hull, from having the stern lifted out of the water, could have led to (further) damage to the bulkhead, creating the reported rush of water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's actually well-known that there were fires in the Titanic's coal bunkers. I remember first reading about this way back in the mid 1990s (1995-1997) when I was somewhat obsessed with the subject. It's also been speculated for just as long that the heat might've affected the hull's properties, though this runs counter to the argument that the cold water might've contributed to making the metal more brittle.

This is by no means extraordinary: coal bunker fires were rather common back in the age of steamships. It was even discussed at the various admiralty inquests into the loss of the vessel.

<comment><USER9> Sometimes they don't go okay.

I can't seem to find the name but there was a town in Texas, coal delivery ship shows up with fire in storage. They dock, open the hatches, fresh oxygen causes the fire to spread. Then other boats catch on fire. Some explode. Throw shrapnel into town. By the time the fires are out, hundreds are reported dead, almost 40% of the town is left homeless.

<comment><USER10> You might be thinking of the 1947 Texas City disaster, which killed nearly 600 people. The fire, and the subsequent explosion after failed fire-fighting efforts, were in a cargo hold containing ammonium nitrate, not coal. [0]

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

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure what story I'm thinking of. The pictures and events don't look right, but some Wikipedia lists about disasters don't include anything else in Texas that's the right size.

The story I'm thinking of, the captain knew the coal was burning before he docked, and went into port anyway to try to salvage the cargo. The subsequent explosion was due to material on other boats.

I may have heard about this around the Tianjin explosion but more likely when they were fighting the new coal depots on the west coast, someone brought it up while talking about coal self igniting.

<comment><USER11> Is it possible you're thinking of the Halifax Explosion? That killed hundreds and destroyed a huge portion of the city, but that ship was carrying ammunition.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author mentions a 56 year old coal fire in Pennsylvania for some reason. It's not the most extreme example he could have reached for. The New Straitsville mine fire in Ohio has been burning for 134 years, and is still slowly spreading.

[http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/New_Straitsville_Mine_Fi...](http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/New_Straitsville_Mine_Fire)

<comment><USER13> > It is estimated that more than two hundred square miles of coal has burned

Why would they measure the amount burned in square miles??? How thick? This measurement is meaningless!

<comment><USER14> At only 200 square miles, we can fix it. Assuming the area is square, the perimeter is just 56.56 miles. We can go around with a tunnel boring machine, replacing coal with a concrete-lined tube. We can dig a trench, like a road cut or canal, lining it just as we sometimes line our road cuts and canals.

<comment><USER15> Yeah only 200 square miles

<comment><USER14> The best case is a circle, giving a perimeter of 50 miles. Some other projects to compare it by:

94 miles total for the three bores of the Channel Tunnel

120 miles for the Suez canal, finished 149 years ago

51 miles for the Panama canal, finished 104 years ago with steam shovels

Clearly, we can do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not as much interesting, but was astonished to know that we know the name of the Titanic paper boy. There's a incredibly sad story on his death too:

[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6364763/edward-john- parf...](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6364763/edward-john-parfett)

</comment><comment><USER17> _> It's unthinkable today that a tragedy of this magnitude could occur._

In terms of death toll, there have been worse shipwrecks in this century.

<comment><USER18> I reacted to that, too, and it made me think.

Had this happened in 1919, I think it would have been forgotten already, as it would seem pale compared to WW1. In 1912, people were quite innocent, so this was seen as a big event.

Was WW1, at least in part, something that was allowed to happen before most people had forgotten earlier big wars? Roughly 100 years had passed since Napoleon, after all.

When authors today again consider Titantic to be "unthinkable", what does it mean?

I consider it perfectly thinkable that something in our lifetime will trigger a nuclear war, killing billions of people.

Especially if we start to take global stability for granted.

<comment><USER19> _In 1912, people were quite innocent, so this was seen as a big event_

Huh?

40 million people died in The Great War, which just ended. And there were world events which killed people on a much larger scale than the Titanic before that.

It's a very modern and naïve viewpoint to think people of years past were "innocent," as if tragedy and large-scale loss of life is somehow a new invention.

<comment><USER20> The Great War ran from 1914 to 1918.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for that. I knew the dates for WWI. For some reason I had it stuck in my head that the Titanic was 1919, not 1912.

Still, my point stands — "innocent" is simply a false way to describe people of that age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> " _Another issue that has always caused confusion was the Titanic's speed. It was running at full speed when crossing the Atlantic Ocean, even when there were warnings of icebergs in the area. There were rumors that the ship was trying to break some kind of speed record, but the Titanic was not built for speed. This mammoth ship was a luxury liner. Molony indicates that this could have been caused by the fire-fighting activities. "_

I think Molony and the author need to do more research on transportation in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Liners were the only way to cross the ocean. If you're in America and need to do business in Europe, you take a ship. The faster that ship gets there, the better.

</comment><comment> jamieson-becker The title is factually incorrect: the iceberg didn't hit the Titanic. The historical record clearly indicates that it was just chillin' out.

<comment><USER22> They may have meant the word 'hit' as a noun.

<comment><USER23> If the title was "The Titanic Was On Fire For Days Before The Iceberg Hit it" I would agree with the parent comment, however as it is now, I read it as you would read "We hit an issue".

Clearly we didn't "hit" any issue, but we started experiencing an issue.

<comment><USER24> "We hit an issue" is still using "hit" as a verb. And making it metaphorical doesn't help the problem of the iceberg being the subject of that interpretation.

Using it as a noun is like saying "before the hit" or "before the issue". "Iceberg" is an adjective describing the type of hit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any sufficiently complex system has a hidden barely contained coal fire burning somewhere. Working as intended.

<comment><USER26> No, according to this the fire broke out in the coal storage. It's not referring to the furnace.

<comment><USER25> Exactly; the furnace is where you'd expect it to break out, so it won't. Somebody didn't write their integration tests for the coal storage though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can someone explain the comment in the article about the ship going at full speed because they were fighting the fire by throwing the burning coal in the furnace?

I would have thought there would be some valve somewhere that can be opened to vent excess power (steam?) into the atmosphere rather than being forced to drive the propellers faster, is that an incorrect assumption?

<comment><USER28> Running out of fuel aside (as mentioned by _rypskar_ ), they may have also needed to conserve the boiler feedwater[0].

The boilers need well distilled water to turn into steam without leaving scaly residue all over the place. During normal operations the steam is routed through engines where it expands and cools and eventually through condensers where it condenses back into water to be fed to the boilers back again.

If they throttled the engines down, the excess steam would have kept gathering, increasing pressure. They'd need to either lower the coal feed rate - which they did not want - or blow off steam [1]. Ability to blow off steam is a safety measure not meant for regular, extended operations. Think "analogue of nuclear reactor SCRAM". It causes loud release of huge unseemly clouds of steam, but more importantly it causes loss of the valuable distilled water for the boilers.

Btw, operations of marine steam powerplants is surprisingly complex and fascinating subject; consider having a look at this WW2-era navy manual [2] if you ever wonder what it takes to run one such at top power or efficiency.

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

[1] perhaps they could route some of the steam directly from boilers to condensers, but I don't think typical condenser installations are capable of directly taking in HP steam

[2] [https://archive.hnsa.org/doc/destroyer/steam/index.htm](https://archive.hnsa.org/doc/destroyer/steam/index.htm)

<comment><USER29> Given that all you need to create more distilled water is heat, I'm surprised they didn't have a way of generating distilled water with excess heat from the boiler.

<comment><USER30> >all you need

Not at all that simple. As already mentioned in the thread, they had limited fuel. Boiling 100s if not 1000s of gallons of water takes more fuel they already don't have.

SWAG: they probably weren't just using distilled water. There was likely some pH additive or other chemical treatment that water uses for a multitude of factors (scaling, corrosion, erosion, foaming, etc etc) that gets lost if you just vent water overboard - lost physically as volatile chemicals are vented or lost logically as new water must be treated.

Also, the boiling process itself is much more complicated than a pot and a fire. To achieve any reasonable amount of efficiency at all requires a multistage process with heat reclamation. If you plan on transiting salt water, the boiling process produces a thick, salty effluent that can be difficult to pump and is strongly corrosive. The weight, complexity, training, parts inventory, etc are all large costs. These are all hard sells for relatively short voyages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I checked Snopes and it seems this is not entirely bogus. A bit speculative perhaps.

[https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/01/06/coal-fire-sink-the- ti...](https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/01/06/coal-fire-sink-the-titanic/)

<comment><USER32> My grandfather mentioned having to deal with a coal fire in the bunker at the high school he managed, over the winter break. If it'd been during the school year he could have got 25 teenage boys to do it. But it was just him and the maintenance guy shoveling out 20 tons of coal.

Smoldering coal bunkers had to be a common occurrence on steam ships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The myths of invincible heroes and the factors and flaws of their downfalls are instructive for any emerging leader, also of the fates of those who journey through the seas of reflection and those in the fog without their binoculars.

Sometimes ya gotta flip the script.

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InvincibleHero](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InvincibleHero)

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoGearLevel](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoGearLevel)

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImprovisedWeapon](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImprovisedWeapon)

</comment><comment><USER34> One of my favorite short stories is Youth by Joseph Conrad, which has as a central event a ship sinking because of a coal fire...

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525-h/525-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525-h/525-h.htm)

</comment><comment><USER35> People must have felt that Engineering products gave humans god-like powers. It must have been fun to completely ignore Physics.

<comment> black-tea You can see that even when people drive cars. People will do really stupid things like drive through deep puddles or over uneven ground because they essentially trust the car to do what it does under normal conditions.

<comment><USER36> > People will do really stupid things like drive ... over uneven ground

Cars tend to be able to drive over uneven ground. I'd say that people only used to driving on smooth asphalt underestimate this.

<comment> black-tea I've seen people rip off entire pieces of bodywork because they've overestimated this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There was an excellent Channel 4 UK documentary about this, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORUKjNZzPbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORUKjNZzPbQ)

<comment><USER38> It's been debunked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> >There were rumors that the ship was trying to break some kind of speed record, but the Titanic was not built for speed.

not exactly. Longest hull means highest hull speed.

</comment><comment><USER40> Something I learn quite recently and most Titanic articles tend not to mention: "The Olympic-class ocean liners were a trio of British ocean liners built by the Harland & Wolff shipyard for the White Star Line during the early 20th century. They were Olympic (1911), Titanic (1912), and Britannic (1915).

Unlike the other ships in the class, Olympic had a long career spanning 24 years from 1911 to 1935. " [1]

The Britannic was sunk by an explosion caused by a naval mine, apparently planted by a WWI German submarine.

And the Titanic... well, we all know what happen to the Titanic, don't we... :-P

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic- class_ocean_liner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-class_ocean_liner)

EDIT: More wiki-trivia [2]

* The titanic was 269.1 m long.

* The largest ship these days (the Seawise Giant) is an oil tanker 458.46 m long.

* The largest passenger ship: the Oasis (362 m long).

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

</comment><comment><USER41> Coal fuel can't melt steel ships.

<comment> mark-r No need to melt it, just decrease the structural integrity so that when stress was applied it would fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This article keeps referring to the bulkheads as _watertight_ , which they were far from...

<comment><USER43> The article says that delaying sinking would have saved lives.

Ships are frequently pumping out water. They don't need to be 100% watertight.

<comment><USER44> Even recreational boats do this. Modern ones. Today.

<comment><USER45> I mean any surprise really? Even if the hull of a recreational ship was completely water tight, large waves or rain would cause water to enter the boat, so having a way to get rid of that water is a good idea.

While boats usually add drainage to the deck, and try to minimize the water that gets "inside" (say in the cabin, or the hollow hull of many small motorboats) not all ingress can be avoided.

Combined with the possibility of anything below the waterline being even slightly less than watertight, and it is not a surprise that a bilge pump of some kind is pretty common equipment on most boats with an electrical system.

<comment><USER46> In simpler times, bailing out was only done with buckets in boats (or even ships) ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is neither new nor surprising; I remember reading about this years ago. Apparently this was common for steam powered vessels back then, which is the reason why they proceeded with the voyage.

</comment><comment><USER39> It was a feature and not a bug - such slow burning starved of oxygen would produce the coal burning with higher temperature and thus increase the power produced per volume unit of the burner.

</comment><comment><USER48> We have proof that too many watertight compartments were open to the sea, that alone doomed the ship, the coal fire is an also ran.

<comment><USER38> Yup. Occam's razor here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This piece talks about the subject, but can anyone explain in more detail why they couldn't put out a coal fire on a ship?

<comment><USER50> Not trying to be snide, but why do you type this into a comment field and wait up to an hour for someone to summarize it for you rather than googling "coal fire"?

<comment><USER49> I did and I still did not understand it well. I thought someone could explain it better and it'd maybe start a dialogue. Thanks for a worthless comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Boy, what James Cameron could have done with _this_ news...

</comment><comment><USER52> The short, stilting sentences make this article read like a fifth grade book report.

<comment><USER53> It is possible the author ran his post through an SEO tool like Yoast. I know we have that on our company blog (I didn't install it), and it is constantly telling me to shorten my sentences for maximum SEO ranking. I usually ignore it because by following its suggestions, it makes my writing read like a fifth grade book report.

<comment><USER54> Short sentences help search engines 'understand' the text, because they can easily parse each sentence to get direct meaning out of it. If your article says 'Fire caused titanics sinking.", and someone searches Google for "Why did titanic sink?", then Google can return that snippet of your article directly. They can also look for similarities in meaning between your sentences and all other sentences on the web to find contradictory information.

If you use long sentences with twists and turns and double negatives, it's rare that such a direct match can be made to a search query, and your article won't be returned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Titanic 2: Backdraft.</comment>


Machine Learning Predicts Laboratory Earthquakes - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074677/full <comment> dane-pgp Why look at "laboratory earthquakes" when we have plenty of data about actual earthquakes? We sort of accept that after a big earthquake, there is likely to be smaller earthquakes nearby and a short time later. By looking at all the available data on all the major and minor earthquakes in a region over time, I'm sure there would be other patterns found, even if the predictive power is not actionable.

<comment><USER2> Really ? Where can I download long term acoustic data from earthquake fault lines ? Needs to be years, and ideally including more than a few real earthquakes (let's say 50 to 100 of them would be ideal).

<comment> dane-pgp I didn't mean acoustic data, but I was thinking of long term global datasets like this:

[http://www.isc.ac.uk/iscgem/overview.php](http://www.isc.ac.uk/iscgem/overview.php)

It covers over 26,000 earthquakes going back roughly a century, but I admit I'm somewhat disappointed that it only seems to cover Magnitude Mw ≥ 5.5 quakes.

A machine learning algorithm may need even more data points than that to spot reasonable patterns, even if it was given the location of landmasses and fault lines to help it, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone could generate a model which can predict future quakes at least somewhat better than random chance (factoring in averages for a given location).

<comment><USER2> That's just locations and quakes. And even there, only really big ones. That's only half of what you need to predict quakes.

There's not much in that dataset to predict with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So predicting earth in a controlled environment, something which might have been generated using a pseudo random generator code? How will this hold up in nature?</comment>


The ill-fated tale of Phoneys, the sticker pack that went #1 on the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ahow/the-ill-fated-tale-of-phoneys-the-stupid-little-sticker-pack-that-went-1-on-the-app-store-4934d4372352#.wmlm6tyk0 <comment><USER2> I think if I were a user I'd prefer it be pulled. Breaking the app I paid for by releasing an update that fundamentally changes it feels like a much bigger betrayal than not allowing new downloads.</comment>


What is π? (and while we're at it, what's e?) - <AUTHOR> https://affinemess.quora.com/What-is-math-pi-math-and-while-were-at-it-whats-math-e-math?share=1 <comment><USER2> looks like an 'n' to me: [http://imgur.com/gBcM0wD](http://imgur.com/gBcM0wD)</comment>


Samsung's Smartwatch Will Use Your Heartbeats to Unlock Your Smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatafuture.com/2015/03/17/heartbeat-authentication-in-samsung-smartwatch/

<comment><USER2> Seems interesting but I don't understand how feasible this is, our heartbeat is not exactly the same all the time, sometimes beats faster, sometimes slower, what a I missing?

<comment><USER3> I don't know how accurate their readings are, but it's (like you say) not the frequency that is unique, however the exact shape and intervals of the PQRST points within a single ECG period _is_.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiography)</comment></comment>


Similarity search engine for Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.smartwikisearch.com/

<comment><USER2> There's an easily understandable intuitive understanding of the 1st eigenvector (for the eigenvalue == 1) of the pagerank matrix (loosely speaking: assuming you browse a-la the pagerank matrix, the ith component of the (unit) eigenvector for the 1.0 eigenvalue is ~the same as lim n->infinity of #(of visits to i-th page on the internet)/n; some details are getting blurred (of course) but it's a helpful intuitive explanation).

Does anyone have any insight into intuitive interpretations of the eigenvectors fpr the eigenvalues < 1? I'm drawing blanks.

(Edited: to be clear, I understand what the linked algorithm is doing and I think it is very clever, and I am not surprised that it works reasonably well for finding similar topics on wikipedia. I'm just at a blank for what it means to say that 'the i-th component of the (unit) eigenvector for the k-th largest eigenvalue is X'.)

<comment><USER3> I would reccomend looking at 'Proto Value Functions' ( [http://www.machinelearning.org/.../070_ProtoValue_Mahadevan....](http://www.machinelearning.org/.../070_ProtoValue_Mahadevan.pdf) )[1]; they use eigenvectors of adjaceny matrices for reinforcement learning --- but because gridworld has a simple adjacency martix, the resulting eigenvectors are somewhat human-readable, and the pictures help a lot. If you're really curious, I can probably bang up some python or MATLAB or something.

The essential intuition is that higher numbered eigenvectors represent more _local_ adjacency information --- so the first eigenvector deals with global connectivity (the relative value of i-th and j-th component says something about how interconnected nodes i and j are in terms of the whole graph). A higher eigenvalue's corresponding vector has a higher local gradient, and the direction of the gradient is less constant across the graph (there is not necessarily a monotonic path from node to node) so says less about global connectivity --- but has a higher granularity when examining local connectivity.

1[Edited to warn that Mahadevan's papers are fantastically dense --- and you don't need to understand the paper to gain intuition from the pretty pictures; read the text at your own risk]

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the informed response.

I think you meant this link:

[http://www.machinelearning.org/proceedings/icml2005/papers/0...](http://www.machinelearning.org/proceedings/icml2005/papers/070_ProtoValue_Mahadevan.pdf)

...reading now.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I apologize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like ours does a bit better. Here are the sample searches they suggest:

<http://pedia.directededge.com/article/PHP>

<http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Flower>

<http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Bee>

<http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Albert_Einstein>

<comment><USER5> How so?

I like their intersections (e.g. Abraham Lincoln, Robert Lee) and simple page layout.

<comment><USER4> The intersections are interesting, but I feel like our engine does better at sussing out what something really is -- e.g. that PHP is a programming language, that Albert Einstein is a physicist.

<comment><USER6> _"sussing out what something really is"_

Wouldn't this be easier done by simply scraping "Category" links on the page? That's free human curated metadata right there.

<comment><USER4> We actually do that for generating tags, but those don't play into the recommendations that are generated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> for the algorithm that was used, see:

<http://www.smartwikisearch.com/algorithm.html></comment>


Quality over quantity – The right way to comment your code - <AUTHOR> http://revelry.co/2014/09/30/quality-over-quantity-the-right-way-to-comment-your-code/

<comment><USER2> You've neglected to mention the most harmful possible comment: the one that is wrong, especially when it was once correct, but wasn't updated in concert with changed code.

Also, I must admit that I have (as I surmise many of us have), as you say, read "a code file that was loaded with comments, but when you actually read them, they were largely useless" and then realized that it was my own authorship!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good one. And yes, I think we have all done that. :(</comment></comment>


Emacs Rocks! - Magit [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzQEIRRJ2T0 <comment><USER2> Mentioned at the end of the video is the [Magit kickstarter]([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit- th...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-the-magical- git-client)) which is ending soon! Magit is a great piece of productivity improving software so please help make it even better.</comment>


SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-asks-manhattan-federal-court-to-hold-elon-musk-in-contempt-11551137500 <comment><USER2> At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account.

I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it's fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away, he would stop yelling stupid FCC punishable things.

As a side note, Twitter has hardly done anything useful for the society. I never got into twitter and never understood its value. Conversations are one sided, blog posts are separated into incomprehensible chain of tweets, people are insulting with no repercussion - it's a giant echo chamber of loud people. One thing it has done is to improve customer support by shaming companies publicly, which is a really sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER3> ...Can a corporation demand an employee waive their right to speech as a private citizen?

I think even if so, that's a terrible idea.

<comment><USER4> This is true for every employee of every public company on the planet. We're discussing it here because Mr. Musk thinks the rules don't apply to him.

<comment><USER5> Sorry that's simply false. You have all your freedoms. You can get fired for exercising them but that doesn't mean you don't have them. If the shareholders wanted to fire Elon Musk they would, but they aren't so the SEC should butt out of the issue.

<comment><USER6> _Every_ CEO of _every_ publicly traded company has _every_ company-related tweet vetted by a company lawyer. What the SEC is asking of Musk here is simply that he follow the industry-standard.

Let's not forget Musk owes a fiduciary duty to Tesla shareholders and his tweets have repeatedly lost shareholders money _and_ induced people to purchase shares on false/misleading information. That's securities fraud.

Source: Corporate & Securities Attorney. I was once the approver of many such tweets. Though thankfully the people I worked with were exceedingly reasonable in comparison to Musk.

Edit: Missed a word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My knowledge of how publicly traded companies work is very limited, but:

Was what he said really that bad? He said:

>Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019

And then later corrected himself with:

>Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.

This seems like a pretty simple mistake to have made, and I have a tough time assigning malice to it.

I like Elon. A lot. The news machine's constant thirst for scandal surrounding him is a cancer on our society, and it worries me that it then effects people who have the ability to enact their will with force: the judicial system.

edit: and it honestly just seems like an honest mistake. He likely is constantly thinking of ways to improve the _weekly_ output of Tesla, and then expanding that in his head to yearly production numbers.

>Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around [/be at the correct pace to be making] 500k [a year] in 2019.

<comment><USER8> The legal point isn't if what he tweeted was "that bad" or not. It's that after he got caught the last time, in the settlement to end the case he agreed to have Tesla legal review all such tweets in the future to make sure he doesn't do it again. He broke that agreement.

<comment><USER9> i believe elon's argument is that the offending tweet didn't need approval because he believed that he was just restating a projection made on the previous earnings call

<comment><USER10> The SEC saw that argument coming and shot it down completely in their filing:

> According to Tesla's Policy, any edits to a pre-approved Written > Communication or even releasing a verbatim pre-approved Written > Communication more than two days after it has been pre-approved requires > that the pre-approval be reconfirmed. Even if the exact substance of the > 7:15 tweet had been pre-approved 20 days before, Musk cannot credibly claim > that he thought he was not required to obtain pre-approval again under the > plain terms of the Policy. In fact, the written communication in the 7:15 > tweet was not pre-approved 20 days earlier or at any time. Musk's claim that > he thought he was simply restating information from the January 30 > communications is not credible.

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show- Cause.h...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.html) page 12

<comment><USER11> This tweet was not an edit to a pre-approved communication. That rule is irrelevant.

The argument is not "this tweet got approved before, so I can edit it however I want". The argument is "the number is already public information, so I can make a new post mentioning it".

<comment><USER12> > This tweet was not an edit to a pre-approved communication.

That is the problem, in a nutshell: it should have been pre-approved - according to the FCC's interpretation of the settlement agreement.

<comment><USER11> Maybe. But don't confuse different arguments about why. If the tweet needed pre-approval, it's for a reason entirely different from this quote.

<comment><USER13> Whether or not it's a _valid_ argument, that does seem to be the SEC's argument here.

<comment><USER11> It's not the core of their argument, though. It's probably thrown in just in case it could possibly be considered relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> SEC filing: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show- Cause.h...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.html)

<comment><USER15> The last two pages (pp. 11 and 12) are a great example of why you shouldn't be an arrogant dumbass towards the government. The SEC quotes his 60 minutes interview with Leslie Stahl where he says he doesn't respect the SEC. While I think the SEC has a legitimate grievance here, I'm also guessing this is partly vindictive. Play stupid games...

And I say all that as a big supporter of Elon generally.

<comment><USER16> It goes to intent.

Typically the law tries to at least somewhat take into account intent, like if someone omits something from a filing by accident or in a deliberate attempt to conceal, for example.

Pointing out his statements demonstrates that he's aware of the rules and is choosing not to respect them. That's usually a sign that someone should be on the higher end of the typical punishment range for a given act.

<comment><USER17> Especially in the case of contempt of court. The whole reason why you'd hold someone in contempt is if they are willfully not doing what the court says. The SEC is telling the court "Look, he's literally here talking about how he doesn't respect us. He's willingly doing this."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me, the real shame is that he wasn't able to _actually_ take Tesla private last year. He loves being the public mouth of his companies and clearly can't restrain himself from tweeting material information. Would be fine if Tesla weren't public :/

<comment><USER19> Yep. A deal with the devil they had to make to let Tesla be where it is today.

Musk should just talk about the tech instead of the numbers though. The SEC are under pressure to bite Tesla for anything it does out of line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Offending Tweet: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1098009983931707393](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1098009983931707393)

<comment><USER21> Was that particular tweet the offender, or the two subsequent tweets?

> _" Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019"_

> _" Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around > 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about > 400k."_

The article seems to suggest it was tweets about projected numbers.

Edit:

From the filing:

> _" On February 19, 2019, Musk tweeted, "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will > make around 500k in 2019." Musk did not seek or receive pre-approval prior > to publishing this tweet, which was inaccurate and disseminated to over 24 > million people. Musk has thus violated the Court's Final Judgment by > engaging in the very conduct that the pre-approval provision of the Final > Judgment was designed to prevent. "_

<comment><USER22> So all he has to do is find a fall guy to say he approved it, and it will be thrown out?

<comment><USER23> Tesla's legal already said they didn't approve the first tweet, but they worked with him on the correction that was posted 4 hours later. Wonder if that's why their general counsel quit again...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is where a software solution might actually help. As an example, I've added some keywords to a script in my IRC client that if they exist the message is stopped by my client.

In Elon Musks' case this should be Tesla (and probably some other court mandated muzzles) and should be on their Twitter clients, and other "designated publication channels" that the ruling covers.

Why? Because remembering to not do things is a restraint that is extremely mentally burdensome and thus difficult to get correct 100% of the time.

Also, this should probably apply to CEOs and other "public figures" as a general practice they work with through their PR and marketing firms.

The fact that twitter and other platforms are closed only makes this innovation more difficult to add to end user clients.

<comment><USER25> _Why? Because remembering to not do things is a restraint that is extremely mentally burdensome and thus difficult to get correct 100% of the time._

When you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, getting paid millions in stock comp to run that company, you don't get to use the excuse "it's mentally burdensome". The whole reason they're in that position, getting paid those obscene amounts, is that they're supposed to be able to handle the burden. If they're not able to handle it, they should step aside for someone who can.

<comment><USER26> It has been demonstrated countless times that "just don't make mistakes" does not work, has never worked, and will never work. The whole reason bureaucracy exists is because people can't even be expected to consistently follow their own rules, let alone rules that are imposed on them. Every publicly-traded company has a process for shareholder communication but Elon Musk is just out there tweeting whatever comes to his mind.

<comment><USER27> This isn't a mistake. Musk is on record saying he doesn't respect the SEC, suggesting he doesn't feel bound by his legal agreement with them. He does this on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> He should really have a public relations spokesman/spokeswoman for this type of messages... Especially since this same situation already happened.

<comment><USER29> Not sure why you're being downvoted. I totally agree, anyone with that much power and influence should want to make sure they are putting their best foot forward at all times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> At least we got him to host meme review [1] before he goes to jail

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWYQ1YtgnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWYQ1YtgnI)

</comment><comment><USER31> He said the same thing in that podcast he did recently. The podcast he did with that company that says Tesla stock has multiple thousand upside.

</comment><comment><USER32> So what's the potential punishment for this, assuming he's found in contempt?

<comment><USER19> A fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am surprised by the number of people here as well as on Twitter confusing between "annualized" and "annual". If I make 1% trading a stock in one day then the annualized return is (1.01^365 - 1) * 100 = 3,678% but that's not the annual return!

In case of Tesla, I think the annualized target production of 500K cars was calculated over 3 quarters (please feel free to correct me).

</comment><comment><USER34> Can someone post a non wsj link?

<comment><USER8> [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/tesla-shares-fall-on- report-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/tesla-shares-fall-on-report-sec- asks-judge-to-hold-elon-musk-in-contempt-for-violating-deal.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Never go public. It's solely for the bean counters selling Pepsi and Coachella

</comment><comment><USER19> Market knee jerked as usual. Good time to buy TSLA shares.

<comment><USER36> The fact this is how our economy and retirement savings are structured is absurd to me.

<comment><USER19> Thrown around the worlds largest casino as a facade for investment? Yep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the answer should be designating official channels like the company's website or an SEC-managed site that you can post to. Everything else gets designated non-official and carries a warning notice saying it's not official so if you wanna trade on it or whatever you do so at your own risk.

<comment><USER38> Such designations already exist.

Tesla designated Musk's twitter account several years ago.

<comment><USER37> Where can I read more about this?

<comment><USER39> Tesla's filed a SEC form 8-K[0] on 2013-11-05 that elevated both Musk's and Tesla's Twitter accounts to Disclosure Channels:

>Tesla Disclosure Channels To Disseminate Information

>Tesla investors and others should note that we announce material information to the public about our company, products and services and other issues through a variety of means, including Tesla's website, press releases, SEC filings, blogs and social media, in order to achieve broad, non-exclusionary distribution of information to the public. We encourage our investors and others to review the information we make public in the locations below as such information could be deemed to be material information. Please note that this list may be updated from time to time.

>Interested in keeping up with Tesla?

>For more information on Tesla and its products, please visit: teslamotors.com

>For more information for Tesla investors, please visit: ir.teslamotors.com

>For the latest information from Tesla, including press releases and the Tesla blog, please visit: teslamotors.com/press

>For additional information, please follow Elon Musk's and Tesla's Twitter accounts: twitter.com/elonmusk and twitter.com/TeslaMotors

[0] [http://ir.tesla.com/node/13651/html](http://ir.tesla.com/node/13651/html)

<comment><USER37> Thanks. In light of this, Musk deserves whatever's coming from the SEC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can the SEC really do this given the content of this tweet? Surely they can't seek approval for every tweet about Tesla? What if he says he's driving home from "the Tesla factory". Does this count as a breach if he didn't seek approval?

<comment><USER41> Musk and his lawyers agreed to the terms of the settlement.

The only reason he had to settle in the first place was because he tweeted false, market-moving information via twitter. Maybe Elon should have considered the consequences then.

Why didn't he just hand over his twitter password to a social media manager and stop tweeting once he lost millions of dollars over the last tweet?

<comment><USER42> Why didn't the lawyers and board require it?

<comment><USER12> The former work for him, and he controls the latter. The "independent" board member Tesla added after signing the agreement was non other than Larry Ellison

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Guidance for this year was 350k - 500k. Elon said several times on the call that he thought they could beat the 500k. This is a technicality on not getting approval for a tweet that could _unreasonably_ be interpreted as saying they are definitely hitting 500k 8 months from now. This is stupid.

[https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/11001772987230945...](https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/1100177298723094528)

<comment><USER38> > _This is a technicality_

It's the law. That's how it works.

Especially _if you agreed to it_.

<comment><USER43> That is the point. He only violated it if you take the obviously wrong interpretation that the 500k was a new material statement. It was not. The agreement only covered new, material information, not repeating a previously given the high-end estimate.

Also, note that the market was closed at the time of the tweet and the second tweet clearing up any possible confusion, thus, having no impact on the stock.

<comment><USER10> No, he was required to get pre-approval even if he was repeating previously released information verbatim. They probably wouldn't have caught him if he was actually repeating it verbatim, but he still would have been breaking the requirement to get pre-approval.

> According to Tesla's Policy, any edits to a pre-approved Written > Communication or even releasing a verbatim pre-approved Written > Communication more than two days after it has been pre-approved requires > that the pre-approval be reconfirmed. Even if the exact substance of the > 7:15 tweet had been pre-approved 20 days before, Musk cannot credibly claim > that he thought he was not required to obtain pre-approval again under the > plain terms of the Policy. In fact, the written communication in the 7:15 > tweet was not pre-approved 20 days earlier or at any time. Musk's claim that > he thought he was simply restating information from the January 30 > communications is not credible.

[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664/Show- Caus...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664/Show-Cause.pdf) 12th PDF page (labeled 9 at bottom of page)

<comment><USER38> You'll note "two days".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Balls Away (iOS) - <AUTHOR> http://www.savetherabbits.com

<comment><USER2> I'll admit. It looks like it has the potential to be an addictive game. However, I'm confused: I didn't see any rabbits in that demo.</comment>


Getting macOS style hotkeys working in GNU/Linux - <AUTHOR> https://technex.us/2020/09/getting-macos-style-hotkeys-working-in-gnu-linux/ <comment><USER2> This irks me. I've also had to go through the horror that is using a mac after a life of using 'regular' pc's. To me it feels like a totally arbitrary change, to switch the alt to the left, and put a different button (which acts the same as control) in the place of alt.

I'm convinced that Apple does this purposefully so your muscle memory gives you negative experiences when you're using other platforms.

To switch it around on MacOs is basically impossible, relying mostly on apps implementing it themselves.

<comment><USER3> So much of the MacOS interface feels like "opposite of Windows" that I can't imagine it's simply a divergent evolution.

The cynic in me thinks it's by design, so when you go use a Windows machine, it feels "wrong" and you go scurrying back to mama.

Maybe it is. Maybe not. But that's certainly the effect it had on me. (As a Windows user who finds the Mac UI bothersome for those reasons.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is good. it should be a setting.

And there's already a good bit of parity because macos natively supports many (emacs style) linux keystrokes (for example control-a beginning of line, control-e end of line)</comment>


What the Facebook Crypto team could build - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/10/facecoin/ <comment><USER2> Facebook can go real big here. The have ridiculous distribution (2B+ monthly users). If they roll out a crypto payment or stored value system to their users, the network effects / lock in will be insane. Only Google could really compete (Amazon doesn't have the same international presence as Facebook or Google; Microsoft doesn't have enough mobile presence; Apple only has rich users).

The question is will Facebook take this seriously and invest over the long term to win. Historically, they've had a terrible history of investing and committing to new efforts that don't pay out immediately (killing Parse, sunsetting big parts of their platform, shutting down their Creative Labs, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well let's see</comment></comment>


White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/17/trump-administration-rolls-back-protections-for-people-in-default-on-student-loans/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised by the comments here. I am a fiscal conservative, but having taken and struggled to pay for student loans, and having hired people in the same situation, find that the lending programs are predatory by nature in that they know students will be unable to service the high monthly payments, and eventually default as a result.

Do I think people should pay their debt? Yes, but these lenders are the same lenders that get bailed out time and time again. They are in no peril. It is our students that assume this risk.

The only reason I was able to pay my loans was because the Army paid them for me after I completed my term of service. I tried for years to find employment that could help me escape a life of poverty but could not. It was not until I left the Army and started my own business that I finally started to claw my way out.

Our education system is broken. We know this. So lets stop punishing kids for doing what they've been told do to throughout K-12, and instead help them find a way out of the rat race. Kids swimming in debt are of no service to this country. We have to do better.

<comment><USER3> Removing loan guarantees, and forcing students to scrutinize the value of the degree they are pursuing _will_ improve the problem of students blindly doing what they've been told to do.

If they don't suffer the consequences of buying a useless degree, why wouldn't they keep doing it?

Any possible improvement of the status quo is going to involve pain. Certainly universities themselves could start feeling some of it, as they are complicit in accepting the guaranteed money without any incentive to more selectively filter either: the students getting the loans, or the quality of degrees they are receiving, or both.

<comment><USER4> Why should lenders not be punished for financing the useless degree? After all the availability of easy financing drives up the price of the useless education.

Remember, the "moral hazard" spoken of in financial bailouts is that the lenders aren't being punished for taking bad risks.

<comment><USER5> Much like the housing collapse, banks have been mandated to finance to people that can't afford it for student loans. The blame doesn't solely lay with the banks. The government is at least equally to blame.

<comment><USER6> That banks were "mandated" to finance people who couldn't afford housing is nothing more than a conservative talking point. The risky loans that banks took on -- no doc loans, interest only loans, negative amortization loans, sub prime high interest loans -- were "non conforming". "Non conforming loans" by definition were not government backed loans.

People who were taking advantage of those loans generally fell into a few categories. Investors who were buying real estate to flip. People who were getting houses appraised at more than they were worth and were illegally getting cash out and people with money that were buying over priced houses to live in but to sell later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After a few years of unemployment and being treated for bipolar depression my loans were in default. Due to the grace of the system at the time, I was able to bring my loans out of default and I now pay them like everyone else. This type of thing punishes the downtrodden even more. There must be a set of checks and balances that at least attempts to differentiate between deadbeats and broke people that don't need a higher hill to climb. The loans never go away. You can't escape them with bankruptcy. Let's not make this a living hell for people that got educated and fell on hard times.

<comment><USER8> I don't pay student loans. Do you know why? I don't have them. I went to an inexpensive local school, worked while going to school, and took the public bus to and from it. (I was fortunate enough to be able to live with my parents.)

While I don't know your situation, it's hard for me to feel sorry for someone who went to an expensive private school, lived on campus in a "country club" atmosphere, and then expects the Taxpayers to cover it.

<comment><USER9> You say you don't know anything about his situation but then you go on to heavily speculate about his situation.

I'm in your situation btw. I worked through undergrad and grad school and had my work pay for almost all of my school so I never had any debt. But I realize I was lucky and had a good situation lined up and not everyone has the same opportunities. Some people need more assistance than others, and I don't mind if the govt helps those folks out.

<comment><USER8> Right. And you may not mind if 'the government' helps them out, but the people who fund 'the government' might.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This USA student loan scheme is one of the most brilliant machines of social control ever devised.

People get of college already owing a lot money, now they have to work for shit, and put up with their asshole bosses do. They can't have the option to spend couple of months searching for jobs or they will have to default their debt and mess all their future life.

Nothing like a well behaved society where the workers can't complain.

Brilliant!!

<comment><USER11> "...a cynic might argue that we haven't really abolished slavery; we've just relabeled it. The cynic would have a point: an ancient Greek would certainly have seen the distinction between a slave and an indebted wage laborer as, at best, a legal nicety."

[https://books.google.com/books?id=lliTBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT275](https://books.google.com/books?id=lliTBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT275)

<comment><USER12> Thank you for the citation; I've ordered the book. Would you happen to have any other book recommendations on the topic, or adjacent topics?

<comment><USER11> Also, Soros's _The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means_ , though Graeber's book is what really brought Soros's claims into focus for me. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HKIFR4](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HKIFR4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee?

Education being the bedrock of an advanced society, isn't but natural the developed economies like US should be able to subsidize education to such an extant that youth of country don't have to worry about paying their tuition fee and focus more on learning and innovation that will take everyone forward.

It is but a reflection on the sad state of affairs that our higher education system has fallen into!!

What do you people think?

<comment><USER14> > Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition > fee?

Students demand a lot. Good profs. Dorms with AC. Sports teams. Medical care.

All that cost a lot.

States and federal gov't pays less each year. The difference has to come from somewhere?

In any case, its not perfect but I will take US colleges 100x over Japanese Colleges or Chinese Colleges or Mexican Colleges or 98% of the colleges in the world.

<comment><USER15> I bet they'd gladly pay $10'000 less per year even if it meant no $100M football stadium.

<comment><USER14> If you read my posts further down, Football is one of the only net positives for most universities. So getting rid of Football may raise your tuition by $500.

Now if you got rid of swimming, lacrosse, cross country, track, cricket, etc. etc., that would lower tuition by a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ironically, the head of the Dept. of Ed. invested over a hundred million dollars in a debt collection agency that tacks on these usurious fees and rates.

<comment><USER17> I don't think that's irony. That is corruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a trillion dollars of liability we're talking about. I'm OK with some forgiveness, but if and only if the Government gets out of the student loan business. (Watch tuition drop like a rock if this happens!)

<comment><USER18> And if guarantees for the loan companies are removed and the inability to free yourself from it in bankruptcy. Essentially move the 100% of the risk that borrowers currently have and move a nice portion of it to the lenders so they both bear the burden of the loans can't be repaid.

Imagine if banks had zero risk when providing home loans. I don't think it would be too difficult to buy a house you couldn't afford and quickly the price on homes would be driven up. The student loan industry is so completely fucked and needs to be reformed before it ruins our economy.

<comment><USER19>
      And if guarantees for the loan companies are removed and the inability to free yourself from it in bankruptcy.

Then why would the loan companies do student loans _at all_ except at exorbitant rates (thereby making the _responsible_ students pay more for those who aren't excluded altogether)?

<comment><USER18> They wouldn't. That's the point. You shouldn't be able to borrow $150k+ without some collateral or a 20% down payment.

I believe that if this happened, you'd see tuition rates plummet. But it won't until some catastrophic economic event occurs because the student loan industry is predatory and corrupt. Essentially ruining people's lives by selling them a lie in the name of "investing in your future."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It doesn't matter if it was a nice idea but if it was adopted outside the normal and proper means of adopting regulations then it is not okay. Forms of action matter regardless of the desirability of the substance. However, nothing prevents this being adopted again in the _proper_ fashion under the Administrative Procedures Act.

<comment><USER21> From the article it sounds like the regulation comes from a court precedent. The court sought advice from the Obama administration. It was not an executive order.

<comment><USER20> Not quite. The use of "Dear Colleague" letters by the US Department of Education have dubious status in terms of being regulations let alone being binding. It didn't play a role in a court case directly. A court _sought_ clarification after a settlement was reached between litigants but it wasn't necessarily required to be issued in that fashion by the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've always wondered if the fact we make it so essentially students are forced to repay their student debt (even if they are otherwise insolvent) contributes to higher cost of education.

After all, you have a captive market that has to buy your service or deal with a higher risk of unemployment and a lending institution that doesn't take on any risk.

What if we let students default on their loans?

My bet:

\- Less people will go to college (not necessarily a bad thing)

\- The cost of college will go down because the demand is stifled

If the government works to guarantee you will get paid, you can charge whatever you want and that might be what we are seeing.

<comment><USER23> Absolutely. There are three parties here: Schools, students, and lenders.

Schools set the price based on what they can get students to pay, which is a function of the willingness of lenders to give the students money.

Lenders approve borrowing students based on their likeliness to repay, which is currently very large due to the legal framework.

Students select college programs and loans based on a convoluted mix of 17-year-old wisdom, well-meaning advice suggesting they pursue their dreams, their ability to get the loan, and a hazy idea of future employment, income, and repayment.

It's obvious that increasing the penalties to the students after graduation is about the least effective measure you can take.

If students were allowed to discharge student loans through bankruptcy, that would still be a hefty penalty. Lenders would be less willing to give them money. With less money available, schools would have to charge less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Costs of increased military spending in Trump's budget: $54 billion

Estimated costs to make college tuition free for every citizen: $62 billion

<comment><USER25> > Estimated costs to make college tuition free for every citizen: $62 billion

How? There are ~20 million Americans enrolled in college so $62 billion is only $3,000 per person. In comparison, the US spends about $12,000 per year per high school student.

<comment><USER26> I'm not disagreeing, but presumably at least some portion of those expenses would be paid back in some way. The Australian model has the government provide the student loan. The interest rate is fixed to CPI and repayments are garnished directly from salary provided you earn over a certain amount (something like 50k). Students also get discounts via copaying which was about $500 per year from memory.

The government obviously never breaks even directly from this scheme. I think they've begun to exclude certain degrees that don't have good prospects which is a big debate at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The actual protection being rolled back:

"That [protection] forbid the agencies from charging fees for up to 16 percent of the principal and accrued interest owed on the loans, if the borrower entered the government's loan rehabilitation program within 60 days of default."

<comment><USER28> 16% interest on student loans is basically usury

<comment><USER29> For loans you can't default on it should be the market rate plus a tiny margin. So maybe 2% or so nowadays.

<comment><USER30> The lendee can't default, but that doesn't mean the loan gets paid. Some people just don't have money/income/assets to seize, and courts will not garnish poverty wages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good. I paid the $120K for my education and co-signed a loan for a friend (big mistake) for $10k for her education that I ended up paying off because she was a dead beat.

There has been a huge disturbing trend in the US in the last 30 years or so: you're not responsible for your actions; it's always some one else's fault.

You choose to go to a high priced school and study something that offers no marketable skills or is hyper competitive and only a few positions exist, why should I, as a taxpayer, fund that? - that is your choice.

I wanted to study physics, because I love the subject, but when I entered college, I evaluated that my job prospects were low, especially with merely an undergrad degree. Instead, I studying electrical & computer engineering, and I paid off my student loan debt 4 or 5 years after leaving college.

<comment><USER31> So you are against the ability for people to declare bankruptcy then?

Many boomers that spent beyond their means and lost their homes in 2008 were able to walk away from their loans. While they had a house to "give back", that asset probably lost 50-300K depending.

Many people every year get expensive medical care and are unable to pay it off. They cannot "give back" a medical procedure, so the cost is written off and/or they declare bankruptcy. This negatively affects everyone else that pays for healthcare.

But when it comes to education, it's a different story? I have a feeling the different story is: educational debt primarily effects the young, housing/medical debt primarily effects the older generations.

Educational debt used to be like other debt, but then the boomers went to college and got into positions of power...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I keep seeing people say that the student loan crisis will be the next "bubble pop". It seems like colleges and lenders both got greedy and created a mass of debt to them that will never be paid off. That, and I imagine the current generation will send their own kids to college at a much lower rate than their parents did. The "college bubble" is going to pop.

<comment><USER33> Its going to be a really rough bubble. There's no one source to point the finger at, but we've got ourselves in a spiral where:

-More people are going to school

-University costs have skyrocketed (mostly due to expanded administration services), which has increased the need for students to secure loans

-Wage growth has been low/flat for a long time

-A college degree has replaced a high school diploma/GED as a minimum requirement for most middle class jobs

-New grads are coming out of school to lower paying jobs relative to the cost of their education than ever before, driving defaults.

-As college matriculation becomes more and more necessary, even great high schools pivot towards a goal of getting students into college, instead of providing them great educations which have a secondary effect of getting them into college. Further decreasing the value of high school as someone's highest degree of education.

The last one is very worrisome for me, and something I hear a lot about. I have family and friends who are college professors - even those at ivy league universities are saying their students are just as smart as before, but on average now they're not as generally educated and way less prepared for serious academic work. They can't handle the same work loads, don't write or research as well, require more oversight/direction - things like that.

How do you fix that without blowing everything up and probably destroying the lives for a huge group of people who's only crime was being born in a certain set of years? Not to mention the economic implications of an entire generation going into middle age already carrying massive debt - how are they going to generate asset wealth?

<comment><USER34> >How do you fix that without blowing everything up and probably destroying the lives for a huge group of people who's only crime was being born in a certain set of years?

A huge number of millennial college students who weren't fortunate enough to graduate into a tech career between 2007-2011 already went through this. It wouldn't be anything new.

>Not to mention the economic implications of an entire generation going into middle age already carrying massive debt - how are they going to generate asset wealth?

I mean...this is already happening. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. "Blowing everything up" is the only way to stop this cycle.

<comment><USER33> Probably should've separated/clarified my last two sentences; I agree that its already happening, and that the system will blow up on its own eventually.

My questions are: Can we do something about to reverse it? If not can we do a "controlled demolition"? Is there even anyone in a position to do anything / is the train accelerating with no breaks and no one at the helm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Two things to note on this:

1) the Obama policy (not even official administrative rule with any weight of enforcement, just a memo with a veiled threat of negative attention if flouted with any frequency) was only in place for his last 1.5 years. This letter just pulls that back to the first 6.5 years of his reign.

2) Note this quote: "The withdrawal of the Obama administration memo arrives the same week as a report from the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) showing that millions of people had not made a payment on $137 billion in federal student loans for at least nine months in 2016, a 14 percent increase in defaults from a year earlier. "

In other words, after this rule was put in place, _millions_ of loan recipients _stopped making any payment altogether_ and 14% _more_ entered default _despite added mechanisms for avoiding default_.

This article doesn't even go into the huge taxpayer bailout of students of closed and failing for-profit diploma mills[0]. It was an unprecedented windfall for those affected, the entire debt was _forgiven_ , they took no hit on their credit, _and_ the debt forgiveness wasn't counted as income by the IRS (like debt forgiveness normally works). Taxpayers paid for it all. It was a great buy-off of new voters.

An obvious _small_ mitigation would have been to instead have their debt applied against a replacement degree program (e.g. you owe $20,000, you go to a new school at $10,000 tuition per year, then your first two years' tuition payments wipe out that debt, with interest charges stopped while in school).

[0] [https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan- ranger/2...](https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan- ranger/2015/12/09/pursue-a-federal-student-loan-discharge-as-a-victim-of- college-fraud)

[EDIT]: Here is the original Obama FFEL memo:

[https://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN1513.pdf](https://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN1513.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER36> I guess I'm just simpleminded and think that you should just pay your debt that you agreed to acquire..

</comment><comment><USER37> This is probably a good idea. It's ridiculous that we coddle people who wastefully took out loans with the goal of improving human capital, and then failed to take advantage of them.

Previously student loans were a socialized losses, privatized gains situation. This gives borrowers some skin in the game and will hopefully give them more reason to carefully evaluate whether college is really a good idea for them.

<comment><USER38> What? Borrowers already have skin in the game. Lenders have _none_.

Make student loans dischargeable and suddenly a lot more people are thinking about the actual utility of college and it's costs.

<comment><USER2> I agree with the downvote and the fact that borrowers have skin in the game, but not that lenders have none. Debt should not be dischargeable, else it's not debt at all.

<comment><USER39> Of course debt can be written off. Out there in the real world contracts are renegotiated all the time. More of that would be advantageous in the face of information asymmetry, the party with better insight would be less tempted to exploit their position.

<comment><USER2> You're talking about corporate debt not personal debt. Show me an example of personal date that is frequently discharged (outside of bankruptcy) and I'll adjust my position.

If you're referring to the fact that it can't be discharged as part of bankruptcy, then I tend to agree with you. It should be.

<comment><USER40> _If you 're referring to the fact that it can't be discharged as part of bankruptcy, then I tend to agree with you._

How else would they be dischargeable? I assume you were talking about bankruptcy.

<comment><USER2> As some sort of student loan forgiveness program.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who will be the next king of web frameworks? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=asp.net%20mvc%2C%20ruby%20on%20rails%2C%20node.js%2C%20python%20django&cmpt=q Ruby on Rails was the way to go few years ago. What do you think will be the way to go in next few years? I'm on the crossroads trying to decide in which one to invest my time? <comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=asp.net%20mvc%2C%20ra...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=asp.net%20mvc%2C%20rails%2C%20node.js%2C%20python%20django&cmpt=q)

Assuming people are more likely to search for RoR than the Illinois public library system or a clothing store in LA, "rails" is still head and shoulders above the others. Not really sure how accurate of a measure this is as being the top used framework though.</comment>


Is Bootstrap making the Internet fat? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> "Fat" in which way? Traffic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha it certainly is popular and helps people get started. But it is a very large library.</comment></comment>


The Baltic Demographic Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/07/19/the-baltic-demographic-disaster-since-1992-the-region-has-lost-more-than-20-of-its-population/ <comment><USER3> The Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this.

Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non- Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1].

According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone started out with 715k non-citizen in 1991, and now has 290,660 as of March 2011 census. Some left, some died and some became citizen, but the drop is huge and the outflow is intentional with the aim of increasing the proportion of "native" ethnic groups.

At the same time, Russia has been taking in immigrants. The 1 million drop does not show the changes in underlying ethnic proportions. Russian politicians have not been as concerned with maintaining the ethnic composition, which they may start to look at as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common.

In any case, pure economic speculations don't do justice to that region. It's a very complex balancing act, with nationalists on both sides willing to chop of their nose to spite their face.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- citizens_(Latvia)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizens_\(Latvia\))

<comment><USER4> Mixing in the non-citizens in a discussion about demographics seems wrong. Most of the non-citizens are people around retirement age - factory workers who were sent in the country from other soviet countries, military families and so on. The cause for reduction in numbers of non-citizens is simple - <USER2> died.

Also claiming that they have an incentive to leave the country seems wrong, because the requirements to acquire citizenship are so easy. You just have to prove that you understand the Latvian language at a very basic level. If you can do that, then you get citizenship. Much easier than moving to a different country.

<comment><USER5> > Also claiming that they have an incentive to leave the country seems wrong

I don't know about that, ever been to Narva? Ethnic Russians are, at least to some extent, in a position similar to that of African Americans in the US, but it is easier for them to leave since they just arrived a few decades ago, whereas African Americans have been in the US long enough to have established long-term connections and to have lost contact with the "old world". So it seems pretty reasonable to me to say that Ethnic Russians have an incentive to leave the Baltic states.

<comment><USER6> You could make that comparison if African Americans had been invaders of the US, but not otherwise.

Narva is a huge problem for the Estonian government - unemployment there is high, and the educational institutions struggle to field teachers who can teach in Estonian. As a result, young people with a Russian background are at a disadvantage with respect to basic language skills.

It's also fair to say there are a number of those in Narva who wish for their 'countrymen' to come rolling over the border again.

<comment><USER5> Why does it matter how a discriminated-against minority group got to a place? Russian Balts are treated poorly. African Americans are treated poorly. Both groups suffer from lack of opportunities, institutional discrimination at various points, and a cycle of poverty caused largely by bigotry. How they got there is really immaterial.

<comment><USER4> You forgot to compare the treatment of the russian speaking people in the baltic states to the treatment of jews in the nazi germany. Both were treated poorly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Forbes, yeesh. It may be trite to roll out the correlation-is-not-causation argument, but this is so incredibly blatant it turns my stomach.

The author's thesis could be summarized as: The Baltic population level has declined consistently since 1992, therefore Baltic economic policies must not be as desirable as some make them out to be.

Population migration and economic policy are two astoundingly broad topics. Any attempt to link the two requires at least _some_ analysis of each. This article contains none.

Flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not fair at all. The author's points are: 1) there has been a major population decline in the Baltics; 2) the decline is staggering even by comparison to Russia, which is widely thought to have a problem with population; 3) people making claims about economic reform in the Baltics should not ignore such a major factor.

<comment><USER7> Points 1 & 2 are facts, and are not in dispute, but point 3 is a question, not a statement.

"Don't ignore population growth/decline when examining economic reform."

Ok, but what of it? Is anyone ignoring that? If the author believes that the population decline in the Baltics is due to the economic policy therein, then they should find ways to establish that causal relationship, not just point at a graph and say "see here".

<comment><AUTHOR> You're complaining about a causality claim that he never makes.

<comment><USER8> He only nods his head repeatedly in its general direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems an overly simplistic discussion of a single chart.

Is it ethnic Russians leaving these countries?

Why the sudden drop in one year, which seems to represent a change of definitions?

<comment><AUTHOR> A blog post will inevitably oversimplify a demographic chart involving millions of people. It's still an interesting chart.

The sudden drop in one year, as the article points out, was likely because of the economic crisis. As for whether it's ethnic Russians leaving the country, it's not obvious to me why that is the first thing that matters; most discussions on population and economics don't immediately leap to ethnicity, do they?

<comment><USER10> Of course ethnicity matters. If most of the outflow is Russian, then to intentionally ignore that connection is intellectually dishonest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course there's no question of intentionally ignoring anything. My question is about the economics. Presumably, the economic significance of population decline has to do with its effect on GDP, growth, and the like. It's not obvious (is it?) which of these questions have answers that change depending on the ethnicity of who comes or goes.

There's also the question of whether the outflow does in fact consist mostly of Russians. Is there data on this? No one has presented any here, and the various comments in the thread contradict one another.

<comment><USER10> It would be extremely useful to know if the outflow are a lot of say "aging Russians" or "young Estonian/Latvians", as each would have extremely different implications. The fact that the information is missing in the article means we can only speculate. Perhaps the information is obscured or those statistics aren't collected, but without knowing, it is much more difficult to find the cause and ultimately come up with a solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what are the immigration policies of these Baltic states? How are they enticing new citizens? Have they relaxed their immigration criteria to try to get more citizens, or is it strict?

If I wanted to immigrate to, say, Estonia next year, how difficult would it be?

<comment><USER12> No one wants to immigrate here. And actually, I'm happy with that.

<comment><USER6> Then that could well make you one of ultra-nationalistic Estonians who would rather see their country and language die rather than have it be 'tainted'.

I'm half Australian and half Estonian - and have citizenship of both countries. I've worked as a developer in both countries, and currently reside (and work) in Estonia. I see this attitude all the time in Estonia; despite the obvious need for immigration, many people would rather see the population keep on decreasing. Currently it's simply too difficult for professionals to get an Estonian visa, and wages are not attractive enough, in general, to attract those with an EU passport. This is part of the problem that will, in time, kill Estonia and likely the other Baltic countries.

<comment><USER11> I actually do like the Baltic states, and wouldn't mind moving. I don't speak Estonian, but I do know a bit of Finnish due to having a Finnish roommate in university. I've long dreamed of moving to several EU nations, but every one of the countries I could see myself living in makes it so hard to get a visa. I'm more used to American immigration policy, which is a lot more "open door" than the EU countries I adore.

From the little time I've spent in Finland though, I've seen a lot of this type of attitude. People are generally happy to see visitors as long as the visitors don't try to speak their language or talk about moving to the country. Tallinn seems like a nice place, though.

<comment><USER13> «American immigration policy, which is a lot more "open door"»

I do not now about that. My impression is that American immigration is just more promoted (and exploited) than in other countries, not necessarily easier or more open. It is like an industry on itself. Other countries are not that eager to sell themselves to immigrants, which I guess it's because the general feeling about what already belongs to locals and is not to be sold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm interested in levels of ethnic Russian emigration from the Baltics. Has this happened, and if so, how much does it contribute to this picture?

<comment><USER15> Interestingly, according to [http://im.kommersant.ru/ISSUES.PHOTO/CORP/2013/02/21/dsryu4....](http://im.kommersant.ru/ISSUES.PHOTO/CORP/2013/02/21/dsryu4.gif), the Baltics combined have the largest russian diaspora in the world, followed by USA, Germany and Israel. Probably due to the proximity and relative ease of emigration from Russia to the Baltic states.

If you read russian, here is a series of articles with advice on various emigration destinations. It's an interesting view into the current mindset there. [http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2132694](http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2132694)

<comment><USER13> There are countries that are not considered in that report, and some of them are big, with a major quota of Russian population (like Ukraine). That's probably because Russians don't have a diaspora there (and as far as I know people usually are considering a diaspora when they feel themselves outsiders in some way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _" over the past two decades, their populations have collapsed at a historically unprecedented rate."_

I don't think it's _completely_ unprecedented, but I doubt that people will take heart in being compared favorably to the Black Death.

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

<comment><USER17> And what if we narrow it down to population collapse as a result of emigration?

<comment><USER18> It doesn't seem wildly different from say, Detroit. It looks like the population declined about 30% over the last 20 years[1].

Granted, the population is smaller than the Baltic states, but the population of the Baltic states is also smaller than that of Russia.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit)

<comment><USER19> The Black Death or Detroit. I don't know which is worse.

I keed, I keed: many very smart people are doing really interesting things in Detroit. It's interesting to note, though, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic causal factors: the Black Death significantly increased real peasant wages and per capita wealth, likely helping the transition from a feudal to capitalist society through dispersing capital more widely. It's a much better situation (for the people who remain) than the Detroit case, where it was low returns to labor that depopulated it.

Estonia is much closer to the Detroit case, it sounds like, which is not necessarily a good thing for its future prospects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Depopulation is not a disaster. We save the world!

</comment><comment><USER21> So what happened in 2010? The article doesn't explain the most prominent feature of the charts...

<comment><USER22> That might be this comment: "It's true that the Baltics suffered a particularly rapid outflow after the popping of their respective economic bubbles".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It is not correct to compare population of Russia and Baltic countries. They border each other, but live in completely different economic spaces.

No doubts that author, who position himself as Russia watcher, is familiar with the demography in russian regions bordering with baltic states. Depopulation there is the same if not more severe that in Latvia or Estonia, yet author just 'forget' to mention that little detail.

<comment><USER24> Some of the hype about Russian population decline is overblown. Whereas people under communism formed families young, now careers take longer to establish and people tend to have kids older just as in the west. This transition contributed to a period of suppressed birth rates, but births are increasing now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it a good idea to build an offshore software development team in one of the baltic countries? Anyone has some perspective with that?

<comment><USER4> There are already local "franchises" of the large companies like Tietonator and Accenture. The computer science department of the Latvian University, which provides free government funded education in computer science is basically controlled by stock holders of such large offshoring companies. The problem is - the country is very small. About 2 million people. So even taking into account the free education, the absolute number of competent programmers will be quite small. It is already a challenge to find employees for basic web development positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> the same is happening in many other countries where salaries are a third of (relatively) nearby countries and people are free to move. I don't expect the population decline in the Baltics to continue at that pace though

</comment><comment><USER27> I have lived with three or four Latvians. Two of them said that they moved from Latvia because, while they could get work there, they couldn't really get by on the wages offered by those jobs.</comment>


Ask HN: Best ways to start learning Rust? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you normally use a search engine for programming questions, I suggest you only look back (up to) 2 years for Rust questions...I found lots of older posts that were outdated...There are tons of Rust learning materials...again, go with recent ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read (and understand) the book; [https://doc.rust- lang.org/book/](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)

Then apply whatever knowledge you have from previous languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Rocket is a really nice web framework of you're familiar with that field. Otherwise just read the "book".

</comment><comment><USER5> Do the tour</comment>


Interview with John Carmack (on Rage, id Software) [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdaction.pl/news-7673/john-carmack-opowiada-o-rage---pol-godziny-goracego-materialu-prosto-ze-studia-id-software.html

<comment><USER2> "unlimited numbers of 128,000 x 128,000 pixel textures, terabytes of source data" (part1, 3:33)

rare to hear about images this large in routine use. cool.

\----

on id's experience with developing for multiple platforms at once: build up in house expertise; have a build system that does automatic tests against each platform at once (part2, ~7:30)

\---

on the future of gaming, and the cloud: imagines a 100 petabyte data store, a World of Warcraft-sized texture, people interacting with it using consoles that have no optical media, just an ethernet port (part3, 6:45)

<comment><USER3> The images themselves aren't that large, but are procedurally generated from sprites/stamps. But it's still damn impressive that they can keep up with that number of stampings at that scale. It's even more impressive when you figure they can do it in 1/60th of a second.

<comment><USER4> The images aren't procedurally generated; they really are that large. Stamping is just an easy way for artists to generate an image that large; the stamps are baked into the texture as soon as the artist places them, and afterward the artist can go back and individually edit every pixel.

Obviously you can't ship an image that large on a DVD, so there's a lot of compression that has to happen, and a lot of that data will eventually just get thrown out. I believe id is using a system that uses recorded player sessions to figure out which parts of the texture are likely to be shown on- screen in actual gameplay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damnit, that's cool.

I recently read "Masters of Doom." It's the "stories" of John Carmack and John Romero. I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it highly.

In the book they describe a "android like hum" that Carmack makes when he talks. I'm wondering if this is the "Iiiiii" noise that he makes in this video.</comment>